Category Archives: Tech

Crotch Robot lets you get your electronic freak on….

Posted on by

….in the most boring way possible.  Another entry in the rush to create cybernetic old people who will kill us all, Honda revealed a freaky robot that you sit on, and it helps you walk and crouch, and eventually, chase after normal people with relentless metallic stomping sounds coming closer closer….

Actually it’s a lot less exciting and deathy than all that.  It seems that it’s really only good for making you look absolutely ridiculous, some sort of cybernetic taint surgically grafted to your nether regions, the result of a secret government project to rebuild that poor fella’s damaged groin.  Just have a look at the picture and tell me you don’t hear that tch-tch-tch-tch Steve Austin sound in your head as he is walking.  Methinks that the robo-chafing would soon render the wearer grumpy and eventually nardless.

 

So, if this is part of some grand plan to kill us all, it seems that it would be from oxygen deprivation as we watch the elderly army of the Robotaint-enhanced clomp towards us and fall over laughing.

Previous robotic ridiculousness.

Robo-Fido

A very similar (yet not as funny) homicidal device from the company destined to doom us all.

iMac

Posted on by

Wow, the lovely and wonderful Nikki surprised me with an early Christmas present that definitely knocked my socks off.  A super sexy 24″ iMac with all of the bells and whistles.


So, really she’s the best wife to be found anywhere in the land.  I challenge you to find any better.  You can’t, it can’t be done.  Nope.

The only slight problem with this whole thing is that the geek is strong within me, and now the tug of war begins between spending time with my most excellent wife and my shiny new Mac.  She is a very patient woman….  I will probably unintentionally soon be testing just how patient she is.

Robotic Suit to assist the elderly, overthrow humanity

Posted on by

A Japanese company has announced a robotic suit that will assist elderly people who can’t walk easily by themselves.  The technology is very cool, it reads the brainwaves that are traveling to the legs and sort of amplifies them and assists motion with the robotic legs.  It’s amazing technology that will surely change millions of lives.

Hm.

Yes, millions of lives will be changed.  The only problem I have is the absolute nards it takes to call a computer that is supposed to assist people HAL.  Yes, you may recall the HAL that kills everybody in that little movie (not to mention another unfortunate coincidence) ?  Why on earth would a company name it’s product HAL?  Unless, they have something to hide?  Yes, methinks they do, because the company is called Cyberdyne.  Yes, that’s the same name as the company from Terminator, the one that invented the sentient computer system that rises up and kills all of the humans.  

W.  T.  F. ?

Does it need to be any clearer for you people?  Let’s recap:  Cyberdyne (evil company who will destroy us all) makes a set of robotic legs (and even admits a whole body suit is coming.  Oh, it’s coming all right.) that READS YOUR MIND and knows what you want to do, serendipitously called HAL (evil homicidal computer).  The product is targeted at old people (who hate the rest of us able bodied people for, well, being able bodied and who are easily suggestible) and they will lead the robotic uprising against us all.  It’s the perfect storm of technology, capitalism, arthritis, and extraordinary cockiness and karmic taunting.  We deserve what we get, unless we can somehow stop the slowly tottering army of old farts in their PJs waving sticks and dragging shawls behind them.

Peggle

Posted on by

I rarely plug any games here, but since I accidentially stumbled on a good one, I thought I would pass it along with a warning to never never play it.  I mean it, never ever click on the Popcap website and think “I have 10 minutes to spare, why not play a little Peggle?”  To do so is to fall into a pit of candy-coloured time sink-ing fun.  This game is a brightly coloured soother that I burbled and cooed over for an hour last night without meaning to.  It’s digital crack, a perfectly crafted thing, more of a fun toy than a game.  Don’t touch it, I mean it.

So, once you have ignored my warning and fall into a hole in the space-time continuum, don’t come crawling to me, ok?  I’m busy trying to get this level finished off…

Wikipedia says Peggle was named one of the “5 Most Addictive Video Games of All Time”…. Wikipedia never lies, so don’t click it.

Must not get upset….

Posted on by

Wilson has been goading me all week long with links about the music industry and how stupid it’s being.  He’s trying to get me to go off on a rant here, I think he secretly likes it.  I won’t oblige him though, because I have become oblivious to the thrashings of a dying business.  He would love nothing more than for me to link to this profanity-laced tirade about how most music sucks these days, and no wonder people don’t want to pay for it, because it’s exactly the sentiment I spout most often.  No sir, I won’t link to it.  I’m above that.  

He also wants me to link to this article about the sheer stupidity of killing Muxtape (a service I literally joined the day it went down due to RIAA intervention).  I have long struggled with the ethics of music sharing between friends, new music discovery and the like.  Muxtape sort of fixed that, really.  It was a way of making a “mixed tape” for your friends (or anybody) of music you liked or thought went well together.  You could stream the music from the website, but not download it (or not download it easily).  I thought it was brilliant, and was looking forward to having a look-see, but lo when I got home after signing up at work, the web site was down due to legal action.  The article goes on and on about the whole string of dumb moves that seem specifically engineered to drive away paying customers, or to treat us like criminals.

Or, that’s what the article probably says, if I read it.  Which I didn’t, of course.  Because I’m above that now.  Well, almost.

Ambient Awareness

Posted on by

Clive Thompson is fast becoming one of my favourite writers. He usually writes articles about video games that I will never get to play because my life is too busy. I just finished reading a piece he wrote about how our continual connectedness to our friends and acquaintances online gives us a sense of awareness and closeness to each other that was never possible before.  The short, often silly status updates and blurbs about our friends online seem silly and banal individually, but when added together gives us a sense of closeness and awareness to each other that is quite powerful.

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

It’s a fascinating piece on how Facebook and Twitter and other services let us keep and maintain lots of relationships that would otherwise wither altogether, and even gives us a heightened sense of our social network.  It’s like a sense of ESP that quickly becomes part of us and we notice keenly when someone stops participating, or drops off.  I love this, and while I’m a chronic laggard on actually participating in Facebook usage, I can honestly say that since I got the iPhone I have checked in to the feed far more regularly and I can see how this really works.  It’s cool, cool stuff, like discovering you had another set of ears.