Landing : Athabascau University

We're Back! And - Boxie?

That's that! I'm back in the comforting arms of civilization once more, and with every day Fort McMurray seems like it's receeding further and further into history. Thank goodness! I'm rather pleased to be back here and settling into life as a full time student once more.

On the school front, things seem to be progressing well - higher marks than before, a relatively comfortable pace, and I'm on track to shave a month off of my expected due dates so far. I'll be sticking to full time student and unemployment for awhile, I think. The payoff is pretty good scholastically, and I've built up enough of a nest egg from the Fort to deal with almost all of my tuition costs. Add in the free room and board I've been able to swing, and I should be set! Let's just hope that the car doesn't decide to crap out on me. 

I'd like to post a little something fun today, too. Technology! One of my courses this semester is on Human-Computer Interaction, and so far it's been a riot. The course has been a pleasant foray into future and tech prediction, some qualitative analysis, and a lot of fun media projects. It's research based, so no textbook and a lot of digging around through websites to find information on the given topics. That's where I found Boxie.

 http://labcast.media.mit.edu/?p=206

Boxie is a neat little project from MIT. It's a robot made out of a cardboard box that autonomously drives around an MIT campus building, talking to people and generally being adorable (just watch the video). It's making a movie about its adventures and the people it meets. The students and researrchers involved hope to capture a "slice of life" of their facility. What a fun way to do it!

Just go watch it already ;)

Anyways, how cool is that? I hope we see more of Boxie in the future!

Comments

  • sarah beth January 15, 2012 - 5:31pm

    You sound do happy to be back in civilization! I followed your blog posts while you were waiting anxiously to move. Congratulations!

  • Colin Pinnell January 17, 2012 - 11:11am

    I'm *thrilled* to be back in the sane world. Edmonton still has some of that Fort McMurray flavour in it depending on where you go, but there's a world of difference. No doubt about it. Thank you!