It do seem to be winter!

I kinda missed winter last year. I hardly ever left the house then, and pretty much managed to miss all of the inconvenience, with the singular exception of the major snowfall while attending denizsarikaya's endless feast. This year, however, I plan to get out a bunch more. I've also been noticing how cold it seems when I get up in the morning, even in my office, the warmest room in the house. It may be because I have 60 lbs (27 kg) less fat to insulate me than I had at this time last year.

I'm not complaining, mind you. I didn't think I would miss skipping a season last year, but I actually did. I suppose I should make an effort to go for walks in the clean brisk air and hear the *scrnch* sound that snow makes when you walk on it. Spring will be here soon enough.

The first Ancestors of a Gundum?

The trouble with being depressed for a week is that a LOT of tech news piles up while you are in no state to try and deal with it. The (virtual) piles had gotten rather deep while I was morose, and now I find its even worse than it appeared. I have started using lots of addresses that look something like 'journal-name AT sti DOT pooq DOT com' so that if a journal gives away my email address to a spammer, I'll know who did it. Well, due to a DNS 'feature' I eventually tracked down and fixed, about half of those addresses stopped working a week ago. Now that the reason for that has been found and fixed, I am sporadically receiving a whole weeks worth of mail in one shot.

Anyway, that probably means I'll be posting a bunch of tech references again, assuming that there are the usual number of worthwhile articles. You've been warned.

To start with, I'd like to point to this article about two new 'robot's from Tokyo, the i-foot and i-unit. The first is a walking unit to carry the mobility impaired, and the second is a (slightly) reconfigured hi-tech wheelchair. I sincerely hope one is not required to wear the suit in order to get the i-unit to function. Now, if they could just cross-breed these, we would be one step closer to a transforming mecha, and we all know how important a tech milestone that will be, right?

Just in time for Christmas: Holographic Food.

Here's a place where you can buy lollipops which have holograms engraved on them. Christmas scenes are available...