Transformer robot

It may be my imagination, but the pace of change in robot technology seems to have picked up over the last year or so, there is an amazing quadraped from boston dynamics with creepy animal-like legs (plenty of posts on YouTube), and there's this transformer style baby ...

Your horse, mechanical strategies

just received an email - a bit of obvious spam
with an obscure title, but this one, subject "your horse, mechanical strategies" looked interesting. I couldn't figure out what all the numbers meant until i changed to a fixed-width font - it must be a stock code.

4160811   3541614   216362         4             4523486   4070314
   5      8     6   5    7        3 3            3     5   0     4
   7      8     7   2    7       5   6           8     4   8     5
   8      2     2   287122      0     1          0     2   8528175
   2      0     6   1  4       301436372         1     3   0     5
   6      5     8   0   6      2       3   516   6     3   1     5
   6      1481620   3    5     5       1   883   1261228   4626568

Rotary Engine Bike

A long time ago I heard about this Australian inventor who had designed a revolutionary petrol engine which was lightweight, highpowered, had very few moving parts and was an all-round wonder. As seems to happen with many technological marvels it never got a foothold in the motor industry (i seem to remember the frustrated inventor pointing to a collusion between oil cartels and the motor car business, or something). And so you'd think it'd be relegated to the dustbin, but no, Its back as an engine for a bike ..... with something of the French grandad about it.

Bad Boy vs. Jack Taylor

Urrrgh. Its been a long time since i've been excited about a mere push-bike, but as soon as I spotted this little Bad Boy black beauty from Cannondale i was on the phone to Santa straight away. Bike technology seems to have changed so much that the ones i used to drool over as a young lad look positively ancient now - though still desirable in a nostalgic way. Jack Taylor from Stockton have such an artisan feel to them - see this short wheel-base track bike with the famous curvy seat tube and a load of info at a reverential Jack Taylor fan-site

Clanky drummer

Robots, robots, robots - gizmodo are as obsessed with these things as i could be if i had more than $1000 to chuck around. These cute little darlings do some nice gymastics and can drum too. What more could a grown up boy want ? Meanwhile, the apparent Japanese obsession with introducing robots into the everyday continues - i read the other day that a hospital has just introduced a couple - 1 as a porter and 1 as a receptionist. I'll see if i can find the pictures and post later.