John Nolan Animatronics

Faka! Dude, I would totally pay you to make me a pair of those giant hands @4:25. You know. To have around just in case.

If you're in the area....

Here's something you can do this Thursday.

Imperial Probe Droid for your perusal.

IPD - 2
Originally uploaded by phil_memmer

My Four Favorite Robots:(sigh) Galspanic

I sigh because I feel like there were too many potential favorites. I'm a robot lovin' pigeon! I decided to keep personal creations out of this. Mainly because I'm not quite sure on Homeless Robot's personality, and personality was a big factor in my other decisions.

I almost went with Hakkaider as my lead off robot, but went with 1. 4-LOM first.

2.IG-88
Immediately follows 4-LOM because the personality thing I was talking about. I like these two robots because they aren't clearly evil. They might have bills to pay, or want to take their girlfriends out to a nice restaurant one of these days. they were in it for the money. Or the thrill of the hunt, or because they are good at what they do. It is unclear, and the lack of clarity excited me as a youth. Good robots were supposed to be the ones with personality, and the bad guys were supposed to be emotionless calculating engines of destruction.
If you were a soulless death automaton, would you risk everything on ten thousand Imperial creds? Hell no. You wouldn't be out for money. money is pointless to a "death to humans" type.(well maybe not pointless. I'm sure the "death to humans" types need to buy their death rays and stuff, but I can't imagine a "death to humans" type robot hanging out in a blaster store, trying to figure what gun will be their new "Ol' Blasty") These robots were gamblers. Risk takers. You know they were just dodging next month's installments on their spaceships. They make the universe a little greyer. Plus they look just nasty. Nasty robots are rad. Screw shiny and pristine. You got bolts and wires sticking out all over the place 'cause you are that awesome.

3.Braniac for the flip side of the coin. He is an evil and somewhat soulless engine of destruction. But he's clever, and something of a magpie. I like his tactical thinking. I can relate to his collector mentality. Plus his metallized DC superpowers Toy was bad ass and stuck with me all these years until the animated superman verison of Braniac came out. I still have the old toy's head somewhere.

4.Kobun
(introduced to me as Serv-bot in Mega man Legends) I love this guy because he thinks he is good and doing the right thing, despite the fact that he serves bad people. He is charming and nervous, and tries his best. he also has 30 sibling units. They ride in a giant air craft and go on missions. Sometimes they have to figure out what to serve each other for lunch. And that is rad.


I had so many runner-ups. SO many.

Four Favorite Robots: Ruby Tenneco

1. Ultron: he is permanently angry at his annoying dad, Ant Man.


2. Mechagodzilla: he is like Godzilla, but more mecha.


3. Robocon: he wants to be helpful but dishonors his family. Mr. Pony told me about him. I think he is Moby's great-great-grandfather.


4. Data: he is sensitive and shy.

Four Favorite Robots: Mr. Pony

@HumanHand, an Internet friend, asked me to name my five most interesting robots. Of course, this was in the context of me blathering on about dancing like a robot, but this fact is unimportant to the discussion. Vowing to take this question seriously, I have taken it seriously; and given our communal love of robots, this seemed the proper forum in which to take it seriously. I have reduced the number to four, to make the challenge more challenging to conceptualize, and less challenging to execute (drawing is hard).

X-51 (Machine Man; Aaron Stack)
In the beginning, X-51 spent his entire day agonizing over his humanity, never realizing that all this whining made him more even more human than the weird, flat characters with which he shared his comic book. As goofy as this endless soul-searching was, it begs certain questions. How could X-51 miss his own humanity all those years? Could it be that the mind is an imperfect tool for understanding its own workings? And if machines can ask if they have humanity, then don't they? (And if that's the case, why don't AI scientists just make a machine that speaks the question "Do I have a soul" and call it a day?)

Mouse Droid
Found aboard the Death Star. I cannot figure out, for the life of me, what these damn things do. They don't carry information— The Death Star has an internal comm system and intranet capable of displaying images and other complex readouts. You see Stormtroopers following them in one scene, but wouldn't an object designed to be followed be a little more, I don't know; visible? The only thing I can think of is that maybe they're like little Roombas, cleaning and polishing the shiny Death Star floors. I wonder what they're saying, with all those squeaks and squirts.


