Archive for July 14th, 2005

RoBoCup 2005

Its that time again, I was puttering around on the MAKE blog today and noticed that the RoBoCup expo was going on. What is RoBoCup you ask?

But what is RoBoCup exactly? It’s a competition between small robots from a number of universities or manufacturers. There are two main themes: an obstacle course and a football game. The last one seemed to be the most popular (we recommend the Aibo football game). There was also a small booth with the latest in cybernetics.

There, that’s it in a nut shell. Yet another reason to go visit Japan. Osaka would be mighty fine this time of year…

RoBoCup 2005

cybernetics, technology, robotics, Japan

The Mind Molester

We built these in highschool electronics class, the fun wore thin after a while. Maybe it was the teacher threating us with harm if we didn’t turn it off ASAP. Who knew back then that it could have been a money making opportunity.

The Mind Molester

electronics, annoy, noise

Wiggler

I enjoy taking stereo photographs from time to time but many people have a problem viewing them. People either can’t cross their eyes or they can’t do the ‘far look’ thing and fuse the images together. Viewers are great – but they don’t do all that well over the Internet and most people don’t have setups to view them on their computer screens anyway.
So this could be a handy tool. What the Wiggler does is take two photos (or one side by side photo) and adds a sense of the third dimention by alternating them back and forth. Its pretty cool. I have a link at the bottom to an image that I made from two screens from the Google Earth program.

Wiggler

Lower Manhattan has been Wiggled!

wiggle, stereo, photography, 3D

Leave Brain at Door Please

Things like this make my brain hurt. What kind of parent would take their children to a place like this?

…Bolted to the wall in both the boys and girls rooms are chains with tracts by the cartoonist/evangelist Jack Chick hanging from them. The pages are laminated and set on rings for ease of reading while using the toilet.

Well at least they are in the right location. But this isn’t about the Chick Tracks, its about the ploy that the regious nuts are using to push their point.

Lets look at something for a moment. A theory is defined as “a model or idea that has undergone testing or validation from careful observations and can be used to make a variety of predictions of what will happen under different circumstances”. Evolution meets that pretty well.
Hovind’s dino land distorts the scientific observations of evolution so badly that it passes the point of absurdity and becomes somthing that is just sad. This write up sheds quite a bit of light on Dino Adventure Land and the man behind the scenes of it all. And before you call it a baseless personal attack on Hovind look at the information put forward by the authors investigation. County and IRS records should speak volumes about the guy.

This can be found in a display case next to a sandpit in the childrens ‘fossil dig’ area:

One dramatizes a scene from the Old English epic poem Beowulf (an inexpensive Dover Books edition of the poem is for sale in the bookstore.) The plaque explains that this is one of many examples of dinosaurs living contemporaneously with humans; apparently, Beowulf is a historical documentary and not just a legend.

Your kidding right? This is wrong on sooo many levels.
You have got to read this article and see just how crazy this place is.

Stupid Dino Tricks

Here is the ‘parks’ web page if you want to see this for yourself. I can not in good conscience reccoment that you go there except to see what kind of dreck people are exposed to there.

Dinosaur Adventure Land

If you go remember to shut your mouth, nod your head a lot, and don’t even think of mentioning critical thinking!
god, evolution, idiots, creation, nuts, wacko

Windows Utility Bonanza!

Wow. If you need a utility for Windows you should be able to find it here. Passwords, weather, networks, command line tools, its here.

Freeware Tools and Utilities for Windows
windows, utility, handy, tools