Margolin Labs

I have been working on some new things.

margolinlabs — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:18:23 +0000

I have been working on some new things.

In the past few months most of my creative work has transitioned almost entirely to ink and paper. I have been writing an extraordinary amount, small quippy little things, some of which make it onto my twitter feed, @Carnivorousgnar. I have also been writing a series of short stories, brainstorming a lot of project ideas for which I have no time, written a set of about 250 short, 1 to 5 cell comic strips, in doing so started exploring my ability to draw and of course when I can I also have been building robots. I tell all of you this because it only recently occurred to me, by which I of course mean a friend suggested that I might share some of this and digitize some of my writing and scan some of my pictures and comics. I will attempt to start doing this in the next few weeks and perhaps I will even post some of it here.

On an entirely different note, I have started re-reading “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” and find that my intrigue is different this time around than it was when I first read it, having at the time just started my endeavors into Neuroscience at Trinity College.

As my sister reminded me today, “Don’t club any baby seals.”

-RM

My New Favorite Children’s Story

margolinlabs — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:58:06 +0000

This is my new favorite children’s story:
Once upon a time there was a poor child,
with no father and no mother
And everything was dead
And no one was left in the whole world
Everything was dead
And the child went on a search, day and night
And since nobody was left on the earth, he wanted to go up into the heavens
And the moon was looking at him so friendly
And when he finally got to the moon, the moon was a piece of rotten wood
And then he went to the sun
And when he got there,
the sun was a wilted sunflower
And when he got to the stars,
they were little golden flies.
Stuck up there, like the shrike sticks ‘em on a blackthorn
And when he wanted to go back, down to earth,
the earth was an overturned piss pot
And he was all alone, and he sat down and he cried
And he is there till this day All alone:
Okay, there’s your story!
Night-night!
-Tom Waits

Dynamixel Servo’s and Robotis Manuals

margolinlabs — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:27:28 +0000

Dear Robotis,

I know that you released your Zig2Serial hardware in the middle of last year (2008), don’t you think that a good solid year, right after the anniversary of the availability of your hardware is a great time to release a manual which describes how your hardware works, how to use it, perhaps comes bundled with the files referenced in your most recent manual for another robot which in fact references the existence of those files which you have kept hidden from us for so long.

Understand, I love your hardware, I really do, just imagine how much more I could love all of it and all of you if you let me in, if you let me see all of your files, all of you. I really love it that you tell me about them in some of your other manuals but to have access to them, that would be so nice, especially if they were in English. But, English is not an absolutely necessity, I would gladly read them in Korean or Japanese.

Really all I want is for us to get along,

Love,

Richard

Pondering

margolinlabs — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:35:18 +0000

As I sit here, at the airport, waitng for a delayed flight, because all flights today are delayed, thanks FAA for down computers. I watch a woman who know she can’t smoke hold a cigarrete in her hand at a bar, watch another man down tequila shot after tequila shot while his wife watches and smiles and I hear a couple talking about all the places that they would love to go but cannot afford.

I sit thinking about people and how boring tha vast majority are. Most people are so perfectly content in their little worlds, complaining about how they want better for themselves but unwilling to try, and I don’t get it. Why are so many people so afraid to make a call put in the effort to better themselves and actually achieve their dreams? Why would they rather sit and watch television for five hours a night rather than take two or three of those five hours and do something productive, just for themselves, learn someting new, create something, improve themselves, whatever.

Maybe the airport bar is not the best place to sit and watch people and ask why they are not better.

AT&T UVerse is terrible

margolinlabs — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:41:17 +0000

Upon navigating and having to login to at&t’s UVerse customer three times before getting to the ‘contact us’ page, I wrote them this email to hopefully recieve some customer assistance sometime soon:

The television is unwatchable due to periods of hdmi error, loss of audio and jumpy buffering problems on the central dvr and far more unwatchable on the other boxes. The internet is intermitent.
This must be remedied because at the moment your television service is worse than trying to stream video on a dial-up connection and the internet is less consistent than one.
Please advise, or as a new customer I will feel the need to abandon your service.

I hit the submit button, and was greated by a “Page not found or has been moved error page.” I would think this was funny if I was not trying to download a very small attachment from an email I sent myself but cannot because the internet connection I have in my own home is at the moment so slow and inconsistent that a 76k download keeps timing out. If AT&T does not fix this for me soon I will be forced to irritate them into giving me free intermitent and barely functional service for life no matter where I go and what I do.

Comics

margolinlabs — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:23:53 +0000

So I have been drawing comics, mostly three framed comics, and I have about fifty of them and I am going to try to start to digitize them soon so that I can share them with people. Although my skills as an artist may not be the best I think that it adds a certain amount of charm to the comics.

I am also in summer school for the summer which is hugely fun. I am taking three classes, Heat Transfer, Experimental Methods and Measurements, and English 2.

Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Richard eventually overcame these handicaps to become an investor, an inventor and an invader.

An Update

margolinlabs — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:33:53 +0000

It has been a while since I last posted. Here is what is new:

I found myself featured at work on Robots.net, and according to that article we will be in next month’s robot magazine.

Two weeks ago I sat in on and observed a prostatectomy surgery performed by Dr. Ashutosh Tewari at the New York Presbyterian Hospital with a Da Vinci Robotic Surgical System. It was a very interesting surgey to watch because it was not an open surgery, but one with five small port holes to minimize blood loss and recovery time from the surgery. It was a very cool surgery to watch and the only one I have ever seen where I wore 3D glasses for most ofthe surgery. The surgery is seen on a monitor and the images are captured by a high definition three dimensional camera. Also because the robot tools are so small the precision with which the surgery is done is incredible. If these things interest you watch some of the video’s on the website (not for the squeemish).

Space Shuttles Need Love Too

margolinlabs — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:02:51 +0000

On an entirely different toppic, I was thrilled to learn that NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis has a self destruct sequence, and that NASA is having fun practicing for space disasters check it out.

In case of an emergency, two space shuttle will hold hands, and when the emergency has subsided on shuttle will leave, waving goodbye, and then the other shuttle would kiss itself good by and self destruct. I think that two shuttles holding hands is an absolutely adorable idea.

Congratulations Ann Margolin

margolinlabs — Sun, 10 May 2009 19:36:10 +0000

I want to say congratulations to my mother, Ann Margolin, for winning her race for Dallas City Council District 13 against Brint Ryan by a healthy margin of nearly 14%. The race was intense and she overcame the bottomless coffers on the Ryan campaign. See the Article in today’s Dallas Morning News (You can see me in the background of the picture too), listen to her on KERA, and see the results of the election here.

On an entirely different toppic, I was thrilled to learn that NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis has a self destruct sequence, and that NASA is having fun practicing for space disasters check it out

Thanks MIT Technology Review

margolinlabs — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:24:06 +0000

I am always excited when I see something I worked on receive recognition. I am also always happy when something I have used is part of a world’s first. Today MIT’s TechnologyReview.com posted an article entitled How to make (robot) friends and influence people. The article is about the Ibn Sina robot, which I helped build at Hanson Robotics, and how it is the first robot with its own facebook profile and can gather information from its own social network.

Finishing Up the Ibn Sina robot for UAEU