Archive for the ‘robots’ Category
Get YOUR requests into MY novel!
October 30th, 2009 | 
Author: So, it's official: I'm doing NaNo this year (my profile), and it happens I have next week booked off from work (having had a lot of leave days to use up) to get a good head start.
My outline is shaping up but there are huge blank areas, and I'm no good at changing plots on the fly; in order to write easily, I have to have a rough outline nailed down. By tomorrow night. This is where you can help – and all you have to do is fill in the blank:
Well, Herm, knowing that you're going to write a very silly novel about pirates and ninjas (and dinosaurs and robots), I would be very disappointed if _____________ doesn't happen at some point!
When I finalise the outline, I'll make an honest attempt at working in all of your ideas that don't clash with what I've already decided. If they don't fit in the first book of the duology, they still might get into the second (particularly if they're ideas related to the dinosaur-men and the robots).
This is your chance to weasel your silly ideas into the Sankmarray Duology! You'll be doing us all a favour: me, by helping with the plot and giving me a challenge, and yourself and the rest of the world, by making it more fun to read.
Robot h0rs
I'm pleased to report that I have seen not one, but two Aibos, and that I still want one.
Aside possibly from hypothetical robot pangolins and Razer from Robot Wars1, robot dogs are the undisputed coolest thing in existence.
I've also witnessed a Pleo attacking a Sony Rolly.
Seeing Bill Bailey tonight, woo! I bought Slen a ticket for his birthday.
1 OK. Dead Metal is awesome too. I so want the thing.
Einen herzlichen Empfang (lol, heart, fang, see what I did there) news trawl
How are the bitey fallen! Since when are vampires reduced to angsty objects of lust for teenage girls, asks BBC Magazine?
Some amber with an unusual payload.
"Hurrah, we've just accidentally dug into a magma chamber!" Oh, geologists. <3
Fascinating thing here about a follow-up to Milgram.
I thought spending my life with my foot in my mouth was bad…
Advice on chip pan fires has been changed.
Conifer pruned into plum pudding
Disappointing news. Cedric the Tassie devil, considered the best hope for his species because he seemed to be immune to the face cancer that's killing them, has developed tumours.
Winter medical myths 'debunked'
Mermaids! <3 Beautiful things.
Sexy Muslim underwear. NO CONNECTION TO PREVIOUS ARTICLE COMMENTARY.
I want a robot. Do you too? So why aren't they selling them yet? Because, as this thing shows, they can't get anything about them right… except their names. And the cool ones of those are going fast!
The psychology of crying. Tear ducts are awesome. Psychology isn't, at least at this superficial level.
Now this really is awesome! Single virus used to convert adult cells to stem cells. There's a lot more to it, so read the full article if you think protein-making is just the coolest.
Round-up of funny things.
I can't really force these into an overarching theme or moral.
There is no god. The proof? Bendy buses!
India launches unmanned moon mission, with cute English phrases peppered in the video.
eBay to ban sales of ivory goods. EBay said it would still allow the sale of some antique items which contain a small amount of ivory, such as pianos
which strikes me as about the right tack to take.
And xkcd because I was emailing it to my friend anyway. His ringtone is the Resident Evil: Code Veronica X music box, which is, you must admit, impressively creepy.
Robot legs: smarter than the average bare foot. (news trawl)
Plans for new Torchwood revealed. I predict moar zomgmalekissing.
Well. Say what you like about the juvenility of it all, at least someone's doing it. Let's hear it for saturating the market! Because I'm jolly sick of gay kisses making headline news as though they're rare and pervy and controversial.
As an asexual, I wince whenever there's an on-screen kiss, including gay ones. As a bleeding-heart liberal I constantly worry that this makes me look homophobic, or even subconsciously be homophobic. Am I not a prize idiot? I suppose I'm glad to have the opportunity to stress about such petty things instead of worrying where my next meal's coming from.
