Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

When Family Guy opened the season with a Star Wars parody episode, I received calls, texts, and emails from friends asking if I saw it.  I did, although a bit late, by which it was built up as having Best. Episode. Ever. status.  Yup, it was funny, but I didn’t find it over the top or anything.  However, at the very end there was a clever riff about a Robot Chicken Star Wars episode, and a friend of mine sat me down to watch it.  Hysterical.  And, if you (like me) aren’t into Robot Chicken, that’s fine, it’s all about the SW.  Enjoy.

Somehow in the midst of continuing a senseless war against evil (despite ignoring the situation in Darfur – must be “not that evil” down there) while vetoing healthcare plans for children, the president has made a move that seems to be good for the American people.  And not just the uber-rich ones either!  Go USA!

and I can own my favorite hockey team.  I better come up with one heck of a good idea sooner or later, eh?

Had to contact a few “big companies” this past week, and I ended up using a site called gethuman.com.  If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a great site that has the 800 numbers that get you (typically) straight to a live person, rather than dealing with the automated systems.  In a word: awesome.

A few weeks ago I was invited to play Weewar by Sal over at geek.com.  It only takes a few minutes a day to play, but it’s super-addictive if you are a fan of old-school strategy games like Ogre.  The team there seems pretty dedicated to making this huge, and I hope they pull it off.  It’s fun to have a game you can play in brief timeslots and not feel like you are always getting beat up on by 14-year-olds.

Not sure how it happened, but over the past week I’ve been a terrible emailer.  My usual policy is basically to do the instant respond, delete, or archive approach whenever I check email.  I’ve let it slip for about a week, and am woefully behind.  I wouldn’t exactly called it a Sisyphean task, but it ain’t pleasant.

As I had predicted (fairly foolishly since I really don’t know a thing about autonomous robotics), Carnegie Mellon’s truck was the big kahuna this weekend.  Well done Tartans!  That thing musta had a HEMI…

Anyone who went to Carnegie Mellon in the past 15-20 years is well-aware of the school’s proficiencies in robotics (despite the fact that they put “Athletics” as the fourth link on the home page – huh?).  Heck, my old roommate (and great friend) once even blew one up, and built another one that was really really really good at looking at trees. Ah, fun robotics.

The annual DARPA challenge for unmanned vehicles pits a bunch of teams against each other, with the race to get an autonomous vehicle from one place to another.  Despite years and years of research, there still tends to be a lot more breakdowns than completions.  This weekend, they’re at it again, and all I can say is Go Tartans Go!

It’s always been a little tricky rooting for a, er, well, piece of cloth as a mascot.   At least it’s not the Carnegie Mellon Bagpipers…

Above is a picture of an “invisible bike” “invisible tank”.  You can read more details about it in this article, but the highlight is:

In secret trials last week, the Army said it had made a vehicle completely disappear and predicted that an invisible tank would be ready for service by 2012.

Now I’m not an expert in warfare, despite countless hours of COD2 with Team Bug, but the more I’ve read about the past few wars that America’s participated in, the fewer tanks we seem to use.  In fact, the last time tanks were really all that effective in a war was World War 2.  I’m sure a few of them see action in Afghanistan and Iraq, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that the era of the tank as dominant battleground player is over.

In a somewhat cynical closing thought:  I wonder how many American soldiers’ lives Army could have saved by spending the Invisitank research budget on equipping the troops with armor…

My friend Veronica Belmont, who recently left CNET to go to Mahalo, is off to a fun start. I’m not 100% sure what the rest of the show will be like, but this is definitely a good beginning! Congrats Veronica, I hope they stay as fun as this one…