Excelsior!

Generally, I don't have a great deal of interest in Discovery News. Most of it seems to be the dry, simplified, stripped-of-sensationalism news that fails to interest the spectacle hungry like myself. Yeah, I'll probably chuckle when I read the story about an ancient coprolite, or the one where scientists stuck needles into elementary school children to see if their pain was better soothed by a mother's touch or television cartoons. But in general, not much there gets my attention.

But then I noticed a couple of interesting headlines right next to each other:

Robotic suit? Rocket man?


Robotic suit?
Rocket man?
Robotic suit?
Rocket man?

It's about damn time. Onwards and upwards, true believers.

Forward, fast

Going back to work next week. I've been enjoying (sort of) a two-week break between semesters. I say "sort of" because even though classes ended two weeks ago, I've been unable to be completely finished with the semester's work. There were exams, workbooks and stacks of powerpoint presentations to grade. There were essays to read, evaluate, and penalize for plagiarism. Then there were the on-line student records to enter, correct, and re-correct. And there were the students who, finding they were going to fail because of a lack of attendance, participation and work submission, began making desperate and repeated attempts to show an interest in passing the course.

All of these things took up time. And now, with half the break gone, I find it's time to start preparing for the coming term. As a condition of my employment, I am paid fairly well per hour of class taught with the understanding that I must consider myself compensated for the the work done outside of class.

Funny, but when I'm called in during my 'holiday' to clear up errors resulting from a lack of foresight, planning or effort on the part of management, I find myself less inclined to accept the terms of the contract with good grace.

Am I lazy? Oh yes. But am I justified in feeling like my employers are taking advantage of everyone on these sorts of contracts?

What do you think?

Ugly and beautiful

A long time ago I studied animation. Like, the actual nuts-and-bolts mechanics of making moving cartoons with paper and ink and film. Come to think of it, it was real 19th century stuff. Except for the plastic cels we used for the final project, almost all the other materials and technology would have been easily available 100 years ago.

Anyway, one of my fondest memories was of trying to figure out how something moved so that the motion could be rendered in individual poses and then animated on film. I suppose that computer animation techniques make that sort of thing somewhat quicker, and that motion capture just gets someone to make the motion and then it's recreated automatically.

But I liked the process of working out how the motion went step by step. And this little video made me think of that:

Dance, fat man, dance!