Why Can't They Just Be Friends?

The classic battle of monkey verse robot, can anything be more primal? I am currently in the thick of it. Like an angry cybernetic monkey I senselessly bludgeon Alloy, trying to make it do my bidding.

My project is due on Wednesday. It appears I might have been a tad ambitious with my initial goals. There is still more work to be done. Unless I pull off some astounding feat of projecteering tonight I’ll probably have to take off tomorrow in order to mount the final charge. I would have stayed home to work on it today, except for the project presentation I have to give. Joy.

Vacation time = Homework time is a crappy trade.

The Fat Pipe In My Backyard

I bet somewhere there is a list of the 100 geekiest things you need to do before you die. Towards the bottom of said list there are probably a bunch of rather tame geeky things to do. Things like “meet a friend you met on the internet in real life,” or “adopt internet vernacular in your everyday speech.” I’m sure most of you have checked off a few items on the list but in general avoid checking off items whenever possible.

Somewhere, much higher up than the tame geeky things, I bet there is the following entry: “Find an elegant internet access solution for non-WiFi enabled devices in your backyard.” I’m working on checking off that item.

Part of my fantastic birthday bounty this year was the Stoker Temperature Controller for my Evil Black Egg grill. The Stoker basically will constantly monitor and adjust the temperature of my grill, while simultaneously monitoring the internal temperature of whatever I’m cooking on the grill. Undeniably, precision grilling is awesome, but this device really starts to shine when you consider that it enables 18-hour long grilling sessions with minimal interventions. Oh, I know what you’re going to say, “what if I have OCD and actually enjoy checking up on the grill?” Don’t worry, the Stoker has you covered. It has lightweight webserver on it so you can monitor its progress and target temperatures from a browser. To get to said webserver the Stoker needs to be connected to the internet, via its Ethernet port. This brings us back to checking off elegant internet solutions for the backyard.

Uh, yes? You, in the back, with your hand up, you have a question? “Couldn’t you just use the Stoker’s LCD screen to monitor its progress without all the Ethernet shenanigans?” GET THE HELL OFF MY BLOG.

Geeze, some people. Now we can continue knowing we’re surrounded by friends.

So, I could just run a Cat-5 cable out onto my patio. I could just get a long cable and run it through the door or a window when I want to grill. I don’t consider that elegant. I suppose, I could go slightly more sophisticated and run a cable through the walls and put a RJ-45 port outside on my patio. That’s a slightly more elegant solution, but I bristle at just anyone being able to plug into my network from outside.

The more astute have probably thought, “why doesn’t he just buy a wireless bridge?” Your point it duly noted. That was my first inclination as well. I don’t really want to connect a whole second network to my current network, so that solution is a tad overkill. Not that overkill is bad, but you normally have to pay extra for overkill. Eventually I found a device from our past, which offers solutions for our grilling future.

Logitech made a connection device for the Xbox and PS2 which would allow you to connect your console to your network. I suppose this was before WiFi was really popular and back when most people didn’t have an Ethernet port run behind their entertainment center (ha, those people are suckers!) It offers a single, wireless point-to-point connection, a wireless Cat-5 cable if you will. It’s just two boxes, each with an RJ-45 jack, the boxes each have little radio/receivers in them and they transmit the data that would be going over the cable. It doesn’t have to worry about protocols or any of that jazz like a wireless bridge would have to manage. Simple, elegant, and wireless. Just what every grill needs.

My Evening With Alloy

Warning: The following is boring project related blather. Terminology has been altered so the reader might find it more amusing than it really is. But, really folks, there is only so much I can do with this stuff…

I spent most of last night working on my project. Part of my project involves working with an automatic model checking tool called Alloy. Working with Alloy is a lot like working with some sort of mute idiot-savant three-year-old that finds contradicting you to be hilarious. You know the types of little brats that insist on disagreeing with you on everything. That’s pretty much Alloy, except Alloy has a freaky grasp of first-order logic too.

Much like a three year old, Alloy has a limited vocabulary. So if you want to try to express a complicated concept you have to make an effort to figure out how to best express it in terms Alloy will understand. You can’t just tell a three year old that “Mommy is never coming home again because she was caustic, emotionally dead inside, fat, and got what was coming to her.” You have to use terms that a three-year-old will understand. I usually use something along the lines of “Mommy had to go away because she felt that you didn’t love her enough. She prefers to spend time with all of your pets that ran away in the middle of the night.”

Once you get past how to best describe something to Alloy, you get to try to take advantage of its idiot-savant ability at checking complex models….the only thing is Alloy finds it hilarious to contradict you. In fact, it insists upon only citing counter examples.

