rants of a humble humanoid

Happy Decade!

2010-01-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

Yes a new decade is upon us... This is what the constant time changes represent to me, that the only constant is change. To that end, this year-- no make that every year I plan on logging more technical info. Information that some people actually need in daily life in addition to the often trivial techno-junk I've been blogging about.

But I cant just get serious without mentioning a serious technological breakthrough. No longer do gigantic mechanized robotic suits only exists in futuristic anime fiction. Say hello to "Land Walker" created by Masaaki Nagumo. This 1 ton brute stands 3.4m or roughly 11ft high and is packing dual air powered sponge-pellet cannons! You can go riding through the neighborhood smashing things next week on one of these for a mere 36 million yen or US $300,000. Check out the sakakibara-kikai LandWalker site for more details and additional images.

Replicated cupcake anyone?

2009-12-24T20:30:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it's been a while since I've posted... Oh well, this is perhaps the most profound piece of information I've shared in a while. How many times have you wanted draw up an object on your lappy you've imagined, then print it into existence? That is exactly the idea behid 3-D printers a.k.a, replicators. An object is designed by means of standard CAD software and is then "printed" into reality by bonding successive layers of material via an jet nozzle. MakerBot (pictured right), can be ordered today and is capable of replicating cupcakes among other things. Mmmm... Tasty, tasty, replicated goodness (about the most inefficient way to make a cupcake I could think of).

Yet another cool project is RepRap (pictured below). This marvel can manufacture a significant fraction of its own parts and soon its own circuitry. Research is being done into engineering applications where organs and body parts are built using inkjet techniques. Layers of living cells are deposited onto a gel medium and slowly built up to form three dimensional structures.

Why algae is cool...

2007-11-27T14:41:00.000-08:00

Besides being a jelly-like pond scum, did you know algae has other uses?
For example:

Can absorb C02 (you know the "greenhouse gas").
Can be used for biofuel in modified car, truck, trains, and maybe even plane engines.
As a fuel source, does not compete with food sources i.e., corn & ethanol or e85.
Doesn't require much land for producing large amounts
Doesn't require freshwater, or can even be grown in wastewater.

Here are more links on the uses of our green, slimy friend
oilgae.com
greenfuelonline.com
algaefuel.org

Get your barf bags ready, commercial space flights begin in 2009!

2007-10-08T09:02:00.000-07:00

You know when you hear news like this you gotta say to yourself "God bless Sir Richard Branson". For anyone not in the know about cagillionaire Richard Branson, he is the tycoon behind Virgin Megastores, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Records, and Virgin Mobile.

Anyhow, onto his latest (and to me his most important) business venture, Virgin Galactic. After licensing the technology that lifted Spaceship 1 into space, Branson constructed a similar fleet of ships. For a mere $20k you, yes you, can reserve a seat aboard one of these lil' beauts. The entire sub-orbital trip will set you back $200k, but thats pennies for a space flight! Read more about Virgin Galactic here. Oh and don't forget to buy some space currency before you go here, since supposedly metal coins and metallic strips in our current currency becomes radioactive in space.

The Grim Reaper ... A Robot?

2007-08-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

What do you think of when you think of the Grim Reaper, assuming you've entertained the thought. Just in case you've been cryogenically frozen for your whole life, the Grim Reaper (in Western societies such as ours) is the personification of the coming of death to an individual. The image I think of is the classic skeleton like figure, cloaked in black and wielding his sharp, rusty scythe as pictured to the right.

What if I told you that a robot was created to do exactly what this creation of the human imagination allegedly does. Also it can fly very far, very fast and could possible use nuclear weapons. It looks like the morbid machine to the left. Okay so maybe it doesn't wait around for orders to go harvest souls or even look human like in any form (the robot to the left was created to give presentations on vinegar). However, General Atomics has in fact created the Reaper which is a upgraded version of the Predator unmanned robotic aerial seek and destroy aircraft . You may remember hearing on the news about the Predator vehicles that relentlessly hunted down Al-Qaeda members in Summer 06' in Afghanistan.

