Gothic_ham's journal

2:03am: On smaller dogs
Haven't posted in a while. Oh well.

You may remember the video I posted of Big Dog, the quadrupedal robot that could stay afoot even after getting kicked by its cruel, cruel masters. Well this is his lil' brother Little Dog. He does some pretty good navigational tricks. Also, once he gets to the end of each task he plops on his belly. Kinda cute (and not nearly as creepy as Big Dog).

11:33am: Church-Fight
Saw this yesterday:



It's kind of insane. Which is why I like it.

Oh yeah, I haven't really posted anything recently. But that's ok, aside from me studying neuroscience at Harvard Extension & moving to a new place, things are pretty much the same.

8:55am: And you thought ninja warrior was difficult...
Check out this Japanese car parking game show. You only get 1cm of space on each side of the car...

2:22am: Anonymous delivers!
This is an interesting post about the worldwide anti-Scientology protests held by Anonymous of 4chan yesterday. The post has some awesome photos of the largest of the gatherings, in London.

9:32am: Degrassi of the Dead
Most likely, this post will only be interesting for Degrassi fans... so 2 people I know that read this.

Sarah & I watched Degrassi of the dead on Friday and it was wicked awesome, in that all the characters I hate are devoured by zombies... or exploded. Yes, they blow up the school. Here's the first part:

10:13am: Halloweenish Times
Halloween is almost upon us. I've wracked my brain for something to do, but then decided it's better to just chillax this weekend. Someday, though, I'd like to do something awesome in terms of decorations. Something like this for example:

7:05am: Portland Zombie Epidemic, and other stories
Ed's been in town so I've been hanging out with him a lot lately. I'm looking forward to having a few empty weekends, though. Things have been busy for a while now. Anyway, on to important news...

These appear to be a new breed of zombie. They seek a new food source:



We'll see how long they last compared to the normal, brain-eating variety of zombie. But I can tell you this:

Whoever wins, we lose!

11:31am: Best. Zombie. Ever
I went to Feat of Flesh V last night. As I might have mentioned earlier, there was a zombie costume contest that I entered w/ Sarah's help.

And hey, I actually won!

Go check out Sarah's pictures of me, I imagine she has a few more to be posting later...

10:34pm: Derby time draws near
The roller derby season starts up this Saturday. Sarah showed me a blog that's getting me even more excited:

11:29pm: Which one is the robot?
Listening to this makes me wish I was at the NextFEST. Well, at least I can occupy myself with questions like, which one of these two is the robot?

1:12am: So many things to do...
I'm really keeping busy lately. Here's some of the stuff I'm doing in the next month or two:
9/15 - King Richard's Faire (just got new boots & gloves to go w/ my renfair outfit)
9/22 - German Beer Fest & the Boston Massacre season opener against Virginia
9/29 - J. Cannibal's Feast of Flesh V with a midnight showing of Evil Dead (and zombie costume contest)
10/5 - 10/7 - Manga NEXT in Seacaucus, NJ

I sure know how to keep busy, don't I?

Meanwhile, Wired NextFEST is happening this weekend. Lots of robots will be on show in the US. Hanson Robotics who are debuting a brand new robot, Zeno, has got me the most curious. Their website has little useful info but I'm sure we'll be reading a whole lot about it after this weekend.

This is a promo video (more like a music video) for NextFEST - the dancing at the end is the best part:

9:07am: Unbelievable, but true
I uh... stumbled upon this video this morning. I don't know why I hadn't seen it before, and its just so damn awesome.

7:02pm: Starfish Robot
Just found this - a starfish robot that teaches itself to walk. Apparently it should still manage to learn how to move even with a busted leg.



Here's the project's homepage: http://ccsl.mae.cornell.edu/research/selfmodels/

6:14am: Blehh..
Ugh, I've been sick since Thursday. Some kind of fever/flu thing... I might have gotten it at Otakon. I suspect what pushed me over the edge into sickery was staying up late building some of my new Ikea furniture.

