Robot Report from the Future

Ah, the not-so-good ‘ol days. Remember when you actually had separate computers at work and at home? Or when “mobility” was defined by carrying around a “laptop” which in some instances included a power supply, keyboard and 17” flat panel screen? No wonder bad backs were so commonplace in the first half of the 21st century.

Of course, that all changed when Antelope Modular Computing launched their Computing Core halcyon days of late 2002. Despite all the haters who said it'd never come out, the Antelope MCC arrived on the scene and revolutionized the entire computing industry. For those of you who have a hard time remembering the days of yore, the MCC was about the size of a deck of cards and was a full fledged 1GHz computer with 256MB of RAM and a 10 or 15GB hard drive (substantial horsepower for its time) that ran a full version of Windows XP (before the mass exodus to Linux and Unix based operating systems, like Mac OS X, windows was the dominant OS in the marketplace). The revolutionary idea sparked by the MMC was that users would simply pop the MMC into a wide variety of docking stations with a screen and keyboard if you want to use it like a desktop, or into a smaller PDA-type shell if you need something more portable. The rest, is of course, history.

More about the Antelope Modular Computing MMC can be found here or here.

A pumpkin carving robot? You bet. From BoingBoing.

Electrical engineers Sigurd Wagner and Stephanie Lacour at Princeton University have developed a kind of connector incorporating broad metal strips that, unlike wires, can stretch up to twice their length and still conduct electricity. They think it will be ideal for use in robot skin. More here.

For your listening pleasure, DJ Hell's Tokyo set (Real Audio required). As always, thanks to Christoph for the link.

Satellite photography of the raging Southern California fires here.

Kung-fu robots and a new Siouxsie site, from Mr. D.

Don't forget to buy your tickets for Richie Hawtin and Ellen Allien at Mezzanine SF on November 7th. You can buy tickets at Blasthaus via Paypal here.

Casey and Toula, April 2003. Photo by Bitboy

Nobody can ever accuse Fischerspooner of not having a good sense of humor. The performance art troupe has finally unveiled news about the long-awaited follow up to their 3 year old debut album #1 -- providing an easy target to electro-bashing critics, here is just one of many news snippets found about their upcoming release, titled "#2":

Fischerspooner #2 on the Way
by Bernardo Rondeau

New York DJ Larry Tee may have proclaimed the belated demise of Electroclash this summer by re-titling the genre's namesake showcase the "Electronic Outsider Music" Festival, and even shutting down the movement's dance party night Berliniamsburg . Numanoids fear not, for the scene's torchbeares Fischerspooner show no signs of shelving their synths and eyeliner anytime soon. Word has it that Casey Spooner and Warren Fischer have finished recording much of the follow-up to last year's dually reviled/revered #1 and will soon unleash another wave of Kabuki-clad, Eurowave transgression on the world.

Song titles such as "SS Stone," "Los Angeles," "Reverb," "Squirm" and "Downup" may suggest business as usual but the men machine have been speaking of the unfinished LP as a "digital AOR Seventies record" and even name-dropping the bloated carcass that reigned over that decade: Pink Floyd . While art-students and academics may fear the second coming of the double-album that dare not speak its name ( The Wall ), Fischerspooner would never turn their feather-and-sequin shoulders to the gallery owners that first nestled them like bejeweled babes in a silken cradle.

Fischerspooner are talking of a collaboration with raven-haired critic, novelist and cinemaniac Susan Sontag on the forthcoming disc. And if you can't tell your Sontag from your Maytag, chances are the prospect of a Girls Gone Wild -ish video for first-single, "Never Young," will be the clincher. Regardless, with a sudden void for aggressively bad-taste left after the demise of Siegfried and Roy , there may be hope still for future generations of spectacle-seekers. Fischerspooner, the 21st Century--or at least an enormous laser-lit, dry-ice stage on the Vegas strip--is all yours.

Here's another article, at Rolling Stone.

The charming and ever robo-friendly, Cat is waking up from a long nap and has decided to come out and play this weekend. She's going to be spinning her latest electro beats Saturday night at the Arrow in San Francisco. Should be a fun time for all.

