A Robot That Mows Your Lawn?

As a little boy I watched the Jetsons and several other shows that told me that by the time I grew up I would have a flying car and most everything I needed to do could be done for me by a robot. I truely believed this and in early 2002 I was rewarded as the first “home robot” was introduced… I thought who wouldn’t want a Roomba? I shortly realized that most people thought it was a gimmick, too expensive for a toy, or used any excuse they could think of to pass off this miracle. I on the other hand could not wait to get one. I encountered one in 2003 at a job I was working and could not believe that this little bot just toiled away cleaning a floor while I was away doing something else… amazing. In 2008 I happened across a Roomba for $3 that’s right Three bucks! I couldn’t believe when the wife told me not to purchase it… I just had to. Even if it was broke I wanted to dissect it.

Well that $3 has went a long way in our household my wife loves her little robot and uses it almost on a daily basis to keep our downstairs floors clean. It still holds about a 2 hour charge and I have not had to replace a single component on it… not even a filter.

So now to my title, my trusty craftsman lawn mower (a hand me down of 14yrs) is finally not worth fixing and I need to purchase another. I don’t want to just purchase a lawnmower though. I would like to do away with that chore all-together. I would love to purchase a robo-mower, but even after the years of faithful cleaning our little $3 roomba has given her I can’t convince her that buying a robot to mow our lawn would be a good decision. She is willing to buy me a zero turn John Deere instead However I am not satisfied, I must prove that just like the Jettsons we can have machines today that make our lives easier.

So today I have decided to at least investigate how much it would cost for me to replicate our Roomba and make a DIY robotic mowing solution. If your interested stay tuned and I will post updates along the way.

Update 1: Nov, 13^th Procured possible wheels and motor from broke RC toy of Daniels:

Update 2: Nov, 28^th A list of Current Robot Mowers available for purchase:
RoboMow
LawnBott
AutoMower

A Great PhotoShoot

Recently my family (Mom, Sister, Nephew, Brother-In-Law, my Wife, and both of my Boys) went to Burlington because my Mother got a deal at O’lan Mills and wanted a christmas picture of us all. We travled almost an hour to a K-Mart and tried to get all the boys to sit still for awhile… impossible. It was fun but also nerve-wracking. So when my wife decided that we needed to do something similar for our christmas pictures I refused. I have all the equipment needed to take studio quality pictures and don’t need to travel to get everybody to the set.

So we setup a day that we thought would be comfortable for everyone and did it.
I setup a green-screen and two super-bright lights with diffusers I then set everyone in front of the camera and the outcome was great. We got a lot of good photos, there was still some stress but nothing like the traveling was.

The one thing I would like to sum this all up with is that the equipment I had cost around $1,200 (not including laptop or editing software) the cost of an olan mills photo with digital rights is about $400 for one photo and I dare say that the outcome of my photos might be better. Don’t be scared to do it yourself.

Enjoy the pictures below.
David Bates

Warning Never Use 3sHost.com Crappy Service

Recently I witnessed such a horrendous display of poor customer service from a friend of mine that I had to post something about it. Based on his experience I will never use and emplore you to not use 3shost.com for any of your hosting needs. Although their pricing is cheap their service is horrendous.

History: This is for a small church website that my friend developed as a favor. The barrage of bad customer service started with a simple inquiry to downgrade his service, renew for another year, and when his current contract ran out. I am going to post the full transaction below but have a few excerpts that I would like to highlight showing the gall that these folks have:

From 3sHost.com:
"if you are not going to renew it is your decision but please do not blame
us later"

"Now we are asking please backup your files & please do not renew your account because such customers like you are really waste of time & money"

Now I have seen a lot of customer support disasters in my time but this one takes the cake.
Needless to say my friend will be finding another hosting provider.

The initial email that started this chain of events:
"Dear customer,
To renew your hosting account, please Copy & paste the FULL link below
Link hidden for obvious reasons
Kind Regards,
3SHost.com Sales Team
Sales@3SHost.com"

Friend Wrote:
"I would actually like to renew at the "Medium" Windows hosting level,
since I don't use any features beyond what it offers. Will you please send me
a bill for that? Also, will you please verify when my current contract
runs out, what date this renewal will expire?

Thanks"


Needless to say they went back and forth. My friend always simply asking about the renewal. He has since switched host.

Full transaction to come I didn’t realize how much work it was to annonymize something…

Google’s Halloween Image is Slide-A-Riffic

Today Google’s choose to do a Scooby Doo Ghost-Busting theme for this halloween but I am not here to talk about the theme but rather the mechanics behind it.
I have heard the control they choose to implement be called many things such as slider, carousel, gallery, ad-rotater, and best of all multiple image thingy-majig. However I don’t know exactly what to call it. But the principle is very simple. You line up a set of images in div’s or unordered list set the width of the first div to the size of the picture and then tell it not to overflow that div hiding the rest of the images. You then move the images based on the navigational queues to the furthest left. Kinda like shuffling cards.

I have seen this control used on several hundred websites and even this one. It is a great way to get multiple ideas across in an unobtrusive and pleasing way.
However a few questions arise as there are so many librarys and methods to do this.
What kind of library do you use to accomplish this effect, do you use a library?
Do you prefer the slide or fade transitions?
What should we call this control?

Leave answers below or tweet them to @davidbates

Thanks
David Bates

Similac Recall No Help

Update: According to CafeMom.com The Formula that comes in a tub is for sure recalled… you have to keep trying their number to find out about the cans.

Abbott the company responsible for the Similac brand of baby formula (which my baby is on) has issued a massive recall today. The recall is because they somehow ground up insect parts in with the formula. How gross. But that is not all they issued a website in the statement where parents could check to see if their formula is contaminated: Check your formula but as I am writing this the website is down. Don’t try calling the number either (800) 986-8850. as it is busy. I hope it all clears up soon so that you can check your lot numbers.

Just two years ago Abbott along with several other companies where in the headlines for having melamine in the formula and several babies died from it. Now I know that Abbott is one of the largest manufacturers of baby formula but c’mon. This is our babies.

Please continue to try and get through to either the link above or the phone number and until you do do not use the formula.

Related Links:
http://thestir.cafemom.com/baby/109903/similac_formula_recall_7_things
http://thestir.cafemom.com/baby/109926/similac_recall_what_lot_numbers