Who cares you might sarcastically mumble to yourself, right? Maybe you should know that the Reaper can reportedly fly three times as fast as the Predator, carry eight times more weaponry, and stay aloft eight times as long as a manned F-16! All this WITHOUT ANY human interaction if necessary. If that doesn't concern you. maybe it would concern you to know the the U.S. Air Force plans to begin deploying the bots as early as THIS fall. Still not concerned, I suggest your read about the aircraft on Air Force site. One things for sure, this robot ain't for vacuuming. In fact it appears that governments around the world are investing more and more in robots to be used as weapons. From the U.S. investing billions in unmanned attack bots, to the Israelis investing billion in Bionic Hornets that essentially seek and destroy. Maybe no one is concerned about death from above via the Reaper bot yet, especially no one on U.S. soil. But make not mistake, plenty of blood will be shed abroad on count of these mechanic murderers.

equilibrium at last...

2007-08-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how in life things seems to want to be in balance naturally. For example, night & day, electricity & magnetism, space & time, male & female, etc, etc. This can also be called equilibrium or the stability of an object because of equal and opposing forces. To me it's not only natural but some forces must be checked. Forces like my 2yr daughter. Luckily, the missus and I, being the geniuses we are, recognized this and decided to create yet another daughter. Ha! Instant equilibrium! The mom-bot and I equally oppose each other. Now the offspring have their equal opposition ( or will be equal soon ). It kind of reminds me of this:

From the wiki:
The dual concepts of yin and yang – or the single concept yin-yang – originated in ancient Chinese philosophy and metaphysics, which describe two primal opposing but complementary principles or cosmic forces said to be found in all non-static objects and processes in the universe.

Is it all smoke & mirrors ?

2007-08-10T01:47:00.000-07:00

Smoke and mirrors is a metaphor for a deceptive, fraudulent or insubstantial explanation or description. The source of the name is based on magicians illusions, where magicians use mirrors to accomplish illusions such as making objects disappear, when they really don't disappear at all (thanks wikipedia).

I found a parallel to this metaphor and the current state of earth's environment. Let the over 21 million tons of toxins pumped into our atmosphere a year symbolize smoke. Then the fact that over 71% of the earth contains large bodies of water, basically large natural mirrors. So with that definition our world IS mostly smoke and mirrors, right? I don't know, just something I pondered while studying about the reflective properties of light and coincidentally listening to the song The Mirror by Thievery Corporation, which has the hook "Our whole world is smoke and mirrors".

You might be familiar with the piece pictured to the left by M.C. Escher titled Hand with Reflection Sphere. Here is what Escher thought about the reflective properties of mirrors; "Such a globe reflection collects almost one's whole surroundings in one disk-shaped image. The whole rooms, four walls, the floor, and the ceiling, everything, albeit distorted, is compressed into that one small circle. Your own head, or more exactly the point between your eyes, is the absolute center. No matter how you turn or twist yourself, you can't get out of that central point. You are immovably the focus, the unshakable core, or your world".

Finally somebody found my giant Lego dude!

2007-08-08T10:44:00.001-07:00

It was found just floating in the Dutch Sea! How it floated over 4899.0 miles from America to the Netherlands is beyond me. Dig the story here.

Bamboozled lately ?

2007-07-29T20:23:00.000-07:00

Indeed you have been if you've done any of the following:

paid taxes
are married
have proceated
bought a non-winning lottery ticket
looked at pornography
called Ms. Cleo to find out your future
voted for Dubya
watch American Idol

What is bamboozled, what a funny word you might say ...

bam·boo·zle [bam-boo-zuhl] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation verb, -zled, -zling.

–verb (used with object)

1.	to deceive or get the better of (someone) by trickery, flattery, or the like; humbug; hoodwink (often fol. by into): They bamboozled us into joining the club.

2.	to perplex; mystify.

3.	to practice trickery, deception, cozenage, or the like.

[Origin: 1695–1705; orig. uncert.]
—Related forms

bam·boo·zle·ment, noun

bam·boo·zler, noun

—Synonyms 1. gyp, dupe, trick, cheat, swindle.

