September 10, 2007

Last night I got a chance to get up close and personal with [Keepon](http://beatbots.org/), the friendly dancing robot, at the [WIRED Nextfest Creative Commons Benefit](http://www.wirednextfest.com/inform/event_09.10.07.php). I was hoping to see him perform live with Spoon, although honestly I'm more of a Keepon fan than a Spoon fan, but Keepon's performance was in the lobby, not on stage: [](https://eecue.com/p/29428/Keepon.html "Keepon") I had a chance to chat with [Marek Michalowski](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~marekm) and [Hideki Kozima](http://univ.nict.go.jp/people/xkozima/index-eng.html) a bit about their robot and they even took off Keepon's pants/dress so I could get a shot of his guts which consist of 4 geared DC motors and a RISC processor to control the motors: [](https://eecue.com/p/29430/Keepon-Lower-Guts.html "Keepon Lower Guts") They didn't take off his skin, but they said they would for me during the press preview on Thursday. The did let me peak behind the curtain at the beautiful rats nest of cables, interfaces and two MacBooks being used to control the quartet of Keepons. [](https://eecue.com/p/29432/Keepon-Brains.html "Keepon Brains") Marek Michalowski and Hideki Kozima showed off their robots to an interested crowd: [](https://eecue.com/p/29433/Marek-Michalowski-and-Hideki-Kozima-demo.html "Marek Michalowski and Hideki Kozima demo") Evidently girls really, really, really like dancing squishy robots (I mean [really](http://blogging.la/archives/2007/09/chicks_dig_robots.phtml)): [](https://eecue.com/p/29438/Keepon-Gets-Kissed.html "Keepon Gets Kissed") You can see more in [my Nextfest Creative Commons Benefit gallery](http://eecue.com/images_archive/eecue-album-1488-1-Creative_Commons_Benefit.html).

[](https://eecue.com/p/30792/Copy-of-MAKE-in-The-IT-Crowd.html) I was watching the most recent episode of [The IT Crowd](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd), and I thought I spotted a copy of [MAKE](http://makezine.com/) sitting on the desk in Roy's flat. I grabbed a screenshot and then compared it to my complete MAKE collection and it is clearly [Volume 02 ofMAKE](http://makezine.com/02/).

[](https://eecue.com/p/29420/Rosslyn-Hotel-Signs-Lit.html) Last night during the filming of [Life on Mars](http://downtown-filming-maps.eecue.com/#production_1140), the Neon signs atop the Rosslyn were relit. I posted a little more background info about the process and the signs on [blogdowntown](http://blogdowntown.com/blog/2857). Of course, I wasn't the first or only person to shoot the temporarily lit sign, [Jim Winstead](http://trainedmonkey.com/2007/9/9/rosslyn_signs_lit_), [Bert Green](http://bgfa.blogspot.com/2007/09/rare-historic-sign-lighting.html) and [Sha In LA](http://shainla.typepad.com/sha_in_la/2007/09/half-a-million-.html) also shot and blogged about the sign. You can see more of the photos I took [in my gallery](http://eecue.com/images_archive/eecue-album-1486-1-Rosslyn_Hotel_Lit.html).