Late to the Party

I love the Sony Rolly. It’s such a cute little, “Aibo meets mp3 player” kind of robot toy. When I first heard about it and saw videos demoing its functionality, it reminded me of the old Sony — the Sony that made really awesome gadgety stuff, whether or not it made sense as a mainstream product. They made tons of different electronic devices in strange form factors, and dominated the consumer electronics world. Unfortunately, that Sony has been replaced with “is it good for the shareholders?” Sony — a Sony that still makes some really lovely hardware, but has enough financial issues that they can no longer afford to make devices like the Clié (the absolute best line of Palm OS PDAs, closely followed by the Tapwave Zodiac) or the cute line of Aibos. When I saw the Rolly, I saw the old Sony taking a peek out from behind the stodgy, “bottom line is king”, new Sony. Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty of innovative (and expensive) products coming out of Sony, like that super-thin, OLED TV that they are selling now, their interesting take on digital SLRs, the Sony Reader, and their fun line of phones, several of which I’m enamored with. I just miss all the fun, “What am I going to do with this?” products they used to have.

Anyway, this rambling is just an introduction to a video I put together recently. I was surprised to see the Sony Rolly displayed at the Sony Style store in Woodfield, so I busted out my phone to take a video of it in action. Too bad I didn’t have the N95-3 with me; I could’ve Qik’ed it… Oh well! The original song it was bopping to was “Love Song” by Sara Bareille (IIRC), but I forgot that I turned off the audio recording. The audio probably wouldn’t have turned out so well anyway, since there was some other music blaring in another part of the store. Luckily I was able to find a good replacement song that still fits with the Rolly’s dance moves. Strangely it’s quite a different song from the original tune that played — “Discipline” by Nine Inch Nails. Thanks, Trent Reznor, for Creative Commons licensed songs! I converted the video from the original 3GP format and added the song as the backing track in iMovie, quite a painless process. I was all smiles while I was watching the Rolly dance in the Sony Style, and I was still all smiles when I watched it dance to NiN. Pretty funny contradiction between a cutesy, mp3-playing robot toy and an angsty (but dancey) NiN song. See it for yourself!

Read it

Decided to finish off the last 4 frames sitting in my SLR 680 SE. This is what I got.

Pen Test

Editor’s note: Even though I’m big on “digital inking”, as seen in my ink blogs, I still love writing in a Moleskine as a journal or for work notes. As such, I’m also quite a pen freak and am particular about what pens I like to write with. I mainly like pigment ink pens, like the ones from Sakura, but I’m always on the lookout for more new pens to buy. Bought some today and tried them out thusly.

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Just a quick scan of the how some of the new pens I bought look on a nice, smooth page of plain Moleskine paper.

Text translation for those who cannot read my handwriting:

Testing out some new pens from Blick Art Supplies:

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Prismacolor Premier Fine Line Marker, Blue 005:

AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOo… Pretty nice! Ink flows smoothly, nib feels smooth on the paper, and ink seems to be drying pretty much instantly.

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Sharpie Ultra Fine Point Permanent Markers:

Berry
Aqua
Lilac
Turquoise

Not good for Moleskines, unfortunately. Ink bleeds, tip is not fine enough, and there is noticeable bleed-through to back of the page. Unfortunate!

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Test of the Sakura Pigma Micron 01… One of my favorite pens for Moleskine writing.

Just Ducky

After getting the mama duck a tad riled (see “Good Sport”), I pushed my luck and took this picture. Actually, she’s fine if I keep my distance. She didn’t even flinch at the flash. What a trooper!

Good Sport

The mother duck seems to be used to my presence now. I’m able to get quite close to her without her even flinching. However, I did push my luck and get a tad too close while trying to frame my shot (I don’t remember if it was this exact shot), because she got a bit restless, fanned her tail out, and started breathing loudly through her beak, as if to warn me not to come any closer. I backed off a bit, and she was fine. As I say in the title, she was a good sport.