This, I came across last week, on the FB items of one of my favourite musicians. It’s a lovely short film, with a beautiful message. I’ve been showing it to everyone so I decided I may as well post it here. =)
“Dennis Hong, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of Virginia Tech’s Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory, or RoMeLa, has created robots with the most unusual shapes and sizes — from strange multi-legged robots to amoeba-like robots with no legs at all. Now he’s unveiling a new robot with a more conventional shape: a full-sized humanoid robot called CHARLI, or Cognitive Humanoid Autonomous Robot with Learning Intelligence. The robot is 5-foot tall (1.52 meter), untethered and autonomous, capable of walking and gesturing. But its biggest innovation is that it does not use rotational joints.”
Last week, a Swedish friend of mine who is well aware of exactly how culture-curious I am, did me the huge favour of directing me to the deviantART gallery of a brilliant Danish comic artist. This artist has created a fictional character for each Scandinavian country, through which she depicts the popular stereotypical characteristics of the people and the culture of each of these countries. It’s of course quite satirical, and extremely funny.
In the past few days I’ve been going through this artist’s gallery, reading through all her comic strips, and I’ve had a great deal of laugh doing so. I highly recommend that you do the same. Here’s a more sophisticated version of her main characters:
From left to right: Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
Don’t you just love the look on Sweden’s face? =)) And apparently Finland’s character has quite a fan-club [and I totally want his hat!].=D Iceland has a parachute, that makes me jealous. Norway has cute hair and a huge fish. =)) Somehow the first thing I did, was sharing this with a Danish friend [xo] who’s apparently been sharing it with just about everyone in Scandinavia…. =D
Oh wow, would you look at this? Yesterday I came across the coolest news here in this article. Apparently the first robotic amusement park of Europe is being built in Neuchatel [I’ve actually been there! ;)]. Check out the article for more info.
So you can imagine how excited I was to read about this. I feel like a million box… I’m actually going to be there! =D I now have to go see where I can find more information about this. This is absolutely AWESOME, WOOOOOHOOOOOOOWWW! =D
So I decided to create myself an “Ask Box” too [or whatever you like to call it! ;)]. Simple, ask me anything you like and I’ll answer it if I can. =) If you have an account on the website, you can choose to include your user info, or just ask anonymously. Otherwise, it’s basically anonymous unless you decide to include a name. Oh and apparently it’s also possible to add / follow people. So, here’s mine!
Yesterday, I turned 27. =) I like the fact that the number has a 7 in it, which has always been lucky for me. I guess it makes sense, given that this is most probably going to be the year of big changes. As in, _HUGE_Migrating Around The Globe_, sort of changes. Which I’m of course looking forwards to. We had a nice little party with friends, after which we went out to a Greek restaurant where I had one of my favourite dishes: Grilled Octopus. Ok, I know that maybe hard to believe for some, but Octopus really is VERY yummy, and I totally love it. =D I even took a picture for proof. [Yet again!]
I would like to thank all my friends for the very nice birthday wishes, cards, eCards and…. Thanks you so much, it means a whole lot to me. =)
A while ago I mentioned something about looking for the perfect pen to draw with. Something that would work for my crazy doodles. Today a good friend asked me if I had managed to find what I was looking for. Well, actually I did! =) I tried a rather large range of similar pens to find what I would be comfortable with, and interesting enough, it turns out the perfect drawing pen is in fact a Stylo Sharpie Pen! =D
I’m a pretty big fan of the whole family of Sharpie markers. But I didn’t even know that Sharpie had these Stylo pens. Apparently they’re new. =) They have very fine tips, smooth waterproof ink, and of course they come in this very pretty sky blue which is just perfect! =D
I also tried out a similar sort of pen produced by Pentel. That was also quite cool, but somehow the Sharpie managed to win me. I think it’s the colour!
My latest musical discovery has been more of a re-discovery.
