Check out this website I found at darpa.mil
I've always said that mobile robots will not be fully useful until they understand and can utilize momentum. We are finally on our way.
Give it five minutes - (37signals)
Give it five minutes Jason F. Mar 01
46 comments Latest by Gavin
A few years ago I used to be a hothead. Whenever anyone said anything, I’d think of a way to disagree. I’d push back hard if something didn’t fit my world-view.
It’s like I had to be first with an opinion – as if being first meant something. But what it really meant was that I wasn’t thinking hard enough about the problem. The faster you react, the less you think. Not always, but often.
It’s easy to talk about knee jerk reactions as if they are things that only other people have. You have them too. If your neighbor isn’t immune, neither are you.
This came to a head back in 2007. I was speaking at the Business Innovation Factory conference in Providence, RI. So was Richard Saul Wurman. After my talk Richard came up to introduce himself and compliment my talk. That was very generous of him. He certainly didn’t have to do that.
And what did I do? I pushed back at him about the talk he gave. While he was making his points on stage, I was taking an inventory of the things I didn’t agree with. And when presented with an opportunity to speak with him, I quickly pushed back at some of his ideas. I must have seemed like such an asshole.
His response changed my life. It was a simple thing. He said “Man, give it five minutes.” I asked him what he meant by that? He said, it’s fine to disagree, it’s fine to push back, it’s great to have strong opinions and beliefs, but give my ideas some time to set in before you’re sure you want to argue against them. “Five minutes” represented “think”, not react. He was totally right. I came into the discussion looking to prove something, not learn something.
This was a big moment for me.
Richard has spent his career thinking about these problems. He’s given it 30 years. And I gave it just a few minutes. Now, certainly he can be wrong and I could be right, but it’s better to think deeply about something first before being so certain you’re right.
There’s also a difference between asking questions and pushing back. Pushing back means you already think you know. Asking questions means you want to know. Ask more questions.
Learning to think first rather than react quick is a life long pursuit. It’s tough. I still get hot sometimes when I shouldn’t. But I’m really enjoying all the benefits of getting better.
If you aren’t sure why this is important, think about this quote from Jonathan Ive regarding Steve Jobs’ reverence for ideas:
And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.
That’s deep. Ideas are fragile. They often start powerless. They’re barely there, so easy to ignore or skip or miss.
There are two things in this world that take no skill: 1. Spending other people’s money and 2. Dismissing an idea.
Dismissing an idea is so easy because it doesn’t involve any work. You can scoff at it. You can ignore it. You can puff some smoke at it. That’s easy. The hard thing to do is protect it, think about it, let it marinate, explore it, riff on it, and try it. The right idea could start out life as the wrong idea.
So next time you hear something, or someone, talk about an idea, pitch an idea, or suggest an idea, give it five minutes. Think about it a little bit before pushing back, before saying it’s too hard or it’s too much work. Those things may be true, but there may be another truth in there too: It may be worth it.
via 37signals.com
I've seen this too many times. It has been very sad.
-- ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.
Codea for iPad on the iTunes App Store
via itunes.apple.com
Very cool. I've been looking for a good way to teach programming on the iPad. Adding this to my to-do list.
LEGOspace.com On Orbit Classroom
via legospace.com
This is cool. A classroom from the ISS showing how different simple machines work on Earth and in the microgravity of space.
The Diyode CodeShield « Diyode
via diyode.com
This looks very interesting. I've been thinking of a way to get kids interested even faster. I will have to get one and try it out.
Hakko FX-888 Soldering Station review « adafruit industries blog
via adafruit.com
Nice. This is the iron I use now. The difference the cord makes is astounding. It keeps the heat up and is light weight. Highly recommended.
In Response to “Innovation, education, and Makers” | soundcyst industries
Dear Mr. Kalil,
I cannot tell you how overjoyed I am that our Nation’s leaders have finally opened an intrigued eye to the blossoming Maker movement. Your speech following the Maker Faire in New York was encouraging, exciting, and promising. It put a well deserved spotlight on the achievements of garage tinkerers and hackers around the country (and let’s be honest, the world). That our leaders are paying attention to these atypical, underground activities and interested in turning them into mainstream, common American values is incredibly motivating to me as a maker.
There is, however, one facet of this movement that was overlooked in your speech, and as far as I can tell, is unfortunately overlooked everywhere STEM is championed. It is an undeniable aspect of humanity as valuable to Captain Picard as it was to Albert Einstein. It has been a driving force, technologically and economically, in the multi-billion dollar video game industry (and thus, the personal computer and home entertainment industries). It is introduced to Americans before Kindergarten, but somewhere along the path to high school, it is hopelessly abandoned as impractical and unproductive. But, it is also how we stop fragmenting ourselves into STEMs; it is how we come together to pick up STEAM for the renaissance (and yes, the ice cream was its idea).
