Stanford's Stickybot wall-climbing robot lizard

I would like my Van der Waals interaction boots and gloves now please.

Stanford's Stickybot wall-climbing robot lizard: "

Filed under: Robots

We thought MIT's slime-climbing robo-snail was pretty, er, slick, but we have to admit that our new fave wall-climber has got to be Standord's Stickybot. The robot gecko has feet coated with a polymer designed to mimic the properties of setae, the tiny hairs on gecko feet that enable the lizards to climb walls. That allows the bot to clamber freely without the surface in question having to be doused with slime, as required by MIT's bot. Not surprisingly, the Pentagon is already interested in adapting the tech for military use in gloves and boots for soldiers. We can only hope this trickles down to civilian uses fast; we're so ready to connect with our inner Spidey as we climb the walls in our gecko gloves.

[Via I4U]

"

(Purportedly Via engadget.com.)

nonos

You should never have to wonder if that smell from the seat across from you on the subway is coming from an exotic breath mint or cheap vodka.

The Horror,The Horror

Teenagers on the subway singing "I love you, You love me" from their fondly recalled, Barney infested childhoods.

Fuckers

Read this blurb on the XM lawsuit by the RIAA.

You're Rich Biotch!

I was at a Citibank ATM near 45th and sixth avenue yesterday, and the machine told me it only had $50 bills, and helpfully offered me quantities of money in increments of $50.

I laughed my way to the ATM next to it.

Serial Communications from OS X

I can use screen instead of Zterm or minicom!

ls /dev/tty.*

gives me:

/dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem /dev/tty.KeySerial1
/dev/tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync

I then run:

screen /dev/tty.KeySerial1 9600

And I get a serial console to whatever the serial port (in my case a Keyspan serial adapter) is connected to.

I use this to quit screen:

control-A, then control-
This is very very useful...

Thoughts on the Treo 700p

Cy asked me what I thought about the Treo 700p. Coming from the perspective of a GSM Treo 650 user, using the phone on a network (T-Mobile USA) that doesn't officially offer or support it, but does offer excellent voice and data tariffs, here are some of my thoughts:

Note that I haven't played with one yet.

Frankly, I'm a bit jaded with Palm right now. Having used the Treo 650 for the last year, the platform is showing its age.

The OS crashes a lot. The web browser is, to put it mildly, inferior to many browsers from Nokia and you can't run a decent version of Opera on it either.

Hotsyncing contacts and calendars is still a joke (compared to what is available with Blackberries and Windows Mobile based devices when tied to Exchange Server.)

Here's where my Treo has gotten me at this point in my phone expectations:

• 1. Reception Everywhere
  
• 2. QWERTY keyboard.
  
• 3. Long Battery life with continuous background network connectivity.
  
• 4. Always on email. (ChatterEmail does this well.)
  
• 5. Syncing contacts and calendar with computer and beyond (eg Google Calendar), automatically, and over the air, in the background. (You can do this with Palm Desktop or The Missing Sync, but it is SLOW, and a blocking foreground process.)
  
• 6. Camera that works well in low light.
  
• 7. Ability to add mp3 ringtones (works with 3rd party add-on on Treo) and 3rd party software at will to and from my phone, and not through the phone company's wireless network.
  
• 8. For the love of god not crash more than once a day.
  
• 9. Touch Screen Phone Interface(once you start using it... It just works really well.)
  
• 10. Have enough space on the device to not HAVE to have expansion cards to store data.
  
• 11. Run on a user expandable Operating System (linux)
  
• 12. Pre-emptive Multitasking.
  
• 13. External audio silencer button.
  

The GSM Treo 650 handles #1, #2, #4, #6, #7 (without supporting mp3 ringtones... come on), #9and #13.
The CDMA Treo 700p improves on the 650 by adding #10. I bet it will still have problems with #5, #8, and they don't plan on moving to #11 or #12 before next year, and there's still no GSM Treo 700p, so forget #1, as it won't work abroad.

The Blackberry handles #1, #2, #3 (I hear), #4, #5, no mp3 support so no #7, #8, #10.

I still think the 700p will be better than any other phone out there, but only barely, Blackberry is catching up.

And if Apple does come out with a phone someday...

Break of Reality

Break of Reality
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Playing at 59th St/Columbus circle on the uptown Central Park West platform at Rush Hour.

Call Me Crazy

But I've been thinking the same thing this weekend.

There's a certain poetic justice about Gore in 2008.

And given a choice between McCain and Gore, I would vote for Gore.

Frankly, healing the Republican Party just is neither my problem nor my project. And after what will be eight years of this nonsense, I just don't give a damn.

