I haven’t gotten a lot done this afternoon, but I did record a podcast which described some of the fun we had at Robogames 2005 (check yesterdays blog entry for pictures) and a brief description of my new graphics card: an ATI X700 Pro which replaces the old X300 SE card in my Windows Media PC.
Hope everyone had a nice Easter. My ham turned out delicious, as did the sweet potatoes.
Keeping with today’s theme of robotics, here is a cool reconfigurable robot that I found courtesy of Engadget. It’s a cool bot, constructed from a large number of identical modules which can connect to one another and provide a wide varity of mobility options.
Well, just got back from a day of watching robot combat at the Robogames competition in at San Francisco State. It continues tomorrow. You can look at my gallery of photos, and maybe even watch a Quicktime of a poor Robosapien competing in an event.
I’m interested in a wide variety of rustic crafts, so I found A Course In Wood Turning, by Archie S. Milton. to be a cool addition to the growing list of public domain works you can fetch from Project Gutenberg. It’s neat, and includes many diagrams and photos.
My BS-o-meter was tripped today while I was reading this article on Media Matters. One of the doctors appointed by the Florida court to examine Terri Schiavo, Dr. William Hammesfahr, was repeatedly referred to as a “Nobel prize nominee”.
Sigh.
Apparently he got “nominated” because his Congressmen sent the Nobel committee a letter saying he should get the Nobel prize. But, of course, you don’t get nominated by just having anyone send a letter to the committee. You have to follow the rules.. And in particular, the Nobel committee prefers to keep details of those who are nominated secret.
Information about the nominations, investigations, and opinions concerning the award is kept secret for fifty years.
When you see someone claim that they are a Nobel prize nominee, they are full of it.
Read the rest of the Media Matters article for more of the poor reporting that outlets like Fox are pushing.
The natural world still has many surprises left for us.
For those of you interested in robotics, this weekend is a veritable feast. In addition to the previously mentioned Robogames, this weekend is the Silicon Valley Regional FIRST Competition at San Jose State. It’s free, and sounds like fun. You can look at the agenda here. If you aren’t in the San Jose area, you could try looking at this list of 2005 Regional Events.
Using my Dell PDA to record podcasts while on the way to work is strangely addicting. Here’s another one that features an update on my cat Scrappy and his recovery from his fisticuffs with another cat, my thoughts on the Schiavo case, and my disgust with Barry Bonds. Barry, you’ll get no huzzahs from me this year.
Oh, here is a picture of Scrappy rolling around on the ground in our front yard this morning. The sunlight apparently feels good to his recovering body…
Space.com reports that the Spirit rover caught these photos of Mars’ moon Deimos crossing the solar disk: in other words, a Martian solar eclipse. Very cool. You can get a version of the loop here as an mpeg or here as an animated gif. Compare these to my crude transit of Mercury that I recorded back in 1999.
Cool stuff.
RoboGames (formerly ROBOlympics) is going to be held this weekend in San Francisco! How did I let this sneak up on me? II’ll have to shell out my $20 and go at least one of the days. Stay tuned for a report!
Microsoft will be releasing six new fonts in 2006, and this preview shows some type specimens. I’m actually a big fan of Georgia and Verdana, and these seem to be similarly attractive. I’m even willing to overlook the creation of MS Comic Sans…
Well, I’ve decided on a name for my tiny FreeBSD LiveCD project: itsyBSD, pronouced “itsybitsy”. 🙂 I haven’t got any files to download yet, but if you click the link you’ll end up at a wiki which will hold my documentation for the project. Hopefully in the next week I’ll have an iso you can download.
SD Times – Is Software Engineering an Oxymoron?
The problem, then, is that programming has changed from the study and implementation of algorithms to the study and creation of complex documents.
I just thought it was a nice quote.
I agree only in part with Holub’s article though. He thinks that computer science is turning into a liberal art, and that it’s problematic that the curricula of universities doesn’t change to reflect that change. I think its also problematic that mathematics and analysis are being weaned out of computer science. Computer science needs mathematics and analysis more than ever.
Well, today’s mobile podcast is dominated by a report on the health of my kitty. I know, I know, podcasting about your pets, how cliché is that? But I’ve spent the last 48 hours worrying about the little fuzzball, so this is what you get for subscribing… 🙂
I do have a few tiny bits of geek news though…
A wiki is a program, often a CGI, which enables you to edit a website using an HTML form. You can limit the editing priviliges to a single or group of users, or let anyone in the world edit it.
They are often used for documentation where the user community is expected to update and correct information, and I’m thinking about using it on my LiveCD project.
Russell Beattie mentioned Mike Rowehl’s new feedhacks.com blog. His major hack is a WordPress plugin that allows you to include RSS feeds in posts. For instance, by entering the tag <feedster search=”vandewettering”>, you get:
Nifty!
