Imagine for a moment that the turntables sit dormant. Their mechanics sit still, precisely tuned and ready to come alive. They serve no purpose for the time being.
The diamonds have worn away. Volatile all along; though we knew it, and are prepared to return with new and improved needles...

Inside of our sapphire cave of dreams, the memories of music still reverberate. In corners and cracks we find hidden melodies from time forgotten:

(mp3) Silver Convention - Fly, Robin, Fly, Jupiter Records, 1974 (16 362 AT)

(mp3) Jimmy Ross - First True Love Affair (Larry Levan Mix), Quality Records / RFC Records, 1981 (QRFC 002)

(mp3) Carrara - Shine On Dance, Keepon Musik, 1984 (DDD A 4384)

oldie, but a goodie.  who doesn't love keepon?  this little guy broke out into the scene a long time ago, but it surely belongs in the ranks of all that is cute.

Parodia di questo

Found via Technomom.

Nos Estados Unidos, o Spoon já fazia indie rock antes mesmo das bandinhas atuais (muitas delas já postei por aqui). Há 14 anos na estrada, seu último álbum Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga agradou a crítica e estreou em 10o lugar na Bilboard 200.

A banda já fez parte de muitas trilhas sonoras, como o filme 'Mais Estranho que a Ficção', as séries 'Veronica Mars', 'Chuck' e 'The O.C.'.

Do outro lado do mundo...

Keepon é um robô, desenvolvido pelo cientista e psicólogo infantil Hideki Kojima do Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação (NICT) de Kyoto, no Japão. Esse simpático bichinho amarelo foi desenvolvido para responder emocionalmente e fisicamente à interação humana, permitindo o estudo dos mecanismos da interação social.

E juntos...

Numa demonstração das capacidades do andróidezinho, Marek Michalowski e o criador do Keepon Hideki Kojima o gravaram dançando a música 'I Turn my Camera On' do Spoon. O vídeo fez tanto sucesso no You Tube que a simpática criatura acabou estrelando também o clipe 'Don't You Evah' do novo álbum da banda:

Hoje a dupla virou queridinha da Wired e vivem felizes mundo afora, o primeiro fazendo shows e o segundo participando de feiras científicas.

Since I am at risk of turning this into one of those depressing posts that no one wants to read, I will instead give you a list of posts that I never want to read. Since I read a lot of blogs I use a feed reader to aggregate them, and I almost never get caught up. There are a few types of blog posts that I have learned to recognize on sight, mark as read, and move right along. If you want me to read your content then please don't do the following:

• Post a poem or song lyrics. If I wanted to hear lyrics I would actually play the song, and really how hard is it to find the youTube video and embed or link to it? If you really feel the lyrics of a certain song are the only possible way to express your feelings, please just quote one or two of the most relevant lines and then move on to some real content.
• Forget to add any white space. Take a look at any book, magazine, poster, website, etc. They all have white space because your brain cannot handle a page completely full of text without wanting to kill your eyes and take a vacation. My attention span is limited, so give me small bits of text to deal with. They are called paragraphs, please look into it.
• Only put part of your content in your RSS or Atom feed. The only excuse for this is being desperate for whatever ad revenue you get when I click over to your site - but really, if you need the money that much then find a way to embed the ad in your feed and give me the content where I want it! There is no blog so exciting that I will click through, I'll always find something else to entertain me.
• Post about the weather or about how bad traffic is in whatever city you live in. Some writers manage to make these topics interesting, but it is almost always by weaving an actual narrative on these themes rather than just straight-up reporting. I don't care if it's raining in Cleveland unless it is an intrinsic part of an interesting story, and unless you make it so I'll be moving right along. Ditto on complaining about how tired you are.
• Post about how you are too busy to post. For crying out loud, if you are too busy (and this is assuming you don't have legions of fans sending you distraught e-mails) then please just don't bother.

I know I have been guilty of many of these to varying degrees, but generally I bore even myself - sorry if you've been a victim of my bad blogging practices - but hey, at least I'm posting at all right?

I leave you with a fun music video starring a dancing robot. I'll let you work out the lyrics for yourselves.

1. Sanjaya: Safe or History

2. Sanjaya on a Roll

3. Jesus Take the Wheel

4. Relational Evangelism

5. Columbia Heights, Here I Come

6. KeepOn Dancing

7. Painting the Town Coffee Brown

8. Building Momentum

9. INC(RED)IBLE

10. Catalyst Reflection

Keepon è un robot progettato per interagire con i bambini tramite i sensi dell'udito e della vista. Ha quattro gradi di libertà, è ricoperto da un materiale soffice, ha due telecamere negli occhi e un microfono nel naso.

Some more about the doll:

We are currently developing and studying dance-oriented nonverbal play with between children and the robot Keepon, designed and built by Hideki Kozima. Keepon is a small creature-like robot developed to perform emotional and attentional interaction with children. It has four degrees of freedom, a soft rubber skin, two cameras in its eyes, and a microphone in its nose.

There's also a group working with Keepon to make it follow humans and interact.

Very cool.  But when can I buy him at Spencer Gifts? 

"Keepon" is a robot that is designed to interact with children through auditory, visual, and emotional cues. It has four degrees of freedom, a soft rubber skin, two cameras in its eyes, and a microphone in its nose. The basic premise is highlighted in the short, 14 second clip below:

Here's a brief description, purely technical, from Marek Michalowski's website:

"We are developing and evaluating an architecture that will allow these robots to perceive, model, and generate social rhythms such that the robot's behaviors are synchronized with those of a human interactor. We believe that rhythmic synchrony will be as important for establishing engagement, rapport, and comfort between a robot and a person as it is between people."

And, if you thought that was impressive, you'll be blown away by this: the robot dancing to Spoon's "I Turn My Camera On."

Should I be worried that a piece of yellow felt is a better dancer than I am?