#robotics Logs
Mar 29 2012
#robotics Calendar
00:32 katsmeow-afk achieving a LINPACK performance of 10.51 quadrillion computations per second
00:33 katsmeow-afk an optimized parallel file system based on Lustre, called Fujitsu Exabyte File System, scalable to several hundred petabytes.
00:34 katsmeow-afk While the K computer reports the highest total power consumption of any TOP500 supercomputer (9.89 MW – the equivalent of almost 10,000 suburban homes), the computer is relatively efficient, achieving 824.6 GFlop/kWatt.
01:25 theBear i wonder how many petaflops a bear has ? quick, ask me some maths, lots of it :)
01:31 katsmeow-afk how many oscopes are on ebay now for $0.01 to $0.99 ?
01:32 katsmeow-afk i see a Tektronix 7633 and a Protek 2640
01:32 katsmeow-afk a couple of Heath 4552 for $10 each
01:34 katsmeow-afk a Tektronix 465B for $0.99 , but s&h is $77
01:43 tsmeow-afk ponders a 100w led in a flashl
01:43 katsmeow-afk 33amps at 3vdc
01:43 katsmeow-afk batteries wouldn't last long
01:49 katsmeow-afk 100 2N5401 pnp 150v 600ma $7
01:50 katsmeow-afk 100 2N5551 npn 150v 600ma $7
01:50 theBear still worried about those pnp's eh ?
01:50 katsmeow-afk the pnp mosfets, yeas
01:50 katsmeow-afk WAAAYYY to pricey for me
01:51 katsmeow-afk sometimes i just scan what is still not bid on in the last 2 minutes of auctions, there's occasionally a good deal
01:51 theBear i couldn't find one the other week, i think you saw the pics of my mobo mods ?
01:52 katsmeow-afk no
01:52 theBear yeah, since the very very first days i found that's the only way to ebay
01:52 theBear lemme find one, rue helped me find a fet (couldn't find a single one in the house) across the road in a broken monitor :)
01:53 katsmeow-afk i found 110 pcs of 74F11 for 99 cents, 200 pcs 47uf 25v caps for 99 cents , 100pcs 2N7000 N-chan mosfets 99 cents, etc
01:53 katsmeow-afk i remember it, didn't see pics of it
01:53 theBear http://fcit.com.au/bear/loungeroom/poor-mobo-2.jpg that was during testing, sidenote: i was too grumpy to remove heatsinks or cables or anything, only just reassembled the whole damned thing after recapping when i did the stupid
01:54 katsmeow-afk picked up 10 pcs 7x5 cm perfboard for 99 cents, free shipping
01:54 katsmeow-afk picked up another 8 pcs 7x5 cm perfboard for 99 cents, free shipping
01:55 katsmeow-afk 10 pcs 1W cool white led for $1.80, free shipping
01:56 katsmeow-afk 2000 pcs 47uf 16v caps for $1.04
01:59 katsmeow-afk bear, the tab on the fet won't hit the chassis and ground aanything, and it not running hot, i guess?
02:04 katsmeow-afk zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
03:30 theBear katsmeow-afk, it's replacing 2 parallel fets about .8*1.2mm in size, and yeah, it's a big gap, and soldered to a couple big solid pads
03:30 theBear and not really long term, just that i need that machine at the moment 'cos it runs my security cams and i'm never around at the moment
06:48 katsmeow-afk <knock><knock>
06:49 katsmeow-afk does anyone have an audio spectrum analyser?
06:54 katsmeow-afk i plead an audio question: taking an audio spectrum analyser, capturing enough notch bandwidths to reproduce any sound a human speech makes, can any portion of the spectrum analyser output be fed thru those notch filters and be recogniseable speech?
06:54 katsmeow-afk and how close to human would it be?
07:31 bigkitty hi all
07:34 rizlah Hello.
07:38 katsmeow-afk you are in china!?
07:40 katsmeow-afk ???????
07:40 katsmeow-afk hmm
07:40 katsmeow-afk cannot paste hyroglyphs in here
07:41 katsmeow-afk http://translate.google.com/#auto|en|%E4%BD%A0%E6%98%AF%E5%9C%A8%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E5%97%8E%EF%BC%9F
07:44 katsmeow-afk ok, bye
07:45 rizlah Government is probably censoring their messages.
07:45 rizlah I joke, maybe just afk.
08:46 rue_house hi kat
08:47 rue_house katsmeow-afk,
08:47 rue_house the static that people ignore or the tones that are irrelivent?