Of course I am talking about art.
While art is a broad word that is dangerously all-encompasing (there is indeed an art to routing a circuit board, and a quite different art to designing a state machine), the art I am talking about here is fine art — that which Wikipedia defines as “developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application.” Fine art is no longer just painting on a canvas, drawing musical notes on a stave, or spinning clay into a pot. Fine art, in addition to everything it used to be, is electrical, dynamic, and algorithmic now, and to borrow from Oscar Wilde, as “quite useless” as it ever was. Take as an example, Syyn Labs‘ recent contribution to GLOW.
I wasn’t at the Maker Faire in New York, but I have been to two in San Mateo, and many of the projects I saw there not practically useful, but were quite inspiring. Many of the useful projects I did see had one thing in common with the beloved MakerBots and DIYDrones: They were based on an Arduino, the open-source microcontroller and programming environment designed by artists for everyone.
Yes, the Arduino does fall under the blanket category of Technology, but it would be naive to think that its developers were trained only as technologists and engineers. Their training in art, sociology, and community is doubtlessly and inextricably linked to the platform’s success across its diverse applications. Their desire to create something useful for artists is what drove them to simplify the user interface and lower the barrier to entry.
As I mentioned above, art also has a crucial role in the video game industry. Visual arts in video games are the reason why many of my friends own HDTVs. They are also the reason that companies like nVidia and ATi have had a thriving market in which to sell graphics cards and innovate parallel processing. By and large, people want the latest GeForce and Radeon cards for artistic reasons: they want their games to look good. It wasn’t until very recently that using these massively parallel architectures for anything else was even reasonable.
I could go on about other examples of influences of fine arts on technology, like “Daisy” and the Altair 8800, but your time is valuable, and so is mine, so I’ll cut to the point. This letter is to ask you to take a step back, have a look at the immense discrepancy between grant opportunities from the NSF and those from the NEA, and think about what we can do to pick up STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math. Educating and encouraging our children to embrace artistic expression is just as important as teaching them calculus and the periodic table. Let’s encourage our engineers to design new Most Useless Machines. Let’s inspire our mathematicians to devise new mind-boggling N-dimensional fractal animations. Let’s teach our artists to write programs and draw schematics so that they might create an electronic Mona Lisa. And let’s show our children how fun and intertwined all of these fields are, so that they may form communities that flourish as they grow older and spread the joy to their children, and so on.
The train is headed in the right direction, we just need to invite everyone aboard.
Sincerely,
Kevin Nelson
Computer Engineer, Electronic Musician, Crasher
via soundcyst.com
He's right. Art is the reason we want to live. STEM is how to make it work. In other words Art is the goal, STEM is the process.
Symphony of Science - the Quantum World! - YouTube
via youtube.com
Not about robots, but without this kind of knowledge then the rest just doesn't matter.
Blinky Grid and Blinky POV | Wayne and Layne
This is a great little project that I just completed. The programming is the cool part. You just go to their website and they have a little javascript page that you can type in your message. You set you Blinky to receive mode and it programs by blinking parts of the screen. The Blinky has two tiny light receivers that detect the flashes on the webpage. You can program any message up to 253 characters. The hard part is waving the Blinky back in forth the correct timing to read the message.
It was very easy to assemble. The only compliant I had was they combined the build instructions with the Blinky Grid. Not a big deal, but it did confuse my eight year old son for awhile. For early beginners this could be enough of a problem to cause a fright.
I purchased my kit from Maker Shed, but they do sell them directly from their website. All of their projects are Open Hardware, so you can build on their ideas.
Here is a link to the programming page. http://www.wayneandlayne.com/blinky_programmer/
I plan to show this to the students at our schools technology night. I ran the programmer from my iPhone and it worked perfectly. I wonder if I can download their javascript page and run it offline. I may try that in the future.
BBC News - Transplant jaw made by 3D printer claimed as first
via bbc.co.uk
Wow, this is real right now! We should all be learning how to design and print objects in 3D.
NEW PRODUCT – 1 GS/s Digital Storage Oscilloscope + Extras « adafruit industries blog
via adafruit.com
I've been waiting for their recommendation. This really looks like the one to get. Any electronics workshop should have one!
Layer by Layer - Technology Review
So, it is already bigger that I realized. Production parts are already being flown on aircraft.
Discover the NEW AR.Drone 2.0. Fly, Record & Share in High Definition - YouTube
via youtube.com
Not a robot, but very cool just the same.