My post earlier about the hovering robots got me thinking about other robot videos I’ve seen recently. I thought I’d have a look to see what else is around online at the moment. Here are some highlights.

Big Dog

This video has been around for quite some time but its rather impressive. Highly tuned reactive control system in action, and very nicely done too.

Aldebaran Nao

Spotted these little guys’ new version announcement a few months back. Seem a bit gimmicky in the promo video but I wouldn’t say no to having a go with one. Would be interested in finding out how its programmed, unfortunately they’re very secretive with their APIs.

Asimo

Honda’s got a bit gimmicky with Asimo too.

Here are some really awesome robots in action. The University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP lab has been working on getting quadrotors under control and working together in tasks.

It looks like these are controlled by a central computer wirelessly and then tracked with cameras and markers in the environment, which is a great way to quickly get started without requiring gigantic machines with processing and swarm communication algorithms on board.

The first video has been doing the rounds online, but the other two are still really worth checking out.

Matlab has long proclaimed itself as “The language of technical computing”. However its language leaves a lot to be desired.

Having worked with Matlab on and off for a number of years now, I am going to try and explain what could be improved:

• Error messages – usually vague and not helpful, and often difficult to find explanations for what a particular error message actually means.
• Programming experience – largely just a text editor. Something like Intellisense would go a looooong way to improving the experience.
• JIT compiler – a just-in-time compiler (much like Eclipse does with Java) would benefit the above point too. As Matlab variables are just matrices, you have to work out what size they are for yourself. There’s not even a way to annotate what size they should be so you don’t have to look it up later.
• Proper functions and objects – Matlab’s function definition system is backwards and annoying. The syntax is horrible too. Objects are (somehow) worse.
• Proper education support – this is something they could charge universities for and make a killing. However it will only work if the support is at the right level for students. If we’re learning a particular technique, highly technical docs are all well and good, but could do with some background as to how the parameters relate to the base technique.

Everyone seems to be going mad about Pintrest at the moment so I thought I’d give it a go.

I’m not one for the most abundant content on there (flowers, arty photos, dresses and various haircare products) so I made one about something I am interested in (and do know something about) – F1 cars.

So far I have found numerous problems with their website:

• Popup modals are visually nasty, difficult to pick out from the background when they’re popped up and often get their events bound multiple times if you do it more than once on the same page
• Following links seems a bit weird, sometimes it follows redirects and sometimes I end up with feedproxy URLs on the “pins”
• There doesn’t seem to be a good way to get to one of your boards – you have to click just below its title?!
• Generally buggy picking images – several times I tried to pin the second or third image from a URL and it still rendered the first one
• Their CDN is sloooooow to propagate – first few page loads and the image isn’t there
• Have to log in with Twitter or Facebook (at least you can turn it off again later)

Let’s hope the experience improves a bit.

Just had a phone call from a “London based head hunting agency”. Sounds dangerous.

They proceeded to ask me about my current work situation and whether they could help me find a job. I politely declined, telling them I am completely busy at the moment and I am perfectly capable of finding myself a job if I were to require one now or in the future.

Failing to take this hint, they enquired as to my current work situation, for the express purpose of potentially getting in touch later. I told them that they should do their research first: a simple Google search of my name would give you probably everything you needed to know and more about my work situation at the moment. I then told them (again) that I do not require their help. They hung up rudely.

They clearly took my advice: a few seconds later a LinkedIn invite appeared for someone from a London based head hunting agency. I reported it as spam.

Here are some tips for recruiters looking to get in touch:

• Read On Communication. It’s only short and will tell you that phoning me isn’t a great idea. I won’t call you back if you miss me and there is an overwhelming probability that you will interrupt me doing something important (contrary to popular belief I do not have the time or will to sit around doing nothing at any point in the day).
• Do your research. Here’s my LinkedIn. Here’s some search results for my name (if you can’t pick out the right person you’re in the wrong job). Congratulations, you’ve already found my website. If you’re going to interrupt me at least have a damned good idea who I am before you do it. If you have a good idea who I am (and you are capable of reading the previous bullet point) then you won’t call me to begin with.
• Don’t add me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn says: “Important: Only invite people you know well and who know you.” Note: a rude phone call interrupting me and trying to get information out of me that is already available online does not in any way constitute me knowing you. I will simply report you as spam. This will prevent you contacting me in the future, unless you can figure out my e-mail address (which is not rocket science either – if you can’t do that either you’re still in the wrong job).
• You can send me a LinkedIn message.

Thanks to the person that phoned me this morning for reminding me to write this post. No thanks to them for wasting 15 minutes of my time.

Update: It appears this person called at least one of the companies I do some work for and tried to talk to me using the age-old “I’m calling about a delivery”. If you try that I will never talk to you again and take great care to instruct everybody I possibly can to avoid you as much as possible.