Neat-o stuff to do in the San Francisco bay area:
Next weekend, go to RoboGames, Fri-Sun, Apr 23-25, 2010 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. It’s the worlds largest robot competition, featuring combat robots, humanoid robots, art bots, soccer bots, sumo bots, and more. We’ll be there as exhibitors, with kits from our web store and other goodies like pager motors for making BristleBots!
In May, we’ll be heading back to the San Mateo Fairgrounds for the Bay Area Maker Faire 2010— our favorite event of the year. It’s the world’s biggest DIY festival, and well, there’s just too much to describe. You have to see it for yourself. We’ll be there showing off one of this year’s Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories blog projects, the Playable game of Tabletop Pong— you can come by and try it out.
Hope to see you there!
Ugh on that sign! As a woman I wouldn’t want to shop in a store that considers women to be jokes and obstacles rather than potential customers.
When I was taking the photo, one of the shopkeepers stepped out and said, "Your husband just called and said you can buy anything you like!" Our friends who are into ham radio are pretty evenly divided between male and female, and it doesn’t bother me that the shopkeepers are playing on the stereotype. Three guys came out of the shop at the time, and we joked a little about it. I’ve found that the ham folks are all very nice, and I think they’re just making fun of themselves here.
Maybe the shop owner should reword the sign to "Your partner called and said you can buy anything you want."
How about, "Your Mom just called and said you can buy anything you want!"
P.S. Don’t forget Mother’s Day is coming!
Actually, I saw the same sign at a knitting store in Salinas, CA, but with "your husband called."
If I am correct, RoboGames features robots by the definitions of "machines controlled remotely by humans", "machines that follow programs written by humans", and "robots that follow programs written by humans in order to learn the best way to perform a desired task". Let me know if your bristlebot qaulifies, or if there are so many robots and so little people officially checking them that you don’t get caught. Still, a vibrating toothbrush makes an excellent cat toy…
BristleBots aren’t part of the official activities at RoboGames, but are pretty popular amongst the young attendees. Maybe someday.
You seem to be working around the question of "what is a robot?" It’s a good question without an unambiguous answer. Fundamentally, a robot does not need *digital* programming (or even *electronic* programming) to be a robot. It’s easy enough to build a line-following or light-seeking BristleBot using analog electronics. What if it’s a wall-avoiding bot? If a BristleBot is programmed or designed to autonomously bounce off of walls and keep moving, that’s getting to be more robotic (in my mind at least) than many of the human-operated remote control "robots" out there.
Windell H. Oskay
drwho(at)evilmadscientist.com
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
someone should tell that shop owner that girls ride the airwaves, too :[
Please see Lenore’s comment above; the shop owners are quite aware that women shop there as well.
Windell H. Oskay
drwho(at)evilmadscientist.com
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
The more interesting thing, to me, is that the store seems to be dangerously close to losing a game of "HORSE". :)
I can just imagine: "My ‘U’! Give me back my ‘U’! I can’t spells ‘HOURS’ without it! Well, I guess I might as well make it ‘horse’. Maybe no one will notice…"