08:51 theBear katsmeow-afk, you know what a 'vocoder' effect/unit sounds like ? among others 'daft punk' are very fond of them, kinda makes a voice sound a lot like a synthesizer in many common applications... either way, it's basically a triggered 'many bandpass filters' machine... you for example might plug a keyboard in one hole, and a microphone in the other, then play keyboard while singing or talking, the voice input (in this example) decides which bands
08:51 theBear are 'turned up'/turned on and by how much, by envelope followers/basically rectifiers on bandpasses set to the same frequency, and even VERY few bands (i think common analog/'hardware' based ones in the 70s/80s were 8 or 12 bands usually) sounds surprisingly intelligble, apart from obviously sounding like a synthesizer/whatever, but replace the synthesizer input with white noise or something, and i gues syou have your answer
08:51 theBear katsmeow-afk, i'm beyond sure that you can find several free implementations in both ladspa and vst plugin formats, depending on your preferred/available os, to test with
08:52 theBear i THINK that's like what you are asking
08:54 rue_house kat, would a pc application do?
08:55 rue_house I think she's asking for a spectrum analizer
09:01 theBear i think she's asking a theory/general interest question
09:02 theBear but unless you're super awake (and sleepy as usual these days<grin>) i've been using heavy duty cleaning chemicals and drinking heavily all afternoon in between, so who knows which of us comprehends :)
10:01 bigkitty hi
10:17 hackkitten :o
13:56 katsmeow-afk bear, i forgot about the vocodor in music, but i was wondering if that approach could make a decent synthesis of a human voice, and how many bandpasses it would take to sound good
13:58 katsmeow-afk i don't want it to sound synthetic
13:59 tsmeow-afk throws an url out that's totally unrelated to the vocoder : http://www.icegods.com/robotics.html
14:00 tsmeow-afk remembers listening to the band Kraftwerk , who use vocoders in m
14:49 katsmeow-afk there was a really bad version of a gated bandpass system used on the 1980's Minidisk audio recorder, some major companies like RCA/CBS etc tried to sell it commercially, but it sounds like crap
14:50 katsmeow-afk Radio Shack had several models of the recorder
14:50 katsmeow-afk but they were gated bandpass, not vocoder systems
14:54 katsmeow-afk ELO's "Mr Blue Sky" and "Sweet Talking Woman" ,, but i want a natural sound, so i wonder if a vocodor is up to the task
14:54 katsmeow-afk hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
14:55 katsmeow-afk tehre's an idea,, a comb filter running at any programable speed, if it's output is subtracted from the input, you have a variable high-Q notch bandpass filter
14:57 tsmeow-afk hmms a few more times, and realises she isn't getting anything done
14:57 katsmeow-afk bbl
14:58 theBear oh, synthesis... interesting idea, not sure i heard of that approach for voice 'synthesis' before...
15:00 theBear not just the early minidiscs, pretty much every recorder sony made from when i was born until i last checked just a few years ago (maybe around the last minidisc recorders i saw on sale now i think about it, not sure what you use for portable recording 'these days' ... oh i know, you get a 'pro audio'/'cd quality' plugin whatsit for yer ipod and use that, or those little korg things with the offset mics on top, or heck, just a mobile phone can ke
15:00 theBear ep up with cd quality easy if it has a stereo input these days
15:01 theBear oh, gated bandpass ? sorry, i just saw minidisc and sony and thought of USELESS "agc"/compressor kinda thing that was always turned on by default and hidden in some stupid hard to find menu
15:01 theBear vocoder is very close to gated bandpass, just that the 'gates' have a 'soft knee'
15:02 theBear hmm... too late to deal with yer comb variable idea, but it sounds likely to someone who understands all the individual words involved :)
15:03 theBear but the main point of my earlier rant when apparently me AND rue slightly misunderstood what you wanted to know, is that a vocoder is very 'intelligible' with very few bands
15:04 theBear ahh tobbor my friend, how have you been ?
16:04 katsmeow-afk but intelligible != natural-sounding , often by a huge margin
16:05 katsmeow-afk the fixed hardware-only approach also yields a flat speech, little intonation, or a stepped intonation
16:09 katsmeow-afk if i had the hardware, if the analyser was used to track and quantify the frequencies and their envelopes, for many voices, and digitally stored, then playback could pick which get played out of ram to the synthesizer, which might be the same hardware that *was* the input analyser (or not), so a really natural voice of your choosing could be controlled by an 8Mhz 8-bit 8-pin avr
16:10 katsmeow-afk it wouldn't be a pre-recorded voice
16:20 theBear i wonder i wonder... you thinking 'true' synthesis, ie from arbitrary words/text, or more mimickery with efficient storage/reconstruction ? if 'true' synth, how would you approach it ? some crazy new idea/approach, or maybe the umm, those 70-odd 'sounds' that are supposed to make up the whole english language or err ?
