Happy May First! Some of you may recall that I had been planning a surprise. Well, here it is. I call it Robot-a-day. Every day for the month of May, conditions permitting, I will draw and post a different original robot illustration by yours truly. If I'm feeling truly inspired, I may include a bit of flavor text. Should I skip a day, for whatever reason, you'll see two robots the next day. Or three the following day. Or possibly thirty at the end of the month. This is something of an experiment, after all, so even I don't know what's going to happen. As long as we all have fun, I'll consider it a success.

So, let's begin with the one that gave me the big idea, the Robutler.

I spent a few minutes at the end of my lunch break to create the second Robot-a-Day robot. Although I know that nobody cares what I had for lunch today, I'm going to tell you anyway. I went to Panda Express and enjoyed a dish of chow mein, and chicken with pineapple. Sadly, I enjoyed it alone. In the past, I'd often gone to a different Panda Express to meet up with a good friend of mine, and we'd bitch about our jobs and the classes we'd been taking. Sadly, the classes did end, I took a job in a different part of town, and he moved out of state. At least there's still the Internet.

Anyway, here's a cheerful little cleaning robot that's apparently programmed with a fondness for sweets. Or is he programmed to take satisfaction in consuming each and every bit of litter and debris lying on the ground? And dare I make a joke about junk food here?

When you were little, did you have an imaginary friend? Or perhaps there was a recurring character you told your parents stories about? Was it a fairy princess? A talking dinosaur? A superhero? Would you be surprised to know that mine was a robot?

When I was little, and my brother still a baby, our family moved to this weird old house that had a big weird outlet in the living room for the big, noisy space heater that came with the weird old house. Since my brother was still much too young to play with at that time, I made imaginary friends with the heater, who became a robot named Heater. I remember drawing a sort of comic about him having an adventure in the mysterious lands beyond the hill behind the house. I don't know what became of the comic. Perhaps it met its end in the weird old house's sphinx-like woodburning stove. But I do remember the robot looking vaguely like this...

As for the real heater, it eventually broke down in a spectacular shower of sparks, and was then deemed dangerous and unfixable, and was duly banished from the weird old house forever. But by that time, I'd made a real friend, my little brother. (Aww!)

Who has a case of the Mondays? I do! What a disappointing weekend. I accomplished nothing but a visit to Souplantation. Ooh, that's a fine adventure there. The rest... well... I did not sign up to work seven days a week. But... I've got to show that I take my job seriously. If that means driving 120 miles in one weekend, well, so be it. As long as it's one weekend. Every weekend would be another story entirely.

Anyway, by my calculations I now owe you four robots. Here's today's robot, the Boogiebot.

Terrorizing children into eating their spinach.

And here's Friday, Saturday and Sunday, found slithering about in the sewers of Robot City.

"No humans allowed."

Today's nugget of wisdom comes to us via the SDRS group.

MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, who brought us Cog, Kismet, and others, is now working on a robotic servant named Domo.The robot can identify unfamiliar objects and determine how best to handle them. Domo's creators envision the robot in the home, assisting the elderly and disabled with such tasks as putting away dishes and groceries. Domo-type robots could also be put to use in agriculture, in space, or even in restaurants...

"To order an appetizer, press One. To order drinks, press Two. To order an entree, press Three. Three. Please enter a two-digit entree code, or enter the number sign when your entree is complete."

Today's robot-a-day isn't completely robotic. Some of you might recognize this fellow as a sort of cross between Robocop and Farscape's Scorpius. That would make him a quarter Scarran, a quarter Sebacian, a quarter Man, a quarter Robot, and, I guess, a part-time Cop.

"Dead or alive, you're coming with me. Hisss."

Evil Mad Scientist presents a 3D Printer based on a heat gun and lots of sugar. Pretty sweet, if you'll excuse the pun.

Knottyboy tells us what he really thinks.

Hackaday featured these crazy googly eyes a few days ago, but they made me laugh, and gave me a fiendishy clever and extremely nerdy idea.

Your robot today is a singing, dancing, three-eyed astromech.

"Share and enjoy! Share and enjoy!"

I'll have more to post tomorrow.

His bark is bad enough.

50 Short Science Fiction Tales

Four days later, Robot-a-Day continues with four vaguely robot-like doodles.

For those of you who missed it the last time around, the In-Infamous Five Question Meme is pretty simple. If you wish to participate, simply ask one of the other participants (such as myself) to ask you any five questions. You then post the answers to those questions to your blog, and then offer to ask anyone else any five questions. And no, they do not have to be the same five questions each time!

Although I've already participated in the In-Infamous Five Question Meme, when I saw that DWQ Online was also participating, I was curious to find out what questions he might have for me. And, after quite a long delay on my part, here they are, along with my answers.

1. What is your greatest accomplishment in life?

Wow, tough question. I had to think about this one for quite a while. In fact, I can quite honestly say it's this question that took such a long time for me to answer. And although I'm afraid that my answer will sound like something of a cop-out, I think it's an accomplishment just to have gotten as far as I have. Having left home, lived on my own, earned a degree, and started a career. It may not be as great of an accomplishment as Star Wars, the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Linux kernel, but I did it. Of course, I do hope that if someone asks me this question again in ten years, I will have a different, better, and more interesting answer. If I can say that I've made the world in some way a better place than it was when I found it, then that will be good enough.