So if I ask Alloy if I’m wearing shoes, it just shrugs. If I state that I am not wearing shoes, then Alloy perks up and promptly whips out a Polaroid of my feet wearing shoes. This gets to be even more fun if I’m interested in some future possibility.

Me: “Alloy, I am wearing shoes.”
Alloy: shrug.
Me: “Alloy, I am never not wearing shoes”
Alloy: Whips out a Polaroid of me getting dressed this morning, without shoes on.
Me: “Alloy, at some point in the future I am wearing shoes.”
Alloy: shrug.
Me: “Alloy, at some point in the future I am never not wearing shoes.”
Alloy: Whips out a Polaroid of me, later tonight, with my feet up, not wearing shoes.
Me: “Hey neat trick.”

And so it goes. Except for last night, the conversation went closer to something like this.

Me: “Alloy, at some point in the future I am never not wearing shoes.”
Alloy: shrug.
Me: “Okay then. Alloy, in the future I am always wearing shoes.”
Alloy: Produces a Polaroid of me from the future without feet.
Me: “Uh, that’s disturbing. Alloy, at some point in the future I have feet.”
Alloy: shrug.
Me: “Err…. Alloy, I have feet at this very moment.”
Alloy: Produces a Polariod of me in my current clothes without feet.
Me: “That’s not right!” Looks down and notices my feet are missing. “Arghghghggh!”

Hello, Case-In-Point.

Wasn’t it just earlier today that I said there was a Hello Kitty version of everything? Well case-in-point I just ran across this….this… thing.This is all blatantly ripped off the OhGizmo! site. I felt I couldn’t possible do a better job summing this up than the original author.

"The Hello Kitty babysitting robot is now available for preorder. It contains facial recognition via stereo CMOS camera, voice recognition technology, an ultrasonic sensor, a lift-up sensor, and an AV connector.

The 52 inch terror-doll can also chat with you in three wonderful personalities: it speaks as though it is a close friend, part of your family unit or to play an entertaining guess game. However, a little known fact is that its frigid, robotic heart contains no love or happiness, only a cold desire to conquer our world and enslave us all. It has moving arms and a moving head so that its evil, beady eyes from beyond can follow you around the room. This adorable murderbot comes with a mouse and AV connection, so it will hopefully be allowed integrate with your TV.


Oh, and at $6,299.99, even the price is vaguely evil."

Why is USB so tasty?

I don’t think any single innovation on the modern computer has been such a boon to frivolous technology as the USB port. Think of all the wonderful and useless things that we now have the option to plug into our computers. Ah, progress.

If you were looking at a Venn diagram of all USB devices (and really, why wouldn’t you be?) I expect there would be a significant overlap between the circles of Memory Stick and Frivolous USB Device. What’s even more…er interesting… is the number of frivolous USB memory stick that are shaped like food. Why do we want to insert edible items into our computers?

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of other really strange USB memory sticks out there, decapitated teddy bears, wooden sticks, Hello Kitty. Actually, Hello Kitty is a separate subject. Why is there a Hello Kitty version of everything associated with a computer?

Anyway, I’m left to suspect that man has a repressed desire to shove food into our modern-day adding machines. Or do we simply want to attach food to our modern-day adding machines? If the first is true, we might be trying reward our computers for a job well done with a tasty memory treat that is shaped like a deep fried treat. If the second is true, we might be simply trying to make a good thing better by decorating it with raw fish that can store a gigabyte of information.

Sorry if today’s post is a bit Jerry Seinfeld, “what the deal with edible USB memory sticks?” I’ve been slogging through a project and there’s not much left for creative juices…

This weekend, where to start?

This weekend was without a doubt the best birthday (observed) I’ve ever had. Heck, this weekend was the better than any actual birthday that I’ve ever had.

Friends, board games, scotch tasting...what's not to like. And that was just the main event! Friday and Sunday were also a lot of fun (big angry creepy guy at the bar excluded).

I’m sure I’ll never know the complete extent of all the cogs involved in pulling this weekend off, but I want to thank any and everyone who involved or associated with it.

In honor of long board games that test your attention span mettle. Here is a list of equations that govern long format board games. The equations are a work in progress.

The first four are pretty solid. I think the last one might still need some work.

Some steps trickier than others.

I thought this was pretty funny. Someone made reference to it on the Freakonomics blog.

Check out this suggested route by Google Maps from Cambridge, MA to Rio de Jeneiro, Brazil.

Be sure to scroll down the steps on the left hand side. Pay attention to steps 31-33. Google has a sense of humor.