16:22 katsmeow-afk well, if the data was stored and played back the inverse of the deconstruction process, it's mimicry, but if you choose to mix one stored channel of a phenome with some other stored channel of the same phenome, then shift some portion of the data in freq or playback speed, it isn't mimicry
16:23 theBear phenome, that's the things
16:24 theBear hmmmm.... so yer thinking, at least for an initial test, 'matching' pairs of phenomes 'mixed' in some way to add err 'goodness' ... interesting...
16:24 katsmeow-afk if i sample all the women reading the evening news, and deconstruct and store anything that's different, i then have a pallete of sound parts for each phenome, and can make each replayed phenome sound different just by playing back channel(12) with channel(8) of the same phenome, where i don't care who recoded each channel
16:25 theBear i wonder, if you were going from a more heavy duty end of things, you could have several of each available, maybe each biased in some pre-determined way, then experiment with combinations/methods to give a thorough range of 'tones' of voice...
16:25 katsmeow-afk i could also chnage the pitch, duration, and tone changes during playback, data that wasn't recorded
16:25 theBear oooh, interesting, cancelling out the usefull data from real world ...
16:26 katsmeow-afk yeas and no
16:26 katsmeow-afk there's a woman reading news on ABC in the usa that seriously needs a tone stabiliser, she keeps switching to falsetto and it makes my ears bleed
16:27 katsmeow-afk i'd delete that data, it's useless
16:29 theBear hehe, people with silly and/or distracting voices shouldn't be allowed to do jobs that basically rely on a nice sensible voice
16:29 katsmeow-afk if i wanna record a 'ssssssssss' sound, i'd want the spectral representation, and i'd want to change it's pitch as i want, so why record the change in pitch as someone else said it?
16:30 katsmeow-afk for instance, questions usually, for some reaon, end on a higher pitch than they started
16:31 katsmeow-afk if i have sampled by accient all of one phoneme at the end of questons, it would sound really bad to start statements witht hat phoneme exactly as recorded
16:31 theBear indeed, and in multiple (all?) languages
16:43 tsmeow-afk throws an url to the bear : http://www.rane.com/note160.html
16:43 katsmeow-afk nice pics on that page to explain the terrible world of audio
16:46 katsmeow-afk "Unfortunately, all optimized higher order versions yield flat voltage/power response, group delay or phase shift, but not all at once. Hence, the existence of different alignments and resultant compromises.
16:46 katsmeow-afk "
16:47 katsmeow-afk in other words, "i can do some of that,, but..."
16:50 katsmeow-afk a lot, if not most, common opamps exhibit 90 degree phase shift at some audo freqs, and so many power amplifiers
16:51 katsmeow-afk makes me toss up my paws and mutter "it's audio and it's louder and it sounds really nice, but it certainly is not hifi"
16:53 katsmeow-afk "why?" "because not only are some freqs phase shifted, but that changes based on temperature, which depends on power used, and it's such that we cannot measure it in actual use and cannot correct for it,,,, plus the speakers change electrical characteristics depending on the voice coil speed and position int he magnet structure!"
16:57 theBear heh, not sure i read that specific page, but i've always liked ranes notes and schems and gear that i've used/heard/repaired, but audio is kinda my area of expertise, a few years ago i coulda written that page on a good day, barring that i always forget the exact formulas :)
16:57 tsmeow-afk
16:57 katsmeow-afk i figured you know the data, i mentioned the url just for the pics
17:05 katsmeow-afk "The ultra-basic analog units were generally mushy-sounding. Synton's had the best intelligibility on spoken words for their original 32-band device, and musicality for the newer 14 band one I currently use: the Synton SPX 216.
17:05 katsmeow-afk "Phase vocoders theoretically ought be even more precise and clear than channel units.
17:07 theBear ahh, yeah, over the years as i 'get' concepts the pics just kinda form in my mind as suitable to a given situation... the more i learn, the more i know just how little i understood making kits and smashing together little circuit fragments as a 'kid'
17:07 tsmeow-afk
17:08 theBear heck, even my first year or so of repairs, i made sure to understand anything important, like why/how i was biasing power tubes, and why the 1r resistors made sense etc etc, but it wasn't a natural isntinctive flowing process inside my head, it was more remembering individual facts/information bits and applying them...
