Windows 7 + Rainmeter

As I'm not using windoze for work I have decided to made a gadget crap out of my desktop.

Rainmeter is just great! Some cool skins here http://customize.org/rainmeter
The crap below is from http://kazasou.wordpress.com/rainmeter/

and yes! Hatsune Miku is dancing!

Today is Towel Day. Don't forget your towel!

http://www.towelday.org/

Towel Day is an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001). On that day, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honor.

I, Robot, Now Pronounce You Man and Wife

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/16/tech/main6488799.shtml

(AP) Almost everyone stood when the bride walked down the aisle in her white gown, but not the wedding conductor, because she was bolted to her chair.

The nuptials at this ceremony were led by "I-Fairy," a 4-foot tall seated robot with flashing eyes and plastic pigtails. Sunday's wedding was the first time a marriage had been led by a robot, according to manufacturer Kokoro Co.

"Please lift the bride's veil," the robot said in a tinny voice, waving its arms in the air as the newlyweds kissed in front of about 50 guests.

The wedding took place at a restaurant in Hibiya Park in central Tokyo, where the I-Fairy wore a wreath of flowers and directed a rooftop ceremony. Wires led out from beneath it to a black curtain a few feet away, where a man crouched and clicked commands into a computer.

Japan has one of the most advanced robotics industries in the world, with the government actively supporting the field for future growth. Industrial models in factories are now standard, but recently Japanese companies are making a push to inject robots into everyday life.

Honda makes a walking child-shaped robot, and other firms have developed them to entertain the elderly or play baseball. Kokoro, whose corporate goal is to "touch the hearts of the people," also makes giant dinosaur robots for exhibitions and lifelike android models that can smile and laugh. The company is a subsidiary of Sanrio Co., which owns the rights to Hello Kitty and other Japanese characters.

"This was a lot of fun. I think that Japanese have a strong sense that robots are our friends. Those in the robot industry mostly understand this, but people mainly want robots near them that serve some purpose," said bride Satoko Inoue, 36, who works at manufacturer Kokoro.

"It would be nice if the robot was a bit more clever, but she is very good at expressing herself," said new husband Tomohiro Shibata, 42, a professor of robotics at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in central Japan.

The I-Fairy sells for about 6.3 million yen ($68,000) and three are in use in Singapore, the U.S. and Japan, according to company spokeswoman Kayako Kido. It has 18 degrees of motion in its arms, and mainly repeats preprogrammed movements and sounds.

Skytone A700 CPU specs

According to Texet - one of the retailers that sells Skytone A700 as 8.9" Touch Screen Tablet PC (EZB890), the CPU is RMI AU 1250.

Its primary features are:

Customized MIPS32® Core

• 333, 400, and 500MHz

• 32-bit architecture

• 16KB instruct + 16KB data caches

• High-speed multiply-accumulate (MAC) and divide unit

• 1.2V core, 3.3V I/O

Media Acceleration Engine (MAE)

• Support for MPEG1, 2, 4, and WMV9 scaled up to 1024x768

• MPEG2 main profile/main level (720x480, 10Mbps, 30fps)

• MPEG4 advanced simple profile/level 5 (720x480, 4Mbps, 30fps)

• WMV9 main profile/medium level (720x480, 2.5Mbps, 30fps)

• DivX® certified portable

DDR SDRAM Controller

• Supports 2.5 or 1.8V DDR1/DDR2 and mobile DDR memory with speeds up to DDR500

• 16/32-bit data, 14-bit address

• Up to 512MB (four 1-Gbit devices)

• 1:1, 2:1, 3:1 system bus clock to memory clock options

• Unified memory architecture with dedicated video subsystem

Static Bus Controller

• 16-bit data bus interface

• IDE interface with support for PIO mode and multiword simple DMA data transfers

• Support for both NOR and NAND Flash devices

— Boot from NAND or NOR Flash

— Supports 30 bits of addressable memory using 15 pins and address latch protocol

