igargoyle

Comments comments comments

Hey, Nym here.

I've been going through the long list of unapproved comments, and I thought I'd share a few:

Ashlin writes in on the article about Remote controlled cyborg sharks to tell us to leave sharks alone. Anonymous chimes in on the same article to say that igargoyle is just as bad as "the media", and that we're giving our enemies the upper hand by talking about our advanced shark mind control technologies.

Simon asks in regards to the article on the 1984 Wrist Computer:

"I have a SEIKO UC-3000 model, problem is I damaged the transmission coil in the waych when changing battery therefore watch does not work. Is there a way to replace the coil, or is there a specification for coil ie wire size, turns etc."

Anyone know anything about SEIKO UC-3000 watch coils?

7th grader, Fiona Fievez writes in to say that she thinks "rely think this is great" and is working on a design and tech fashion show.

Aderet writes in to tell us that the article about mice growing back their limbs that

"They neglected to mention in older articles, that the strain of mice which 'regenerate' are "...better known for their inherited susceptibility to autoimmune disorders"

Aderet also points us to a recent paper at: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/95/20/11792.pdf
(June 2007)

Anonymous writes in to correct me regarding "Oxycyte: Better than blood?". Gee, I knew I should have paid more attention in biology:

"I think that you are mistaken about the meaning of oxygen and oxidation. Oxygen is an element and oxidation is the process during which electrons are being added to an element or a compound."

Thanks all for keeping those subscriptions, and checking back! Please don't hesitate to write your own comments or send us tips. We love to hear em!

Back from Hiatus?

We shall see, I am extremely overworked, and I am not sure if I can personally sustain the frequency I was posting at a few months ago, but I will try to get in at least once a week. My suggestion? Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Meet WOTA and ZachM

We have two new writers here on igargoyle, at least for the time being while I'm away on vacation. They're both readers of the site, and have a passion for the same kinds of things I've been writing about with Xander, but maybe a little bit of a different take on it all.

WOTA, which stands for Warriors of the Apocalypse, has first hand experience with prosthetics, and is going to be sharing some of that process and what's on the horizon in terms of that kind of technology. It seems that hip replacements are commonplace these days, and prosthetics are a large sector of the health industry, and what happens in this arena is core to the transhumanist effort. After all, the next step to repairing our bodies after they're broken, is to build them stronger. I'm also hopeful that WOTA will help address these areas for those who are looking to regain their mobility, health, or improve their way of life to the standards that many of us already enjoy.

Zach on the other hand, is a bit more traditional, and much younger than anyone else here. Nevertheless, he seems to have talent, and I'm eager to see what kinds of things he digs up for igargoyle! He lives in South Florida and has been obsessed with technology since he was 10 years old. He's big on DIY projects, and breaking things apart to see how they work.

I hope that both WOTA and ZachM's writing will be well received. Please continue to email igargoyle@gmail.com if you have any link suggestions, or to give us feedback on what you think of the site and various authors.

Thanks!
nym

ig needs a babysitter!

You may have noticed the posts have gotten really sparse in the last week. This is because my boss left for Germany and I'm about to leave for the Black Rock Desert.

So, not wanting to deprive igargoyle of juicy reading material and links, I'm putting out a call for a babysitter! Must be decent at writing and be passionate about wearable computing. I expect to be gone for two to three weeks, so this is really important to me, I don't want to leave everyone without their cyber-punk-techno-mad-robo-wear-hard-ubiq-comp fix for that long. Plus it makes me so happy when I see others writing about this subject that I'm so passionate about!

As a token of my gratitude, I will give whoever provides the best, most frequent content with an ipod jacket or a podbelt. I was given the jacket a while ago, but don't personally use an ipod very often, and my friend isa gordon makes the podbelts, and I'm sure I can get one from her if I throw her a few dollars.

Please write me as soon as possible! The email to reach me at is igargoyle@gmail.com.

>H Shirts

Okay, so I apparently hit a cord with the idea of wearables, I mean t-shirts. If you want a shirt still, email me in the next 24 hrs, and I'll do you one for $12 if you're in the United States. This is basically just to cover costs of shipping and whatnot.