17:10 theBear over the years, largely influenced by finding out what an 'analog synth' was, and seeing/being excited by the whole concept of drum machines almost as old as me if not older, i've really grown to love audio, and the funny thing you notice when all this stuff starts to just seem natural in the way it works, is how all this stuff applies to the larger world of physics, speakers are the same concepts as windbreaks and 'accoustic engineering' and all
17:10 theBear kinds of filters apply to everything from audio right up thru the various spectrums thru various rf's and even optical/light related stuff... physics is just a great big beautiful concept i've grown very fond of with time
17:11 tsmeow-afk ag
17:13 theBear the first real 'synth' i ever saw/touched/played after starting as an unofficial 'apprentice' at the music shop doing repairs and generally learning how stuff works is still in the next room.... for a start, it looked like an 'electric piano' except instead of a couple fig8's and buttons and a list of sounds, it was COVERED in knobs and toggle 'buttons' and leds... then one of the older guys that worked there plugged it in and showed me/explained
17:13 theBear the absolute basics of your classic 'subtractive synthesizer' ... i was hooked, this was MAGICAL
17:14 katsmeow-afk in the early 1970's a company called SWTP (southwest technical products) made a moog-kit that was fairly basic, but could be expanded with i/o plugs to insert your own music at different steps in the system, which of course i did
17:15 theBear once i was working there under my good old buddy paul who taught me OH SO MUCH about the world and electronics and repairs, i was naturally dragged into the whole giant-pa thing on weekends, which being owned by the other guys bigger stranger more geeky brother, was the natural selection for any rave-like or less than totally above-board 'parties' and well, the rest is history
17:15 katsmeow-afk made some interesting sounds
17:16 theBear indeed, first time i saw a modular (more semi modular and needed hand/jack patching) synth, a err, roland? system 100, i thought that was amazing, all of a sudden things like 'connecting that modulator to this "control"' was as simple as moving a plug, and that was considered (and to be fair WAS) infinitely more primitive than the big chroma polaris i mentioned that's next door
17:17 theBear you see my other pics last week ? most of the synths and stuff are in there... ummm http://fcit.com.au/bear/loungeroom/ the err, IMAG* ones in that dir is basically the 'studio' in the loungeroom rotating clockwise, then the stuff underneath
17:18 theBear closest to practical/most things able to be 'played' with simply a switch of the power and a wiggle of the mixer for many years now
17:18 theBear the big chroma polaris is probably the first or 2nd pic
17:18 theBear mmm, mostly the 1st
17:20 katsmeow-afk i should be outside doing things
17:20 theBear and my first and possibly only 'completed' 'pedal' the RESBIAN ... basically just a paia-design-based lm13600 resonant filter with a couple buffer stages or so allowing a little crunchiness and overdrive... i'm thinking the knobs are input attenuate, freq, gain/resonance and output attenuate or maybe gain... btw, it looks a lot like a cheap 80's ratshack mixer <grin>
17:21 theBear yeah, i should trust the power of modern chemicals and have me a shower now i finally cleaned that horrible mess
17:21 theBear seems when i got back yesterday, my sewer waste had been a little err, blocked, and i got another flat directly upstairs :(
17:21 theBear 'nuff said
17:22 katsmeow-afk yuck
17:22 theBear yerp
17:22 katsmeow-afk ok, bbl, in afew hrs
17:22 theBear heh, good luck with productivity :)
17:22 katsmeow-afk thanks!
17:23 thylane http://www.robotcub.org/misc/papers/papers.html
19:26 rue_house I think I been jinxed
19:42 sw0rdfish oh hi there rue_house
19:43 sw0rdfish I got the k&r book on C :)
19:47 Tom_itx 2nd edition?
19:48 sw0rdfish yep
19:48 sw0rdfish ofc.
19:49 sw0rdfish <rue_house> sw0rdfish, find the syntax error in this line of C code: for(i==0; i != 5; i+=2) {
19:49 sw0rdfish okk.... if I'm not mistaken it must be: for (i = 0, i <=5, i + 2) {}
19:50 Tom_itx i believe so
19:50 sw0rdfish but the question about batteries... rue_house, I'm gonna need to get a good book on electronics maybe before starting a book on beginner robotics
19:51 Tom_itx i think the +=2 would be ok
19:51 Tom_itx it increments before compare in that case i think
20:12 katsmeow-afk and you swear you used a level when you built that thing? : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Cog_railway_Schneeberg.jpeg
20:15 sw0rdfish fake :P
20:15 katsmeow-afk real
20:15 katsmeow-afk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cog_railway_Schneeberg.jpeg
20:16 katsmeow-afk trains runnng up steep grades still had to keep their boilers level
20:17 katsmeow-afk tilting them as needed wasn't workable, so there were dedicated tilted locomotives to deal with mountains
20:19 katsmeow-afk you prolly don't think railroad locomotives had teeth on their wheels eitehr, eh?