Nano velcro. Cool.

Put away your fancy laptops and synthesizers, that's so 2003 retro 80's. Instead, bust out your gameboy. There's an entire community who are not only composing 8-bit tunes using the chipset embedded in Nintendo's pocket-sized player, they're even performing live with them - by this robot's standards, there's nothing more hardcore then performing live with a gameboy or two. Check out some of the links here or here. Of special interest is the 8bitpeoples.com site, where they have downloadable MP3s of 2 brilliant Depeche Mode megamixes, all composed on, you guessed it. Rock on, Mario. Thanks to Robot Peter for the links.

Attn: Robots. Looking for cool nightlife options in Vancouver, B.C., any suggestions? E-mail me.

Apple releases iTunes for Windows.

Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft is in full effect here at iRobotnik thanks to Christoph. Whenever he sends a music tip I always check it out right away cause it's sure to be good - his latest recomendation is no exception. Germany's Generation Aldi (on Dekathlon) gets the BitBoy bleep of approval for their synsonic-teutonic sounds. Check out the MP3s on their site.

If you're in the mood for something a little more mixed up, check out the links on fellow robot Spooner's site blentwell.com, which is 'devoted to the elimination of wack compilations through the administration of blend education'. Good stuff.

Sometimes owning an Apple gives you that great feeling of reaching into the pocket of a jacket you haven't worn all season and finding a fistful of cash. Here's just one example - this article explains how Apple is adding support for DVD+R and DVD+RW into the Macintosh operating system with Panther, the new version of Mac OS X that ships next week. Normally support for a new type of format would mean having to buy a new drive, but I just checked my new G5's System Profiler to find that Apple shipped the G5 with a Sony DW-U10A internal drive, which just happens to be the FIRST combination drive which supports DVD+RW, DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD-R formats. So voila! Instant upgrade. Yet another reason to love Apple.

Okay, NikeGround is indeed an elaborate (very elaborate) hoax pulled off by media performance group 0100101110101101.ORG .

YARTHN
(yet another reason to hate Nike)
This is not a joke. Nikeground.com describes how one of Vienna’s best known squares, Karlsplatz will now be renamed Nikeplatz and will prominently bear the Nike swoosh logo. Thanks to Mike for spotting this disturbing trend.

Electro-raunch diva Peaches will be performing live 10.24 at Bimbo's in SF. More information as it becomes available.

Photo by Bitboy, May 2003

Faithful Robots: Our favorite DJ and Turbo Records poster-boy Tiga has bestowed the gift of free streaming music. Partake in his generosity here or here (RealAudio Required):

Tracklisting:

Tiga Mix
1. Headman/Manhead, Love & Music Faberge Records
2. Tom Tom Club, Wordy Rappinghood Sire
3. Star You Star Me, Antidis (Freestyle Man Thirsty Monk Remix) Mood Music
4. Groof, Miami Is Nice White Leather Acetate
5. Da Fresh, Back 4 Ya Weaked France
6. M.A.N.D.Y., Don't Stop Get Physical
7. Tiga, Hot In Herre (a cappella) Skint
8. Tiga, Hot In Herre !K7
9. The White Stripes, Seven Inch Army Bootleg - Touched By The Hands of Z
10. The Faint, Your Retro Career Melted (Ursula 1000 Remix) Astralwerks
11. The Warlocks, Shake The Dope Out (Kiki & Silversurfer remix) City Rockers
12. Joakim, Come Into My Kitchen (Basement Dub) Versatile
13. Miss Kittin & The Hacker, The Beach Mental Groove
14. Drama Society, Teorema Turbo recordings
15. Groof, Azid Life White Leather Records
16. Goldfrapp, Strict Machine (Ewan Pearson Strippedmachine) Mute
17. Tiga, Burning Down Turbo Recordings

Oh, and for you poor, poor dears who are having trouble finding the Fitness' album, Call Me for Together, never fear, you can find it here.

If you happen to find yourself in the fine capital city of Sacramento, word in the burg is that the deckest of deck choices for electro-entertainment is none other than club Vicious, which happens the first Saturday of the month (thanks to Shaun for the tip). Across the pond, if you happen to be lucky enough to be in Barcelona, consider yourself even more lucky if you can make it by Club Access All Areas to partake in wicked beats being thrown down by the femme-fatales also known as Robots in Disguise.

