Robot Vs. Barbed Wire Fence: 1, Zip

TEDx USC: Juan Enriquez

The folks in the TEDx booth fixed the audio glitch and played this TED 2009 video again. Ahh, much better.

It's a rare public speaker who can take an otherwise depressing topic (the collapse of Wall Street and the U.S. economy) and make it both humorous and hopeful.

I had no idea how far advanced organ regrowth technology has come, nor that Boston Dynamics (whom I've been following since the early 90s since hearing about them via Alan Alda on Scientific American Frontiers) now has a free-standing quadraped robot that walks freakishly close to a real animal. Wow!

Now if we can all get affordable health care and free robotic assistants, the future looks brighter indeed!

Pepakura - Make Your Own Figurines!

The Internet has spawned a number of sites devoted to papercraft or Pepakura patterns. Papercraft is similar to Origami, the Japanese art of making folded paper sculptures, except that it usually involves cutting out shapes and gluing them together. Thanks to technology, we can easily share patterns through Illustrator and PDF files. We can also use 3-D software to automatically flatten the shape into a pattern.

Robot Learns Dance, Tea ceremony movements

Japanese researchers have created a robot that can recreate movements observed through a video camera. They intend to use the system to preserve dying culture & rituals. Though thousands of years from now when we devolve into Youtube-watching slugs, will only the robots know how to dance?

Robot + Pet + Analog Synthesizer =Thingamagoob

For $100, this adorable pet Thingamagoob can be yours to love and give a good home. Each one has a customizable color scheme and is a simple monophonic analog synthesizer hand-made by John-Michael Reed over in Austin, Texas. I met Mr. Reed at Bent '07 here in Los Angeles. Formerly a grocery store clerk with no formal electronics training, he has cleverly turned his music tinkering hobby into a full-time business.