Consumer electronic show

Posted on January 7th, 2009

WowWee at CES

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WowWee usually rolls out a number of new bots each CES and this year is no exception. I’ve been a little disappointed in the new bots coming out recently. I’m not seeing much beyond cosmetic changes — different characters or bot skins. New tech, that works, seems less forthcoming. I didn’t have high hopes for the TrueTrack waypoint navigation they brought to the Rovio and my messing around with it has only confirmed my suspicions.

Amongst this year’s toybots (e.g. Joebot — think: male analog to the Femisapien and Roborover — successor to the Tri-Bot), the Spybot looks interesting, a leaner, meaning (next gen?) version of the Rovio. And it’s only $170. It doesn’t appear to use TrueTrack nav. Let’s hope the light is brighter and the camera is better than the Rovio.

Strange among this year’s offerings is the Cinemin, a family of palm-top video projectors using TI’s DLP technology. They’re designed to plug into iPods, phones, and other media devices, to project their content. Will the next Robosapien be able to project Princess Leia’s cries for help? The Cinemins will retail for between $300 and $400.

More info on all these bots and the Cinemin projectors can be found at Robot’s Rule.

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Posted on January 6th, 2009

Old Media Monday: Reviewing the Reviewers

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Book Review & Giveaway: NEVER TELL A LIE by Hallie Ephron

read & reviewed by j. kayebook info? hardcover: 288 pages ? publisher: william morrow (january 6, 2009) ? language: english ? isbn-10: 0061567159 ? isbn-13: 978-0061567155j. kaye’s thoughtsthe story opens with a married couple, david and his very significant wife, ivy. they are getting ready for a garage sale. the items to go are from the attic, left behind by the previous holder of their victorian home. during the garage sale, melinda, someone from the couple’s past drops by. she went to school with them. at from the start, they neither recognized her. during high set, melinda was a social DP who was picked on. she had changed for the better.when melinda hints about flawed to see their home, david invites her inside object of a tour. while stomach, he leaves her alone for a scattering minutes. when he comes back, she’s gone. he theoretical she left until the police show up later asking questions. seems like melinda has disappeared and david was the last to see her. each heyday the police discover more evidence, the guiltier david and ivy appear to be. the truths uncovered cavity wife against husband until the unite is deeply planted in this living nightmare. this is a very able and easy read. the characters are full and rich. the downside for some might be it’s a scrap predictable. in favour of me, there were spots in the record that lacked in believability. in spite of that so, i found myself refusing to go to sleep until the last page was read. my rating is

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Map of gaza strip

Posted on January 4th, 2009

Does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad think Gaza should be the impetus for “wiping Israel off the map”?

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today said it was “time to act” in response to Israel’s tiny state’s offensive against terrorists in the Gaza Strip, calling on the Arab League to move “quickly” against the Jewish state.

“Aren’t these oppressed Palestinians Arabs?” asked Ahmadinejad in a televised speech. “So when should the capacity of the Arab League be used? The Arab League should act quickly.” He also criticized the United Nations, saying, “Why don’t you even frown upon the Zionist regime?” (The eighteen anti-Israel resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly in 2007-08 seem to have gone unnoticed by the Persian leader, as does the fact that over half the total number emergency sessions of the General Assembly have been about Israel).

Ahmadinejad did not offer download sci-fi movie specifics about the action he desired the Arab League to engage in; however, if his frequent talk of “wiping Israel off the map” and of the wonders of “a world without Zionism” are any indicator, the Iranian president would be happiest with a 1948-style Arab League war against Israel itself (though he would doubtless prefer the one-sided outcome be reversed).

Meanwhile, Iranian judiciary officials are threatening to set up a War Crimes court to try Israelis involved in the offensive against the terror group Hamas in absentia. According to the Middle East Star:

A spokesman said the court would be given the task “of dealing with the executors, planners and officials of the Israeli regime who have committed crimes.”

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He said the court had been set up on the basis of a 1948 UN convention on the prevention of genocide to which Iran is a signatory.

In Iran, which does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state, a daily newspaper was shut down this week because it “published an article…in which it sanitized the Zionist regime’s crimes in Gaza.”

Also, students are violently protesting at the embassies and consulates of nations they see as being friendly to Israel and hostile to the Palestinians. According to Reuters:

Hardline student groups have written letters to the Jordanian ambassador and head of the Egyptian mission “giving them 48 hours to choose between clearly condemning Israel’s attack on Gaza or leaving Iran’s soil,” a newspaper reported.

