Pages Tagged “Robots”
Reviews
- Automatic Noodle
A short but joyful tale of creating the future you want out of the present you’ve been stuck with, told by robots who would rather make noodles than war. - Head On
★★★★★
John Scalzi
The sequel to Lock In is a fast read with intriguing concepts, fun characters and an interesting mystery. This time locked-in FBI agent Chris Shane investigates the death of a locked-in athlete in a sport too extreme for human bodies, played with remotely-controlled robots. - The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport
★★★★★
Samit Basu
Starts as a cyberpunk take on Aladdin and gleefully launches into a glorious mishmash of robots, legacies, secrets and political upheaval in a crumbling spaceport slowly sinking into the mud on a backwater planet. - Short Circuit ★★★★☆ The comedy about a robot coming to life and the humans trying to catch him or help him escape holds up better than I expected.
- Soonish
★★★★★
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Fascinating, accessible, funny, and still relevant overview of cutting-edge tech, even though it took me 7 years to get around to reading it. - Transformers (Movie) ★★★☆☆ Better constructed than I expected, with impressive effects, plausible story logic, but a lot of the humor is forced and it feels like they missed the big picture in trying to get the details right.
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ★☆☆☆☆ In some ways it wasn’t as awful as I’d heard, and in some ways it was worse. I’m glad I waited for the second-run showing and only spent $1.75.
- Usurpation
A different sort of book than Semiosis and Interference, taking place entirely on Earth long after the second Pax expedition returns. Can the bamboo keep humans’ chaotic conflicts in check? Where do the robots fit in? With so many forms of intelligence, who counts as a person, anyway?
Blog Posts
- The Future is Here
We may not have jet packs and flying cars, but we have autonomous robots rolling into hotel elevators to deliver room service.
- About Those Robots…
I don’t know how I missed this easter egg before: In Firefox, type about:robots into the location bar. (via @Aeire & @IsobelWren) If you’re a science fiction fan, you’ll get a kick out of it!
- Cyborgs: Terminator Salvation and Surrogates
Finally got out to see Terminator: Salvation at the second-run theater. It was a passable action flick, though a bit overblown and tedious at times. I thought it was better than T3: Rise of the Machines, at least. T3 was too caught up in repeating the first two movies (a Terminator is sent back in […]
- Roomba Path, TV Campaign Advice, and…NINE
Long-Exposure Shot of a Roomba’s Path Shows Beautifully Organized Chaos (src: SignalTheorist) Things to consider when running a “save our show” campaign & what NOT to do. (via @johannadc and @mikesterling) Whenever I get order #9 or take-a-number, I imagine the disembodied voice saying “Number 9…Number 9” from the Beatles’ song Revolution 9
- Saw Transformers
I finally got out to see Transformers today. Yes, I grew up with the cartoons, the toys and the comics. Yes, I even collected every comic book from the original Marvel series through the Generation 2 series (including the prologue in G.I. Joe) through the first round from DreamWave. But somewhere along the line I just lost […]
- Vroomba!
CNET writes about a new model of the Roomba automatic vacuum cleaner and its application of technology iRobot originally developed for mine sweeping (real mines, not the game), touching briefly on the state of the consumer robotics field. Amazingly it includes the following sentence: On the other end of the spectrum, the Roomba cleans up […]