20:21 Tom_itx they used sand too
20:21 sw0rdfish hmmm
20:26 katsmeow-afk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rigi_vertical_boiler.jpg <<== note the tilt
20:28 katsmeow-afk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ascensores_de_Valparaiso.jpg <<== note the tilt
20:30 katsmeow-afk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Funicolare_di_Montesanto.jpg <<== note the tilt on the doorframes
20:31 Tom_itx what's the fascination with leaning locomotives?
20:31 katsmeow-afk some *serious* tilt going on : http://www.hows.org.uk/personal/rail/bour.htm
20:31 Tom_itx find the one at royal gorge
20:32 katsmeow-afk a) no one else was talking, and 2) swordfish said tilty trains were fake
20:32 Tom_itx o
20:33 Tom_itx i'll be glad when tomorrow is over
20:33 Tom_itx i'm tired
20:37 theBear who is this robotcub, and MY GOD, did they just write paper after paper from 2006-2009 ? that's a LONG list
20:37 katsmeow-afk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zurich_Seilbahn_Rigiblick.jpg
20:39 katsmeow-afk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InclineTopView.jpg
21:12 Tom_itx i wouldn't be surprised if we lost power
21:14 katsmeow-afk are we having a storm?
21:15 Tom_itx maybe a tiny one but it's angry
21:15 katsmeow-afk yeas, 60k ft tops, likely hail
21:16 katsmeow-afk it's a lil confused which way to go, it likely may stretch out to a NE and SW line
21:17 katsmeow-afk it didn't even exist 3 hrs ago
21:17 tsmeow-afk plays the radar logs back and f
21:18 katsmeow-afk south of Seattle got 8 inches of rain the last couple days
21:18 katsmeow-afk course, that's about normal for them
21:25 katsmeow-afk bear, here's something you need : http://www.ebay.com/itm/Samson-BR-3-Broadcast-STD-Series-Wireless-Receiver-w-DBX-Noise-Reduction-/260987564952?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cc4123398
21:26 katsmeow-afk he has two of them, $0.01 + $20 s&h
21:29 theBear samson ? you kidding me or you just never seen/touched/heard one ?
21:30 theBear also i SUSPECT that might be an old vhf one, aka illegal here, but more importantly long ago killed by various spectrum users and new dtv stations
21:31 katsmeow-afk never heard one, but if you needed one, at $0.01 , hard to beat the price
21:36 theBear hehe, they're VERY cheap 'crap'.... that whole thing is cheap brittle plastic and poorly aligned led/label holes and weighs i dunno, under 200g
21:37 katsmeow-afk oh
21:37 theBear oh and i've been rambling, but sensible people only get grumpy with imperial units when you get to accurate stuff and start dividing inches by 1000 AND calling it something silly like a mil <grin> it's just, so wrong :)
21:38 katsmeow-afk i won't be going back into pro audio, but if i did i'd haveto trade all my wired mics for wireless, just because of the weight of the cable bag
21:38 theBear in radio mic world, you probably wanna spend an ABSOLUTE minimum of $900 of any given dollars for a setup these days
21:39 tsmeow-afk still has a briefcase full of Shure 58 clones,,, which might be convertable to wireless, if i try really hard to do
21:41 tsmeow-afk grabs some $4 am/fm radios off ebay, puts in a tiny avr to decode, build up some 100mw transmitters with tinyavr encoders, and wonders if they'd sell like hotcakes,, wait, ebay doesn't sell hotcakes,,
21:42 theBear 58's and clones don't usually have much room inside, even if you remove the glue/transformer... also 90% of the clones i've seen over the years (as in the IDENTICAL copies down to fake shure factory stickers on the capsules) are VERY brittle and sooner or later the case tends to crack in half
21:43 theBear err the body
21:43 katsmeow-afk these are all metal bodies
21:44 theBear yeah i know, solid cast thing
21:44 katsmeow-afk what i'd prolly do is put the electrnics in the body, and make a battery pack with an xlr top to it,, such that if the battery pack is plugged in the radio xmitter is on, else the mic operates like a normal mic
21:45 katsmeow-afk why would the metal body crack in half?
