little bits of everything

Holiday reading part 1 Robo sapiens is a broad survey of what is going on in Robotics. There are lots of lovely pictures and annoyingly little detail on each robot. The range is large though, from humanoid robots, to real robots doing useful things. Coincidentally one of our sons got a robot for his birthday. It is from Teksta and is called a "Boy-bot". Like the old Tamagotchis it needs to the looked after. It responds to sound, movement and pressing buttons on its front and back. For the first day I wanted to make sure that it was looked after. But after that I got tired of it. My wife wanted to make sure that it didn't get too sad for several days, however it just lies forgotten in a corner now.

The last mile/km This is a term from the telecoms industry used to refer to the distance between the exchange and your home. For me it is the gap between my brain and the computer. Because I suffer from RSI I don't want to be doing a lot of typing in the evenings, and I would rather spend my breaks at work (I talk to my computer) having a break. Hence the gap between the last entry and this.