Messages

Heh, it's a hard question for a reason. OS analogy like you started:

The brain is hardware. The subconscious is like a Host OS, and the conscious is a preferred guest OS in a VM. When dreaming (or imagining others' reactions, etc) the host-OS spawns extra VMs to run other entities. These entities communicate over a virtual network run by the host. They are different from the preferred guest in that they don't run as much and tend to get reset frequently, and thus have less data stored. Multiple-personality disorder occurs when the host prefers the wrong guest OS, and dramatic personality shifts (say, after an accident) occur when the original guest OS is damaged beyond repair & a new one gets created to run the body.

True. But I can't very well give advice with no real knowledge of what materials you have on hand.

Really, the most basic thing is: what do you want the robot to do? Avoid walls? Follow a line? Collect information about its environment, then discard that info & drive into things?

EDIT: I HIGHLY recommend "Mobile Robots: Inspiration to Implementation" by Joseph L. Jones, Anita M. Flynn, and Bruce A. Seiger. Seiger (now deceased) taught me most of what I know about robotics, it's a very good book for an introduction.

I'm basically straight, with enough leeway not to freak out when things get weird, gender identity-wise.

Oh, definitely that. Making "totally-straight, freak-out if they see anything gay" guys freak is fun.

[law enforcement]

Federal law protects your privacy and keeps your answers confidential (Title 13, United States Code, Sections 9 and 214). The answers you give on the census form cannot be obtained by law enforcement or tax collection agencies. Your answers cannot be used in court. They cannot be obtained with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Emphasis mine.

So go right ahead.

So, revising after thinking more.
Small breasts, small hips, long hair (not blonde), no S&M. That said, I rather like having my hair pulled, but I don't feel pain in my hair. At all. I think I just like the pressure, especially around my craniotomy scar area & the occipital bone.

Also, the one that might be more of a true fetish: I have a very hard time getting off if my partner hasn't. Wanting her to be happy overrides pretty much everything else. Probably why I don't like the sadism, seeing someone I love hurt is an instant turn-off.

As for corsets, I'm a ren-faire geek, so I really don't know. Damn near every woman I know has one, so it's nothing special.

I build things involving stupidly large amounts of electricity or very high voltage. When the stress is caused by budget I just make plans to build such things.
Current plans:
500kV Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier.
4.5MHz audio-modulated phase-locked-loop solid-state class-e Tesla coil. (need oscilloscope)

Probably do the CW first, as it is significantly cheaper.

But yeah, plasma is fun.

Aaah, ok.... But the motors to move the laptop would (in all likelihood) be cheaper than the 2-way radios, so that's probably not the best choice.

One thing I am curious about is how to people inheritly know how to use their brain? Do people train to use the brain, just like how someone practices walking?

There's really no "you" that is separate from your brain (as far as anyone can prove), so this question doesn't really have an answer. 

"You" is (very probably) a subset of the brain, and it might be more interesting to ask "How does the brain create you?"

And just as interesting is "How does the brain create other, separate personalities." Most commonly experienced when dreaming, the people you interact with aren't you, they are clearly separate from the "you" doing the dreaming, yet all are generated by the same brain.

The Blair's is supposedly around 800,000-1,000,000. So, rather hot.

To paraphrase^W blatantly steal and change the brand of someone else's line: The amazing thing about Bud Light is that they get the cat to squat over the can.

Totally straight. Or epsilon away from it.

I do, however, have an interesting friend, Phillip. Our mutual friend J was hanging out with A when P walked by.

A: Hey, J, who's that hot chick?
P: *waves at J.*
A: Dude, she waved at you, you know her?
J: Yeah, [shouting] Hey, Philip, come on over & meet A.
A: Wait, did you just say her name was Philip?!
J: Yeah, that's my friend Philip.

Phil in a dress looks very much like a girl, which has lead to many pranks with him & straight guys.

The way I see it is, if it's visible from a public street it's fair game. The shouldn't be driving on private driveways/roads, but they have just as much right to take pictures as anyone else.

Or should we have stopped George Holliday from publishing the Rodney King video because the police officers didn't consent? (Actually, that's not the best analogy, since Holliday was on private property and the beating was on public property, but it was visible from other public property.)..

Most of my robotics comes from robot-wars style stuff with friends & Botball tournaments (3rd place nationally, yay). The botball stuff is all actual robotics (fully autonomous) whereas this seems more robot-wars style fancy-RC car. I happen to like working with aluminium, it's not that hard to machine. Can be a bit annoying to weld, but nothing too bad once you get used to it.

Stages for designing a bot:
Decide on control scheme (autonomous or remote, or some mix of both).
Decide on drive system (ground/water/air, further subdivided to wheels/treads/walker, jet/propeller/magneto-hydrodynamic, plane/helicopter/rocket, etc etc.)
If it's meant to do things (weapons, lifting, etc) you need servo motors or hydraulics or such. Chose what you need to do.
Select your motors. Do you need servos, how much power used, how much heat generated, etc.
Select your power source. If gas, what engine. If rocket, what fuel mix. If electric, what sort of battery? How long do you need to operate?
How much torque do you need? How many transmission/gearing systems do you have to get/create?
Select your chassis type/material. How strong will it have to be to stand up to the stresses applied?
How will you control your motors? Relays (h-bridge or not?), power FETs, commercial speed controllers?
How many control channels do you need (generally 2 for wheels (1 drive, 1 steers or 1 for each side), 1 for each other servo/hydraulic/etc you need).
You can then determine how complex a radio-control system you need (AM/FM/PM, do you need to take PCM signals, how much interference will there be from/on the power lines to your motors, do you need bi-directional communication, what sort of failsafes do you need in case of interference/controller failure, what frequency band (27MHz, 50MHz, 72MHz, 75MHz, something else) etc, etc.)

I've tried it before.  It's not as fun as they make it sound.  Maybe if we had like thirty people high on caffeine trying to sink a mime in a dinghy, it would be fucking cool.

We (sort-of) did that at the last Vegas Rennisance Faire. The Wilds had a boat, we had a water balloon launcher. They didn't have a bucket, and nearly sank in the lake. They curse more than mimes, but they do wear black & white paint.

Hmm. Small breasts, small-medium hips, brunettes/redheads, light skin, long hair. The classic big-breasted blonde look is rather a turnoff for me. Also definitely not into the sadism bit, the idea of hurting someone I love is rather disgusting.