Cap’n Deadprogrammer And The Hunt for the Giant Robot

On the day when Kottke posted his crappy cellphone snap of the giant robot in Times Square I dragged my co-workers to go see it. The robot must have flown away since the morning leaving behind only stupid Naked Cowboy and his admirers. Because I know that the tighty-whity wearing scourge of Times Square sometimes subsists solely on soy nuts and coffee, it was probably a good idea to keep my distance.

Or was Kottke’s photo a hoax? I guess it could be done with a toy robot – the photo is grainy enough. Everybody seems to be just reposting it with or without credits. A giant square probably lousy with camera carrying bloggers – and no other pictures at all? What gives?

John Crapper Would …. Hmmm, I Don’t Know How He’d React.

Now, robotic cat crappers have been around for a while. I’d get one too, but my wife is a litter box Luddite. I am thinking of buying a Roomba vacuum cleaner because there are clearly not enough robots in the Deadprogrammer household.

The surrealism of this cat box impresses me to no end:

Another fine choice is the C.A.T.S (Cat Approved Toilette System) which was clearly designed by a retired missile silo designer

It’s Almost Lunch!

Happy Friday, everyone.

Had a pretty good dream this morning. I was working on a project with . We were building a gigantic mecha robot. I was surprised with the efficiency of my work. I accomplished much more than I thought I would. My task was building a whole bunch of rack mounted compartments, including the main radio. The robot was about the size of the 5 story building I live in.

I guess this dream is pretty easy to interpret. First of all I am planning to rebuild all of my computers in inexpensive rack mount cases (these things sell for about $60-100 a pop on eBay). I’ll also probably get a cheap and slow, but sexy 1 unit rack mount computer for an mp3 file server, home automation and other always-on type services. They are also within a range of a few hundred dollars on eBay.

Second, I came up with an idea last night. There’s an application that I want to write. First I got to make sure nobody else has written it already. It’s gonna be extra awesome!

Now for a bunch of unrelated cool news:

1) Google started spidering livejournal and other blogs again! Sergey probably read my rant and repented. Yep, that’s what it must have been. Oh, and google’s new toolbar is so damn awesome. It even has a popup blocker. http://www.livejournal.com/users/deadprogrammer has pagerank of 4, but deadprogrammer.com – of 1. Link to me more, people.

2) Some Cubans tried to reach the US Junkyard Wars style, in a 1951 Chevy with pontoons and an engine driven prop. I can’t believe Coast Guard sent them back. That just sucks!

When morons write about technology

There was an article in free newspaper called “Brooklyn!” (very creative, putting an exclamation mark into the name) about some school kids who participated in a robot building competition.

I bet those kids did not explain to the reporter what red boxing really is :) Uh, and the box that really brought some prominence to some kids was blue (One Steve made them, the other Steve sold them).

Boxes also come in all colors of the rainbow.

By the way, I really hate those robot competitions, like Robot Wars. They are nothing but glorified RC cars. If there was a competition of autonomos robots, that would be a bit more interesting, but probably also not watchable.

Junkyard Wars, on the other hand, is a great show. The original British version was even better.