Some extras:
A frisbee-shooting robot built by students of Westlake High School using NI products barely missed the face of Vice President of Marketing Ray Almgren. Better luck next time!
Robotic elephants build with Lego Mindstorms EV3 prepare to take over the world:
This is me and NASA’s next Lunar Lander. That things is going to be on the Moon. With my fingerprints on it.
NIWeek 2013 kicked off today (well, the first keynote was today). I took very few photos but one thing was coolest to me: North American Eagle. This is the “car” that will attempt to break the land speed record. It needs to go at almost 800 MPH. It’s basically a fighter jet with no wings but wheels. Impressive.
Other randomness:
Over a year ago, the Leap Motion was announced and it looked to cool to resist (for me). A long time and two address changes later, it finally arrived – to the right address, mind you.
Leap Motion is a little black doohickey that plugs in to your computer and sits in front of the keyboard. It can track your hands in 3D space with surprising accuracy. I’m not sure how it does it, I suspect it uses technology similar to the MS Kinect; which projects a star field of infrared dots and then uses cameras to map out 3D space based on how the star field hits things.
Quick impressions:
The box is huge given the size of the contents. It reminds me of the boxes used for Apple products. What a coincidence.
It doesn’t ship with drivers. You must go to the website and download them. They have drivers for Mac and for Windows.
After you download and install the drivers , a program called Airspace launches. There’s an intro/demo with yoga music in the background that lets you wave your hands and see pretty stuff on screen. This happens while a few other programs download from the app store (how original!) in the background.
One of these programs is Cut the Rope. This game is quite good on touchscreen…. how good can it be in thin air?
Ok, obviously this is my first game, it’s late and I’m tired, and I am recording it while I’m playing. Perhaps I’ll get better with time.
Not bad for four days, and this isn’t even a comprehensive list. Thanks to Lema, Sam and Anya for visiting and for a fun time.
Readers of this blog know I am an avid RSS reader. Specifically, I’ve used Google Reader for years but now they’re closing. People panicked – but they shouldn’t. This is just as if people had panicked when Netscape Navigator died: “the end of the web!”? No. Just use a different web browser.
I just moved my 240 feeds to feedly. So if you came here to see my detailed analysis of all the competitors then you came to the wrong place. I picked feedly because it was free and Reeder works (or will work) with it. I don’t like that it uses my Google account – I like to keep my accounts independent of each other.
Have you been affected by the Apocalypse closing of Google Reader? What have you migrated to? I’m interested to hear.
Since we haven’t had any Mega Parties in a while, I figured there was no reason to keep the place around anymore.
Top ranked Tigres was eliminated by #9 ranked and arch-rival Rayados de Monterrey in the Mexican Soccer League Quarterfinals. This is the third time in a row that Tigres is defeated by Monterrey in a playoff derby. More info.
Update May 13, 2013: Small corrections. Thanks to Arturito and Juan Carlos for pointing them out.
MONTERRY, Mexico — Faced with a two-goal deficit entering the final 30 minutes, Monterrey pulled off a comeback for the ages to win the CONCACAF Champions League crown for a record third consecutive time on Wednesday night.
Unbelievable. More info on CONCACAF.com.
10K:
Marcos Kirsch at the Finish in 53:12.
Pace 8:34 min/Mile.
Time of Arrival: 8:56:49.
Shlomit Kirsch at the Finish in 56:41.
Pace 9:07 min/Mile.
Time of Arrival: 9:00:19.
