~larcher

Natalie and I went out dorking tonight The dorkbot made it’s second appearance in Austin tonight at Cafe Mundi. There was some great geeking going on .. I think we missed the first presentation though (got there around 8:30).

First one we saw was Joel Greenberg showing off his nifty homemade mic zeppelin. According to my del.icio.us links, I read about this back in April, but didn’t realize he was from Austin. (Note to self: checkout his podcast )

Next up was Rich LeGrand and his Lego-bot with a Gameboy brain. Basically, he put an FPGA and some flash memory on a card that fits in the Gameboy Advance cartridge slot, which lets the GBA brain talk to sensors and motor controllers and cameras and all kinds of roboty goodness. For a demo, the bot spotted a loose lego piece, wheeled itself over, grabbed the piece, and moved it to the other side of the table. It was also able to learn and repeat and little dance — you push the thing around the table, and it senses the movement through the motors, records it, and plays it back. ( video! )

The Austin Robot Group had the last two presentations: Eric Lundquist explained the Babbling Head and had it sing a few songs, and Vern Graner demoed the controller board/prototype of a funky spin-art game-type-thing they’re making for the next First Night Austin.

All kinds of Neat Stuff[tm] .. we’ll have to go back next month. (I heard they had a homemade Tesla coil last month!) I managed to catch part of the evening with the voice recorder on my iAudio. I’ll try to clean it up and stick it online sometime in the next few days.

[tags] austin, austintx, geek, dorkbot, dorkbotaustin, nerd, robots, robotics[/tags]

That’s right, the Communist Red Planet is closer to Earth now than it has been in the past 60,000 years. Look for the bright red thing in the east after sunset. ( I really should buy a telescope one of these days. )
The Astronomy Picture of the Day has plenty of information and linkification. If you want to know exactly when sunset is tonight, you could consult the US Naval Observatory’s website.

It starts like this:


ATATTAGGTTTTTACCTACCCAGGAAAAGCCAACCAACCTCGATCTCTTG
TAGATCTGTTCTCTAAACGAACTTTAAAATCTGTGTAGCTGTCGCTCGGC
TGCATGCCTAGTGCACCTACGCAGTATAAACAATAATAAATTTTACTGTC
GTTGACAAGAAACGAGTAACTCGTCCCTCTTCTGCAGACTGCTTACGGTT
...

(via NSLog)

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