Welcome to the Funcave

For All You Mecha Lovers Out There

Smith & Tinker are the uber-cool folks who bought the FASA licensed properties back from Microsoft. Which really means only one thing…

Gigantic fighting mecha action!

Check out the whole trailer for MechWarrior 5 right here. Yummay!

|| posted by chris under beta, game, hardware, nostalgia, robot || comments (1) || ||

The Ripple Effect AKA Women In Technology

Here’s what I’ve been doing this Father’s Day weekend…

Apple of My Eye and Cute as a Button and I spent most of yesterday working in our brand-new Mindstorms NXT laboratory building, programming and testing robots. So far we’ve built the TriBot, Alpha Rex, and Spike AKA The Scorpion. Both of them dig getting the robots to do their bidding, altho CaaB’s reactions have been roughly akin to that of a diabolical robot horde overlord.

Where did this come from? Really from four things… read more…

|| posted by chris under business, game, hardware, it pro, robot, tech hand, time || comments (2) || ||

The Next Great Female Action Star

There have been plenty of great female action stars on the big screen over the years…

Marion Ravenwood

Lara Croft

Every character played by Michelle Yeoh

and even…

Dora The Explorer

Pixar just gave us another one…

A long long time ago, in a lifetime far far away (20 years to be exact)…

I was in a session at a writer’s conference where a very well-known author basically told me I was full of it because…

Cartoons cannot, and will not, ever be able to adequately express emotion.

So all I can say now is…

Suck it OSC!

Best of all…

Emotion-expressing animation or not…

I got to see Wall-E with Cute as a Button right beside me.

And that’s always a good time!

|| posted by chris under epiphany, hardware, media, robot, rx, thumbs up, time || comments (0) || ||

Welcome To The Firehose

AKA Best.Day.Evar

Today’s penultimate session for the 2007–2008 class of Leadership Tuscaloosa was…

How shall I put this?

TOTALLY FREAKIN AWESOME!

Big huge thanks to the local health and safety organizations who hosted us, including…

• Tuscaloosa County Jail
• Tuscaloosa Fire Department
• Tuscaloosa Police Department

No, we didn’t get to fire any ordnance or discharge any rounds, but we got to see all of the following…

• A full walking tour of the county jail, including the maximum security wing
• Mobile command center
• Armored carrier for Special Response Team activities
• Bomb squad equipment, including robots
• Mobile forensic lab, including 360 degree laser imaging system for crime scene investigations
• Special Response Team (formerly called SWAT) equipment and tactics

We also got to…

• Perform emergency medical technician response for a simulated car accident
• Use a thermal imaging camera to pinpoint heat sources
• Put on a full suit of turnout gear, including a helmet, to…
• Work a fully energized firehose against a simulated fire target
• Simulate forced entry into a residence
• Field deploy a firehose (fully unrolled mine in a single toss, straight as an arrow…hella yeah!), then reroll for proper stowing

All while basking in today’s glorious 80 degree heat.

Did I say how FREAKIN AWESOME today was yet?

|| posted by chris under business, community, hardware, it pro, mobility, more cowbell, nostalgia, robot, rx, shoutout, thumbs up, unified comm || comments (0) || ||

Best.Trailer.Evar

I humbly present…

The Iron Man!

|| posted by chris under hardware, media, more cowbell, nostalgia, robot, thumbs up || comments (0) || ||