Without a Traceroute

So I’m here to shamelessly plug Monochrom’s USA tour. As previously discussed in this blog, Monochrom are awesome. Anyone in America these days should make an effort to see them. I sincerely doubt it will cost much, if anything, since Monochom’s relationship with capitalism could generously be described as ‘conflicted’.

I was also thinking it would be quite amusing if any of my American friends who attend would bring some sort of small, strange gift to give to Johannes Grenzfurthner. You’ll recognize him as the loud, singing one wearing all black.

Examples of the kinds of things he might appreciate are: Chick Tracts, Burger King body spray, historical memorabilia from the German American Bund, a Kinko’s-bound collection of applied office art works (a.k.a. bored doodles) stolen off the desks of your coworkers, or Sarah Palin campaign buttons. But use your imagination, many of you are more creative than I am. If anyone goes to see the show, be sure to come back here and comment about it.

Right Claw South – The March 2009 Monochrom Tour:

• March 7: San Francisco (8 PM @ Soviet Special, Chez Poulet, 3359 Cesar Chavez)
• March 11: San Jose (9:30 @ Etech/LateTech, Fairmont Hotel)
• March 14: Seattle (8 PM @ Theatre4, 305 Harrison, 4th Floor)
• March 18: Chicago (7:30 PM @ Mercury Cafe, 1505 W Chicago Ave)
• March 19: St. Louis (3 PM @ Webster University, Dept. of Arts)
• March 19: St. Louis (9 PM @ to be announced)
• March 21: Brooklyn/NY (8 PM @ NYCResistor, 397 Bridge Street, 5th Floor)
• March 24: Boston (8 PM @ to be announced)

So I’ve done a few things that merit longer, better posts, but I haven’t really written those “good” posts yet. Oh, my kingdom for a counterfactual computer (where the mere possibility of my writing such posts would mean that they were already written).

In the absence of reality-bending quantum effects, I’m going to slap together a collection of links and brief anecdotes in order to try to keep up my regular posting schedule. Consider this my “really coming into his own as a blogger” post.

Tonight You Belong to Me (ukulele cover) from buriednexttoyou on Vimeo.

Dave Hoffman is awesome and much better at the ukulele than I am—I am still working on it. He’s also not bad at harmonizing with his evil doppelgänger (you can tell the evil one by the beard). I’ve been looking for a good excuse to link to him for some time now, and I’ve decided if there’s one thing this blog is sorely lacking, it’s ukulele musical interludes. That’s as good a reason as any. Anyone who enjoys eccentricity in their creativity should check out his site.

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It’s like regular fame, only without any of the wealth, recognition, or offers of sex that usually accompany it.

So Roboexotica was featured on BoingBoing Gadgets, the recently-launched BoingBoing spinoff which is kind of exactly like Gizmodo, Engadget, Gadgetizer, GadgetVenue, Wired GadgetLab, TheGadgetBlog, and Ubergizmo. Clearly, the world was crying out for a new gadget blog.

Anyway, the photo they chose for the story features none other than yours truly, driving Chassis! His creators were very kind in letting me drive their expensive, awesome robot. He’s fairly simple to control, with a two-joystick tank-tread-style control scheme. But the joysticks are analog, and his motors are actually pretty powerful. It’s easy to push too far and send Chassis careening across the room. Also, one joystick is a bit more sensitive than the other (“He has a limp,” they tell me) so you have to learn to correct for that if you want him to go straight at all. There are also buttons on the remote that make him blink, wink, dispense beer, or rotate the little metal fan on his head.

They also let me try the headset and take a turn doing the voice for Chassis, frightening small children when the robot talked to them (I was nice!) and amusing drunk adults.

1. They’re lazy. Formatting a blog post as a list is a really cheap way organize it. It spares the author from having to actually put their thoughts together in a logical, coherent manner because the list automatically imposes an organizational structure on the post. You don’t have to worry about making one idea flow smoothly into the next because you can just throw down the next number as abruptly as you want.
2. No intro or conclusion. You can get away without these basic elements of writing your high school English teacher wouldn’t shut up about. You don’t have to write an introduction because you just put #1, and you don’t have to write a conclusion because you can just stop writing after the last number. Usually you go for 10, but if you run out of ideas you can always have a “top 6″ list. (more…)