From my beloved comes this video, an a cappella tour of my video-gaming childhood:

Brilliant! 1-Up!

Dean Kamen is my hero!

Those of you who know me are probably aware of my fascination obsession with the Segway Personal Transporter. I can't walk past one without getting giddy, and I'd dearly love to spend an afternoon someday rolling around Chicago with Gretchen on one of the various Segway tours to be found in the city.

You may or may not be aware that Dean Kamen, the genius inventer-cum-mad scientist behind Segway is much more than a one-hit wonder, and his most amazing inventions are aimed at restoring to the disabled much of what they have lost - mobility, agility, and the small but hugely important intangibles of human life and interaction that can be stolen by a lost limb or a back injury. His IBOT wheelchair, for example, is not only able to negotiate rough terrain and climb stairs... it's able to balance on two wheels, using the same gyroscopic technology that scoots campus security officers around the quad on a Segway, so that the IBOT's user is able to reach counters and cupboards, and even (here's the beautiful part) hold a conversation with another person at eye level.

That's what I love about how Dean's applied technology to medical issues - he seems to understand deep down that as cold and pragmatic as these robotic devices could be, there's something deeply human and humane in the power they have to improve people's lives.

Dean's latest invention, currently making the buzz rounds on the Internets, is an artificial limb he's calling "Luke" (if you're not sure why, ask Jeff or Shawn, or spend a weekend of quality time with the Star Wars trilogy). The video below shows the arm in action. You really just need to watch it.



I geeked out over Dean when the Segway came out. I was in awe of him when I read about IBOT. Now that I've seen "Luke," I've got a new personal hero.

Rhombitruncated Icosidodecahedron

It's OK if you don't get what this is doing in my blog. Let's just say it's an enduring fascination of mine to do with 30 regular square faces, 20 regular hexagonal faces, 12 regular decagonal faces, 120 vertices, 180 edges, two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. At least the first part of that.

Thanks, Roxie - that, at least, has stuck all these years!

Swiss Army Knife Of Doom

Is it any wonder why I subscribe to ThinkGeek's mailing list? A mere $999 gets you this three pound, 85-tool special edition knife - there's not a tool available on a Swiss Army knife that can't be found somewhere on this sucker.

Technology-enabled clothing

How freakin' cool is this?!?

WiFi is all around us. My cell phone has built-in WiFi, and if I forget and leave the switch on when I leave home, it's not long before I'm alerted to the presence of the many home and business networks I drive past.

This is a good thing. I've happily mooched WiFi where I've been able to mooch it, lots of times. When I was moving into my new home a year ago, I remember pulling up to a hotel in Janesville that shall remain nameless, just to be able to pull in their guest broadband signal and grab my e-mail. I'm always delighted to turn on my laptop at a restaurant, cafe, or other public space and find an FM path to the Internet shimmering in the ether all around me.

Problem is, it's hard to know where you're going to find the smiling wireless countenance of a high-speed signal. And it's a pain in the rear to have to fire up the laptop, just to find out. Many people (OK, not many, but a some... OK, not some, but a few geeks) have key chain fobs to let them know when they are in the presence of WiFi bliss. That's fine for yourself, but what about all the masses around you who are fobless? How will they know that there is Internet in the air, beautiful Internet, if only they could detect it?

If only there were a garment which could detect WiFi signals with ease, and convey their strength at a glance.... such a garment would be invincible...

Enter the the WiFi-detecting shirt: With this shirt, you can become the prophet to the fobless masses. Just like the Baptist pointed people toward the Good News that in Jesus, God was present, you can proclaim to everyone around you the nearly-divine presence of WiFi (and also, how many bars of signal your shirt is receiving). It's not geeky - it's a public service! It's not hopelessly lame - it's performance art! People should be paid to wear these things!

The WiFi-detecting shirt: a beacon of hope for the digital masses. ;)

Postscript: "...how many bars of signal your shirt is receiving..." Isn't the ability to say that reason enough to buy this shirt right this very minute? :D

Do you love me...?

For those who love me enough to appreciate my propensity for getting lost, and wish to give me a clue, I present the Freedom Mini Keychain GPS. With this on my keyring, my cell phone would be transformed, like Clark Kent in a phone booth, into a mighty navigation tool, ensuring I'd never again take two hours to get from Willmar to Hutchinson after dark. *blush*

Project Mayhem visits the Apple Store

Mmmm... Very amusing to spend several minutes showing fellow customers how to watch the YouTube video of an iPhone being pulverized by a BlendTech blender ("Will It Blend?") - on the store's demo iPhones.

I know... I'm SUCH a rebel. ;)

@#!%$

Very not good. The partition on my laptop where I store my data was almost full, so I ran my partitioning software to transfer some of the free space on my other three partitions (like virtual hard drives) to the full one.

Should have been a simple procedure.

Alas, something went awry, and my laptop is now fubar. The boot prompt comes up every time I reboot, and no matter whether I choose a normal launch of Windows, the "last known good configuration," or a launch into safe mode (which should always work), I always end right back up at the prompt.

Which means that something's toasted on my system partition, the "virtual disk" that has Windows and all my programs loaded on it.

Since my data's on its own partition, restoring the system partition shouldn't affect that. But there are always things that are on the system partiton, because Windows and other applications are too stupid or arrogant to let you tell them "put ALL of my documents here - I don't care if you'd rather store them in some obscure folder somewhere else... They're MY files!"

So, the question will be, once I manage to restore my laptop to working order, what will I have lost, and what will be intact? And how long will it take to get things back to normal.

Grrrrrr.

Which leaves me computing on my cell phone for the time. It works pretty well, but there's some weirdness that has kept some people from getting e-mail sent from my phone. So, if you are expecting a reply from me and don't get one, the odds are very good it's disappeared into the unhappy black hole of my technological life at the moment. Sorry.

So, I'm going to watch something on TV and go to bed. At least both of those two items are still functional.