Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

Interesting new technology called Siftables showcased at TED Talks.

I wonder who will win in the standoff between ugly dolls.

Personally, I vote for both to be gone to raise the intelligence of the next generation by a few points. Bring on the Legos instead!

Today, I finally gave into temptation and bought myself a Blackberry Curve 8320. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but hey, it was long due and was totally worth it (and I got one hell of a discount).

It’s quite a beauty, sleek, small and very easy to use. And it comes loaded with all the cool features — wireless capable, a 2 MP camera, Bluetooth 2.0, built-in multimedia player, 320 x 240 QVGA display, 64 MB internal and of course, a microSD expansion slot, 312MHz Intel processor and a whole slew of other features.

Other interesting things include such things as Blackberry Maps and a kick-ass multimedia player. And I really really love the trackball. Other things that I like about this phone is that it has a very convenient mute key (so you can have it turned on when you’re flying but it won’t try accessing any network) and a push-to-talk button on the side. The display also automatically adjusts the lighting levels by sensing its surroundings, which is really quite useful.

Sadly, it’s not quite 3G (2.75G, maybe? ) and there is no HSDPA or GPS, but hey, I am not complaining.

So yes, I am stricken with the phone fever.

I finally gave into temptation and bought myself a few Lego Bionicle sets. Have a peek.

And is it me or does anyone else think that these two pictures could totally fit into an Alien vs. Predator movie?

I could not resist putting up this picture of my three little Hexbug critters together.

They are such mean things — they try avoiding one another but in the process, end up hitting one another anyway. Almost makes me want to write a program to see what a colony of a million of these would look like.

If you haven’t noticed, I suffer from ENS (Excessive Neoteny Syndrome) and lately, I have been obsessed with making various fun things with Lego.

So, here you go – a Lego DeLorean.

I was hacking the Lego Mindstorm vehicle demo when I saw a few other things lying around on my desk. I totally could not resist taking this picture.

So, I liked the little critters so much that I decided to go ahead and buy some more Hexbugs for myself.

The first one I had was Bravo and these are called Alpha and Delta. Since I have three, I hope to collect two more and have the entire collection. That way, I can probably make them fight amongst themselves.

(Does anyone else think that they are called Hexbugs but there are only five of them? They do have six legs, though.)

And for some reason, these things remind me of those Replicator bugs from Stargate SG-1.

Meet the newest member of our family! Lana just got me a new Hexbug toy as a random gift.

Hexbugs are fun little robotic bugs that can sense the surroundings through their antennas and find their way around. Not only that, but when you make a loud noise, they can hear and react to the noise. This lets you control where they go. Interesting little buggers!

Well, I thought the instructions were rather boring. Improvisations are fun, especially with Lego.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

~H2G2, DNA

As you all know, I love mountaineering, rock climbing and a plethora of other extreme outdoor sports. So, I have always wanted a Casio Pathfinder, which is an awesome watch with such features as digital compass, altimeter, barometer and thermometer.

So this Christmas, Delana has gotten me this fantastic and very useful (not to mention possibly life-saving) Christmas gift. Yup, a Casio Pathfinder.

The model that I got is the PAG70-1V, which was one of the two models that I had wanted. This watch is totally fantastic. I am totally thrilled and excited, this little baby has got a tonne of cool features and works amazingly well. And I think that Digital Watches really are a neat idea.

Yay!

This is a new toy that I picked up at Target for $9.99 — one that has been entertaining me quite a bit for the past couple of weeks.

I like toys.

No, not the kind that you’d hide when folks come visiting, but the kind that kids play with. The kind that bring smiles to your faces.

Lego. Robots. Wind-ups. Action figures. Puzzles. Rubik’s cubes. RC operated thingys. And so on and so forth.

Just last week, I had seen the new Lego Mindstorms NXT at the store. Now, as you could probably tell by now, I love Lego. I grew up playing with Lego (and Mattel’s equivalent rip-off in India called Leo), Technic and other building blocks.

Much later, I discovered Mindstorms RCX and enjoyed playing around with them (I mean, my graduate work was done at the BORG Lab at Georgia Tech — what did you think?!). The older Mindstorms were so much fun, but I had given up hope of Lego ever coming up with another version of Mindstorms.

Now, in January, I had heard that Lego had come up with the next generation of Mindstorms — the Mindstorms NXT. Not only that, you could also preorder the Mindstorms NXT online. These were supposedly coming out in August, and I was eagerly awaiting them. However, when I saw them stumbled upon them at the store last week, I was torn between two things — my “mature” adult mind telling me that I was trying to spend $250 on toys which could be better spent on my car payment, and the child in me telling me to just go to heck with it and enjoy myself.

As you could probably not guess, the adult in me won. Well, sort of. For all of about two days.