4AM in the morning of April 1st, for a rather long list of reasons I was still awake and trust me, this time around I was in fact quite tired. So I thought I’d relax to some nice music for a bit before the day officially started. I was about to serve myself up some Mike Oldfield [I had “Amarok” in mind!] when incidentally I noticed the news of a new release on the Kahvi Collective page. The EP called “Little Man Entered a Big Village”, is the latest by the Finnish electronic musician Aleksi Eeben. This was interesting news, seeing how I hadn’t listened to anything from this artist in a reeeeeally long while! A very long time ago I had come across a number of truly great tracks by the same artist under the alias “Heatbeat”, but since then somehow [unlike me, I know! =P] I had in fact lost track.
So, well, I downloaded the EP and began listening. It started with my head resting on the pile of papers on my desk. Then came the feeling of blood rushing into my brain.. then I found myself sitting straight and totally conscious… Then, of course, came the track “Linen & Linseed”, and I have to admit I’m glad none of you could actually see me at that point. Messy hair, googly eyes, mildly head banging to the track, in my PJs, 4AM in the morning. =D Needless to say I luuuuuuuvvvvvv the EP and even more so this track.
Of course then I went ahead and downloaded the artist’s entire set of available albums off of Bandcamp in FLAC [YAAAAAAAY yes it’s all available in FLAC]. And if you want to get your hands on what I’ve been loooooping in the past week, you can do the same HERE. Oh, and I really do mean looping. To say that I’ve gone completely nutz over “Linen & Linseed” would be an understatement. Check out my Last.fm profile if you don’t believe me. =D So, well, I really do suggest you check this out. =)
Is it just me, or was the general quality of the music released at Breakpoint this year way above average? The streaming music compo included a great deal of awesome tracks, and many of the demos released in all categories featured superb soundtracks. So for someone with a serious case of [good] music addiction such as yours truly, this was a good chance to fuel up. =)
Here I’m just going to mention a few of my favourites, but really, I think you should just check out everything that was released.
When the streaming music compo finished, my first thought was – “so much great music, how can anyone win this?”. Well, apparently someone did, and well deserved too: Check out Disrupt, fantastic DnB track by Puryx, the Danish demoscene/electronic musician. This guy produces a lot of great music, some of which is currently available on his Last.fm page.
Petarda by Chaser/Elude, and Sooner or Later by Little Birchard are also tracks that you should definitely check out. The entire collection of music released at Breakpoint 2010 can be downloaded from here.
In the 4K intro category, Retrospection by FRequency & Trolls In The Shadows is certainly one of the prettiest 4Kz that I’ve ever seen, with a really cool and upbeat soundtrack. I liked the soundtrack so much that I requested for a separate music file, and the guys in charge were kind enough to provide it. The soundtrack can be downloaded here, and below is the video.
Hey, I'm Aasemoon, and this is my blog which has been around since 1998. Childhood toy project that ended up growing up with me.
You can reach me here:
aasemoon.blue
Zorbas is my kitten. You can see some pictures of him below. =)
![1573984[1]](http://lh5.ggpht.com/_Tl7xVSHEwJs/S-H2YPen-aI/AAAAAAAAAV4/CuY4wRAOzL0/s1600-h/1573984%5B1%5D%5B3%5D.jpg "1573984[1]")
![Robosphere[1]](http://lh4.ggpht.com/_Tl7xVSHEwJs/S9Nr4wiVxdI/AAAAAAAAAVw/9MHhURGXqzg/s1600-h/Robosphere13.jpg "Robosphere[1]")
![DSC05530[1]](http://lothlorien.aasemoon.com/random-january-2010/DSC05530.JPG.php "DSC05530[1]")
I guess it makes sense, given that this is most probably going to be the year of big changes. As in, _HUGE_Migrating Around The Globe_, sort of changes. Which I’m of course looking forwards to. We had a nice little party with friends, after which we went out to a Greek restaurant where I had one of my favourite dishes: Grilled Octopus. Ok, I know that maybe hard to believe for some, but Octopus really is VERY yummy, and I totally love it. =D I even took a picture for proof. [Yet ![DSC05161.JPG_802[1]](http://lothlorien.aasemoon.com/random-january-2010/DSC05161.JPG.php "DSC05161.JPG_802[1]")
![2479118199-1[1]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/_Tl7xVSHEwJs/S7-8wd0B2wI/AAAAAAAAAVA/wLe-U4yEung/s1600-h/2479118199114.jpg "2479118199-1[1]")