Closer to home, Friday night Club Dirrty at the new Paradise Lounge will be playing host to a live performance by The Lovemakers and The Vue. Saturday marks the beginning of SF Open Studios where you can wander the myriad galleries, studios, and and garages of local artists wanting to showcase their work for the public, and consume more free cheap wine and cubed cheese than you can shake a cocktail toothpick at. More info can be found here. Finally, I don’t know too much about this event on Sunday, but with a name like 'Realistic 1983' can it really be bad? Head over to Milk in the Haight and find out for yourself. You’ll enjoy the sounds of DJs Peanut Butter Wolf and Sweet Steve as they pay respect to 20 years of DJ culture with a night of vintage beats.

Fun animations at the much-hyped new Napster site.

Holy wayback machine! Don't adjust your sets, if you saw a weird version of iRobtnik today it's because somehow Blogger f*cked up and published an ancient version of my design template. I managed to manually wrangle it back to normal, but I still don't know how it happened.

In spite of the unbelievable reality that Conan the Barbarian is now Calih-fornyuh’s new Governor-elect, my day turned out great thanks to Sam Valenti and the fine folks over at Ghostly International. They sent me a cool schwag pack full of CDs and stickers, including the latest not-yet-released album from 24 year old electro-funk prodigy Matthew Dear called “Leave Luck to Heaven” (bonus props to anyone who can tell me what the title is in reference to). Anyhow, if you see any of these characters around town:

You can bet that BitBoy was responsible for it!

Also, as previously mentioned, expect big things from Seattle’s “The Fitness”. I’m trying to pull some strings to get a San Francisco show booked. Stay tuned for details.

Oops!

The most ghetto fabulous WiFi HiFi yet: an old school boom box called the Bass-Station that's been refitted with 802.11b, a 120GB hard drive, and an MP3 decoder, and that is controlled using a web browser. Besides being able to play MP3s, it can also stream audio to other devices in its local area network, double as a file-server for file-sharing. Sure to come in handy for our next breakdancing battle. Thanks to Damon and Gizmodo for the fressshhh link.

Ich liebe Berlin!
San Francisco is being invaded by Berliners (and we're so happy!). Ellen Alien will be in San Francisco at Mezzanine, November 7th along with T. Raumschmeire to promote her album, Berlinette, and touring Ritchie Hawtin (a.k.a. Plastikman). You can see some limited details about the tour here. More details to come as soon as I hear more. Thanks to Nix and Mr. D for the info.

October's newest electro beats are available for your listening pleasure at Daniel Miller's Radio Eins. Thanks to Mr. D for the reminder.

Choices, choices. Your friendly neighborhood robot is having a real hard time choosing between this Friday night's options to officially endorse, so I'll just leave it up to you. Both are sure to be kick ass events, but I've got it on good authority that Tokyo Electric will be pumping out some serious non-stop robot love that is NOT to be missed. Of course, the fun doesn't stop on Friday, it just gets better with RE-VOLT and THE CLAP on Saturday and Sunday:

Friday October 3rd
TOKYO ELECTRIC $5 (9-3:00am) Paradise Lounge (in soma) 308 11th Street DJs: Teflonjacket, John Weir, Julian Destruckt, Raf One
More info.

Saturday October 4th
RE-VOLT $3-$5 depending on your mood (free before 10:30) Amnesia (in the mission) 853 Valencia DJs: KEN - Q Ki, Forest Green, Chris Burfine
More info.

Sunday October 5th Since you still haven't had enough, or maybe you haven't had any...
THE CLAP (free all night long 8-12:00pm) Amnesia (in the mission) 853 Valencia DJs: John Hoppin Actual Jakshun, Caltrop and Luck
More info.

Also, if you're craving some new tunes from The Faint, try satiating your appetite with the sounds of Seattle's The Fitness, who are currently rocking my world.

More reasons to vote Camejo on October 7th from the San Francisco Examiner, and The Contra Costa Times.