2. What is your favorite electronic gadget?

According to Wikipedia, a gadget is "a device that has a useful specific practical purpose and function. Gadgets tend to be more unusual or cleverly designed than normal technology." In other words, a clever device that does one thing and does it well. I'd have to choose my TiVo. I just wish my cable company had better programming for it to suggest to me.

3. What is your favorite blog besides your own? Was this the first blog you started reading?

Hmm, tricky question. If I finger one blog in particular, everyone else on the Web will be ever so slightly offended that they weren't chosen. I could just wimp out and say, "Oh, but I love you all," no matter how dishonest that may be. Or, I could just as easily choose a well-known, popular site, and say "Oh, but I just adore Slashdot and Fark," as dishonest (and technically incorrect) as that may be. I don't really consider those blogs, but rather news-themed discussion fora. The value of such sites is not so much in the publishers' opinions, but rather in the peanut gallery's reaction to a particular bit of news. So to get around to answering your question, I guess I could say that the blog I most look forward to reading is Radioactive Jam. Unlike some bloggers whose presence on the web is but a never-ending monologue on bunions, pets, and other minutiae of their personal lives, RaJ is more interested in what others have to say, and to that end writes very entertaining posts intended to start a dialog with his readers, which almost always succeeds. I'd like this blog to be like that, someday. (I might also add that he leaves me lots of comments.) Of course, Radioactive Jam wasn't the first blog I'd started regularly reading. Not counting news-discussion fora and the "what's new" sections of webcomics and the like, I'd have to say that honor fell to Hack-a-Day.

4. What is the furthest you have been from home?

Not counting various moves, I'd say less than 500 miles.

5. Would you ever run for an elected office?

If campaign financing weren't an issue, I might consider it. I could possibly do a lot of good that way. Unfortunately, I don't know if I'd be able to negotiate the political arena. I've never been any good at decoding unspoken suggestions, veiled threats, and the like. I'm afraid I'd just end up being manipulated, or else buried under an avalanche of people wanting favors.

"Our next destination is somewhere out there."

...another robot.

"Beep. Boop."

Postfix: The Definitive Guide

Today's robot is a helmeted android. Something odd is happening with his mouth. He came out looking as though he either has buck teeth or a bad moustache.

What do you think?

In reading 50 Short Science Fiction Tales, I couldn't help but notice how tame and dated time had made those tales seem. Factor in the length, and the seemingly compulsory twist endings, and I feel almost as though I'd been reading The Science Fiction Joke Book. This is not by any means to say I haven't enjoyed the book. Vintage science fiction is fun to read for its odd speculations that never bore fruit: book-film readers, binary-coded police reports, atomic light bulbs, tube-based teaching computers, and all sorts of other, wonderful ideas that seem half-baked by today's standards. Of course, some ideas never seem to go out of style, such as robots that carry out their programming long after the need has passed. Thus I present to you the twentieth Robot-a-Day, the Keeper of the Volcano.

The Keeper of the Volcano had been quiet for generations, just listening to the earth move, but on the day it finally spoke, nobody understood.

"Do you ever have the feeling... that you're being watched?"

Were I a Great Blogger, I'd have something witty to say right now. Perhaps I'd verbally paint wicked caricatures of my coworkers, making certain to disguise each by adding the equivalent of a ridiculous fake moustache, French accent, or other funny hat. Or, maybe I'd tell a story about a shopping/bar-hopping adventure that ended with equal parts puke, bruised ego, and buyers remorse. Or, maybe I'd tell you in gruesome, intimate detail of a recent infirmity, whether due to virus, bacteria, burrito or alchohol poisioning. Or maybe I'd express my considerable outrage over the things my city, county, state and Federal governments do in their effort to better "represent" me.

Is it that I'm just not that sort of blogger? Or, worse, am I That Sort Of Blogger? Am I, perhaps, the sort of blogger that pops up every few weeks, raving about his newly broken computer? Maybe I'm the sort of blogger that daily posts a sentence or two about how his day went, perhaps dropping the name of another blogger he accompanied on a shopping/bar-hopping adventure? Am I just That Sort Of Blogger that periodically performs a link dump with little or no explanation?

Maybe. Or maybe I just haven't yet discovered my rightful place in the blogger heirarchy. But if it's not to ridicule my coworkers, if it's not to recount my few and unremarkable adventures, if it's not to express my considerable discontent with the government, and if it's not to just wave from the crowd, then what is it?

"Here I am, brain the size of a planet..."

May is almost, but not quite, over, and with it, my Robot-a-Day challenge. The last week has been busy and tense, and I'm not only glad it's over, but am also glad to have had a third day this weekend. In addition to partially clearing a path through the Secret Laboratory, I also caught up with Robot-a-Day.

Only three more to go!

I was asked to draw a robot based on a turbine.

Instead I drew a robot in a turban. Close enough, right?

Is May over already? It seems as though it had just rolled around the corner yesterday. Ah well. Today I submit to you the last two Robot-a-Day sketches.

The first is, as you can probably tell, a robot based on a turbine, not a turban. I do like his shark-fin head. Very aerodynamic.

Champion of the roller derby.

And finally, a robot doing what robots do best-- work.

Computers don't stop us from making mistakes. They help us make mistakes faster.

Robots don't stop us from making mistakes either. They make our mistakes worse by repeating them.