21:45 theBear just in the last 3 years, working at a 90% lighting company, i musta seen at least 40 different 58 copies from at least 5 different copier-companies
21:45 theBear poor brittle alloy
21:45 tsmeow-afk
21:46 theBear also often a problem with people that like to 'play' with their mic while they use it, screwing too hard/ many times the middle joiney thread on the cheap ones is often enough to just make a chunk of that threaded section come away
21:48 katsmeow-afk mine don't have that,, tho the windscreen ball does unscrew, no one has
21:50 katsmeow-afk i did find people would switch the mic off tho, so i cut down a ring connector and put it under a screw so that the crimp porton was down in the switch slot and held it on
21:52 katsmeow-afk qty 100, MPSA92 PNP to-92 bipolar 0 bids, 99cents, $2 s&h 300v 500ma
21:53 katsmeow-afk i have more than i'll ever need, but that is a great price
21:53 theBear heh, really poor copies <grin> tho it's possible you just haven't noticed.. even the real ones need a good stiff turn to get that bit unscrewed.... about 1" down the body from the ball
21:54 theBear mmm... little generic things like that are good to have an 'unlimited' supply of
21:56 katsmeow-afk he has 6 auctions like that one ending every day for a week http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-100-pcs-X-MPSA92-PNP-High-Voltage-0-5A-300V-Transistor-TO-92-/190660037259?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c64394a8b
21:56 katsmeow-afk there is a npn complement to that part too : MPSA42
21:57 katsmeow-afk 300v in a to-92 case, hard to find any higher
22:00 katsmeow-afk the MPSA42 is $5 per 100 , that's cheapest from anyone
22:00 thylane http://videolectures.net/icml08_ng_stair/
22:10 tsmeow-afk ponders a dinner of p
22:10 katsmeow-afk i am thinking that will knock me out cold
22:31 katsmeow-afk what scfi tv shows have i missed the last 20 years ? all the Star Trek series, all the Galactica series, what else?
22:32 LoRez Fringe
22:32 LoRez recent Dr. Who
22:33 katsmeow-afk was Fringe that show like lost, but after a war of some sort, and no island?
22:33 LoRez no, it's about fringe science
22:33 katsmeow-afk docudrama?
22:34 LoRez no, sci-fi
22:34 LoRez Division of the FBI investigates odd occurances
22:35 katsmeow-afk the girl with the tatoos and spikes? or the guy from Lost with the enforcer killer guy?
22:36 LoRez the latter is not sci-fi
22:36 LoRez don't nkow what show you're talking about with the tattoos and spikes
22:37 katsmeow-afk remember the guy from "Darma and Greg"? he is in the same show, i think
22:38 katsmeow-afk dharma
22:38 LoRez yeah, no idea.
22:50 thylane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROS_%28Robot_Operating_System%29
22:55 katsmeow-afk 100pcs 2N5401 PNP 150v 600ma to-92 0 bids $0.99 $2.45 s&h
22:56 katsmeow-afk the complement is the 2N5551
23:00 thylane http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/research/research-areas
23:03 katsmeow-afk yeas, they have been putting out good data for being just some guy's garage,, but so did Tektronix, HP, and microsoft
23:04 katsmeow-afk problem is they always go for the most complex and pricy methods
23:04 katsmeow-afk grasping stuff, for instance, requires something that will run a RTOS, and it cannot pick up a car battery
23:05 katsmeow-afk anything can pick up a chess piece or a glass, not that many peplpe can pick up a car battery reliably with one paw, that's what we need help in
23:19 katsmeow-afk "help, i've fallen and i can't get up!" "sorry, i can pick up only glasses of water, i cannot even reach down to you"
23:22 katsmeow-afk "so i grabbed the robot and was pulling myself upright on it, and it fell over and broke my other leg!"
23:23 katsmeow-afk "the battery began leaking .... "
23:24 katsmeow-afk "i was mortified, positively mortified!"
23:28 katsmeow-afk "i was praying to dog, and the god walked in and was barking at the twitching robot laying on top of me! Why i tell you, it was ,, it was,, i tell you, it was *suggestive*!!!"
23:29 katsmeow-afk "it's wheels were turning like it was trying to scoot off somewhere, and they had caught the edge of my dress,, oh my dog!"
23:40 katsmeow-afk was Aeon Flux ever a tv show?
23:42 katsmeow-afk i stumbled onto a list of 7174 tv shows, and it's in there