www.otton.org

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. This is gorgeous. A robotic scribe. Link (via).

They really need to have a bunch of these working in cells for the full effect.

The new Pragmatic Programmers book turned up today - Programming Erlang by Joe Armstrong.

The language looks like a perfect fit for an SMS platform [unfortunately we’re trying to fight the last war, but that particular post-mortem is a story for another day] , so after one guy at work picked it up he didn’t have much trouble convincing a couple more of us to check it out. At this point we’re just trying to figure out what it can do, but it’s interesting that it seems to be on a lot of people’s radar right now - I keep seeing references to it at Reddit or DZone. This is probably an effect of it being a Pragmatic book (they scored a major win with the Ruby books), but I find it hard to believe a functional language could ever gain the kind of growth Ruby did.

I ran through the first 20 pages or so tonight, and some first impressions jumped out at me. First, the quality of the book is awful - the layout is amateurish and scrappy, like it was typeset in Word. The content appears solid, but it looks like a PDF that’s been printed on a b+w laser and perfect bound. Second, the language uses makefiles. Makefiles! I get the impression the tool chain is going to be quite primitive. Third, it’s been a long, long time since I’ve done anything in a functional style (beyond a lingering abhorrence of side-effects, and the occasional array map/lambda function pair to confuse the “HTML programmers”).

We shall see, I guess.

The rabbit is now 5.5 kilos (~12 pounds), and 83cm (2′8″) when stretched out. That is all.

This is the clearest description of how to program with objects that I’ve ever read.

Rather than the standard, 15-year-old “Fido’s a Dog, Dogs are Mammals, Mammals are Animals” stuff that you get in Introduction to Objects texts, it’s a short, readable explanation of how to design objects that are maintainable, extensible and loosely coupled. Really really good stuff.

I’ve been kicking around ideas for Moo cards recently, and in searching for inspiration I discovered this little gem

Madeline just found the baby giant rabbit in the washing machine. Just a head sticking out.

She was evicting the socks; every few seconds another one would go flying.

I guess she’s big enough now that a washing machine looks like a reasonable place to hang out. That’s kinda scary, as she has another six weeks of growing to do. I wish she’d stop eyeing the kitchen bin so speculatively.

Link

Paint with embedded usability features. Neat.

This paint insures you get it right the first time: it goes on pink, but dries white. As long as the ceiling’s solid pink when you’re done, you know you’ve done a great job!

Link

I assume the magic ingredient is a dye that breaks down in the presence of air or (more likely) light.

A nanoguitar, devised at Cornell years ago, has been “played” for the first time by shooting laser light at the silicon “strings.” A newer version of the guitar, shown above, twangs at a frequency of 40 megahertz, some 17 octaves (or a factor of 130,000) higher than a normal guitar.

Link (via)

Plus a better article, courtesy of Google. Although pumping a “string” up to radio frequencies with laser light seems like an intriguing alternative to quartz, I wonder if the most interesting thing here is the showmanship behind the project - a nanoscale silicon rod vibrating at 40Mhz ain’t that interesting, but dress it up as the world’s smallest guitar (a flying V, no less!) are you’re going to get a lot more press attention (and, presumably, funding).

This came via Make:

Entomophagy (literally, “insect-eating”) has been practiced throughout human history and continues to this day. Modern enthusiasts cite the economic and environmental benefits of using insects as a major source of protein in their diet; some even admit to liking the taste. Although I can’t personally vouch for the tastiness of any of [these] items, if you’re interested in taking up entomophagy, here are a few things you could try.