Here’s a jaw-dropping video (6.7 MB Windows Media Player file) of four Sony QRIO robots dancing. (These are smallish bipedal robots, remarkably anthropomorphic and apparently very highly articulated.)
(Subject line stolen from Labyrinth, link via Boing Boing)
Clay Shirky’s latest piece, titled Situated Software, is actually a lot more interesting than it sounds — basically, it’s about how the “traditional” design goals of web software (”scalability, generality, completeness”) are being gleefully disregarded in ways that produce software that’s extremely useful and successful within smallish social groups. Kinda reminds me of some [...]
First day of term and zero chance of missing the rest of this week due to snow! I like my two in-person instructors, and my two online ones seem cool as well (and I’ve taken a live class from one of those).
Most common comment today: “You should be a teacher” (I heard this [...]
Wikipedia pages on graph theory and graph visualization (complete with useful links), respectively.
I’m such a dork.
Anything nice I ever said about PHP, I take it all back. I HATE WEB PROGRAMMING.
I got an email from someone whose computer I worked on last year (total revenues: $32). She asked if she could pay me to hook up a DVD player if she bought one… a job which would take less time than the round trip.
(So instead I drew a picture.)
This is thoroughly disgusting: a money compartment built into a pair of tighty-whities with pre-painted skid marks. Sort of a “poo-loined letter” effect, if you’ll forgive me…
(oh yeah, link via gizmodo)
Implementing Graphs [in Python] — way nifty. Hardcore geek territory, though.
Anybody want a 12x CD burner?
While this will undoubtedly cause my sweetie to repeat the oft-heard phrase “just give ME the money!”, I got myself a DVD burner for my PC today, for less money than I’d expected to spend ($115). I wound up with an NEC dual-format drive (this means it writes to both DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW, a [...]
I hereby declare today to be Goddammit Day.
I spent some time adjusting a few things on both of my bikes, slicing into two of my fingers in the process.
One of our prettier candleholders (frosted glass inside a metal frame) fell off of the bookshelf as I walked by, breaking three of its four panes of [...]
Highly entertaining story of one motorcyclist’s encounter with suburban wildlife. (Link via Sean Graethorne, who as far as I know has no website.)
Cat With Hands (6.2MB Quicktime link) is a creepy little short film that I would particularly not recommend to my squeamish partner. But for the morbid among you who enjoy the original Grimm versions, have at it.
(link via Neil Gaiman)
Here’s NASA’s press release, including links to some not-particularly-exciting pictures, of that subvocal speech recognition system I mentioned last week.
Finally got my grades back for all my classes last term (they were supposed to be available Friday, but my trig teacher apparently didn’t enter them until last night, and that was the one class whose grade I wasn’t sure of). I got another sweep of As (17 units’ worth), bringing my GPA up [...]
Had a lovely weekend with some friends in Seattle — juggling, and French/Mexican fusion cuisine (the mango-Brie quesadilla was excellent).
I’ve added two new links to the right: Aussie Chick, as she’s known on the Joel on Software discussion board, will probably not be particularly interesting to any of you, and my Canadian friend Karen [...]
The propellerhead set at NASA (and I mean that in a loving way; one day, if I’m very good, I may have a job as cool as theirs) have come up with an interface that reads your mind — sort of:
“A person using the subvocal system thinks of phrases and talks to himself so quietly [...]
Python 2.3 (#1, Sep 13 2003, 00:49:11)
[GCC 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1495)]
Type “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
MacPython IDE 1.0.1
>>> thisList = ["spam", "eggs", "bacon", "spam"]
>>> for i in range(len(thisList)):
… print thisList[i]
…
spam
eggs
bacon
spam
…I’m liking this language. And not just because it encourages you to use “spam” and “eggs” instead of “foo” and “bar.” [...]
Watch Donald Rumsfeld soil his trousers. (link via Justin)
[UPDATE] My dad theorizes:
It seems like they got away with saying one thing, then contradicting themselves, then lying about it for so long (like three years while the media never called them on it) that they’ve gotten used to just saying whatever is convenient. I think [...]