Paypal tomlong at gmail dot com, and include your snail mail address and shirt size in the comments.

By the way, if anyone wants to trade a twiddler2 or a microptical HMD, I'm up for that too!

igaroyle hits 500 Posts!

Wow, after just under four years we've hit 500 posts. The wearable community is still as strong as ever, and more and more of this high tech gadgetry is trickling down into the marketplace. The ideas behind Transhumanism are becomming more popular as well it seems, and I'm really curious what the next 4 years are going to be like in this field.

To celebrate, my girlfriend and I have made these t-shirts. All the writers here are getting them (xander, wearaware, dragoon), and I'm going to extend a few free ones to you guys too.

I might regret this later, but everyone who emails me in the next two hours gets a free shirt. Just tell me your size and I'll make one, and mail it out.

Thanks again everyone, and please drop us a line if you want to give us a tip or just let us know when one of us is doing a good job!

Here's the email: igargoyle at gmail dot com.

Glog Roll on igargoyle

I've added a "glogroll" on igargoyle thanks to James Fung's help establishing a JSON API. The glogroll is a feed of all the latest images from glogger.eyetap.org, which I previously talked about here on igargoyle. If you post a personal moment onto glogger and it gets flagged as a featured item, it will now show up in the right hand corner and stay there until it gets pushed off by newer featured content.

The code is a bit rough, nothing I'm terribly proud of, but I will improve upon it soon, including more ajaxy stuff and smooth transistions as new content appears. Feel free to nab the code and improve upon it yourself though!

Xander Joins igargoyle

We have a new writer on the igargoyle team, who is going by the pseudonym "Xander". I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say about wearable computing, robotics, and whatever else he digs up for igargoyle. Expect more content on igargoyle, as well as more feature articles with his addition.

As always, you can submit stories to igargoyle@gmail.com. It always helps to get those tidbits from you guys, as well as the great feedback. If you like what Xander has to say, please let him know.

Kudos

I've been lagging about getting back on track with igargoyle recenty, but I got this great email recently that really reminded me why I do this:

I by randomly found your site by typing some uber geek search criteria into google. I really like what you do and wanted to say “thumbs up” to a fellow burner. I just got through browsing EVERY page on your site and I loved every last drop. See you on the Playa.

Sometimes it feels like I'm not really connected with the community since this is a blog, not a forum, but getting kudos like that really makes me feel like there's a lot of people out there who do appreciate this as a resource. My original goal was to have this site be more of an interactive, collaborative place, but I've realised that in a lot of ways I have to keep posting to keep it going. I'm getting more and more feedback as I do it though, and one of my favorite things is when I get a link from one of you about a cool project or product on the market.

Thanks everyone for your feedback and input! I wouldn't be doing this without you.

Cheers,
nym

igargoyle Needs You!

I'm dealing with some personal stuff related to work, and I apoligize for not posting for the last two days. I'm actually short on links to write about, so I really encourage you to email me any suggestions. I'll of course give you credit, and link to your website.

In other news, igargoyle is a bit of a victim of it's own success. Davy was busy writing away at Sacrafice Throw, but was contacted by an influential igargoyle reader about turning it into a screenplay. Congrats Davy, but dammit I want to read the next part!!

Comments on igargoyle

I just went through the comment system and approved a few comments that slipped through the cracks. Sorry folks! If you've posted on here before, you won't have to be moderated in the future. Also if you don't want to use an email account, you can always use a pookmail email, they're like disposable credit cards, except with less money and well okay maybe they're not like credit cards, but they are disposable.

Anyways, Davy Krieger is going to have his second part of Sacrafice Throw, the nano-tech sci-fi ecological-political-military thriller. If you haven't read part one, check it out!

Bloggies 2006

igargoyle hasn't yet been nominated for the annual Webloggies, and I think it's about time! Nominate for us under the computers and tech / topical / best-kept-secret categories if you want to support the site.

Here's the link...

[ Link ]

Merry Xmas

Happy Holidays everyone. I'm running a fever and pretty sick, so I probably won't be blogging much in the next couple of days.

It looks like I'll be doing more interviews in the next year. Cheers everyone.

Comments Back!