Ha-Ha, you've been bamboozled!

Do it yourself DNA extraction ...

2007-07-23T18:22:00.000-07:00

Finally someone has publish a simplified way to extract DNA from living things. Who needs restriction endonuclease and gel electrophoresis? If for some weird reason you've been craving some good ol' gel electrophoresis or you want to extract DNA from living things other than veggies, click here. Enjoy !

Why taste the bitter taste of defeat?

2007-07-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

Does the human being need to occasionally sample from the sour loaf of defeat? I think defeat helps shape our inner most conscious. It allows us to find out who we are, what our breaking points are, and what we can over come. Never confuse me with the facts, here are some quotes on defeat from some individuals that most consider to be more intellectually enlightened than the average person:

"Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary." ~Mahatma Gandhi

"You don’t have to fear defeat if you believe it may reveal powers that you didn’t know you possessed." ~Napoleon Hill

"It is inevitable that some defeat will enter even the most victorious life.The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated... it is finished when it surrenders." ~Ben Stine

"Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. " ~John F. Kennedy

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure . . . than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." ~Theodore Roosevelt

"Man is not cut out for defeat. Man can be destroyed but not defeated." ~Theodore Roosevelt

The point is, it is good to experience defeat periodically. However, don't let it trip you. Simply brush your teeth, and proceed with caution...

OCD rears it's decontaminated head again ...

2007-07-12T02:10:00.000-07:00

More and more I've noticed that my obsessive compulsion to cleanse, purify, perfect, sanitize, organize and otherwise bring order to every environment I come in contact with manifests itself in my programming habits.

I first came to this realization after listing my 2 favorite web 2.0 technologies AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). Then I considered where I focus most of my time and energy while working. I'm constantly writing functions to clean-up stuff, of course named things like "sanitize($this)" and "nuke($that)". If not working on some bot to clean-up some kind of data, then I'm organizing my personal files or organizing my own existence via DSOrganize (http://dragonminded.com).

In conclusion I'll say being a father seems to only magnify the compulsive behavior. Whether in the real or virtual world, I always strive to make sense and use of the space around me. This means the space must always be (or appear to be) free of clutter and decontaminated. I've also noticed that other people share in my sterilized revelry with their anti-bacterial wipes and germ-X. So germs, bacilli, microbes, pathogens, and all sorts of viruses, physical and digital, be afraid ... be very afraid ...

Wealth Smealth ...

2007-07-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

To say one is wealthy implies what? Does this mean that the said individual is having great monetary wealth and all the nauseating material bliss the follows with the average definition of wealth? Wealth is defined as wealth = income - expenses. One of the wealthiest people in the world, William H. Gates III (aka. Bill Gates) was estimated to be worth around $56 billion in early 2007. 10% of that works out to be around $5 billion. Now, imagine what might happen if the 10 richest people in the world spent %10 of their wealth on critical world issues. You know the AIDS crisis, malnutrition in under-developed countries, global warming, etc, etc ...

It's always the unexpected things...

2007-07-03T22:51:00.000-07:00

I find it amusing how easily unexpected events catch us unexpecting them. If only we all could somehow control our environments everything would be better right? Wrong! The only product from that would be eminent fear, uncertainty, and doom (aka F.U.D). So how do you cope knowing unexpected events will catch you off guard from time to time? Two obvious ways to approach it are:

Attempt to calculate every possible event that might ever occur at that instantaneous second in time and have a plan to deal with it (deterministic thinking).
Attempt to be fluid and do whatever is necessary to quickly and intelligently respond to unexpected events (non-deterministic thinking).

This concept has been a hot AI topic for some time now, but who cares right ? When I get caught off guard (rare), I try ignorance first and if it remains, I use #2 above. No matter which path of thinking you choose, force that spongy mass you call your brain to analyze what startled it. Then, use your common sense and understanding of the physical world around you to stop being a wuss. Remember kids: cool-heads always prevail ...