(Also, there's a rainbow flag flying from one of the flagpoles along my walk into work. I don't know why it's there, but it makes me vaguely yay, even though weirdly-gendered asexuals aren't actually guaranteed to be any more safe and accepted among GLBTs than among other folks.)
Vandals damage dead royal dude's tombstone
Hawk (up)drafted in to kill seagulls
What a surprise! As I predicted, a brilliant new plan to deal with seagulls without telling people to stop strewing rubbish!
Let's go and fly a (red) kite! (That man has a bukkit.)
Take up thy robot legs and walk. This is great. As the article says, just moving as they evolved to do is hugely beneficial for legs. It must surely slightly increase the chance of recovering some nerve function. (Plus, robot legs. Dude. If I'm ever spinally pwned I want robot legs.)
Red squirrels get pox protection
Most people have an "above average" number of feet. Surprised? Er, not really… Myself, I have the modal and median number of feet.
What to do when planes lose pressure. (Eat the pilot!)
All pupils to learn about slavery. Odd. I thought it was already compulsory, I guess because I remember we studied it. (Apparently I can chillingly well put myself into the mind of a slaver, according to my homework grades. I hope this reassures you.)
Computer sold on eBay with bank details. Luckily, it was bought by an honest man. Mmmmm, BBC server room…
KILL THEM. THROW THEM OFF A TOWER.
There's stuff about self-harm rates in Manchester and Scotland, but you'll have to look those up yourselves if interested. The subject makes me too furious.
Singularity or zer puppy gets it (news trawlette)
Have Germans got a sense of humour? Ja, and it involves trousers?
T-1000s just around the corner, reports Intel
We are literally watching technology move at an ever increasing pace.
Literally? Only if you're watching the world land speed record attempt.
Argentina's latest reluctant celebrity is a middle-aged mother named La China, who has discovered that no good deed goes unpunished after she saved an abandoned baby human.
Bizarre ER gets animal spin-off show. I misread one paragraph as "featuring a toad with a cyst on its head that had a tooth in it", which really WOULD have been bizarre.
Why do Asians hate dogs? (British usage of 'Asian', meaning South Asian) It'd never struck me as a racial thing before, either. Good article.
Miss Scarlet with the arsenic news trawl
(Today's news trawl is rather Reeish, as you will see.)
That Nixie would be great for teaching autistic kids! I understood almost all of her cartoony expressions.
Missing German cat goes home after a year abroad. Microchipping works, people.
Mummy is LITERALLY gathering dust. It is getting up and shambling around and picking up dust. LITERALLY.
Police need canine training sites
Stolen puppy returned to owners after paternity test
Boys harmed by 'get rich' culture. I like this story. One or two people vaguely seem to realise how this unbelievable backsliding in attitudes to ambition and celebrity is affecting girls (50 years ago young ladies were expected to get education and jobs; today's junior schoolgirls' ambition is to marry a pop star or footballer, not even to be one themselves). You don't hear as much about how boys are being damaged, and they obviously are.
Woman impaled on religious statue
Cluedo stars killed in makeover. I raised an eyebrow at this, but their justification actually makes sense. Or maybe it's that I'm sick of companies trying to play on my nostalgia recently… Either way, redesign Cluedo, why not. Our hypothetical kids need their own memories, not to have ours forced on them.
The Month without Plastic blog looks at drinks cans and cartons.
Legal milestone for open source. This is important and cool.
Arsenic-munching bacteria found. This is awesome because although they've suspected bacteria could do this in prehistoric (more to the point, pre-oxygen) times, this is the first proof that not only could it have happened once but it's still happening.
Bacteria were around before oxygen became the new trendy thing. Bacteria eat POISON. Bacteria punch TRAINS. Bacteria are HARD!
In fact, bacteria were Jack the Ripper!
All your chip are belong to us news trawl
This is fascinating! By 2010 there will no longer be a clear majority of white people in the USA.
