Month: October 2007

Funny

Ballmer Peak

I liked a lot this joke 🙂

Ballmer

The president of Microsoft is “Steve Ballmer”, that’s why in the joke they talk about a supposed “Ballmer Peak”. Steve Ballmer is a man who sometimes cannot control himself, he can transform into an “animal”. Even though he can’t control his nerves and hi likes to insult Microsoft’s competence, he was intelligent enough to become one of the richest men in the world.

Here there are some Steve Ballmer’s videos that are pretty popular on the net.

This video is so famous that there is a Wikipedia article about it.

In this one he said the word “developers” fifteen times.

And the last video is a remix using the previous videos, pretty funny 🙂

Technology

"Teleport" lockers

Last week I used a “teleport” locker. They are lockers where you put your luggage/bags/whatever and you have the option to enter a post address using a screen interface. After inputing the data you pay with your Suica/Pasmo and a transport company will get your luggage from your locker and send it to wherever you selected. I tried it to send some stuff I bought in Sendai, the presents I put in the locker arrived to my home in Tokyo before me!

There are not many of these “teleport” lockers yet, but it would be nice to have them everywhere in the world.

taquillas

Technology

Humanoid soccer

Japanese were the first to create a humanoid robot. It’s been almost 10 years since Asimo’s launch, nowadays there are dozens of humanoid robots in Japan. There is a company called Kondo Robot that makes low cost humanoid mini-robots. They cost around 1.000$, and are usually available in electronics shops around Akihabara.

Kondo robots are programmable, but people usually use them using remote controllers. For example, there are competitions where humanoid remote controlled robot teams play soccer. Every year there is a pretty popular competition in Akihabara organized by Robo dreams.

There are lots of “robot competitions”, I personally know: Robolympics, Robogames andRobocup.