For all of you who may have tried to comment in the past and found out you weren't able to, now you can again. We're trying to figure out a good way to keep the spam off the site and get back to an umoderated system.

Working for Disney

For all of my friends, I'm just saying that I'm going to continue to work for Disney. This is motivated much in part by my desire to build a wearable computer. Many of the other companies that I've been talking to recently just wouldn't afford me the kind of time to allow me to tinker. My goal is to make igargoyle into a much more rich hub for gargoyles and cyborgs alike. I as always encourage people to send in links as it's sometimes quite hard to find articles that I think are high enough quality for the crowd that reads this site.

Cheers all!
nym

SEXLAB 3000

21:04 -!- Topic for #infoanarchy: SEXLAB 3000 -!- Topic set by Ash
20:35  * wmf looks at the topic
20:35 < wmf> Ash has gone Xeni on us
20:38 < Ash> haha
20:39 < Ash> wmf: dude, it doesn't say ROBOT VOMIT SEXLABITRON 3000 ON NPR

In other news, I still need others to help find content and write for igargoyle. I'm having trouble posting everyday, and I need you guys to step up!

Looking for Writers

I'm doing some work for "The Mouse"(*) for a few weeks and really need someone to help lighten the load of writing for this site. If you're a writer/blogger who is interested in the topics on this blog and would like to contribute, please contact me immediately.

Thanks!

(*)"The Mouse" refers to Disney

Reborn

A new server, a little bit of sysadmin fun and it's back.

Friday Slashdotting

Wow, igargoyle got slashdotted on Friday. I've been keeping slashdot as a goal for this site since it's a major blogosphere hub, but it didn't occur to me that the renowned "news for nerds" had linked igargoyle when the hit counter skyrocketed, but the flood of comments (44 total!) was a clear giveaway. 27,000 hits in one day, approximately 4 times as much traffic than igargoyle has seen in the past two months. Thanks everyone for stopping by, and to those of you who have subscribed to our full XML syndication, I hope you enjoy the ad-free cyborg and wearable computing feed.

Giveaway Update

One more free GMail account... tomlong zat gmail dot com. Good luck!

Giveaways and Posthumanism

In the past month igargoyle has seen over 3,500 page views, not including our full rss feeds. Thanks for your patronage, it's been fun publishing (mostly) every day this past month. As a reward, the first three people to email me at tomlong zat g mail zot com get accounts on google's amazing new gmail. I also have one gmail account for whoever emails me links or leads, or plug you shamelessly if you prefer.

On another note, I thought I'd share this disturbing short story from Warren Ellis of http://diepunyhumans.com/ that was published a while ago. I was reminded of it by a friend talking about wanting to write, and a robotic suit article I saw on engadget. Exoskeletons are great, but when will we have cybortenticals?

Update:
"okay...that story creeped me out. thank you very much nym..." [Rich_Gibson]

Warning: This story is pretty graphic.

She used to have eyes I could lose myself in, and then she had them replaced with laser pointers. Little red dots jumping up and down on the bedroom wall as I took her from behind. I could live with that until she had the animal voice import. The cheetah purring was okay, but the dingo noises just killed the mood. The combination of the red eyes and the gorilla sounds when she jerked off was horrible. A few weeks later, things were moving down there that shouldn't have. Don't be scared, she said, as stuff pumped like organ stops under her skin. Something extended itself and waved at me.

I threw up between her legs and she didn't talk to me for a week. Which I suppose you can't really blame her for, but still.

I knew it was over when she cut her legs off.

Had them hacked off at the knee and came home with a suitcase full of modular replacements. The stumps had little Firewire ports that plugged into the new lower leg units. She fitted what she called her Sex Legs and flexed artificial toes, feet fixed in a perfect arch to accomodate the welded-on six-inch heels. Apparently there were Segway gyroscopes in the calves to keep her upright when she walked.

I came home one night to find her in a red latex minidress and sixteen legs. Spider things were sprouted from her knees, eight legs each. She paraded on the plastic kitchen floor for me, swinging her hips. Clackclackclackclack on the floor. Clackclackclackclack.

She stuck her tongue out at me when I started retching. There was what looked like a DC power inlet on the tip.

