Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Even More Robots (with lasers!)

Looks like the Neato Robotics XV-11 is shipping (review sites are getting their preorder units, Amazon lists it as "2-3 weeks" but is taking normal orders.) This is the first real competitor to the Roomba - while iRobot has been doing an excellent job of evolutionary/incremental improvements to their flagship consumer robot, the only really significant change since it came out in 2002 was automatic docking for charge - I now have one unit that runs in my bedroom every single day, and it handles that quite well with minimal attention - the switch from IR to RF for control didn't really do the end-user any good. The XV-11 appears to be going all the way in an attempt to leapfrog it - actually mapping the space, keeping track of what it's done, appearing to follow a plan - basically behaving like a smart robot, instead of a cleverly-dumb one. (Roomba's random walk is effective in simple spaces, and was a clever bit of engineering optimization back when CPU actually cost something... but I have a large, cluttered, "open plan" space that the Roomba generally gets lost in which will be the XV-11's first challenge.)

Of course, one of the secondary advantages of the Roomba was that it encouraged keeping a space uncluttered - but it'd be nice to have that as a choice, rather than a limitation.


Sunday, August 22, 2010

Emergency Chai Flashbacks

The (long gone) Someday Café in Somerville is noted for having been the reason Chai escaped from Seattle - somewhere I have a Time Magazine blurb about it, we're talking early 90's here. I used to be "that guy" who showed up with a hat and a beat up Tosci's mug (once we determined that it wouldn't melt, they were happy to steam directly in it - yay for having Real People behind the counter :-) Especially in early winter, when Davis Square was entirely composed of slush, I'd use the subway tunnel to cut across the square and back to my office. I still have fond associations of Oregon-style Chai with miserable New England weather :-)

The *reason* these 15 year old images are flashing back to me now is that my local grocery store (Crosby's) stocks K-cups, and I got a K-cup machine as a gift (I'm not sure K-cups are what you want if you *like* coffee, but if you just need a cup some mornings - self-medicating, if you will - so you can rush out the door instead of lingering over a proper cup of tea - the low end machine is a nice thing to have tucked in a corner of your countertop somewhere.) Today I saw that they had Chai Latte cups, and on a whim, I picked up a box.

Much to my surprise, they're *perfect*. Good enough to inspire the flashbacks above (ok, perhaps it helped that I was out shopping in the rain - I'm still in New England after all :-) I really didn't expect that. I mostly figured I'd use this once in a while for have-to-get-up-at-7am-for-a-concall-with-dudes-in-Berlin coffee emergencies; that was how I convinced myself that the ludicrous amount of packaging per serving was acceptable. These Chai cups may change that...