More is Less

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger I suppose. And if I have to do another software update I'm going to be the strongest man alive. I recently upgraded to OSX 10.6. I had a single reason for doing so: a bug in apple's openGL implementation meant my favorite program, blender, didn't work. It would crash after just a few minutes of use- every time.

10.6 fixed that error, and I must say Blender's been working excellently for me. I just can't believe it took an entire system software upgrade to fix that one little but.

I'm happy about that, but a little upset that exposé now shows me windows scaled to funny proportions. I liked this better before. A lot of people are complaining about the blue glow, that doesn't bother me in the slightest, but the weird scaling for windows in exposé greatly reduces its usefulness, for me at least. David Trang seems to have summed up most of my thoughts on the matter, so if you want to know what I honestly think of the new exposé size, see his thoughts.

The upgrade did inspire me to go hunting again for a solution to one of the worst things about the new macbooks. Namely, the absence of a numpad on the uio-jkl keys. For a lot of people it didn't matter, but for those of us who used it, that was a major cripple.

2001 Websites

As you probably know, I'm into electronics. I'm fascinated by every new thing, from the ingeniously simple to the awesomely complex. There's a lot out there, it's a good time to be alive.

I was searching for some information on a hobby of mine though, and I was incredibly disappointed at the results I found. I did a search for BEAM robotics, and it seems there hasn't been any progress made, not a single noteworthy thing, since 2003. Google's top search results don't include anything recent, apparently the most relevant links are nearly a decade old.

It's not like I'm searching for Hammer Pants here, this is robotics! I think it's reasonable to expect some recent news, developments, and articles. But apparently that's too much to ask. It's clear that BEAM was very popular from the late 90s-the early 2000s, but then it must have fallen off the face of the earth, because no one on the internet seems to be talking about the subject.

I'm going to do my part. I've got a little blog going dedicated to the art of BEAM robotics. It's a fascinating realm, full of hard hacks, clever design, optimization, and (generally) analog electronics. Beam bots meet the expansion of their acronym, including bionics, electronics, aesthetics, and mechanics. I created the beambots blog (name subject to change) to cover what's new in the field, even if I'm the only one doing any beam work and posting it to the internet.

I'll keep you updated if I find any post '01 BEAM resources. I'd love to find some myself. I hope everybody hasn't just moved on without me, and if you have... where are you? I want to know!

Whatever the case may be, I hope BEAM can hold on, if not online then off. It truly is an art practiced by masters.

Where did Analog Go?

Where are all the analog electronics? I mean, digital is great and all, but it somehow became synonymous with better. The way I see it, it's just two paths, and we focused on one. Who knows what secrets analog electronics may hold for us.

I've nothing against digital, I just think it's worth taking a step back and evaluating if analog can get us anywhere. There's starting to be some focus on this in artificial neural networks, but if my impression is correct, we're still talking way less than 50% compared to digital.

BEAM robotics make use of the analog properties of electronic devices, as do some other hobby projects. As a note, here's a project where some professional research went in to exploring the analog properties of an FPLD. Seems to show promise in using analog devices for evolutionary programming methods.

Let me know if you think I'm wrong, but analog electronics have just as much potential for shaking the future as digital electronics have in the last 50 years. We'll see where the future leads us.