Kim Clijsters LUCKY SHOT French Open (by AccepthisNEWS)
Author: Jonathan Frei
Learn to steal like an artist (via How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me) – Austin Kleon)
Kinect Hackers: unlocking new possibilities in robotics
Microsoft’s Kinect is letting hardware and software hackers (the good kind) discover new possibilities in robotics.
Within weeks of the device’s release, YouTube was filled with videos of Kinect-enabled robots. A group from UC Berkeley strapped a Kinect to a quadrotor—a small helicopter with four propellers—enabling it to fly autonomously around a room. A couple of students at the University of Bundeswehr Munich attached a Kinect to a robotic car and sent it through an obstacle course. And a team from the University of Warwick in the UK built a robot that had the potential to navigate around post-earthquake rubble and search for trapped victims. “When something is that cheap, it opens up all sorts of possibilities,” says Ken Conley of Willow Garage, which sells a $500 open source robotics kit that incorporates the Kinect. (The previous non-Kinect version cost $280,000.) “Now it’s in the hands of just about anybody.”
And the good thing is that now Microsoft is actually encouraging this kind of discovery.
[T]he company’s official response to all this activity has gone from hostility to acceptance to vigorous support. In June, Microsoft expects to release a software development kit that makes it easier for any academic or hobbyist to build Windows applications using the Kinect’s camera and microphones. The company is also granting access to the high-powered algorithms that help the machine recognize individual bodies and track motion, unleashing the kind of power that was previously available to only a small group of PhDs.
![mf_kinect_f[1]](../../../../i0.wp.com/jonathanfrei.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/mf_kinect_f1.jpg)
(via Kinect Hackers Are Changing the Future of Robotics | Magazine)
bestrooftalkever:
The zeppelin Hindenburg floats past the Empire State Building over Manhattan on Aug. 8, 1936. The German airship was en route to Lakehurst, New Jersey, from Germany. The Hindenburg would later explode in a spectacular fireball above Lakehurst on May 6, 1937. (AP Photo)
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Author Vs. Author
Flavorwire has a collection of 30 of the harshest author to author insults. My favorites are the ones where I’m familiar with both the insult-or and the insulted. This one on Don Quixote is my favorite:
17. Martin Amis on Miguel Cervantes
“Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.”
(via Flavorwire » The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults In History)