My Life As A Teenage Robot gets a “Thumbs Up”
I love cartoons. I love robots. Naturally, I love cartoons with robots….even GIRL robots. My Life As A Teenage Robot is a Nickelodeon cartoon that has been around since 2003, whose primary character is a “female” teenage robot. XJ9 a.k.a “Jenny” is a Global Robotic Response Unit who RUINS evil robots including “The Cluster”, a conglomeration of evil robots controlled by a menacing queen robot. Of course she goes to high school too, which is apparently more difficult that protecting the world from evil bots.
The show is animated in a very neat art-deco style. It kind of reminds me of Sky Captain, which portrayed all these futuristic robots and technology, but circa 1939. My Life uses a similar mix of retro 40’s architecture and styling mixed with all kinds of futuristic themes. The show storylines are usually decent, but I mainly enjoy watching for the animation and imagery. It really is beautifully animated, and is unique in a really cool way.
My Life airs on Friday nights on Nickelodeon. They replay at noon on Saturday and Sunday which is when I usually end up watching.
Show Info:
My Life As A Teenage Robot on Nickelodeon
Here’s a couple of screengrabs of the show:
Robo-Sneakers!
Adidas is touting their Adidas_1 as “the world’s first intelligent shoe.” Based on the guts of these kicks, I tend to agree. The shoes contain a microprocessing unit that uses external sensors to monitor ground conditions and other environmental factors 1,000 times per second and adjust the shoe’s cushioning accordingly. There is also an user interface on the side of the shoe for manually adjusting the tempermant of the cushioning.
The going price for these bad boys is $250 a pair, which is definitely steep, but Adidas goes to great lengths to distinguish these shoes from anything else out there. Even the packaging is unique, as it holds each sneaker snugly in a molded foam insert inside the box.
I might shell out the bucks, if only they could give me a bionic-like jump, roadrunner speed, or download and read my email (in a tinny robot voice, of course).
Technically, these shoes are “0ld n3wz”, but someone finally published some decent pictures (japanese text, but the images are quite nice):
Adidas_1 Photos - page 1
Adidas_1 Photos - page 2
Adidas_1 Photos - page 3
Adidas_1 Photos - page 4
Adidas official site with their flash-o-matic promo:
Adidas_1 Official Site
Sun Debuts Ultra 20 Workstations For Under $900
Man do I love hardware fresh off the boat! Today Sun released their new Ultra 20 Opteron based workstations, and boy do they look delicious.
Basic configuration is just that, but it still includes 512MB of memory, 80GB hard drive, Gigabit NIC, and a single Opteron 144 (1.8GHz). The sub-$900 price point is sure to catch the attention of developers and Sun geeks everywhere.
Fedora Core 4 On PowerPC
I was rambling on about Linux with Joey today when I finally put 2 and 2 together. Fedora just announced support for PowerPC (Apple PowerMac) with the release of Core 4. Apple is moving to Intel hardware. That means that unless someone begins to sell generic PowerPC based workstations, all that porting and adaptation of source code to run on PowerPC was a big waste of time.
I guess it works out great for me, as I will probably be able to eventually get a G5 tower for pretty cheap which I will promptly load up with Fedora Core 4.
Nonetheless, what a drag this must be for the Fedora developers who spent all that time and effort on getting Fedora to run on PowerPC. It appears that Core 4 can also run on IBM p-Series servers, which is pretty snazzy, but how many people have a spare IBM p-Series Server laying around?
Firefly Is Back…Well, Sort Of…
According to TV.com, the Fox series “Firefly” is coming to the Sci-Fi channel this July. Firefly was a very well written futuristic space cowboy series that I really enjoyed…until Fox AXED it without even showing three episodes that were completed! I haven’t watched Sci-Fi since they cut Farscape, but this finally gives me a reason to hop onto the Sci-Fi channel again.
Maybe this is a sign that Sci-Fi is listening to their watchers and will start airing better stuff than the horrific crap they have been peddling for the last few years. If they start production of a second Firefly season, I swear I will take back everything bad I ever said about Sci-Fi.
TV.com - Firefly lands on the Sci Fi channel
Nerd Fan Site
More info on Firefly
Crummy Driver Names
Both Dell and HP use the worst driver naming scheme I have ever seen. They both use complete nonsense naming for their driver files. How am I supposed to determine what “SP29528.exe” is for vs. what “SP27936.exe” is for? This is really annoying…you have to remember exactly what each driver is for…which I never do. I usually end up putting the function on the front of the driver name when I download it, like “audioSP27936.exe”, so that I remember what it’s for. Why can’t HP and Dell just do something like that to begin with? They ought to know it is not good to make me angry. They would not like me when I am angry.
