I promise you this is not another mere-smear BS YouTube embed just to say we’ve posted when we actually are only posting a BS Youtube embed.
Okay so maybe it could kind of lok that way but it’s cool because tis is abkut US! As in, it’s about RoboGames, the li’l shindig we throw in June or thereabouts in San Francisco.
Bill Sherman, robot builder extraordinaire, always sets up a nifty time lapse camera at RoboGames to capture the arena build and all sorts of other silliness. He has included footage he took of some of the art bot mezzanine as well. Tel him how neat he is and thank him for putting this up.
[BTW, hello to all those coming from Neatorama through the Rotor's last post, we weren't expecting guests to please forgive us if we're scrambling around to tidy things up.]
This is Mr. Robotics’ progress on his Mechwarrior, which so far he has spent exactly a day and a half on, using parts we had lying around at home, deep down, as a procrastination tool. He will still kick ass and/or take names.
Magnus Würzer of RoboExotica and Shifz fame has taken this video in my very own kitchen. It is of our Intern’s marshammlow roasting robot, a fine tetrix-based contraption that results in burned sugar par excellance:
See more awesome like this at this year’s RoboGames, oh boy that’s a lot of robots.
So, for a little background: Stephen Nelson is one of our favorite people that most of the six of you who check this site regularly have never heard of. He builds things like power tool racers and, more importantly, robots.
His stable include Evelyn, a Modified Dawg(watch out, 16mg video download); Eva, the beer retriever, and his latest and gnarliest creation, Ethel, (named for the Zappa song). As Mr. Nelson says, “The goal of building Ethel is a learning experience with software and vision system on a off road robot.” At least this was the goal when he started, she has since sprouted a flamethrower and a portable DJ rig, amongst other things. But I digress.
I will now turn over the tale of the latest adventures with Ethel to Mr. Nelson himself posting from his garage while nursing his road rash:
A Finnish programmer who lost his finger in a motorcycle accident has now replaced it with a prosthetic finger that has a USB drive built in. Jerry Jalava can now peel back his “nail” and reveal a 2GB “finger drive” for storing photos, movies and software.
Jalava had his left ring finger amputated last summer after crashing into a deer with his motorbike near the Finnish capital Helsinki. Given his profession as a computer programmer, the doctors treating him joked that he should have a USB “finger drive” and Jalava went for the idea.
Bre has established that Skynet will enable itself via tasty cheese-filled snacks:
This is one of those robots that I swear is alive. The noises it made were like an animal and it seemed that everytime we looked the other way, it was coming to life and changing things with the setup.
So back a couple days ago I mentioned I-Wei Huang, who is still cooler than you and sheds mechanical ninja-fu like some people shed viruses. Well, he’s shown up again, saving me from actually having to look for something good to post:
(The Rotor is in Vienna, Mister Robotics is in buried in Systm and I am wrangling art stars and tentacles, so apologies for the lack of posting, I shall take my beating with my tea.)
Being as The Head Rotor, Mr. Robotics and myself live in San Francisco, so along with the usual ballot type measures, we get the fun stuff like Prop R Prop 8. Yes on the first, HELLS no on the second (if we may be permitted to lodge oblique political preferences on this website, which we are, on occasion).
In the meantime, this video is the emblem of a sweet future for our robot overlords:
Thanks Laughing Squid for the video!
I will be watching the results on Twitter (follow WashPostResults for state-by-state reporting) while attending a very important business function at Lagunitas Brewery this evening, which will entail drinking enough beer so that we can’t tell the difference between the hero and the villain, Purim-style.
I have one-a them nifty Lynxmotion hexapods, I imagine if I just applied myself one of these days I, too, could someday be cool. That’s what my guidance counselor always used to say, anyway.
Many tanks to the many tentacled wonder, Laughing Squid.
Yeah, do like Grant did and get yerself one-a them sexy stickers over in the sidebar there. Then you can say you were one of the cool kids way back when.
Channel Nine’s priorities are straight, of course, in a data set where giant killer bipedal robots firing airsoft pellets are top priority. Which they are. So have a watch and get all slobbery over MechWars, and then build one and inhale the awesome.
Fomdi is a happy little search bot that enables the deaf and hard of hearing to find a movie they can actually enjoy in a theater. You’d be surprised how annoying this is to do ordinarily.
In addition, today YouTube unveiled a new captioning service for its videos, which is very forward thinking and not-evil of them to do. YouTube joins the ranks of other like-minded companies like the BBC, CNet, UC Berkeley, MIT and Gonzodoga that have realized that you you can just do the darndest things with all this new technology, and make friends and influence people besides.