Fwd: [IP] real good SNL: If Al Gore were President

Do watch the clip. I caught it on my DVR earlier today.

Beyond the parody, there is something almost poignantly painful about Al Gore talking about so many of the issues that many of us thought were important back in the 2000 election, that have so ignominiously blown up in our faces during this Bush Administration.

I had almost forgotten how much I miss competent government.

If the Democrats can just remind us of this, I think they have a hell of a chance in the next elections.


Begin forwarded message:

From: David Farber
Date: May 14, 2006 3:28:54 PM EDT
Subject: [IP] real good SNL: If Al Gore were President




Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks
Date: May 14, 2006 1:16:43 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] SNL: If Al Gore were President



Last night, "Saturday Night Live," <http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/> opened their show with Al Gore addressing the nation as if he was the President of the United States. Gore was focused and quite funny in this entertaining spoof of the current administration and their long range of failures. He also parodied himself and the media (when they falsely claimed he said he created the internets) by saying that he invented an Anti-Hurricane and Tornado Machine.

You can find a Windows Media version here: <http://movies.crooksandliars.com/SNL-Al-Gore-5-14-06.wmv>.
You can find a QT version here: <http://movies.crooksandliars.com/SNL-Al-Gore-5-14.mov>.

Well worth checking out!

Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>

Harlem Lanes

Harlem Bowling Lanes
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

On the 3rd floor at the corner of 126th and Adam Clayton Powell, after being patted down for weapons.

Clubbing with Koalas

Purportedly Via Warrenellis.com:

NEXTWAVE #5 Sneak: "

NW005018

Pencilled art by Stuart Immonen, violence towards cuddly cuddly baaars by me.

"

If you liked Black Narcissus...

I finished watching Black Narcissus this afternoon.

IMDB notes that if you liked Black Narcissus, you might like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King...

FEMAil: Don't Get Shot!!!

With fans like these...

Purportedly Via Wonkette:

FEMAil: Don't Get Shot!!!: "

The fan mail is generally funnier than the hate mail. We wish this writer had gone on CNN to give those bitches (presumably a veiled Anderson Cooper reference) what-for.

'
"

Videos of the Day: TMBG Fan Flix

A video mashup of my favourite televideo series.

And by the way Season 3 comes out on DVD tomorrow.

Purportedly Via Gothamist:

Videos of the Day: TMBG Fan Flix: "

The fans of Brooklyn's supergroup They Might Be Giants love to make tribute videos. We're particularly partial to the Scrubs mashup we've linked here, but some of these are also pretty amusing/inexplicable/absurd/awesome:
"

Full bottles go here

Full bottles go here
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

Our Cupboards, Refridgerator, and Pantry are out of space. All full bottles are now being lined up next to the baseboard heater. This will be a problem in winter. The two yellow capped Coke bottles are all we have left of the twenty bottles of Passover Coca Cola we had purchased.

userfriendly : 06 mei 2006 (9116)

HAHAHAHA.

Purportedly Via User Friendly the Comic Strip. by Illiad:

userfriendly : 06 mei 2006 (9116): ""

DARPA doing the right things again

If NASA was just run like DARPA, I'd be writing this from Mars.

DARPA Funds Bold Research on Limb Regeneration

Don't Be Evil

I'd like to believe that Microsoft is trying to tie up this patent so that it can sue people who try to violate this patent, all in the name of being a red blooded american company, but I'm not optimistic.

On the other hand, hey, a neat idea for a public interest IP firm. Patent all of the evil ideas, and keep people from using them. After all, there's no such thing as compulsory licensing,right?

Purportedly Via Slashdot:

Your Rights Online: Microsoft Seeking to Patent Automatic Censorship: "theodp writes 'Microsoft is back at the USPTO, this time seeking a patent for the automatic censorship of audio data for broadcast, a system and method for automatically altering audio to prevent undesired words and phrases from being understandable to a listener as originally uttered.'"

Palm's Blackberry Connect software for the Treo650 is worthless

Blackberry announced Blackberry Connect software for the Treo 650.

It uses the built in VersaMail mail client. How often do you hear people asking for a mail client on their phone or pda "just like Versamail?"

The answer is never. Snappermail and Chatteremail (my current fave) are what power users tend to use.

Futhermore, it seems that the Blackberry connect server does sync the mailbox and calendar with a blackberry enterprise server, but not the contacts, which means that you still need to sync your phone with your computer to do backups and sync your contacts.

Perhaps Blackberry doesn't want to cannibalize sales of their own devices.

This might be useful for those people who work at an organization that has a Blackberry Enterprise Server, and wants to look at using Treos, but doesn't want to consider using Goodlink's services, which sync contacts, calendar and mail.

I don't think that market exists.