So if you were at Otakon w/ me last weekend, get plenty of rest and make sure to up your vitamin intake. Hopefully you won't end up like me!

Bleh.

8:14pm: Good news and bad news
The good news is that octo-squids are real.

The bad news is that Hope & I broke up. It's ok, we're still good friends. We both agree its time to move on, though. Sorry if this is sorta sudden, but we've already talked about this for a while so don't worry about us - we're both gonna be fine.

7:55am: A much cooler robot
To make up for the hideous baby, here is a really cool robot. It takes numerous kicks to the face by jackass humans.. and keeps on walking.

5:39am: Hideous Robot Baby!
Yatta! Japan did it again!

3:51pm: Woah now!
Just saw this while looking for new movie trailers:

They're making Persepolis into a film!!!



It's based off a wonderful graphic novel about the author's childhood in Iran (it also does the second book when she goes to university in Switzerland - but I haven't read that one yet). I can't wait to see it. The trailer is in French (as is the movie) but I'll be seeing this as soon as it gets translated.

4:33am: Madness in Akihabara


I imagine some of you might recognize this well-coordinated cosplay dance in the middle of an Akihabara street. Once again, the Japanese kick our butts at being awesome.

5:23am: WoW!
I've played too much WoW for my own good lately, but considering what month it is (April, probably my busiest month of the year) I could use a little stress relief. Until Hope leaves for London there is something important to be done on every day of the weekend. Not that I'm complaining about Hope's birthday or my folks coming to visit - its just that with Anime Boston preparations & cleaning the house going on I won't get a lot of time to rest.

So for now I shall relax & play WoW. Tauren warriors are quite dangerous, I hear - just ask basketball star Yao Ming:

6:06am: Rockin' Robots
Saw this video of Dexter, the first dynamically balancing bipedal robot. Check it out. He even gets bullied by a wheelie-robot that keeps poking him & trying to knock him down. But Dexter stands tall!





Note: Although he seems kind of slow, he is the first robot that dynamically balances itself. Fancy robots like Aasimo (the one that falls down the stairs in this post) are preprogrammed. They will make the exact same steps each time they run a walk program - and they need a hard flat surface.

SO this is pretty exciting stuff.

7:02pm: Effin' Racoons
Posting this to show off my new icon. I made Reeg make me this today. I love it.
Everyone's been getting really into Avatar lately, myself included. If you haven't watched that much Avatar you prolly won't get this - so my apologies. I would recommend watching it though as it has easily overtaken the time I usually spend watching anime.

4:44pm: Today != Valentines Day

avatar valentines by ali_wildgoose
get your own valentine here

I decided to do a Fire Lord Ozai anti-Valentine for y'all. Oh yes, he melts faces for Valentines day. This and many other (often very wrong) Avatar valentines were made by Allie.

In other news, I have a new job downtown on Newbury St. It's pretty freaking awesome. I'm doing more QA stuff for the time being, but I'm doing more advanced work, which I always appreciate.

Hope + me = smarties because we did our whole valentines day thing sunday night so we don't feel compelled to go on a date along with the other million peeps in this city today. We went to The Wine Cellar which is right after you cross the Charles River on Mass. Ave. Great wine + fondue FTW!

7:04am: Death by Teapot
It's official! The dude who got poisoned in London w/ Polonium was killed by a radioactive TEAPOT!!!

Sweet! Also it looks like its pretty much a given the Russian gov't is involved in this extremely awesome assassination.

6:46am: No-Squid Thursday...
No squids, but I do have an awesome article about a deep sea frilled shark!

In other news, Melinda is in town so hopefully we'll get to hang out w/ her. I'm finally gonna see Children of Men this weekend.

Lastly, it will be below 0 degrees tonight - which is in sharp contrast to the weather in Miami (where I was visiting Ed last week). Thats right folks... 8 days ago I was swimming at South Beach... and now this!