14 weeks to go & A Robot Inventing Farmer!!!

Hello Everyone,

Thanks again for being so supportive and here are the updates and Robot gossip.

Robot Gossip:

So my sister told me a story about a Farmer who has no formal education making robots in China. He has made almost 50 that can do things from just walk to pour tea. Here is a short video of him from this year.

http://shanghaiist.com/2010/04/21/robot-farmer-shanghai-expo.php

He is my hero! I mean I do have formal education in physics and have actually taken electronic courses but don't have the balls to make a robot. Maybe I should. If you are really interested in him, watch this next link that was done in 2007. It is nice to see how much he has grown in his craft and how much more recognition he is getting.

http://gizmodo.com/287492/mr-woo-the-chinese-robot-farmer

Stay for the end of the video.....it is pretty cute.

Last Week's Progress and Next's Weeks Expectations:

So, I did get those distances and wrote 2 programs to get me a total number of GCs (Globular Clusters). I felt great because I also wrote 2 pages of one of my thesis chapters. Thanks to my lovely sister and her boyfriend, for taking me in all weekend and playing with my kid, I got a lot of work done.

Next week I hope to finish a rough draft of this chapter. My goal is around 15 pages. I think that is going to be really, really difficult but still doable. Please, cheer me on.

15 weeks to Rough Draft a PhD thesis & Burning Robot Questions!!!

Hi Loyal Followers,

I am posting this as motivation and a cry for help. I want/need to write a rough draft of my PhD thesis by August 7th. If I announce it here, I think I will be held accountable. You, my wonderful geek brethren, can help me by words of encouragement and possibly advice. However, it won't be all, boring posts about globular clusters (GCs), galaxy profiles, and data reduction; I will also post, EACH WEEK, a fun fact or controversial robot question to satisfy your nerd needs.

Robot Question:

What makes a robot? Is Data from Next Generation a robot or an android? Is an android just a subset of robot? Does a robot need to be in a humanoid form (2 legs, 2 arms, head..etc) so are those machines on a assembly line not robots?

Week 1 - Get Distances & Find Total Number of GCs:

I need to collect distances to 11 galaxies in the Shapley Super Cluster and use those distances to get a Globular Cluster Luminosity Function (GCLF) and to find the total number of Globular Clusters (GCs) surrounding each. I need to figure out 'Specific Frequency'. This section is more for me....holding me accountable. Don't worry if you don't understand anything...I am having trouble too. However, if you totally know what I am saying, send me a comment and help me out.

ROBOTS IN SPACE!!!!

So if you are a dork like me, you may has been paying attention to the "Obama's new Space Program" news. Well, it does relate to a couple of my favorite things, robots and space (which is what my research is about). There are a lot of people that are mad that President Obama would favor Robots in space over going to the moon, again, with people. What most people don't understand is that traveling in space is dangerous. Not only does bad stuff happen in the launch but there is radiation, bone and muscle loss. I mean, I know that sending humans in space is exciting but we just don't have the technology right now for a safe flight to Mars. Click on the link to read about the radiation dangers.
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/2122/how-safe-is-travel-to-mars

Also most people don't even know that we have something called "The International Space Station (ISS)" where astronauts from all over the world do experiments (switch out people every few months). They are helping medical science and doing work to better understand how humans will react to a long space mission...maybe to Mars. However, it takes time to figure out ways to correct the affects of long term space travel. The one cool thing is that we are sending up Robots..ROBOTS..to the Space Station to help with the experiments. Check out how human it looks. He looks buff (picture and link included)
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=30604

My point it: I would love to send humans in space (and by the way we are sending them to Live In Space on the ISS), but I do not want a premature Mars mission where everyone gets cancer and has a hard time getting back and I also do not want to go back to the Moon, just for the hell of it. If we were building an amusement park there like Futurama, then that would be another story.

What do you think? Do you think Obama made the right decision?

Emerald Con, Sakura Con..Pros & KAHN!!!!!

So I just got back from standing in line at Sakura Con for 4 HOURS!!!! (If you don't get the Kahn joke, please go look up Star Trek II). That's right, I spent more time in line, to get the tickets, then in the actual Con. I took my cousin and we spent the time, in line, taking pictures with people and dealing with the theft of her old Gameboy DS.

My sister, who helped me with the title, urged me to tell the story. We figured around hour 3, standing in the line, that my cousin's DS was gone. After yelling "HAS ANYONE SEEN A WHITE BeDAzzLed DS?" for a good 15 minutes straight, she had lost hope. Plus, she was embarrassed that I shouted her DS was Bedazzled. I was determined NOT to start the day like this. Finally, a guy 6 people behind us started shifting his eyes to the left mouthing, "That guy. He took it." I mouthed "Which guy?" "The guy with the stroller, " he answered. I confronted a large (as in fat), very stereotypical-looking nerd and flat out asked "Do you have the white DS?" He acted very surprised and said "Ooooh yeah, here it is," and gave it back. My cousin thanked him and I did too, briefly. Who steals a Gameboy from a 13 year old in a 4 hour line at an Anime convention...while taking care of a kid? Crazy! Anyway, the line took so damn long because they were printing out name tags for everyone and taking an address, email & phone numbers per person. Very crappy registration! The good part is that we got to we watch some anime in a big room and saw lots of great Cosplay (Truly, there weren't very many bad ones and we actually felt out of place because we weren't dressed up). The only Robot I saw was a little toy robot called Tofu Robot (picture included). That surprised me. This place was supposed to be celebrating everything that is Japanese and there were no robots...Booooooo.

So the Emerald was a few weeks ago and my sister told me that she would buy me a 2 day pass if I dressed up. So I did. I dressed up as Harley Quinn (Joker's Girlfriend). I couldn't go more then 3 steps without someone wanting a picture. One picture is included with me and a Ghostbuster. At that point I totally could understand why people dress up and do the convention circuit. I actually saw the same Batman & Superman at both Cons. Oh and the line to get tickets at this Con......10 minutes. It was smaller in crowd but it had a lot more booths. There were a large amount of local artists which was uplifting. I really wanted to see Will Wheaton. I don't know why. We actually saw him up close but this does remind me of a huge flaw in my Robot list from the last post. Anyone who loved Star Trek: The Next Generation, like I did, will notice that Data wasn't mentioned on the list. I am so sorry. However, when a robot gains weight over the years, it does ruin the fantasy.

Bottom Line: Cosplay is fun when done properly.