("Immigrants" contrasted with "white people" = unintentionally hilarious and ever-so-slightly depressing. Anti-'immigrant' Americans = very depressing.)
Flying dog poo, BUT IS IT ARS???
Device 'steals chip-and-pin data'
It seems to require the cooperation of a staff member, or ridiculously lax security, and if you have either of those then you're going to be able to do any number of nefarious things.
Famous tent keeps burlesque alive
Why remake cult things when you KNOW the remake will be rubbish and loathed by fans of the original? Know why people liked the original? The clue is in the word ORIGINAL???
Privacy worry over location data
Targeted or personalised adverts. Some people seem to like them. Do you? Why's that? Myself, I dislike them because anything that makes ads harder to ignore is an irritation. But I never buy anything I see advertised, with the exception of going to see films.
Rat-brain robot aids memory study
Gordon Brown aide vetoes leadership question. Haha.
What stops trees getting bigger? There's a height limit on how high they can move their water.
Trees move water around by capillary action, transpiration pressure (a sucking effect from water at the top evaporating off) and osmosis. They don't have a powered circulatory system. The xylem (tissue in the stem or trunk that moves water) is in fact dead cells, wasted away so there's nothing left of them but the rigid cell membrane on the outside.
In other words, tree intra-wet is a series of tubes.
Yay! Well done! I want a Cheshire Cat shirt.
Economy 'counting' somethingorother. Accessibly explains why economics as reported in the media is balls.
White-tailed eagles released in secret location. Look at their metull hair, and listen to that chick croaking "foodfoodfood". *headbangs* I can't believe they steal chicks, though! :(
Robots in war games challenge. This kind of situation is where you'd typically think of using a dog.
Inside Beijing's 'secret' tunnels. We're very privileged to get this exclusive access, so to make the best of it, we sent a patronising blonde idiot to report on it. She can't even read whichever Chinese alphabet that is. THE BBC, DUMBING DOWN FOR YOUR PLEASURE.
Dangerous jellyfish on rise in UK
Footage of Charles mouthing off. "Conurbations of unmentionable awfulness". (Why can't you all have country homes as well as your palaces in the posh bit of London?)
If nobody paid attention, Royals wouldn't blahblah all the time. I don't particularly want this guy openin my Parliament being my figrrhed.
Post union demands dog attack law
Owners plea over dog microchips
The contraceptive pill affects women's ability to pick out genetically dissimilar partners. The biological quirk that leads to this actually makes perfect sense in non-pill-taking females. The pill mimics the conditions of pregnancy, during which a woman is no longer looking for a studly mate but instead, I presume, more interested in a long-term supportive partner who may or may not be the dad.
Speaking of sex or gender differences, this from Philanthropy UK makes interesting reading.
And this on OCD from the Guardian because it's awesome.
Although not all people with OCD are as adorable as Mister Monk, nevertheless it's an interesting condition.
Tomorrow's fish-and-chip wrapping.
Dude! Radio 4 is doing a whole day of programmes from the Cern lab in September. This is gonna be great! I hafta record the whole thing!
Particle physics is something I understand very poorly. Luckily, science fiction has educated me in what to expect. Switch-on will end the world, give us all superpowers and make aliens arrive brandishing huge electricity bills. (Further reading.) I'm just hoping they'll give away bags of gravitons. They're my favourite theoretical particle. (I bet most of you lot prefer muons… and I know at least one relative who probably likes pi mesons.)
Eye condition badgers Dachshunds, offering genetic clue to similar condition in humans
Potter prequel book sets record
Nigerian advises against 86 wives. I can't even mock this. Read it and weep.
Chippies use special 'art' wrappers for their fish and chips. I wonder how many people won't notice. You don't get much newsprint used for chips nowadays; it's generally (the ones I see) cheap offwhite sugar paper these days. (No, not edible paper; that's ricepaper.)
If anyone ever MISSED THE SODDING POINT of camping… I hate camping and like my creature comforts, and that's why I DON'T GO CAMPING. I don't buy a tent with a flippin' built-in radiator and jacuzzi.