Shockwave
Near as I can tell, Shockwave just sat on Cybertron, talking to Megatron on the telephone. Once in a while he would open a space bridge, or something. He was support staff. He could also turn into a giant ray-gun pistol. The fact that he was apparently all alone in his office, and maybe his whole office building, and possibly his entire planet (it was really never clear to me if there was anyone else on Cybertron); with no one to hold the ray-gun he turned into; makes him an especially melancholy figure. At the end of the day, who did he have to go for drinks with? No one, that's who. I bet the time difference was murder, too. I bet when Megatron called, he was super-happy.


Moby
Yeah. Kinda partial to this guy.

* * *

Please, Community--submit your own Four Most Interesting Robots! As you can see from the tweet, these robots can inexplicably not include Bender from Futurama or the Robot from Lost in Space. For more information on any of these robots, fricking Google them.

Little Dog Robot

The latest advancement in our innate desire to replace all drunk people with freakish, drunk-acting robots. Brought to you by DARPA.

"The Gift" by Carl Erik Rinsch

Via the Curated Internet; part of the Philips Parallel Lines Project

IM HERE

What do we think about this?

Robot WTF dance thing

Posted by Galspanic via Fugu's 'puter.

This is mainly for Odori.

Enjoy ^_^

Honda's "Living with Robots"

Looks like Honda is laying the foundation for a line of home help aide robots it hopes to start selling in the U.S. about 10 or 20 years from now... It wants Americans to believe robots can be their friends. There would be little need for this kind of "documentary" (er, propaganda) in Japan because many people generally have positive impressions of robots. I'm generalizing like crazy here, but robots in Japanese popular culture are more often friendly and good, not scary and violent like the U.S.

My pet theory is that massive U.S. research, development and investment in robots that can find and kill people helps make Americans distrust and fear robots. In contrast, Japanese companies are building robots to do things like feed and carry the elderly. It's no wonder Americans are afraid of robots and Japanese see them as cute.

Thoughts, anyone?

Former Chrysler plant equipment up for sale.

Dudes. Duuuuuudes… Anyone live near Delaware?

The Great American Group is auctioning off some former assets of Chrysler and the University of Delaware, including but not limited to: 6-AXIS ROBOTS, golf-carts & fork-lifts, computer-guided mills, welders, metal lathes, compressors… I am beside myself with envy.

Sonosheets!

Serious flashback seeing these. I don't think I had too many out of Japan but I used to love these guys. I bet they're still hidden away in a box somewhere. Anyone else got some? I'm sure they're worth billions!


Here's one of our own A1-BU9:

Via Pink Tentacle

Kinds of Robots We'll Have in the Future

Kinds of Robots We'll Have in the Future
Originally uploaded by spacesick

Self Explanatory, really.

Things collected from the internet this week

000. 59-foot Gundam, now lit up.

001. For all you drawerers: Kongregate, the guys who've given us a ton of great flash games, is calling on you!

010. In about two weeks, this kid is going to wake up with super powers. At the very least that scar should be an instant get-out-of-jail-free card for pretty much anything.

011. Useless Superpowers crossover time!

Summon Ice Cream Cone

100. Choose your own adventure with Dinosaur Comics!

101. This movie always depressed the hell out of me. I like this better.


110. And finally, monkeys.

Fire breathing robot horse!

It breathes fire!. There's also a really pissy fancy-looking one and some little ones.

Robot Love

I know Valentine's Day has passed, but this post is not really about romance and love anyway. It's about robots and the giant prehistoric lizards who f*ck them.

I just read the site for the inspirational sayings. Certainly not the disturbing and hilarious pictures.

In unrelated news, even while California is about to lay off up to 20,000 state workers, I somehow managed to land a new job working for the Legislature. Which means me and the missus are moving to Sacramento next week. Excitement galore is expected.

Chinese Robot

Ok, this is awesome! Just when you thought we'd never crack the robot-rickshaw problem.



Let me know if anyone's having problems with the new blog layout...

nostalgia washing over me

Big Dog Beta makes me happy

This is my first post ever, anywhere!

I stumbled upon an essay by David Hockney in The Guardian that I wanted to share... It's kind of all over the place (it goes off on at least one tangent I think) and I don't know enough about medieval European history to judge whether his analysis is accurate. (Many Guardian readers disagree with him, apparently.) But I think the following is paragraph pretty great food for thought. Reading it helped me realize how happy I am to be living in era when people are making video clips of Big Dog Beta and I'm able to watch them.

The church had social control. Whoever controlled the images had power. And they still do. Social control followed the lens and mirror for most of the 20th century. What's now known as the media exert social control, not the church, but we are moving into a new era, because the making and distribution of images is changing. Anyone can make and distribute images on a mobile phone. The equipment is everywhere.

Check out the full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/27/religion.filmnews?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront