Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
Ooops… The sand that Oppertunity is stuck in is pretty neat stuff. It won’t stick to the wheels very well if its just rolling through thin parts but when it rolls through thicker areas of sand it will stick to the wheels like mashed potatoes on a fork!
NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover has run into a sandy snag. All of its six wheels have sunk in deep into a large ripple of soil.
Opportunity Mars Rover Stuck in Sand
Neat, I hope these guys do a bit better than everyone did at the last DARPA challange.
“The H1ghlander robot is a driverless vehicle that will race through 175 miles of hostile desert terrain for a $2 million prize. On Thursday morning, the H1ghlander was being evaluated by a team from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). If the vehicle passes the evaluation, it could advance to the semi-finals at California Speedway in September. The H1ghlander is one of 118 teams hosting similar evaluations.”
CMU’s H1ghlander Robot Demonstrates Skills
If you have ever had to fix an XP machine you know that this guy got off easy. Ok, to be fair he might have had hardware problems, but that still can not account for the problems this guy had fixing an XP machine.
A shattering experience with Windows
America needs a party like this. I think that once a country loses the ability to have a sense of humor and the value of irreverence all is lost. You might as well just let go and take the plummet into the abyss. Say what you might about the British, at least they can laugh at themselves a bit.
Official Monster Raving Loony Party
(Thank you Eugene for sending me this link)
W00t! These guys used a killer laser galvo system to play MAME arcade games not on your VGA monitor, not on your TV, but on your wall! Apparently there is an add on to the regular MAME32 that will output vector values for use with vector monitors. As I guess vector monitors were in short supply they used lasers. The laser control system was not scratch built (darn!) and they didn’t build the lasers either (crap!) so to do this yourself I’d guess that your going to have to spend some bucks. But hey, the final result is oh soooo sweeet!
LaserMAME – Vector games played in a new Light
I’ll do my part and inscribe the convention coordinates onto acid free paper (as suggested), on rocks (next to the indian drawings, that should keep them guessing!) and on some twinkies. I think that should cover it.
Student Organizes Time Traveler Conference
(thank you agent Kevin for this story)