Man, I might go if the park had African wild dogs, though. *melts*
Cankers killing horse chestnuts. Ignore their silly focus on conker tournaments. Poor trees.
Robbie Coltrane is a burglar? No, it's his 16-year-old son by Alan Rickman.
Are boy bands on the way back? Uh. Oh Loki Minerva Xolotl Hanuman Bau and Anubis please no?
'Miracle' rescue for family pet
Scouting robot for danger zones, and another for interpretative dance.
Is it the WALL-E thing that's causing them to do this stupid "yay, robot luv" hook every time? Because it's annoying… I claim robots as my asexual brethren. Except that Joe guy from AI. He was irritating, anyway.
Film looks at 'honour killings'
Retarded report on free-running. Seriously, I apologise for the facileness of some of these video reports. It seems a lot of them are from breakfast news, which is very patronising because it assumes all its viewers have either just got up or are unemployed and lounging in the house all day.
*saves this for project later tonight*
Two-foot-long hot dog news trawl
Aimless archer fish get target practice (why'd it take the keepers this long to think of this?)
Reptile 'first-time' dad at 111
Hen harriers don't kill other rare birds: it's official.
Net address bug worse than feared
Genius Great Dane swallows two-foot-long stick. Brilliance. *pines at video*
Boy 'youngest' to get guide dog
Your pictures: Pets that yawn with you
Society takes YET MORE steps backwards when it comes to women.
Gardener finds rare, valuable truffles
Shakespeare's 'first theatre' found
Iron Maiden in stolen guitar plea
US election gets ugly (what a surprise)…
…comparing someone to Paris Hilton is tough language. What costs me sleep is that she'd get more votes than either of them, both from stupid-yet-legitimately-disaffected young people and from the tv-goggling oh-I-think-I've-heard-that-name-before-so-I'll-vote-for-'em brigade. Think I'm wrong? Ronald sodding Reagan. One-off? No.
One for Ree: Cairo paternity test for King Tut
Now, science!
Elastic electronics see better and more from Science Daily
This is awesome because our eyes work better than flat sensors, and cracking being able to put sensors on a flexible, concave membrane is something several groups have been trying to do.
A new look at how memory and spatial cognition are related… in the brain!!!
This is awewsome because… well, I can't really follow their reasoning here, but it seems they've proved certain areas of the brain aren't important (or as important) for spatial memory as was thought.
Simulated robots learn to move themselves. Odd. And terribly cool.
No atheist websites for you! Our bees know where you live!
Thai school offers transsexual toilet to unintentionally-humorous self-described MtF pupils
10%–20% transgenderism among boys is quite amazing.
No mention of FtMs, of course, as freaking usual.
No time to think? Add moar pick-your-own fruit and Gorillaz.
The robot that loves to be hugged (ignore the "twoo wuv" stupidity, they're cool beasts.)
I'm gonna get Charly one of these.
Caecilians in India! Super-smart professor went to look for them in the non-monsoon season and didn't find any. Then the rain started, and guess what?
Man speaks of priest child abuse
Hacker loses extradition appeal
A row led to changes in the opening titles of Dad's Army. Despite my practically indesctructible sense of what's funny, and hatred of censorship, I think they made the right call. This programme wasn't about troops and atrocities. It was a comedy about old men bumbling. Anyway, the arrows are freaking iconic.
Why can't people with dyslexia do multiple choice?
Zimbabwe introduces new currency. Because that will really work.
It's a ripoff, anyway. It's not a cool new currency; they're just crossing zeroes (ten of them!!) off the old one. I was hoping for something in glittery space-plastic and called the Brickybach Pound or Niffsquishle Dollar.
Seriously, printing and circulating new paper money seems supremely pointless with the rate at which it's devaluing. It's keeping a few people at the mint in work, that's all.
Lords rule that bowing to Saudi bullying over a fraud probe was a good idea.
