Life of Andrew » Links

Robots, Robots, Robots

Andrew — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 08:01:11 +0000

I really like what people have been doing with robotics in the last few years. Now that powerful CPUs are cheap and wireless communications ubiquitous, whole new areas are opening up for hobbyists to explore. Sure, someday those robots will undoubtedly rise up and destroy humanity, but until then why build a single robot when you can build 32:

(view at youtube)

I love how the knights’ horses thrash their forelegs while they are moving – genius! There is a little more information at the Monster Chess Site. I hope they have a good supply of batteries.

Bonus robot video:

(view at youtube)

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Pacman

Andrew — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:00:34 +0000

Remember kids – winners don’t do drugs.

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The Wellington Podcast

Andrew — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:16:48 +0000

Bevan McCabe, raconteur and man-about-town, is producing a podcast about this fair city. The first episode has just been released and it turned out rather well.

There is more information at the associated Wellington Podcast Blog, but the daring amongst you can just downloaded it directly (16Mb mp3), or subscribe to the Wellington Podcast using iTunes.

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Tsunami

Andrew — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:36:51 +0000

It is not everyday that I awaken to the radio telling me that Civil Defense has been activated due to the imminent arrival of a Tsunami.

Luckily the effects of the Tsunami on New Zealand were slight to non-existent, but not totally unnoticed. The following chart is from the excellent GeoNet web site. GeoNet (amongst other things) maintains a system of tsunami gauges around the country for just this sort of event.

The graph on the GeoNet site is a moving window so I have copied a static version here. I took graph snapshot at about 11pm, you can clearly see the waves hit different parts of the country in succession start from about 9:30am at Raoul Island (I didn’t know where it was either). Luckily for us there was nothing over a metre.

Samoa was not so fortunate as we were in NZ, with many fatalities in low lying areas despite a very speedy evacuation.

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Freaky Friday

Andrew — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:59:16 +0000

Today has thrown up some examples of what strange, dark times we live in.

Firstly the trailer for the live-action version of Where the Wild Things Are is released and turns out not to be a monumental travesty.

Then John Banks is quoted in the Herald saying something that I kinda-sortof-maybe actually agree with.

Has the world gone totally mad?

I am in a fragile state. If my expectations are shattered just once more today I may explode. All it would take is for me to find that the latest TV series from Japan is not incomprehensibly insane.

View at youtube.com

Phew! That was a close one!

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My Little Modified Pony

Andrew — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:27:11 +0000

So I was talking with the team at work and conversation drifted (as it so often does) to My Little Pony.

Just a bunch of guys talking about My Little Pony – nothing weird about that.

But then, mere hours later, a link to this collection of modified My Little Ponies shows up in my RSS reader.

Spooky.

My Little Chewbacca is the best.

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The Minimum Wage vs. The Edict of Maximum Prices

Andrew — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:06:51 +0000

I see today that the minimum wage is going to rise from $12 to $12.50 this year. This is something I support, not only to keep up with inflation but also because it puts more money into the lowest section of the economy – always a good move in a recession.

The minimum youth wage is going away, also something I support if only to stop the half-baked student protests that used to break out occasionally. Instead there is now a “new entrant wage”, which is almost the same thing but will mostly apply only to students in part-time work. 16 and 17 year-olds in full-time work will quickly step up to the full minimum wage. I can’t imagine this will stop young workers getting exploited, but it is a step in the right direction.

But enough back-seat economics, here is how things were done in ancient Rome – with an edict. It’s interesting to see how the relative value of things has changed – meat and clothing were many times the price they are now in proportion to the average hourly wage.

Nowdays, an Edict of Maximum Prices seems like a poor way to deal with economic woes. Luckily in this enlightened age nobody would try such a tactic.

Oops.

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I Declare a 5 Minute SciFi Break

Andrew — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:25:25 +0000

Sam Hughes writes short, short form science fiction, most of which I quite like. This one is particularly good. So is this one. This one is very silly.

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Tiny Change We Can Believe In

Andrew — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:45:13 +0000

It has irked me for a long time that although the President of the United States wields great power over the rest of the world, only US citizens get to vote. To be brutally honest it irked me a lot more when Bush II was in power, but I approve of the way our USAian cousins have voted this time. Obama seems exactly what the US and the rest of the world needs – someone thoughtful, honest and willing surround himself with actual experts instead of cronies. That fact that he can string two words together without stumbling is an added bonus.

And its not just me. The action figure industry thinks Obama is pretty cool. This Obama figure is way more bad-ass than the old George W Bush doll.

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The Art of Diversion

Andrew — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:07:25 +0000

I am actually supposed to be doing some work at the moment, but as usual I need a diversion. You are probably in the same situation yourself – why else would you be reading this page?

I figure if you are going to be diverted, why not be diverted by a master? This magic trick is very diverting indeed, so diverting that it made me doubt that my eyes were working.

Then I watched the second half of the video and realized that it was my brain that was defective.

Watch at YouTube

That’s enough diversion – back to work for me.

[SPOILER WARNING - don't start reading the comments until you have finished with the video]

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