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Odd Lots
- Grocery conglomerate Kroger is testing a driverless robot cart for grocery delivery here in Scottsdale. The service uses robots made by Nuro. (Watch their videos to get a sense for the ( Read more... )
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Odd Lots
- Someone asked me via email the other day: How thick is 16 gauge aluminum? I'm old: My first impulse was to grab my caliper and measure some. My second impulse was to google it. This answers the question, for steel as well as aluminum.
- The page cited above is part of a large and fascinating Web compilation called "How Many?" and it's a dictionary of ( Read more... )
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Odd Lots
- Have you ever wondered what the analemma looks like on other planets? There's an app for that.
- If you want to cover screwheads or other elements of a laptop that would be disturbed by tampering, use glitter nail polish, the less common the better. The tampering may still happen, but glitter nail polish isn't easy to fake, and at least you'll know ( Read more... )
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Odd Lots
- Anger makes you stupid. Politics makes you angry. Do the math. (Thanks to Bob Trembley for the link.)
- Running across George O. Smith's books while redistributing titles on one of my shelves led me to look for the most powerful vacuum tube ever produced commercially. This was the understated Eimac 8974, which contains its own vacuum pump and could ( Read more... )
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Odd Lots
- It's not cinder blocks, but something altogether more boggling: a pair of quadricopters tossing a pole to one another, catching it, and balancing it like I used to do with rakes, only way better. (Thanks to Bill Higgins for the link. )
- Salon can't seem to decide if self-publishing makes sense, or if it doesn't.
- 10 thoroughly obscure terms, of which I ( Read more... )
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Odd Lots
- Which movie theater did you go to on your first date? Whether or not that theater still exists, this site may have a photo of it, along with other interesting historical data. The first theater I took Carol to is this one. It's still there, and still awesome. (Thanks to Ernie Marek for the link.)
- Five years later, I proposed to Carol while we ( Read more... )
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Odd Lots
- I just finished writing an SF novel (now in the final polishing stage) that postulates robots who throw things so precisely that there is no longer a need for assembly lines. Everything the factory deals with (parts, subsystems, finished items) are thrown from one place on the floor to another. The well-known Big Dog robot recently learned how to ( Read more... )
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Odd Lots
- Here's a great site on older toy and hobbyist robots; if you're a collector or just a nostalgist, it's a must-see. (Maybe some here have never seen my late 70s robot Cosmo Klein.) Alas, the link came from an old email sent by the late George M. Ewing WA8WTE, who suggested it as an Odd Lot. Better late than never.
- We used to giggle at the name in the ( Read more... )
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Odd Lots
- Jim Strickland and I will be attending MileHiCon in Denver this weekend. Anybody else listening gonna be there?
- I'm on a panel about robots, and here'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, or Tobor the Great? The oldest one I can ( Read more... )
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Odd Lots
- Wired has a nice piece on the 1859 Carrington Event; basically, the strongest solar storm in the last 500 years, assuming ice core data is a reliable proxy for storm strength. Early landline telegraph operators actually disconnected their batteries and passed traffic solely on power induced in the lines by solar activity. Whew. Now that's QRP!
- Alas ( Read more... )