Drinkable Chicken

This is an interesting idea: Cubelets: modular, affordable robotics for kids and students.

Basically you build a robot out of small parts (cubes, in this case), each of which are simple to understand by themselves.

As it happens, I had a somewhat similar idea a while ago… a game that should appeal to programmers. The idea is currently very crude, but it comes down to building a “robot” from 4 parts. There would be blocks that allow it to move, see, jump, shoot, etc. You then put this robot in a certain environment (a level) and program it in some kind of language. You beat the level if it performs a certain task (maybe reaching the end, or picking something up, or even surviving for a certain amount of time… there are many possibilities).

Maybe someday I will take a stab at fleshing out the game idea some more and implement it using my “retro kit” (a small library on top of PyGame that works with a 40×25 text screen like the Commodore 64; currently unreleased). Yes, I realize that saying “maybe someday I will…” is lame. The problem is more that I have too many ideas and too little energy/motivation to implement them. :( The chaotic environment doesn’t help either. >.<

[By the way, I started writing on this blog again, because it's currently somewhat hard to update Aquiline Ascension, mostly because I don't have a Mac that is up to snuff.]

[By the way #2, I am still selling a bunch of stuff on eBay. ;-)]

It seems my “new” iMac is borked. The only Macs I have now are G3s, so blogging and hacking will be limited until I can afford a new one. (Speaking of which, I’m selling a bunch of stuff again. :-)

I suppose I *could* whip up Yet Another Blogging System using Gauche, but yeah… you can only write the same software so many times. ;-)

I was also trying to hack on something else in Gauche, but life kept interfering…

(( Gauche Scheme is seriously underrated, by the way. Although it’s an interpreter, it’s pretty fast; in an informal benchmark that I did just for the hell of it, it beat Chicken, Gambit, Scheme48 and Racket. Oh, and Python. ;-) I noticed this before, when it processed SXML much faster than *compiled* Chicken code. Also, it comes with a bunch of libraries baked in, and has a decent Windows version. What’s not to like? Well I do have a list of ideas for improvement actually, maybe someday I’ll blog about it… ))

Anyway, the plan is now, to raise ~$2000 so I can buy an iPad and a Mac that can actually be used to develop iOS software. Hence the renewed selling of stuff… As usual, I am also available for odd jobs and part-time work.