Link Latte #1

I think I’ll make Saturday Link-Latte day… where I throw lots of disconnected stuff at the screen at the same time, because I simply can’t keep up. This is an idea at least partly (or completely) stolen from www.darkroastedblend.com/ who I love, and who have 120 of them already, although theirs don’t have pictures and are a bit less chatty.

Ok. Here we go.

1) Someone sent me this… it’s a service where you can send yourself back to the 1970s – which would be cool because you’d get to see Star Wars for the first time, and see Led Zepplin, and cruise down Van Nuys Bvd on a Saturday night with Tom Petty on the stereo.

I would’ve used one of my own photos but I know how annoying Susan would find it if I used one of hers instead, so I will:

There are various different filters and whatnot…

So there you go.

Things were better in the 70s generally speaking… well, in one important way: everything was mapped out for you. The Future came in big, easy to deal with phases : “university”, “job”, “someone to love”, “kids” etc. The Suburbs… nothing was ever going to go wrong. You took it easy. You rolled with the flow. There was no point fighting – on our side or theirs… we had all the momentum… our energy would simply prevail…

2) High Altitude Photography With Glider

A bit like the balloon thing form a couple of days back, but with a glider instead so you can control where it’s going to land. Something like that.

In the future, when people have something difficult or fiddley to do, they’ll stick their tongue out to concentrate.

3) A new generation of Reprap’s making a first-print, with Julian laughing like a mad scientist.

4) A couple more things about cloud-sourced manufacturing… where a) people can make (potentially) real, actual money out of it, but b) the main thing they’re making is parts for other repraps. It’s The DIY Machine Bubble. You heard it here first.

5) Spotty Rooms

6) Rather Fab DIY Prop Art

6) Musical Instruments made out of stuff. Like sand.

The trouble with this sort of thing is the energy seems to go into the knobs and things rather than the songwriting. Songwriting really needs to come first.

This is cool though… similar “found” sounds approach and a really good songwriter as well.

7) Weather Bracelets

This is a good idea waiting in the wings I think. Reminds me of something that hasn’t happened yet.

8 ) A campaign seeking an international treating limiting military robots.

You’re kidding right? Ok. You’re not kidding. Good thing too. We really need this.

Trouble is, it hasn’t got the a farcically flimsy, ephemeral, half-arsed ghost of a snowball in hell’s chance of happening. I mean the catholic church and various EU aristocracy tried to ban crosswbows back in the day… on account of their being “a threat to the social order”. People tried to limit car speed by having people walk in front holding flags. And they were right. Tens of millions of people wouldn’t have died if they’d got their way.

These people simply don’t get how badly, longingly, desperately, clingingly people (well, the ones that matter) want weaponised robots.

9 ) Speaking of which, laser-cutting from a plane.

But as I keep saying, “if you blow up a $10 tent with a $million cruise missile, you haven’t won”. Whenever you see a cruise missile… you should also envision an equal but opposite ghost-missile headed back the other way… to a hospital, a school… that won’t ever be made in the originating country… because instead of doing something useful with the money, you’ve given it to someone who’s taken it out into the desert and burned it.

What’s the bet that the American fiasco in Iraq has wound up killing more Americans through misappropriated resources than 100 9/11s put together?

And now the wingers are talking about a military coup.

So um… don’t envision a military laser as a stream of photons burning a hole in a (cough) “bad guy”‘s clapped out pickup. Envision it as a murderous drain of $100 notes going in the other direction… straight towards you, and whatever future that you thought your tax-dollars ought to entitle you to. Every cruise missile, every drone, every “smart bomb” represents a school that won’t be built back home.

Ask not for whom the Bomb tolls. It tolls for thee.

10) Cool Lego Dudes

11) and lastly I stumbled across an entire hoard of home-made Power Loaders like the one off Aliens

Some of which appear to be better than others.

But there are a hell of a lot of them on youtube.

I love how such a lot of the Robotics Revolution isn’t being driven by any real need, but is based quite heavily on things the people liked from Sci Fi movies.