Mountain View wrapup

I've been back in Phoenix for a couple days recharging. Here's the wrapup on the Mountain View trip.

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First, Mountain View is pretty.

Look! Pretty leaves! And they do that EVERY YEAR!

On Saturday I went to the Laughing Squid 10th Anniversary party. It was sort of web-geeks-meet-Burning-Man.



Hung out with a bunch of folks from Yahoo!, a couple Apple-types, and at least one Googler, but the highlight was most certainly Ouchy the Clown, who was spinning the best of Burl Ives and other modern hits.


There were a number of exhibits there that clearly came from people with too much spare time. My favorite, which was too dark for me to photograph, was a center-pivoted spinning rod with a seat on each end. Each rider, facing in toward the center, could pedal to make the whole contraption spin around. Fuuuuun. Jason served as an excellent counterweight.

At one point, we tried to pass a beer to one of the riders. After whooshing past us several times, he finally made contact with the beer — which, in devout observation of Newton's laws, shot off tangentially and beered the audience.

See also: the Photoboof!

This was a homemade photobooth...err...boof, which spit out free pictures of its inhabitants. I did not use the Photoboof!, because I wasn't sure where else the pictures would end up. You can't trust those web developers.

On the home front, the robot has learned to navigate hallways and hookah lounges with surprising grace, considering the simplicity of the program. It's being controlled entirely by its motor-control board — the equivalent of a chicken with its head cut off, running only on base neural reflexes. I'm working to wring every last drop of smarts out of this simple system, which, among other things, means I get to rewrite the abysmal compiler and library supplied by its manufacturer. Sigh.