Coral Amber

Hi! Meet Purply, my first creature created in Spore Creature Creator. I find him both odd and endearing. Spore is the much anticipated new game from EA that promises to let you “nurture your creature through five stages of evolution: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space. Or if you prefer, spend as much time as you like making creatures, vehicles, buildings and spaceships with Spore’s unique Creator tools.”
The creatures are extremely customizable in a very easy to use interface. It’s fun and slightly addictive to make your own creature and then watch them dance, sing, play or pose. You may be wondering what to do with a creature once you’ve made it. Post it in the Spore online community with pictures or videos available right in the game. You can even record a moving avatar. After that, you’ll have to wait until the full version of Spore comes out next month.
Spore comes out September 7th for around $60, but you can start making outrageous creatures with the Spore Creature Creator free trial or pay $10 for the full starter kit.

I don’t even realize how much I miss the humor of Buffy until I watched this clip for the never realized Buffy animated series. She hit herself in the head with a stake! So perfect. Why isn’t anything else on tv quite this funny? Why didn’t a network pick this up? Why aren’t they just doing it on the web so I can get my fix? The world is full of unanswered questions.

I’ll admit I am a bit biased towards female type robots. They are just cuter. After all, half the point of having a robot is that it’s adorable to look at (which also explains my feelings toward robo-kitties). Last Christmas, Sakura was at the top of my list. She was adorable, lit up, and had a small vocabulary of jokes, Magic 8 Ball like fortunes, and other cute sayings. She even will keep your secrets, but I haven’t thought of any to tell her yet.
The robot is posable, but only moves on her twirling, whirling scooter. My friend’s kids had a blast dancing “with” her and asking her a million questions. She resided on my nightstand for months, but I have moved her to a display shelf where I wouldn’t knock her over as much in my morning stupor. Sakura is still available on Amazon, but the price has gone way up from the under $20 pre-christmas price.

Over at Dvice, I saw a beautiful storytelling robot called Murasaki. Murasaki-bot tells the Tale of Genji in Japanese, complete with gesturing and fan brandishing. It’s just a prototype for now, so it isn’t available to buy, but I really want her. I can only hope she comes with a USB interface so I can program her with my own MP3s and sequence of gestures. If nothing else I would love it if she connected to my computer and moved in reaction to getting email or hearing music. Gah! Will my dreams of a desktop buddy never be realized?

Femisapien is the newest release from WowWee toys. It’s a pretty advanced and interactive bot for the money, only $100.
She walks, dances, and poses like a model and will even hand out business cards. You can teach her to move by posing her in sequence and she will remember it and repeat it. She will actually dance with you. If you hold her hands she will sway to and fro just like an awkward junior high student. In Kiss Mode she blows kisses at anything placed in front of her.
She speaks “emotish” which I can only assume is like Furbish and not like angsty Morrisey songs. There is a link to a comprehensive review over at Engadget, complete with video. She is the least cute of the bunch, although she makes up for that with feminine movements.
Overall, I am still disappointed in the lack of programming available for these robots. Although they all do a variety of tricks, each is still just a toy. Perhaps I want too much. Well, here’s to the folks writing programs for the Nabaztag and the Tux Droid. May your innovations lead to the perfect cute and customizable fem-bot!

It’s so easy to wonder where the summer went. While the days are long and warm I want to make sure I fit in the little things. So here is a list I wrote earlier this month:

