if you haven’t seen the videos of the walking/climbing robots being developed by the military you should search on youtube for “boston labs robot”. every time i watch one my brain has to decide between 2 mutually exclusive observations: 1. this thing is a robot 2. this thing is alive but this post isn’t about the inevitable time when our control of matter itself blurs the distinction between man and machine. instead, this post is about robot security dogs. assumptions: …
this week i started going to the gym in one of the buildings where i work. i like to run for 15 minutes to warm up, and since its winter i have to run on a treadmill. running on a treadmill is so boring! usually i stare at my reflection in the glass window in front of me and try to avoid looking at the timer, which always tells me i have more time remaining than i thought possible. time …
I had an idea for an app that I called IceBreaker When you set up your profile you go through different categories and select things you are interested in. Musicians. Actors. Sports teams. Places you’ve visited. You’d also have to let it know your location (but only when you want to use the app). When the app sees that you are within range of enough users with some overlapping interest, everyone gets an alert related to it. As soon as …
back in the 80s i read a lot of choose your own adventure books. part of the appeal was the variety – every story could be set anywhere/anytime, and be about anything, real or imagined. and they could get weird. ‘You Are a Shark’ started off with you having some kind of shamanic experience then becoming (and surviving as) a series of different animals. I believe the goal was to get back to human form. i was thinking about pets …