Smiley's Tropical Escape

I Need a Droid

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:41:27 +0900

Like a lot of the current crop of adult geeks, I grew up on Star Wars. I remember standing in line for Jedi when I was eight years old and I remember watching the cartoons on Saturday mornings. And, of course, I had a metric ton of toys. Including R2-D2 and C-3PO.

I remember being disappointed by the fact that I could not get a real R2 unit; I was crushed when I found out there was an actor inside the little metal 'bot.

Fast forward 25 years and I still want a working, independent R2 unit. (Preferably one without a bad motivator.) And, now, it seems like things are finally heading that direction.

My wanderings across the great and dusty interwebtubes have brought two droids to my attention recently: Chumby and the Tux Droid. Chumby is a small screen-in-pillow device that gathers fodder from the 'tubes and displays it back to you whenever and however you want. The Tux Droid is a small, stuffed Penguin that works via IR and will do mundane online chores for you.

Chumby

Chumby may look like little more than a glorified alarm clock but it lists an impressive range of features, including: acting as a digital photo frame, internet radio, YouTube video player, feed reader, and calendar. And alarm clock. Chumby is open source and designed to be hacked by just about anyone. Users create "widgets" that are then placed on the Chumby network and then downloaded by anyone who wants one. According to the website, the physical unit will work on any open, wireless network.

Tux Droid

Tux, on the other hand, is designed to be a little more active than Chumby. The Tux Droid has several inputs, like a microphone and touch sensors, built into it. They allow Tux to respond to commands and the 'bot will check to see if you have new email or if something has finished downloading. Once it has done your bidding, it will report back by dancing or blinking its eyes.

The kid in me sees both of these products and gets an immediate -5 against my saving throw for Shiny. And, truth to tell, I would like to have either or both, just to play with because I think this is one of the futures of consumers goods. Why wouldn't kids like to have a doll that can talk back? Why wouldn't adults want web-enabled devices that do what we want without the bother of a direct interface?

These ideas are not new. I remember my sister's Teddy Ruxpin doll when we were kids. It was basically a stuffed bear with a cassette deck built into its back that would simulate a conversation and tell stories to its owner. And more recently, Ambient Technologies has been taking the idea of ubiquitous computing and running with it. Products like the Ambient Orb, which lets you know, for example, how your stocks are doing by glowing a different color, are in this same idea of hardware that anyone can program doing the work we do not want to do ourselves. And it's brilliant.

So. If anyone's got a spare couple of hundred bucks laying around, well, you know what I want.

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Just Now

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:05:45 +0900

Just now,

You said I could

Do anything I wanted

And I thought you could do so too

But, no.

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Saturday Morning Cartoons: The Smurfs

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:40:54 +0900

The Smurfs

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Candyblogging: Chocolate Covered Cherries

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:35:55 +0900

Chocolate Cherries

We tried Turin's Chocolate Covered Cherries this weekend. After having mixed success with the Jack Daniel's filled and the Kaluha filled, we were a little apprehensive, but decided to try them anyway.

And we were quite pleased. The chocolates are again, good, not great, but the cherry liquor (un-named and presumably not a brand name) adds a very nice sweetness that goes down well.

At the same time, I don't know that I would recommend these as a special occasion candy. They seem more suited to a quick, after-dinner, choco. Maybe something to keep in a bowl on the coffee table or a dish on the kitchen counter. But, as a special birthday or Valentine's day chocolate, they do not seem quite adequate.

And, once again, the website does not seem to be working (there is a Spanish language access denied message this time, rather than the page not found error previously encountered) so I found the photo on Gift Shop Cafe. Enjoy.

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Soapblogging: Classic Shaving Cream Lime and Coconut

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:36:14 +0900

Classic

Last summer, my wife bought me an Omega shaving brush. I have been enjoying it immensely and had just been using a generic shaving cream purchased in the local supermarket.

But for Valentine's Day, my wife bought me a nice razor and brush stand, as well as a package of Classic Shaving Brand Lime and Coconut soap.

Fellas, it's good stuff.

Both scents are light and hard to detect after completing your shave. However, both are still present, and reactivate whenever your face is wet, whether from washing or rain or something else entirely.

This combo is also idea for anyone who shaves in the morning as they are a pleasant eye opener and make shaving a real treat instead of a chore.

The soap lathers up easily for quick application, but comes off quite cleanly with the razor, leaving very little to muck up your shaving towel. Similarly, it comes out of the brush with minimal effort, which will help the brush to last longer. It also, at least so far, seems to be very nice to the blades of my razor, unlike the gels I have used in the past.

In short, guys, if you are looking for something to help make the daily shave a little more pleasant, you could do far worse than this soap.

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A Game of Inches

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:34:36 +0900

I had fun posting yesterday's clip, so I thought, today, I'd post my other favorite movie speech:

A Game of Inches

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Vox Hunt: In Honor of President's Day...

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:49:21 +0900

Show us your favorite President.

My favorite president? My favorite? Well. He doesn't exist. But this is a pretty fair approximation of the kind of person I'd like to see in office:

The American President

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Vox Hunt: Hooked on...

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:34:27 +0900

Show us something that's got you hooked.

Pip

Last June, cartoonist Adam "Apelad" Koford took the idea of LOL cats and ran with it.

In short order, he "discovered" a comic strip purportedly drawn by his grandfather, Aloysius "Gorilla" Koford, called the Laugh-Out-Loud cats. The comic is usually a single panel featuring the antics of two hobo cats, Kitteh and Pip and is drawn in a clean, classic style on old newsprint.

The comics also feature all the memes and recursive internet humor found in the various LOL Cat macros that seem to crop up everywhere.

Since June, Koford has drawn around 750 different Laugh-Out-Loud Cats comics, resulting in a collection called "Meet the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats."

Koford, who rose to internet fame through his attempts to illustrate each of the names in Jonathan Hodgman's listing of Hobo names in his book "The Areas of My Expertise," has published the collection himself, through Lulu.com.

The comic and the book, not to mention the cartoonist, have been pushed to greater and greater popularity through Koford's Flickr listing and through Boing Boing's adoption of Koford as their artist in residence.

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Saturday Morning Cartoons - Gargoyles

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 13:25:14 +0900

Gargoyles

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Brewster's Challenge

nobody@vox.com(Smiley) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:29:25 +0900

Brewster's Millions

The challenge:     Spend 30 million dollars in 30 days.
The catch:            After 30 days, you can have no assets.
The conditions:    You can't tell anyone what you're doing or why; you can't destroy anything of inherent value; you can't give it away; you can use only 5% for gambling and 5% for charity.

If you succeed, you get 300 million, but if you fail, you get nothing.

Brewster's Millions is a Richard Pryor vehicle from 1985 that holds up surprisingly well during more recent vehicles. And it's one of my favorite early 80s films (along with Club Paradise and Trading Places).

But I keep thinking about what I would do in Brewster's situation. Could I spend it? I honestly have no idea; I don't even know if I'd try.

I'm terrible with money. I can't save to save my life and I like spending it. But I don't know if the no assets clause is the one that would get me. Rather, I think the being unable to tell anyone why I was burning money would be my undoing, much as it is Brewster's. It's a weird thing, money. We are conditioned not to talk about it in specifics, yet to be knowledgeable about it in generalities. And then we have to spend it. For our own good, if we listen to the politicians.

I don't know. I have several half formed thoughts running around my head and I don't have the time to really break them all down. But I keep thinking about the movie, and about money, and what I would do.

But I don't know.

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