«Lego Robots»

It's amazing what people have did with the lego mindstorms.

Here's one ding something I could never do, solving a rubik's cube. It scans the colors on the cube, then solves it.

NXT Rubik's cube solver - Final version


Here's a lego turret controlled by hand motions.

LEGO NxtShot 2.0 - cannon controlled by Mindsensors remote


Here's an automated lego car factory.

Mindstorms Autofabrik

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«Firefox 3 Download Day»

Today is "Download Day" for Firefox 3. They planned to set a world record for the most downloads in a single day. As far as I can tell, they're not doing so well.

They have the interest of enough people I think, so much so that all the traffic crashed their servers. The official download site is http://www.getfirefox.com. All I get when I try to download it is "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable". I suppose I'll just try later.

Well, disregard that. In the time it took me to write this post they got it up and working. For how long I don't know, but I'm going to try to get it while I can. Although the download is going very slow and has long pauses, I may not be able to get it even now...

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«NASA Twitter»

Twittering 'from Mars'

NASA has set up a Twitter channel for the Mars Phoenix lander. Neat idea. These were the first words to be twittered by the lander:

• "The parachute is open!!"
• "Come on Rocketssssss!!!"
• "I've landed !!!!!"
• "Cheers! Tears! I'm here!"

Now it looks like the Twitter channel is a Q&A. People can ask questions and someone at NASA answerers as though it's the lander answering.

I keep hearing about Twitter. I know what it is, but I've never really looked into it.I guess I don't have anyone or anything thing that I'd care to read twitterings about.

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«Snake Robots»

Modular Snake Robots

These could be useful for all sorts of situations. Such as finding survivors of a building collapse after an earthquake.

Robot Humps (maybe slightly NSFW)

And this little guy, although not as useful as the robots in the first video, is still pretty funny.

Oh, and if you haven't done so already change your clocks for daylight savings time. Unless you're in an area that doesn't change their clocks for it.

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«TED: Ideas Worth Spreading»

If you're ever bored, and don't feel like playing some random mind-numbing flash game, have a look at TED. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. There's quite a few video lectures about a wide range of subjects. Many of the world's best minds come together to share ideas at TED conferences. Most of the videos discuss ideas for future technologies.

Just the other day I watched a video where they made robotic feet, combining many different foot designs from nature. The robot can walk up nearly any surface.

The videos give you something to think about.

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«An Easy Solution to the Oil Dependency»

Environmentalists always find a problem with every source of energy. Now they're complaining about biofules. I never did think biofules were all that good. It's not the most efficient process of extracting it and I feel it's the wrong direction for our fuel. It's still a pollution causing form of energy and it is driving up the cost of corn. There's all sorts of foods that have corn products in them, and we don't need our food to cost more.

I favor types of natural, renewable energy. Take hydroelectric for example. That's a wonderful source of energy. Or wind turbines, that's another great one. Solar panels should be on the roof of every house in sunny areas such as California, Nevada, and Arizona. Geothermal is a good source of energy. Even tidal and wave action can be harnessed. The technology is all there to have all the electricity we need, and then some, without burning oil. Once you have a surplus of electricity, it's no big deal to use some of that to get hydrogen from methane gas or even water. Then we can use hydrogen in our cars, trucks, and even trains. Suddenly, our dependence on oil is gone.

It would also help the economy. Not only would it stop US dollars from going overseas for oil, but it would create a ton of jobs in the US to build and maintain the various power plants. It would dramatically lower the cost of electricity, reducing the cost of manufacturing (not the mention the common household's power bill). Producing hydrogen with the excess electricity would reduce shipping and transportation costs. All of this would cause a surge in the economy. The cost of building and maintaining would quickly be paid for by what would otherwise be spent on oil.

Measures can be taken to make sure the fish can get around the hydroelectric dams. That's one of the things environmentalists complain about. Some of their other complaints get kinda stupid, like the wind turbines injuring birds. The large wind turbines don't move that fast anyway.

Trains should be used everywhere. They are far better and more fuel efficient for long distance freight than individual trucks. The trucks can haul the few miles from the train station to individual factories and stores. That would also keep a good deal of the trucks off the highways and ease traffic. Not to mention prevent the ruts they cause in the pavement.

Oh, speaking of environmentalists, you know those nature documentaries they have on TV? They always seem to show a nuclear power plant when they're talking about pollution. Nuclear power plants are absolutely clean. That's only steam coming from the cooling towers, not smoke!

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«C-Block Bidding Closed»

The C-Block bidding for the 700mhz spectrum has closed at a price of $4,713,823,000. That's over the 4.6 billion reserve price that was set. So this block will be required to give its customers the right to download any application they want on their mobile device, and the right to use any device they want on the network. And I think that's great.

That's been the main problem with the iPhone. It wasn't open to 3rd party programs, and you can only use AT&T with it. Won't be having any of that in the C-Block of the 700mhz spectrum.

We won't know who won it until all the bidding is done for the other blocks, but speculation is leaning toward Google. I hope it was them. I hope they have some grand plan for a nation wide, free high speed wireless network. Remember, for Google the more people that are on the internet seeing their ads, the better. Only downside of that is a lot of ISPs would go out of business, who can compete with free? I say unlimited access to the internet should be free anyway.

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