Giant Freakin Robot

The ancient city of Teotihuacan, located about 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, is one of the most intriguing places on Earth, as far as its history goes. Established circa 100 B.C.E., it was once one of the greatest cities in the world, with a population that reached around 125,000 people at its peak, and a landscape full of pyramids. In the 1970s and 1980s, a tunnel system was found beneath the Temple of Quetzalocaot — or the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, for the more exotic among you all — and while it was partially explored and mapped out in 2003, its most recent developments have been the most amazing yet.

And it’s all thanks to a Smallish Freakin’ Robot named Tialoc II-TC, named after Mexico’s god of rain. The three-foot-long, 77-pound Tialoc-II entered the tunnel last week, rolling through sludge and mud to reach the end of the tunnel, where archaeologists expected to find another chamber, similar to the ones at the mouth of the tunnel. Only the robot found three of them, thought to be burial chambers, as all these things generally are.

If someone asked you to make the smallest film ever to exist, how would you go about it? Would you use a GoPro camera with part of its lens blocked, filming ants carrying grains of salt over a half-dollar? Or would you film something as normal and then release it on a ridiculously small disc? Well, if you’re at IBM, you make a short film by blindly shifting individual atoms around, like bulbs on a Lite Brite, for the most scientifically sound stop-motion production ever. And because the plot is slightly less complicated than the title of a Curious George book, we’ll just stick to the background for this.

The future of 3D printing technology will ultimately lead to amazing medical marvels and could have amazing health benefits for almost anyone. But that shit is for doctors and scientists. What about everyone sitting in front of their computer right now?

The company botObjects is raising the bar for personal users with their ProDesk3D full color desktop printer. Assuming its finished products are as attractive as the best 3D printers currently available — as well as the attractively sleek look of the ProDesk itself, which looks like a futuristic coffee maker — this will probably be best of the best when it’s released. This is mostly due to the five-color PLA cartridge, which will allow users to mix those primary hues to print their objects in any color they choose, which isn’t an option for anyone else at the moment, and many don’t offer the use of color at all. Which isn’t a problem if you just want to print up a bunch of black pyramids for your weekend cult…I mean club meetings. But for people interested in printing out anything flesh-colored, for instance, they’re limited to just painting their pieces after the fact.

I remember being sort of excited when I got a color printer for my computer for the first time, however many years ago, and then I never ever printed anything in color. That can be blamed on two things: most of what I print in the first place is words, and I am not one who enjoys spending money on expensive inks. Unless it’s squid ink for my…club.

Speaking of expensive, there’s no price set just yet for the ProDesk. But when you take in the color aspect, the design, the intuative set-up, the ease of the software integration, and the machine’s ability to design and print things as small as 25 microns, this thing will probably cost quite a bit of green. At least you can re-use the eco-friendly cartridges, which may save you green later in life. Like three dollars worth.

Should I ever find $200,000 while hunting beneath the cushions of my couch — and 199,999 other couches — then I would see nothing inherently wrong with spending that money on taking a trip into space with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. They’ve been working the last two years on a rocket-propelled passenger craft, performing many test “flights” where the craft was dropped from a carrier plane and successfully glided without power back down to Earth. Well, they recently pulled out the rocket power, and man does that thing fly.

Richard Branson described his anticipation for the event in a Twitter post, saying, “Occasionally you have days that are ridiculously exciting. Today is such a day.” At around 8:00 AM Monday morning, the WhiteKnightTwo carrier reached an altitude of 50,000 ft and released the SpaceShipTwo, piloted by Mark Stucky and Mike Alsbury. Once it got clear of the plane, the SpaceShipTwo blasted off towards the upper atmosphere, hurtling forward at supersonic speeds for around 16 seconds before the shutting off engine power. It’s truly a sight to be seen.