After that, it just got ugly. I had to go. I saw her again a couple of weeks ago. She introduced her new boyfriend as Spin. His skin was cold and shiny, like white plastic coating over steel. He had a revolving drum in his stomach. She leant against him and grinned.

I'm living in my car now. My car loves me. I mean, it wouldn't have grown a real vagina for me otherwise, would it?

Rich also gave me this link about future shock levels. "I thought I was a big singularity guy...but then, actually thinking of firewire ports in my leg stumps seems, well, a bit off putting." [Rich_Gibson]

PayPay against Free Speech

Due to PayPal's recent stupidity and blatent disregard for free speech, I have removed the paypal donations on this page and have replaced it with a google adsense ad. Hopefully this will give me some real feedback on how the site is being recieved, and produce some cool contextual links.

Below is the release from the Freenet Project, an open source project which relies on donations to pay for it's anti-censorship software development. Please consider donating to them if you are able to.

17th May, 2004 : Paypal suspends Freenet donations account
Paypal has frozen the account we use to accept donations over the web, they refuse to give any reason other than "use of an anonymous proxy", which suggests that someone at Paypal took a dislike to the goals of our project, since I have never used an anonymous proxy to access Paypal (this being the activity I assume they sought to prevent). It is fortunate that Johann Gutenberg did not rely on Paypal to fund his work on the printing press, which also allowed anonymous publication of information, since his account would probably have been frozen too.

If you are concerned about whether your account might be at risk due to your political opinions you may wish to speak to their PR contact Hani Durzy at (408) 376 7458. If you are an investor and you would like to see what other political opinions Paypal doesn't like, you may want to speak to their Investor contact Tracey Ford at (408) 376 7205.

[ Picture from Robot Protest found via boingboing]

Site Update

I've been very busy recently with personal projects, and haven't had time to really write articles for igargoyle recently. I would love to get some other editors on here, but it's still such a small area of emerging technology that I haven't really had any offers.

In the meantime while I prepare for the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Confrence in San Diego (Feb. 9th-12th), here's a few pictures from jeffbots.com (thanks lemonodor).

Updated Design

Hey everyone, things seem to be moving a bit around here, and I finally fixed up the templates with some new design that works on IE and Moz pretty well. I also added a full RSS feed to satisfy the newshounds out there. Hopefully this feed will include all our images. I added a donate button to the site, as it would help me allocate time to interview people, and write more articles for infogargoyle.

Hope you enjoy the new site design!

Desires and Motivations

Infogargoyle came out of two of my desires, to collect information, and to build a community around the subject of high tech information gathering. I began with things like wardriving, and wanting to collect more information like geospatial wireless access points. This desire led me to research, the research led me to the fundimentals, and from that I've gained a lot of insight about my personal goals, in regard to igargoyle.com and the world. This site began as a pseudo blog, into a dynamic full fledged one, and in time is likely to become much more. Part of my aim to find and build the systems to support both effective data aqusition, as well as effective data storage.

movable type up and running

Thanks to Dragoon of hardsun.net, the blog engine Movable Type is up and running on our server. Pretty good web application really.

Web Site Design Evolving

For those new to the idea, a gargoyle, a term used by author Neil Stephenson in his book Snow Crash, among other authors, describes "a person who is decked out in computer gear such that they are able to catalog all data collected through their senses as well as get data that is useful to whatever goal that they have". This article describes my original goals and desires behind infogargoyle.com.

I love the idea, but for those outside the slashdot crowd, the term requires some explanation. Thus, I created the term infogargoyle, or for short, igargoyle to describe a roaming high tech indivdual who collects data. Why would someone want to become an igargoyle? Personally, I'd like to be able to be able to see visual time lapse from a first person perspective at the end of a day, maintain a wireless blog, and be able to act as camera man and reporter all by myself.

"Your mistake, ... is that you think that all mechanically assisted organisms - like me - are pathetic cripples. In fact, we are better than we were before."
-Snow Crash

My main goal of this site is to create a hub for all the information gathers around the world, as well as a place with articles and documentation on setting yourself up with equipment to gather information. If you have a mobile camera, or would like to upload the contents of a digital camera you carry, please contact me, nym at nym@espians.com.