Friday, July 18, 2003

Crowded streets... er... sidewalks Sidewalk sales are here in Rochester, MI this weekend.  The weather has been beautiful so far and it seems like the crowds have been pretty decent.  It was nice to have lunch outside at Kruse and Muer yesterday.  Tor had made a comment about how nice it would be if there was a restaurant with permanent outdoor seating. So far, the Sidewalk Sales crowds are the worse "traffic" I've had in months.  It's tough to commute by foot, eh? 5:08:30 PM    comment []  trackback []

Once again, the Japanese have all the fun This new Handheld / PDA from Sony looks incredibly cool.  Alas, it will only be offered in Japan. "Sony has taken another first in the Palm OS market with the release today in Japan of the CLIE PEG-UX50, the first Palm OS device to include both the Bluetooth and 802.11b (Wi-Fi) networking standards. It also features a new rotated screen as part of a new clamshell design, a keyboard, and other Sony extras. The PEG-UX50 is a "landscape clamshell", with a 480 x 320 pixel screen that runs width-wise rather than vertically, as on nearly every other Palm OS handheld to date. It does, however, use the same "Twist and Rotate" flip design as Sony's previous portrait-oriented handhelds. That leaves room for a new, larger keyboard as well. The entire devices measures 103 x 87 x 18 mm when closed, and weighs in at 175 grams." [ via InfoSync] 12:58:47 AM    comment []  trackback []

Birthday math factoids "Neat math factoids about various birthdays: your 3^19 th second when you were 36y 10m, your 2^30 th second when you were 34y 9d, your billionth second when you were 31y 8m, your 10,000th day when you were 27y 4m, your 3^3 rd year when you were 27y 0m, your e^pi th year when you were 23y 1m, your 4^4 th month when you were 21y 4m, your 12! th second when you were 15y 2m, your 7! th day when you were 13y 9m" (Thanks, Don!) [via Boing Boing Blog] Damn, I'm still getting older... but closer to my 3^3 year! 12:51:03 AM    comment []  trackback []

Not tires, treads, or wheels.... just slime "Even more robots today. While Tohoku University's researchers are building dancing robots, MIT's are hard at work on robotic snails that use fake slimes one made out of silicon oil, the other a mixture of glycerin and water, to move around: "People have looked at the properties of slime in the past, but more from a biological point of view, not from the engineering angle," said Anette Hosoi, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. "So now we've begun to take a look at the mechanical side of the biology. It's like walking. It's a mechanical act, but not everyone has been concerned with the biology behind it." To ponder the slime, Hosoi, graduate student Brian Chan and fellow assistant professor John Bush spent several weeks putting together a mass of unsophisticated gears, wiring and pieces of plastic to build a robotic snail. It measures about 10 inches in length and is housed in a rubbery membrane that moves forward on a thin layer of slime." [Via Gothamist & Gizmodo] 12:39:25 AM    comment []  trackback []