Prey for Power via Rocketboom

via rocketboom.com

Solar mobile phones are selling rapidly in Kenya. Costing about $45 a piece, the phones come from China and are a standard mobile phone with a solar cell stuck to the back. Safari.com, the phone provider, says they sold 10,000 in first month.

The phones require about 6 hours of strong sunshine to charge fully. The supply of electricity in Kenya by other means is highly unreliable, so if it's cloudy for too long, you have to plug in the charger and...

"Prey for Power".

The final subtitle is highly ironic in the context.

Posted via web from andragy's posterous

iCub, the Toddler Robot (w/ Videos, Pictures)

via physorg.com

"(PhysOrg.com) -- A little humanoid robot called iCub is learning how to think for itself, bringing the world of science fiction to reality. The major goal of the "RobotCub" project is to study how humans learn and think, using a robot with the size and brain of a toddler, but the study is also expected to have practical applications in the near future.

The robot, with its cute white face and big eyes, is designed to learn from experience and adapt to changes in its environment, just like a human child. As iCub learns, the scientists behind it hope to learn about the development of cognition in humans. According to research director Peter Ford Dominey, the goal is to understand more about the ability of humans to cooperate, work together, and understand what others want us to do."

I expect it will shortly learn to play suzuki violin and then its cute as a button little face will strike terror in the hearts of every musical mother out there. I have discovered the Uncanny Valley soundtrack!

Posted via web from andragy's posterous

Slow Poetry and Invisible Kings

I'd like to rewrite my to do list more like the Romany marker poems from David Morley's Invisible Kings. Of interest here is also his recent Slow Poetry embedded, carved, etched, grown and drawn into the North Yorkshire landscape.

 

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via David Morley

Posted via web from andragy's posterous

SocialAction

via cs.umd.edu

I hate it when my really really good idea was just done by someone else. However, this is only the beginning. I look forward to testing this tool out on the dispersal of politically polarised information to see if it can measure the effects of clustering and the isolation of nodes.

Posted via web from andragy's posterous

My Extreme To Do List

via allcampgrounds.com

Blog.
Read faster.
Lose 10-12kg.
Learn how to run.
Play football at Master's Games.
Read ALL the Network Society course notes this week.
Finish research, writing and referencing Gender Agenda assignment including 7 new posts by end of week.
Read ALL the Computers As Culture notes by next week.
Apply to TED India or Global.
Draft, discuss and revise plans for final assignments, lock topic by next week.
Start researching communities and prejudices re global warming on Climate Debate Daily vs Wikipedia.
Suggest skeptic groups sue Wikipedia for not providing neutral and objective information.
Run equivalence model skepticism to feminism?
Develop pathway for retired scientists to speak out online - the changed economy of science.
Settle for one paper and scoping a 1 year research and action plan re scientific knowledge, democracy, the environment and the internet.
Research and write the application as art AND/OR altermediacy.
Discuss plans for event/art installation with Eury and DeptHead on network society and control with parent/child metaphor.
If it's a go... then interactive sound/light installation to be constructed by Dec.
Research DesignLab more.
Dream up ways of mobilizing teh internets for illiterate non English speakers.
Sketch out plans for iphone ambient experiments.
Sketch out plans for my Eureka! clustering coefficient social search application.
Build it.
Finish the wiiiteboard... and the giant catapult.
Keep momentum up in kid's robot club after Nationals, with in school challenge and liaising with high school.
Continuing Science Club.
Continuing Trampoline School.
Continuing the TED Talks... now with guest curators!!!! YAY!
Read more bed time stories to kids.
Don't forget your friends and a social life.
Remember to go to work, too.
Personal stuff. Say no more.
Give up drinking. LOL.

Posted via web from andragy's posterous

Extreme To Do List Gets Distracted

via designmom.com

What can I add to that image? These are some of the things I found along the search string "extreme to do list" starting with:

Indian Chemistry PhD posting furries on GaiaOnline as a platform to complain about discrimination, torture and wanting a job.

Quakers debating appropriate response to global warming and other environmental issues.

Extreme Pumpkins to amuse and terrify your friends, neighbours and children.

Two Knives - Incisive feminist posts on Bratz and beauty products.

Warcrafting for WOTLK from Wynthea at World of Matticus. Good tips for levelling up your characters and building miniguilds.

Maybank2u a malaysian banking portal reusing Einstein with domestic formulas.

Computer geek's 100 best aesthetically pleasing desktop turbochargers.

Design Mom.. I am duly awefully inadequate. It's amazing how many mom/women/craft things turn up on this string.

SilverClipboard puts it into practice, photographing then decimating everything superfluous in his married life. Wonder if he's still married?

Sodahead musing on do-the-extreme-right-wingers-threatening-revolution-even-realize-how-delusional-they-truly-are

LearnerDriver on 10 things to do if someone stares at you (for being young pretty and female in general)

TheSucculentWife's Favorite Things filed under Useful Stuff - ListPlanIt

and finally, I have to stop with the Extreme Women's Self Care Meetup attended by 0.

Posted via web from andragy's posterous

Augmenting Reality with the iPhone - O'Reilly Broadcast

via broadcast.oreilly.com

Although the iPhone 3.1 is old news for those in the augmented reality space, it dovetailed so nicely with my current reading I had to include it! Echoing Heidegger, Baudrillard calls for us to pay more attention to the cultural mediation of objects.

"First of all man must stop mixing himself up with things and investing them with his own image; he will then be able, beyond the utility they have for him, to project onto them his game plan, his calculations, his discourse, and invest these manoeuvres themselves with a sense of a message to others, and a message to oneself. By the time this point is reached the mode of existence of 'ambient objects' will have changed completely, and a sociology of furnishing will perforce have given way to a sociology of interior design." (Baudrillard, 1997. "The System of Objects")

Posted via web from technoist at play