Practical Casemod: Silencing The Rattle
I’ve got a computer that has this really annoying rattle that occurs every now and then. I guess it must occur when all the hard drives and fans all happen to sync up for a few moments and create excess vibration, which causes some of the metal pieces on the chassis to rub and produce the annoying rattle sound. This is a real pain and I usually just give the PC a light whack on the top to make it go away.
Out of the blue this weekend, I remembered how we used to deal with rattling doors way back in the day when me and my buddies would put ridiculously loud stereos in our cars: Dynamat. This stuff is like a magical rattle silencer. I stopped by a local car audio shop and got a door kit for speakers which consisted of two 10″x10″ chunks of Xtreme Dynamat.
Application is pretty simple, you just cut to the size/shape you want and apply. It’s best to use a small roller of some sort to really stick this stuff to the case. Once it’s on…it’s not coming off. It’s imporant to put enough Dynamat on the case to dampen the rattling, but not too much, as it can act as an insulator and make your PC run warmer than before the application of the Dynamat.
I decided to focus most of the Dynamat around the top of the computer and near the power supply, since that’s where it sounded like most of the vibration noise was coming from. After applying all the Dynamat, the computer actually does sound a bit quieter, but most importantly, that annoying rattle is gone!
Here’s a small gallery of pics from the installation (hold mouse over pic for description):
Update: I just discovered that Dynamat actually makes kits specifically for computers. They use the same material, but they are pre-cut to a different size or you can buy a roll of the stuff. I’ve never seen the kits in any stores, but apparently they do exist: Dynamat Computer Kits
I really like the illustration of the loud, angry, swearing computer before Dynamat and the happy humming computer after Dynamat!
Laptop As A KVM…
I was just thinking how cool it would be if someone could develop a way to use a laptop Screen, Keyboard, and Pointer as a controller for another computer. My guess is that it would need to be done at the hardware level, as current ports on laptops are not designed for this sort of thing. It might not seem very useful at first glance, but would definitely come in handy when administering servers that are not connected to a KVM already, or used as a temporary display when troubleshooting monitor or videocard problems on computers. You could even crack your laptop into a larger KVM and control multiple connected machines!
The idea would be that you could somehow hit a special function key, and your VGA and PS2/USB ports would become inputs rather than outputs. Even better, make it a button that is addressable from bios so that you can switch modes without any OS running.
I’ve come across several occasions where I’ve had to cobble together a keyboard, mouse, and display of some sort in order to troubleshoot or setup a server or desktop pc. All the while I had a perfectly good display, mouse, and keyboard sitting there unused on my laptop, all in a very neat and compact form factor.
Maybe I should pitch this idea to some VC’s…but…they would probably just laugh in my face and tell me to fix their broken Treos.
Ill Effects of the Cingular / ATT Wireless Merger
Already the Cingular / ATT Wireless merger has proven to be harmful to consumers. While Cingular has been advertising their “great new 5-bar” wireless network, they have silently removed many consumer-friendly options from their lineup.
For example, they no longer offer the option of a 1 year contract for new service. They are forcing a 2 year contract for new customers, and depending on where you live, you either get a $240 pro-rated cancellation fee or a flat $150 cancellation fee. That flat fee means that if you cancel on day 364 of your 1 year contract, you have to pay them $150. That is pure, 100%, unadulterated JUNK.
Also, they employ some pretty slimy marketing tactics. They advertise unlimited nights and weekends on all plans $49.99 and above. Sounds like a good deal…I’ll take the $49.99 plan please. Oh, you don’t have a $49.99 plan? Just the $39.99 or the $59.99? Sounds to me like the real truth is unlimited nights and weekends on all plans $59.99 and up….but that doesn’t sound like as sweet of a deal, does it?
Also, soon after the merger, Cingular promptly removed the $19.99 and $29.99 plan from their offerings, so now there is no low-cost option other than prepaid, which has horribly expensive per-minute rates.
Overall, the only benefit consumers have seen as a result of the merger is slightly better coverage in some areas. As with most mergers, the pockets of the “higher-ups” have been nicely lined with fresh benjamins while the consumers get the shaft. Neat-O!
So It’s Official: Apple Going “Intel Inside”
Today at the keynote speech from WWDC, Steve Jobs confirmed that Apple is moving off IBM PowerPC chips and will transition to Intel-based systems. The transition will happen over the next two years, and will be fully completed by WWDC ‘07. Rumors have been circulating about this for some time now, and I am quite suprised to hear that the rumors are true.
What I find even more interesting, though, was hearing Jobs say that Apple has been compiling and running OSX on Intel hardware for the past 5 years! He was even running the Keynote presentation on OSX using Intel hardware. I think it’s pretty incredible that they had the foresight to think that they might transition one day to Intel, and that they were able to keep it a secret. I guess the ability to compile on multiple platforms is one of the benefits of using a BSD-based core for OSX.