{"id":2162,"date":"2011-10-16T15:16:27","date_gmt":"2011-10-16T21:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2162"},"modified":"2011-10-16T17:13:24","modified_gmt":"2011-10-16T23:13:24","slug":"odd-lots-170","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=2162","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Jim Strickland and I will be attending <a href=\"http:\/\/milehicon.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">MileHiCon<\/a> in Denver this weekend. Anybody else listening gonna be there?<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m on a panel about robots, and here&#8217;s a megatrivia question for you: What was the first film depiction of a robot that was <em>not<\/em> a mechanical man; i.e., not things on two legs like Robbie, Gort, or <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0047590\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tobor the Great<\/a><\/em>? The oldest one I can think of is the 1954 <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0047033\/\" target=\"_blank\">Gog<\/a><\/em>. (<a href=\"http:\/\/davidszondy.com\/future\/robot\/gog.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Writeup<\/a>.) This was a rare form factor back then (because humanoid robots were actors in robot suits) and the only other one from the Fifties I can recall is the 1957 <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0050610\/\" target=\"_blank\">Kronos<\/a><\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Pertinent to that question: There was a serious and reasonably big-budget Japanese SF movie in the early 60s (not a let&#8217;s-stomp-on-Tokyo thing) depicting a spaceship with a small robot named Omega that ran on tracks. The other vehicles on the starship were also given Greek letters as names. Can anybody remember what that film was? All I get on Google for &#8220;Omega the Robot&#8221; are Sonic the Hedgehog references.<\/li>\n<li>Having flown the X-37B into space twice, Boeing is now officially looking into doubling the size of the vehicle and making it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.universetoday.com\/89925\/crewed-variant-of-x-37-space-plane-proposed\/\" target=\"_blank\">a sort of people-only space shuttle<\/a>. Alas, it would probably kill all hope for anything like the sexy li&#8217;l <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/X-38\" target=\"_blank\">X-38<\/a>&#8211;but I&#8217;ll take what we can get.<\/li>\n<li>Red tide algae glows blue after dark, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/local\/la-me-0930-red-tide-20110930,0,3610014.story?track=icymi\" target=\"_blank\">if you shake it up enough<\/a>. Pete Albrecht has seen this, and it&#8217;s real; nay, surreal.<\/li>\n<li>Boston Dynamics&#8217; uncanny and brilliant Big Dog quadriped robot now has a big brother, <a href=\"http:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/automaton\/robotics\/military-robots\/boston-dynamics-alphadog-prototype-on-video\" target=\"_blank\">AlphaDog<\/a>. Watch both videos; the second is a demo of Big Dog doing stuff I wouldn&#8217;t have imagined a robot doing when I was in high school. BTW, that tube sticking out of Alpha Dog&#8217;s front panel isn&#8217;t artillery&#8230;yet.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenarraychips.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">These guys<\/a> will sell you a <em>144-core<\/em> CPU&#8211;and then make you program it in FORTH. Not x86; each core is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenarraychips.com\/home\/documents\/greg\/PB003-110412-F18A.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">an 18-bit F18A processor<\/a> executing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.colorforth.com\/inst.htm\" target=\"_blank\">the colorForth instruction set<\/a>. FORTH ties my head in knots and yes, I&#8217;ve tried it&#8211;on the CDP1802 processor, no less. (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.)<\/li>\n<li>Gotta love Google Books. I recently found a <em>Popular Science<\/em> article I had read in 1967 <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=CSEDAAAAMBAJ&amp;pg=PA80&amp;dq=rotary+engines&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=Qu6YTpmJFaKMigLVhbSFCQ&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=9&amp;ved=0CGEQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&amp;q=rotary engines&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">summarizing various rotary engines<\/a> under discussion at that time. Nobody answered the obvious question: How do you machine a piston in the shape of a piece of kielbasa?<\/li>\n<li>A short 1963 book on rotary engines by Felix Wankel himself can be found <a href=\"http:\/\/digital.library.cornell.edu\/k\/kmoddl\/toc_wankel1.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. (Multiple PDFs; not an easy read.) Thanks to Pete Albrecht for spotting it.<\/li>\n<li>From Henry Law comes a pointer to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rvDqoxMUroA\" target=\"_blank\">the most boggling piece of amateur rocketry I&#8217;ve ever seen<\/a>. High power? Heh. One doesn&#8217;t get to 121,000 feet on vinegar and baking soda.<\/li>\n<li>You don&#8217;t have to speak or read German to appreciate <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foto-julius.at\/images_wien_drittemann.html\" target=\"_blank\">this photo tour of Vienna&#8217;s sewers<\/a>. Why do they get such cool sewers in Europe? (I&#8217;ve seen a few Stateside, and they just&#8230;stink.)<\/li>\n<li>Sure, and <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.boston.com\/2011-10-09\/news\/30260638_1_romney-rivals-mitt-romney-faith-issue\" target=\"_blank\">while you&#8217;re at it<\/a>, grab his beach towel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jim Strickland and I will be attending MileHiCon in Denver this weekend. Anybody else listening gonna be there? I&#8217;m on a panel about robots, and here&#8217;s a megatrivia question for you: What was the first film depiction of a robot that was not a mechanical man; i.e., not things on two legs like Robbie, Gort, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[61,43,113,95,18],"class_list":["post-2162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-aerospace","tag-humor","tag-robotics","tag-rockets","tag-sf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2162"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2164,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2162\/revisions\/2164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}