Filled with daft ideas

[hirez]

Boo. For a stupid set of reasons (While I like pottering in the garden-thing, I don't much care for the feeling of being observed doing same. Since we live in a terrace, this feeling is near permanent and yes I know at some level that no-one gives a bugger, but when I'm somewhat tired I don't want to be able to feel another mind within a half-mile radius and would you all please just fuck off) I've left the bag of courgette plants just long enough for the flower/bud things to have been consumed by bloody slugs.

Yay. On the other hand, the rescued strawberry plants that time forgot have been shooting runners hither and yon, so I have been placing strategic pots under where the runners bend and having a bit of a propagate. I estimate that by this time next year, the entirety of the garden will be waist-deep in strawberry bushes from before television.

I think I'm beginning to process EMFcamp. It's mostly a week later and I still want to build Mr. Swearybot, keep some sort of a tech blog (http://ops.failcake.net/) and get the work c0dez out there on the github.

Mr. Swearybot? A tinplate robot that's had its clockwork brain replaced by some motors and an Arduino. It beetles up to you, goes 'Twat!', 'You useless tosser!' or 'Hopeless fucking shower!' and then steams off in search of other people to insult. A simple matter of robotics I'm sure you'll agree.

Comments

[inbetween-girl.livejournal.com]

I think you should make a Mr Swearybot/Roomba hybrid that does all of the cool stuff you said, plus the hoovering. That'd be ace.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

...and it soon find itself a part in the Red Dwarf remake

[arkady.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest a modified Rooma, with a voice unit wired into the proximity sensor! Though that does risk the thing picking fights with chairs & the fridge.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

It's been so bloody damp this summer the slugs/snails have got to everything.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Also, I think the swearbot needs a creative obscenity algorithm. I suggest the traditional [swearword]ing [animal] [bodypart].

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Forwards to tin robot heaven! I observe that eBay is riddled with the things.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yes. There seems to be A Factory in China that emits quite nasty ones. I note that the UK wholesaler hath an website and that any number of tat-and-memorabilia-from-an-age-that-never-existed shops hold stock at remarkably similar prices. Along with enamelled adverts for Landies (that never existed), family card games (that no-one ever played. Although that's probably just my wonky excuse for a family) and other entertainments of a bygone age (like rickets and outside bogs).

So I have a robot with a body-cavity that's just about Arduino-uno sized. Although it would be much easier with a Pi, no doubt.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

You might want to talk to Russ about his recent ventures into sound sample playback in an embedded environment. Suspect it's exactly what you need.

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

... in the voice of Brian Blessed or Tom Baker.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

[FX: Scree scree scree]
"You, sir, are SHITE. Aargh."

Yes. I can see how that might work.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Nah, I reckon it should be in the voice of someone deeply inappropriate, like Moira Stewart. "Good evening, here is the news. You're a cocksucker."

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I had thought to combine Inappropriate Robot with the old 'Posh birds swearing' project, but it doesn't feel like a good fit.

In my head, I have the idea of a Fast Show character in tin-robot form. Perhaps its simple wall-following behaviour will be punctuated by a loud 'Arse!' as it bounces off things. Also in my head is that the notion of a being that just stumbles about, swearing at inanimate objects, is actually quite tragic, and I want to build the thing to see how I and other people react to the thing. Call it an experiment into the edge of the Rod Brooks envelope.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I now have a mental image of it getting stuck in a corner or gap and banging repeatedly off the walls going, "Arse! Arse! Shit! Crap! Bumweasels! Fuck-fuck-fuck-fucking fuck it!"

[hirez.livejournal.com]

OH GOD YES.

Although. It would have to grind to a halt eventually and mutter to itself about everything being awful and not being able to cope. At which point the only way to bring it back to gleeful swearyness would be the tin-robot equivalent of a hug and a listen to Boards of Canada.

[nemesis-to-go.livejournal.com]

I've got tall shrubs around the edges of my centre-terrace, overlooked-on-all-sides garden. I can go out there naked and the neighbours never know.

Mostly Forsythia, Bay, and, erm, that shiny green bush that looks like mega-privet. (I also have some real privet but it's surprisingly feeble stuff - it's been comprehensively out-grown by the rest). Mostly grown from cuttings and self-seeded plants from my Mum's Bay tree.

I learned a while back that one of my neighbours refers to my garden as 'The magic forest'.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

Mega-privet = box? That's usually good for topiary & screening.

[nemesis-to-go.livejournal.com]

I've got some box, too, but that's not the one I'm thinking of. A Google search for 'that shrub that looks like mega-privet' doesn't seem to help, unfortunately. I could post a photo...

My mum would know, since it originated (like much of my garden) from a cutting from her garden. Now I'm spreading cuttings around myself. I've shrubbed-up quite a bit of greater London/Wiltshire/Kent over the last few years....and that's just the stuff I've given away officially, not counting the guerilla planting.

[reddragdiva]

LOLBOT implements the communications bit, of course.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Oh God. You know, the idea of building something that runs on BC-108s yet has more charm and personality than the average Eggs-box-live inhabitant is at once exciting and dreadfully, dreadfully sad.

[reddragdiva]

Gawd, can you even buy a BC-108 any more?

(What does one do for discrete componentry these days, anyway?)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yep: http://www.rapidonline.com/Electronic-Components/Bc108-Npn-Gp-Transistor-81-0014/

[reddragdiva]

It's like it's 1979 and I'm reading EE again! Now to build that two-transistor multivibrator that alternately flashes two LEDs! Again!

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Oh, PLEASE build Mr Swearybot!

[hirez.livejournal.com]

The prototype chassis went down well enough with the spods on the second floor...

[jendama.livejournal.com]

If only I lived closer to you . . . I could give you more courgettes than you could consume. I am running out of things to do with mine and the bush keeps producing more. I try to ignore them but then they grow into gigantic things.

[maluse.livejournal.com]

Back at the end of the last century, when I still worked at Philips Research, my research group obtained a Sony Aibo and then replaced all its internal sound samples with Bender quotes. Ah, the fun we had watching it potter into the offices of $importantPeople and asking them if they'd mind biting its shiny metal arse...