I love barcodes. Besides saving me a ton of time when ringing up your book club purchases, I just like the way they look. I always love it when a book designer incorporates the barcode into the aesthetics of the book jacket. The folks at Design Barcode are nerds like me, and have devoted their existence to spicing up these ubiquitous little buggers.
Every time I hear war mongers talk about who should and shouldn't be allowed to develop nuclear capabilities I can't help but think of this song by the great Tom Lehrer. I honestly don't think any country can be trusted completely with the ability to destroy all life on the planet, but that's just me.
The New York Times covers the the last pinball factory in the US. It includes a glimpse into a dwindling industry that hasn't lost it's sense of fun. It also includes funny quotes from the curator of the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas that is a must-see destination for any pinball fan.
Anyone my age or a little older will remember this classic bit of advice from KTVU channel 2's old puppet pals Charlie and Humphrey. There's no video for this, but just the music and voices take me back to a simpler time and place. Thanks to alert customer Dave Watts for bringing this to my attention.
Yes, THAT Steve Ditko. With his first new comic in eight years, Ditko shows that he's not just a recluse, but a reclusive artist. I'll try my best to get some of these for the store soon.
Paro is the world's cutest therapy robot. According to the website, Paro is a "Seal Type Mental Commit Robot", designed to treat patients with Alzheimer's and other emotional illnesses.
Paro learns to act how you'd like it to by seeking out affectionate petting and more disturbingly, by trying to avoid making patients hit it. Apparently it's sensors know the difference between a loving caress and a brutal beating. There are some people out there who can't tell the difference between those!
Here's an upbeat little tune written and performed by a very bad man. Sometimes it can be tough to separate an artist from his art, but you kind of have to in order to appreciate this song. But you have to admit the song is catchy.
Does anybody else think that the idea of free-moving, self-replicating robots is probably not the best idea? This is a prototype that only uses a pen instead of an actual routing head, but this thing has the potential to be a completely autonomous CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) fabricator. Seems like we're just playing into Ultron's hands with this one.
Nexi is an MDS robot which supposedly stands for Mobile, Dexterous and Social, but I think the title of this post is a little more accurate description. Can you imagine a young child being anything but totally terrified by this machine? If only Jim Henson were still around, he could really help these people!
This is a link to what may be the most impressive robot ever built. It's not only able to carry out complex tasks, it also passes the Turing test. It's so top-secret that I can't even embed the video, you must click here to see it, but trust me, it's worth it!
But if I was, I'd be number the number six. Why? I'm glad you asked.
Six is a perfect number, quite literally. A perfect number is one that is the sum of all of it's own positive divisors. 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, it's actually the very first perfect number. The next perfect number is 28, followed by 496 and 8128.
Six similar coins can be arranged around a central coin of the same radius so that each coin makes contact with the central one (and touches both its neighbors without a gap), but seven cannot be so arranged. This makes 6 the answer to the two-dimensional kissing number problem. The densest sphere packing of the plane is obtained by extending this pattern to the hexagonal lattice in which each circle touches just six others. Bees figured this out a few million years ago, we're just catching on.
According to the bible, god created man on the 6th day, and that was so much work even he needed to rest the whole next day. I think he just hung out and watched football. But take 3 sixes and you've got the mark of the beast (also known as the number of man) according to Revelations so three sixes has become the sign of the devil.
Carbon, the fourth most abundant element in the universe and the basis for all known life has an atomic number of six. Without it, not only would we not have life, but we'd also not have pencils, diamonds, or charcoal barbecue and what good would life be without those?
Perhaps most importantly of all, it was 6 years ago today (April 1st) that I bought Hijinx Comics and started the long trip that's lead me here. In that time I've opened, sold and closed other stores, but I know now that I belong here in Willow Glen and I hope I'm here for a good long while to come.
Thank you all for all of your support and encouragement. It makes it all worthwhile and I could not do it without you!