• Compact Flash/PCMCIA

• Support for external 10/100 Ethernet controller

AES Hardware Encrypt/Decrypt Engine

• AES 128

• ECB, CBC, CFB, OFB modes supported

• 100/50/25/12MHz clock option for power/performance considerations

LCD Controller

• Up to 1024x768 resolution screens

• 32-bits per pixel aRGB color resolution support

• Four prioritizable overlay windows

• Alpha override and per-pixel alpha blending

• Four-color hardware cursor

• Configurable on-chip memory area for palette RAM, gamma correction, or 1KB frame buffer

Integrated Peripherals

• Two Programmable Serial Controllers (PSCs) – each independently capable of being programmed for AC97, I2S, SPI, and SMBus (system management bus) serial protocols

• Two Secure Digital/SDIO/MMC Controllers

• USB 2.0 Host and Device Controller with HS, FS, and LS support (for both)

— Configurable Host, Device, OTG (On-the-Go) support

• Two UARTs

• GPIO (48)

Camera Interface Module

• 8-10 bit parallel data bus

• Planar modes support CMOS/CCD sensors

• CCIR 656 data input

• CIM image data is autonomously planarized in RGB or YCbCr format, relieving the core from the actual work

• A Raw Data Mode supports moving CIM input data unchanged to memory

Power Management Modes

• Sleep

• Hibernate

• Idle0/Idle1

Other

• Low power

• Package: Pin count 372 Plastic BGA

Skytone A700 vs iPad

Skytone A700 everything 2 times less (almost :)

	Skytone A700	Apple iPad
CPU	MIPS 500MHz	ARM 1GHz (Apple A4)
Screen	8.9 TFT (1024x600)	9.7 TFT (1024x768)
RAM	256 Mb DDR2	256 Mb DDR2
HDD	2GB NAND	16GB NAND
SD/MMC/SDHC	up to 32GB	:-P
WiFi	802.11b/g	802.11a/b/g/n
Bluetooth	:-P	2.1 + EDR
3G	:-P (external)	UMTS/HSDPA (Optional)
USB	2x (A/B/Host)	:-P
Media	MPEG1/2/4,H.263, H.264,VMW9,RMVB	MPEG4, H.264, M-JPEG
Accelerometer	:-P	Yes
A-GPS	:-P	Yes / 3G
Battery life	5 hours	10 hours
Weight	720 g	680 g (730 g / 3G)
Price	$250 ($320 UA)	$499 ($830 UA)

The biggest iPad advantage is long battery life and app store.

8-bit Starcraft

Hellraiser VS Space Cube

http://www.handlewithlinux.com/smallest-linux-pc

Cute Linux powered humanoid robot, speaks, listens and knows your face

http://www.handlewithlinux.com/linux-powered-humanoid-robot

This is wakamura a 100cm high little robotic pall , originally developed to be used in house as a baby sitter.
It has face recognition for 10 faces and understands 10000 words. It's powered by Linux and it's developed by mitsubishi.

Controller

CPU

Multi processor configuration

Operating system

Linux

Robot control architecture

Serial bus connection distributed processing I/O

Sight

Omni-direction camera x 1
Front camera x 1

Hearing

Directional microphone x 1
Non-directional microphone x 3

Touch/Force sensing

Shoulder sensor
Hand sensor

Voice

Speaker

Safety Structure

Designed for minimum energy consumption and maximum safety.
Complies with the Japanese domestic standards of home appliances
Safety joint structure prevents finger pinching

Interlocking

Arm: full axis servo level collision detection (torque monitoring)

Originally available for 14.000$ but nowadays you'll have to travel to Japan to meet him, as it's for rent in Japan only. ;-(

BBQ/cocktail party 9 May 2010

Full album

Tequila Corralejo 100%

"Corralejo Reposado is aged for four month in barrels of three different types of wood - French and Amercan oak and white oak.

This is our unique method of influencing the taste of the tequila by using the 3 flavors of wood.

This method has been acknowledged with 3 gold medals at international events and with

the Double Gold Medal at the World Liquor Competition in 2001 and 2007"

...pretty nice actually :)