Archive for November, 2008
chinese farmer builds up army of 26 robots
wu no. 25 pulling his creator and owner, wu yulu, along in a rickshaw
without a university degree or academic learning, chinese farmer, wu yulu has managed to build himself
an army or 26 robots over the last 30 years made from scrap materials. each one takes its name from wu,
and are numbered according to the sequence in which they were made. the robots all vary in ability,
indicating that wu’s robot building skills have improved over the years. his first robot, wu no. 1 took a few years
to build and barely moved, taking very short steps. whereas his recent wu no. 25, actually has the capability
of pulling its owner around in a rickshaw for up to 6 hours on a single charge.
designboom history
female robots
via oh gizmo
Mumbai Terrorists Watch World React With Horror Using BlackBerrys [BlackBerry]
The terrorists in Mumbai might have committed inhuman acts, but in at least one way, they are just like you and me. When authorities cut the cable feeds to the hotels where the terrorists held over 200 hostages, they relied on another piece technology to monitor the police response and the world’s reaction to the attacks: BlackBerrys. Commandos were not only surprised to find the devices in the terrorists’ rucksacks, but that they used the internet to look beyond local Indian media for information, watching the global reaction in real-time as well.
It’s somewhat striking that the terrorists’ use of BlackBerrys “caught the anti-terrorist forces by surprise.” While perhaps another step forward in the sophistication of their organization, in that it it makes communication more instant than ever, it’s long been reported that terrorist networks use the internet and cellphones for communication. Why wouldn’t they use the same tools that millions around the world use? They don’t all live in caves, you know.
That said, it doesn’t make it any less scary, either. [Courier Mail via Business Sheet]
joe the plumber, and irrational dreams
28 Nov, 2008 • posts i've written • 2 comments
Sam the Dreamer
When Presidential Candidate, now President-elect, Barack Obama walked onto his front lawn in Ohio, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher asked the candidate how his proposed tax plan would affect him once he purchased a plumbing business making over $250k per year. The answer was higher taxes. Zing.
Of course, now we know Joe the Plumber wasn’t an actual licensed plumber, his $40k/year income put him in no position to buy that business, he was delinquent on state income taxes, and Barack Obama’s proposed tax plan will actually lower his taxes. And the rest, sadly, is history.
But Sam the Dreamer is no different from you or I. Isn’t this our modern American dream? Forget protection from false imprisonment, separation of Church and State, most of the Bill of Rights (except for that second one), those poor and huddled masses–that’s not the America we struggle for anymore. According to the U.S. News and World Report, the average American with a credit file has $16,635 in debt, excluding mortages. (Source: U.S. News and World Report, “The End of Credit Card Consumerism,” August 2008) Our struggle and our dream these days is to live wildly outside our means, to match the lives of those people we watch on television and in the movies. I write this on ‘Black Friday’ as people literally trample others to make a purchase. As the world is being ripped apart by extremists, we’ve reduced ourselves to somnambulant shoppers. I fear we’ve become a grotesque caricature of our once proud former selves. Dreams should inspire hope, but we’re creating a putrid sense of entitlement by believing we’ll all be rich and disgustingly famous. What has happened to happiness? How did we let ourselves fill it with such empty calories? I’ve had enough.
Please wake up.
welcome to what consumes me, the remix
27 Nov, 2008 • posts i've written • 2 comments
First off, if you’re reading this, then you put in some effort to get here. As I write this on Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for you, dear reader. If I can beg for another minute of your time, can I ask for a quick message in the comments to let me know who you are so I can get to know you better?
Welcome to what consumes me, the remix. As of late, I’ve become increasingly obsessed with the idea of aggregating and curating the best content I’m reading on the web. Everyday, I read through the updates of almost 250 sites in my Google Reader and share the items I find particularly interesting. I do this partly for myself, to go back, re-read and remember the good stuff, but also to share with like minded others (perhaps yourself). But beside just denoting this content, I didn’t do much else with it. Bringing that content into a publishing tool like WordPress allows me to better sort through all that information and present it to you. I’ve got a good deal of work ahead of me to truly make this beneficial, but this new site is a big step forward. I hope you find this new site useful, particularly the RSS feed of the posts I’m reading and sharing. What’s great is that using simple WordPress plug-ins, like one for displaying related posts, if you love one post, I can suggest to you another post, from across the social web, not just that single domain.
Some of the content here is not my own. Anything under “What I’m Reading” is an article, image, or video created by someone else, and you can learn more about that someone else simply by clicking the title of the post. I’m working on more ways to more prominently highlight the author and publisher of each post, and I hope to help send more traffic their way and turn more readers on to their great content through this site. If your content appears here, and you are unhappy with that, please let me know and I will pull the content down as soon as possible. If you’ve got any ideas how I can better attribute each post to its author, please let know!
I hope to do some more writing, myself, here as well in the near future. You can also catch some of my posts at MakeTheInternetABetterPlace.com if you’re feeling antsy. Thanks again for your continued attention.
About some of the technology behind the site:
Everything I’m reading starts at my Google Reader. If I like something, I share it. I run my shared items through Feedburner to condition the posts (I noticed that sometimes the Google Reader feed hiccups or adds bad characters). From there, I use a plug-in called FeedWordPress to actually insert those items, on the fly, into WordPress as distinct posts. When I first tried this, I used Tumblr as a test, but found that the RSS items were often duplicated. FeedWordPress has a great companion plug-in that weeds out duplicate posts. I’ve come to love WordPress since attempting this little experiment because of the robust and active community out there working to make things better. If I ever had an issue, no matter how complex, I could google it by almost any name and receive some manner of help. Go WordPress!