Six humans and a dog were rescued from the water after their boat capsized off the Dorset coast. Slight misprint in the headline there.
Rise in dog cruelty convictions. <3 the Animal Welfare Act.
I want the poor things. I want all of them. I will train them to be my Runt's Revenge Army and put little green blinky HUD visors on them and give them lasers, and then ear-mutilators, tail-mutilators and animal-torturers of all stripes may tremble, they may tremble.
There was a programme about police dogs on tv. I watched it last night. It's not nice to have to send your Alsatian into situations against armed perps. On the other hand, the sniffer spaniels were a complete delight. They have such fun and when they find something they get their tennis ball and it's all so exciting and they're so waggly. It was dreadful, really. I had to complain loudly.
Steven Moffat promises new Doctor Who monsters
Thank goodness. If there had been one more "we bring the Daleks back AGAIN! But this time they're, um, BIGGER!" storyline… Russell T's run, what with all the playing on the nostalgia and a lack of innovation, especially in the third season (why not more creatures like that tree lady at the beginning of the Ninth Doctor's time?), was, sorry for my choice of word, camp.
Bees join hunt for serial killers. Geographic profiling?! Wow, science!
You know what this really means, of course. Bees were Jack the Ripper!!
Sherlock G news trawl
Sacha Baron Cohen to star as Sherlock Holmes
D: And the other guy is worse. That's no Watson.
Looking further, it seems Guy Ritchie is directing and The new Sherlock Holmes will be less stuffy and more adventurous than previous screen incarnations
, so I don't even dare look up whether they'll be covering A Scandal in Bohemia.
Remember dude, you got through I, Robot by repeating to yourself "That isn't Susan Calvin, it's just some woman with her name". You can handle this.
Hidden abuse of domestic workers in the UK
On-the-run skunk Pepe caught out
Gallery of sawn-in-half cameras
Notes of one of the first forensic pathologists are being sold.
Floridian builds flying saucer—which is not a UFO, because it's clearly identified. This is awesome partly because, far from being a spaceship, it couldn't move itself anywhere in a vacuum.
Drunken Facebook scallies pwned by police.
Awww, it's Da Vinci! Cute! (video)
'Super Spam Me' experiment (video)
Nellie named Heroic Hearing Dog
Pets saved from smoke-filled home
US tycoon left $8bn to dog welfare
(not news) "The 8 PG-Rated Movies That Should Not Have Been Rated PG"
That Wizards clip is bad. In every sense. It comes with every warning ever.
A journalist volunteers to be waterboarded. He says it's not much fun.
Posted in animals, books, dogs, films, news, photography, robots, sherlock holmes, web | 
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Dogs in the stalls, dogs in the circle, robots babysitting the humans.
Hey! Hey! Listen! Is it ok if I borrow your dog and take it to Glasgow?
OK, that's it, I'm voting for this man. He clearly has cojones of rawhide.
'Camera' takes photo of LIGHT. Badass.
Spinny thing to predict fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field.
You want a robot man to hold you tight. One that you can count on every single night.
Which makes this seem suddenly inevitable.
Chinese Cresteds are NOT ugly. They're frickin' class. I do find it hilarious that these humans are going "well, our species did this to your species, now we're going to laugh at you, ha ha, yuck!"
Now this, on the other hand, this is ugly. (And it's coming after your children. (To make them ugly.)) Ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly. Disturbing.
*runs away*
The devil's in the de-tailing news trawl
Diesel Sweeties archives are available to download in PDF ebook form under a free Creative Commons licence. It's a pixel comic with robots and romance. I used to read it and seem to remember the early stuff was ok. (Red Robot is cool.)
Physicists produce quantum-entangled images of – what else? – cats.
Now, certain brain cells, pontine neurons, are built in the rear of the brain and trundle around for a bit before settling in the cerebellum. I never knew that. And now someone's worked out how they do it. It's a molecular carrot-and-stick approach.