1. Make a mix CD (I used to do this every summer).
   
2. Ride my new bike (I’ve been foiled twice, once by a stuck garage door and then by a flat tire).
   
3. Make a flash video (with my toy robot Sakura).
   
4. Bake a yummy dessert I’ve never done before (perhaps crème brûlée cheesecake).
   
5. Write a poem.
   
6. Write a children’s book (based on my Moon Balloon idea).
   
7. Create a scrapblog.
   
8. Clean out my room (I need to pare down).
   
9. Paint my toenails.
   
10. Wear my new bikini.
    
11. Write encouraging sidewalk notes.
    
12. Play a spy game (hopefully with invisible ink).
    
13. Make a smoothie with my smoothie blender.
    
14. Eat at an outdoor cafe.
    
15. Fly a kite or play some Frisbee.
    
16. Watch the movies and read the books I already have on the shelf.
    
17. Copy files onto portable hard drive (already started!).
    
18. Get a haircut.
    
19. Make some jewelry.
    
20. Work on conversational robot program (this one is kinda tricky).
    

What’s more exciting than finding not one, but two new limited edition M&Ms in the candy aisle? Making all your friends try them and tell you what they think! I found new Wildly Cherry M&Ms with no fanfare on a break from class. Why hadn’t I been informed of a new flavor? I immediately bought them and broke them out during class. I could smell the cherry before I even popped one in my mouth.
Me: “Woah, that’s a lot of cherry…”
L, my classmate: “Mmmm”
My mom: “Oh, this is like a cherry cordial, but not as good as those cherry kisses.”
My boyfriend: refused to try them on the basis that they were cherry and therefore disgusting.
If you like cherry cordials, you’ll probably like these just fine. I found the cherry taste very overwhelming and sort of like cough syrup. Also, they are made with semi-sweet chocolate, which the candy coating couldn’t sweeten up enough for me. I couldn’t have more than one or two. In fact, I think half of the pack is still in my book bag.
I found the mint crisp flavor at a Walgreen’s when I was feeling rather bad and had stopped to get a Sprite and some medicine. I was more excited about these because of the Indiana Jones tie-in and commercials. These were made with a dark chocolate which I like more than the semi-sweet.
Me: “Hmmm… these are… strong. What kind of mint is that?”
Mom: “I think it’s more of a spearmint than a regular mint.”
boyfriend: “eh.” (he’s a man of few words.)
Now I really like mint and chocolate, but as soon as my mom said spearmint I realized they reminded me of mouthwash, but not in that fresh mouth feeling way. I liked them much more than the Wildly Cherry flavor, but they didn’t have that “pop in your mouth” feeling that makes M&Ms so evil. They did have barely decipherable icons based on the new Indy movie: a skull, a temple, a fedora. Those were mostly rubbed off from being in the bag.
I managed to finish the little bag one day when I was famished at work, but I have been spoiled by the 3 Musketeers Mint bars. They have a wonderful light mint flavor that I can’t get enough of. Mom puts a mini one in her coffee for a treat. It makes me wonder who does the taste testing for these companies.

I just discovered a post comparing all the Republican primary candidates to villains from the Buffyverse, complete with pictures! Not only are Neil Sinhababu’s picks eerily accurate, but he explains all his choices very well.
See them all at Cogitamus!

This is the new design for the OLPC XO-2. This smaller model will have dual touchscreens so it can be used as a laptop, a tablet, or an ebook. I love the ability to swap between the horizontal and vertical so I can read comfortably. It’s what I have been looking for in a device for a while. Most of all, it looks fun!

XO-2 will continue to be affordable, since they are aiming at it costing a mere $75. I would count on it being at least twice that when it comes to fruition. Although, I am impressed that it is projected to consume just 1 watt of power!
Unfortunately, it won’t be out until 2010. Even then, it probably won’t have the downloading capability of the Amazon Kindle (which still doesn’t have enough books available in ebook format for my tastes). It will probably have a webcam though, so it looks like a decent multi use device to me.
Source via Dvice

This morning I was in a traffic jam on my way to work, and later I discovered that it was caused by an overturned semi of double-stuffed oreos! If only I had known, I wouldn’t have been so cranky at being late. Um…Got Milk?


MORRIS, Ill. — Police say a trailer loaded with 14 tons of double-stuffed Oreos has overturned, spilling the cookies still in their plastic sleeves into the median and roadway.
Illinois State Police Sgt. Brian Mahoney says the truck’s driver was traveling from Chicago to Morris on Interstate 80 around 4 a.m. Monday when he fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into the median.
“The boxes came out of the trailer and boxes were ripped open,” he said.
The crash about 50 miles southwest of Chicago remains under investigation.
Mahoney says no charges have been filed but both lanes of traffic remain closed while authorities remove the cookies.
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Anyone else think the new iPod commercial looks like an ad for Trapper Keeper binders from the 80′s? Neon colors + geometric designs makes me think of giant hair and plastic jewelry. Some of them might have even had silhouettes…

Spring is in full bloom and I love these warmer days. Green is coming back full force after being almost forgotten over winter and the air smells lovely and clean. Here are some of my favorite spring scents that I try to find.
Lilac was my favorite scent and color when I was in high school and I think my high school boyfriend still associates that scent with me because I wore it so much. When I was little we used to snap off a sprig around this time of year and give them to our teacher. Today I walked around my back yard and noticed that our five lilac bushes were starting to bloom so I stopped and smelled each one.
I fell in love with cherry blossoms when I went to Japan one spring. I know I’m biased because I’ve never been there any other time, but It has to be the most beautiful time of the year there. Now I really want to go to D.C. for their cherry blossom festival. So far it hasn’t coincided well with spring break, but I’ll make it work one of these years and bring my bike. I love the original clean and fresh Cherry Blossom scent from Bath and Body Works, although it’s so popular that they’ve rolled out Japanese Cherry Blossom (with a more musky scent) and Blushing Cherry Blossom (with a stronger perfumy/flowery scent) this year.
A new scent that I’ve embraced this spring is green apple. I’m kind of particular about it. Not just any apple scent will do. It has to smell fresh and a little tart. I haven’t found it in perfume form yet (but DKNY has one called Be Delicious that might fit the bill). I started using Garnier Fructis shampoo because it has a light green apple smell that I can just wash into my hair and not worry about applying later. Also, it’s a little less girly than the flowery scents above.
The last scent is hard to capture. I call it stormy sky but it’s that warm rain smell that has a bit of green grass and earth in it. It makes me feel calm but also like something is a bout to happen. A nice rainy afternoon where you might get caught outside, but it’s not so bad when the sun comes out and lights up every drop. And, if you’re lucky, you might see a rainbow.
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