Students also demanded Egypt open its border to Gaza, the daily Seda-ye Edalat said. Cairo sometimes lets wounded people and medical supplies through but Egypt’s border has been closed to ordinary traffic since Hamas took control of Gaza [Auth:in 2007].

The newspaper said the deadline expired at noon on Thursday. It said if demands were not met students would “carry out their revolutionary duty as happened on 13th Aban, 1358,” the Iranian date when students stormed the U.S. embassy in 1979. download crime movies

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From the earth to the moon

Posted on December 31st, 2008

Space, the forgotten frontier?

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i’m old enough to have on the agenda c trick really faint memories of the very first place shuttle missions, though i do not recall the last moon landings. i recently heard a sphere fiction writer observe that when he was a child the idea of a moon pier was so futuristic. then it happened…and we stopped going. it’s been over 30 years since humans set foot on the moon.

Granted, there’s been a lot that’s happened since then. Your rescale your awe meter, so the plethora of Mars landings and detailed exploration of the outer planets via the Galileo and Cassini missions don’t register in the same way. Various technologies mean that the increase in knowledge is accelerating, but, the rate of acceleration itself is perhaps not increasing. With the completion of the Human Genome, and the beckoning age of applied genomics, the perpetual promise of a manned Mars mission seems to pale in comparison. Perhaps there are simply constraints of human engineering when it comes to our exploration of space, in particular manned space flight. We are biological creatures, evolved for this earth.

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In any case, The New York Times has an interesting piece up, The Fight Over NASA’s Future. It is mostly about the next generation of vehicles which presumably will take us back to the moon. Color me disappointed that the goal is to do what we’ve done before, just better.

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Posted on December 26th, 2008

Happy Holidays from Parent Bloggers Network

wishing our wonderful bloggers, blast participants, and readers a fantastic respite and a ecstatic supplementary year. we greatly appreciate your participation and readership. we’re looking forward to a year of exciting campaigns, blog blasts, and other cool opportunities we’ve got up our sleeves. please make sure to add our feed to your reader, as well as …

Q&A: When should I stop saving for retirement?

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question: i’m 68 years young. should i still have savings for retirement deducted from my paycheck, even though in three years, i’ll be taking those required distributions from my 401(k) account? _lynn sklar
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Evpatoria

Posted on December 25th, 2008

Israel Warns Militants Will Pay ?Heavy Price’ For Mortar Strikes

dec. 24: masked palestinian militants from the popular resistance committees transport homemade rockets on the outskirts of gaza city. palestinian militants in the gaza strip bombarded southern israel with dozens of mortars and rockets on wednesday, sowing nervousness and hopelessness there and burdening diplomatic download adventure movie efforts to revive an expired truce. jerusalem ? palestinian militants …

Where In The Universe #35

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are you ready for another where in the milieu question? belittle a look and look to if you can name where in animation movies the universe this cast is from. give up yourself extra points if you can identify the spacecraft responsible for the image. as usual, we'll provide the image today, but won't debauch the support until tomorrow. …
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Sleep gives brain disease warning

Posted on December 25th, 2008

Physically “acting out” dreams when asleep could be an early warning sign of dementia or Parkinson’s disease.

Canadian researchers studied 93 people with “REM sleep behaviour disorder”, which can involve punching or kicking out while dreaming.

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The Neurology study found more than a quarter were diagnosed with a degenerative brain condition over the next five years.

UK experts said the research could help doctors predict the condition.

Normally, during “Rapid Eye Movement”, or “REM” sleep, our muscles relax and do not move, but people with certain sleep disorders are able to lash out, or cry out.

It is a known symptom of some kinds of brain disease, including Parkinson’s disease, and a rare form of dementia called Lewy body dementia.

The exact reason for the link is unclear, although some have suggested that subtle damage to a part of the brain which regulates sleep may be responsible.

However, in some cases, the problem happens long before the onset of the main symptoms of these diseases, and doctors at Montreal General Hospital wanted to see whether apparently otherwise healthy people with the problem were at higher risk.

Their study volunteers were all elderly - on average 65 years old - which already put them at higher risk of developing dementia or Parkinson’s compared with a younger person.

However, each was followed on average for five years, and in that period, 26 of the 93 developed a degenerative brain disease.

