By far the most interesting robot I saw was the RoboTuna, which looks eerily fishlike (no gills). The tuna (the real one) is known to be able to travel long distances, which led scientists to believe that tuna must use their energy efficiently, which led some crazy geeks to try and replicate the tuna’s efficiences in a robot. I wish they have the video of RoboTuna online, it was amazing to watch.
Some other interesting projects at MIT that I didn’t see at the Museum:
I first heard about the WTC attacks by reading this post on evolt.org at probably 9:00am. I remember walking over to our kitchen at work and mentioning it off handedly to someone else, who confirmed that she had heard ‘something’ about a plane hitting the WTC. We didn’t have a TV at work, so the skeleton crew that stayed (my wife is my ride home and she wasn’t offered the day off) listened to the radio reports, called (tried to) family, read email, and tried and tried to get to cnn.com, washingtonpost.com, boston.com or any other news site to see what was going on. I remember postulating that the planes were destined for California because that would have meant full tanks of gas, which would lead to more destruction (and perhaps the reason the towers actually did fall)…
Spent the day w/ Mom and Dad Waterbury doodling up the coast through New Hampshire and into Maine. We stopped at Fort Constitution in New Hampshire, drove to Portland, Maine (right past York and the Nubble Lighthouse because we’ve already seen that one) where we stopped at Portland Head Light, supposedly one of the most picturesque lighthouses around… Fun time had by all, pictures to prove it.
Sign up for the cooper newsletter. Check out the nice form and the exceptional error handling. Be disappointed by the lame ‘Thank you for signing up!’ page. Seriously, how long does it take to add a cooper.com branded thank you template? 2 seconds?
Great site with an inside look at how Microsoft manages (better yet: tries to contain) the 3.1 million pages strewn haphazardly throughout their ‘intranet’, if one can call 8000+ separate intranets one ‘intranet’.
I’m trying to understand investing, picked up a book on index funds, and now I’m doing web research. (in short: index funds premise is ‘passive’ management… you invest in the S&P 500 and expect that over 10 years your investment will outgain an ‘actively’ managed portfolio because your financial adviser a) cannot consistently pick winners and b) financial advisers make money by churning… getting you to sell this and buy that, in addition to their ‘management’ fees. So what’s *really* true? Gotta find both sides of the argument right?
Fool.com on S&P 500 — excerpt: “(Psst. There’s a reason that all these magazines don’t tell you how simple mutual fund investing really is. Scientific marketing surveys and focus group testing have determined that magazines with covers that read “Index Funds: Still The Best Choice!!!” every single month really wouldn’t sell as well as magazines that promise “Our BRAND NEW 10 Best Mutual Funds To Buy RIGHT NOW!” Sad, but true.)”