Here's an accessible explanation of pontine neurons and the happy Hox genes that tell them where to go. The same genes, if messed up, can do things like causing insects to grow legs in place of antennae.
Stolen dog reunited with owners. Saluki/greyhound, gorgeous.
Nasty woman fined for tail docking. Says there's no demand for undocked animals, boo hoo, spectacularly failing to get the point of the new legislation that (at last) classifies tail amputation as unnecessary mutilation.
Docking is bad, ok? Your tail's a limb, with bone, blood supply and nerves, but it's also used for communication. There's no exact analogy for humans on the physical appearance and balance side of things, but as for the social—let's play pretendy, kids. The lower half of your face has just been paralysed in a horrific Botox accident. Oh, you can still talk (your tongue, jaw and brain work fine), but your speech is slurred because of your lips and you can't even smile to let strangers know you're friendly. Imagine the inconvenience, and in some cases danger, you'll be put in. And by the way, I lied. It wasn't an accident. Your mum did it to you. She thinks you look prettier this way.
I happen to like many of the breeds that have traditionally had their tails amputated, but if I bought a puppy (as opposed to rescuing an adult dog, something I'm more likely to do) I'd never buy one that had been mutilated. (The only problem with rescuing an amputee dog would be having to explain to everyone that I wasn't the one who mutilated him.)
Neglected dog found on roadside, believed to have been imprisoned in a cage for years, is put down. Hope they find and disembowel the culprit.
Dolphins and doggies. And a hoovercat.
A mass dolphin stranding is making the news over here. The clip there is very sad. They're gorgeous things, even all dead and stiff.
TV presenter adopts adorable rescue dog
Dog locates missing elderly man, but before you go "aww", he isn't the dog pictured.
Dog survives days in rabbit hole. I wonder what she ate to survive…
Chinese parks 'sell tiger wine'
Manchester congestion charge plans backed
Vacuum used to free kitten (vid). (Ours is moulting in the obnoxious manner of mostly-white cats in summer, and I've already suggested similar measures. I'll show them this clip and see if they change their minds now they see the fire services do it.)
Bionic hand wins top tech prize. I live in hope that these things will bow (wave?) to inevitability and turn killer.
News trawl shows you how to walk the skunk… ride the trike… er, jaywalk the bullock?
Why does having a sword turn people into arseholes?
Australia appoints woman bishop
Pet skunk's walkies turning heads
Noisy Swazi cockerels face chop
Park celebrates camel births (video)
Court overrules Texas sect raid / video
Technicalities, technicalities… and here's another that is more funny.
When doing our news coverage at work we avoid including stories that are too obviously electioneering, but this is particularly pungent so I thought I'd share with you lot.
Microsoft's going to take up ODF out of the goodness of its heart, presumably because OpenXML sucks humbugs
Sorry, Indy, the shiny things are fake.
That's amazing how this announcement got made when they've just made a movie about it! Wow, spooky coincidence or what?
This is so awesome eeeee. I mean, it's pretty obvious that frosting glass is going to change what it does to light, but still. Here's more.
Escaped umaa shot, causing car crash. No pictures. I'm not sure WHY it was shot.
Doctors flown in from Netherlands to treat 1,000-year-old tree. Awesome.
Playboy reviews UK sales displays after vicar complains at their marketing strategy.
I find this persecution appalling. How anyone can suggest that this innocent corporation had any obvious marketing strategy in mind when designing bright pink, shiny, fluffy products such as typically appeal to young girls simply beggars belief. Pink fluffy rulers and pencil cases are daily essentials for grown men too, I'll have you know. Dog, we might as well be living under the Taleban.
A lifeboat rescues an elderly 15st St Bernard/mastiff cross, described as "a bit grumpy".
A couple of random stories: How the internet ruins humour, from SomethingAwful (now THAT's rich) and a robot, because there can never be enough. There is some kind of serious psychological point among the ads and stupid film clips. Actual interview starts at 1:09.