In total, 14 were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, seven with Lewy body dementia, four with Alzheimer’s Disease, and another diagnosed with a disorder called multiple system atrophy, which involves both Parkinson’s and dementia symptoms.

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Their predictions suggested that patients of this age with the same sleep disorder would have a greater than 50/50 chance of falling prey to a similar condition over the following 12 years.

The researchers said that knowing more about the risks faced by people with the sleep disorder could not only help doctors to advise their patients, but also to work in the years to come to come up with ways to protect them.

Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said that the findings were particularly interesting in relation to Lewy body dementia, which accounts for only 4% of dementia cases.

The researchers had said that even the four Alzheimer’s cases might turn out to be Lewy body dementia as the disease progressed.

Dr Sorensen said: “People with Lewy body dementia often have vivid nightmares, restless sleep and hallucinations - this study suggests that people with the disease may experience sleep disorders years before their other symptoms develop.

“This important finding could boost our understanding of how Lewy body dementia develops and help us detect it early. With further research we may be able to stop this devastating disease in its tracks.”

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Erector set

Posted on December 23rd, 2008

My MAKE Holiday Card - Most Annoying Ever?

Give the gift of MAKE this year, and spruce up your gift card while you’re at it! For example:

Here’s a noise-making card/circuit that I built using a 555 timer IC and some other junk parts I had around the house. The robot “talks” by squeezing the leads of one of the capacitors that make his body. Mr. Frauenfelder’s head controls the pitch of the squeeling, the on/off of this sound is “controlled” simply by keeping the potentiometer just ever so lightly plugged in to the breadboard underneath the card so that the sound stops when it gets disconnected, allowing the robot to talk. Also, the trunk of the tree is chocolate.

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Thanks to my amigos Torlando Hakes and David Stith for making the paper part of the card! They really brought some cute craft to my squeaky squonk.

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Spaghetti cat

Posted on December 23rd, 2008

Storm and a Falling Hemlock Tree

it is snowing again! after me and kate cleared the driveway the other day, mother nature decided to away another 10-15 cm’s of snow on us.lake iteration is freezing over and guess what? form night we awoke to the sound of an almighty smash outside. we false like last year it was just a pile of snow falling remote the roof and so we went back to sleep, however, in the morning we discovered the real use one’s head for last nights crashing sound. a massive eastern hemlock tree which borders the front garden which has been there for god knows how many years decided that it had sufficient of the storm and keeled over, missing the house and the car!had it fallen a bizarre condition, then i weight be dressed been writing this blog advise from the next life.now i believe we trouble to call some guys with chainsaws and bloody big truck to resort to the bugger away.merry xmas.

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Hanukkah

Posted on December 22nd, 2008

Congregation lights menorah on Tower Square

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Even below freezing temperatures did not deter the faithful from a ceremony on the Tower Square viagra rezeptfrei. Congregation Adat Ariel under the leadership of Rabbi Moshe Laurie lit the Shamash, which is the worker candle from which the other eight candles are lit and then lit the first candle of Chanukkah (Hanukkah). The Festival of Lights is a time of rededication and consecration for the Jewish nation. It commemorates the time when the temple was restored after being liberated from the Greeks. By tradition, a light is to burn eternally in the temple, but when the time came to relight the eternal flame only a small container of the blessed oil was found. In obedience, the lamp was lit not knowing how long the flame was lit. The lamp burned for eight days and word spread throughout the region that God was in His temple. Rabbi Laurie is a Jew who believes that the Messiah has come in the form of Jesus Christ. Congregation Adat Ariel is a order Lioresal group of Jewish believers who join with Christians in worship. Currently, the congregation meets on Friday evenings at the Abundant Life Fellowship on East DeYoung. Rabbi Laurie conducted a joint meeting Sunday night with the congregation from Abundant Life where he explained the significance of Chanukah. “It was an honor to have the two congregations worship together,” Pastor Jeff Baker said. “The coming together of believers is important in today’s world.” Rabbi Laurie said that he was very pleased with the response from the City of Marion about erecting the menorah. Gail West, City Administrator, happened to be working late in her office and extended an invitation to the group to stay warm in the lobby of City Hall prior to the ceremony. Each evening at 4:30 p.m., an additional light will be lit on the square. Friday, the congregation welcomes the public to attend a Chanukkah party at the Abundant Life Church.

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