smolZINE - Issue 37

eZine lover (@eZine)

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smolZINE

· 1 month ago

smolZINE - Issue 37

2023-01-21

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Introduction
Hidden (and not so hidden) Gems
Emanations
Recreation
Community Contributions & Discussion

Introduction

-Beep- -Boop- smolZINE Issue 37 process initiated.

Hidden (and not so hidden) Gems

Alexandra's Cafe

Something a bit different than the average capsule in geminispace. This cafe weaves what it has to say into a narrative meant to be explored rather than just read. A lovely throwback to the old internet.

=> gemini://alexandras.cafe/ Alexandra's Cafe

a.rusty-haiku.dev

This "rusty old corner of the smolnet" has things about, you guessed it, Rust and the Haiku operating system. Also, home to a mirror of the Awesome Gemini repo that collects a large list of gemini software projects in one place.

=> gemini://a.rusty-haiku.dev/

COLEAN.CC

Technology, music, art and cheese info are the kinds of things you'll find here. The perfect combination.

=> gemini://colean.cc/ COLEAN.CC

Clearleaf Forest

Don't be fooled by the unassuming landing page. Behind that short list of links are a sizeable bookmarks page and large trove of recipes!

=> gemini://clearleaf.flounder.online/ Clearleaf Forest

Emanations

Unrealized Potential of Robots in Your Home

I, like many people these days have a robot in my home. One that vacuums my house when I tell it to. There are many different version of this type of robot. My particular one has the potential to run on a customizable schedule, from a phone app or even be connected to a voice assistant so you can verbally tell it to vacuum the house. Being the control, privacy and security conscious person that I am, that little robot is connected to no wifi, no apps and no voice assistants. It has a nice little button on the top that you can just press to make it do the thing. Since it is still necessary to prepare the house for running the vacuum by tidying up things that it would get stuck on or pick up that would be undesirable (we have kids) and empty the dirt bin, I don't see this as an inconvenience at all. More like just a part of the routine and still way easier than vacuuming the whole house manually. Do a quick walk around to put things back in their place and press the button when you're done.

=> img/neatorobovac.jpg Our Neato Robot Vacuum

I'm still quite enamored with how well it works even though I've had one in the house for going on 8 years now. We're on our second model at this point. These vacuum robots have gotten very good at navigating a home succesfully on their own. Back to those voice assistants I briefly mentioned. As you'd probably expect from my previous remarks I'm not keen on having a Home or an Echo in my house. But what I do have is a Mycroft voice assistant. Mycroft is an open source voice assistant that has been around for a while. It is far from perfect and I'm not sure if it will stick around in the long run but it's the most useable alternative to the ones you've heard of and that I have no desire to use. Maybe it will make it or maybe another open source voice assistant project will come along. Are voice assistants robots? I'd say yes. They don't really do anything in the physical sense but in a roundabout way they can, sort of. I'm thinking about triggering "smart" appliances, lights or stepper motors and such.

=> img/mycroftmarki.jpg Mycroft Mark I
=> https://mycroft.ai/

That's two kinds of robots that are fairly common in households today. When I say unrealized potential what I mean is that I'm pretty disappointed that nobody has succesfully combined these two types of robots. One can navigate, the other can take commands and do your bidding or fetch information for you. Who isn't intrigued by putting them together and having the real life Rosie we were promised by the Jetsons? Fun Fact: Rosie is what my parents named their roomba and yes, my mother talks to her as if she was literally Rosie. Imagine having a little robot that sits at it's charging base like a vacuum robot but can come find you when you call it so you can ask it something, tell it to clean or to kick off some automation task you have configured. Instead of having multiple voice assistants littering your house so they can respond wherever you are, you could have just one robot that comes to you instead.

There is one robot that looked like it may, in some form, realize this dream. The Qbo robot was a product that began being developed about 10 years ago that was a little wheeled robot with a head and eyes that could move around on its own and was supposed to be an assitant not unlike what voice assistants are, just mobile. That never panned out and they pivoted to make it a stationary Raspberry Pi based voice assistant with a controllable robotic head. It is intended as a robotics educational project and I'm not sure if it ever made it to production.

=> img/qborobot.jpg Qbo Robot
=> https://robots.ieee.org/robots/qbo/

It would be so cool if this home robot ever came about. If it ever does I'm skeptical that it will be open and user/privacy respecting enough for me to actually feel comfortable using it. Bonus idea that I briefly considered attempting as a project. Rather than a robot that roams the floor of your home I thought about mounting a small voice assistant to a motorized zipline mounted to the ceiling that could move along the line when summoned. Somebody please make an actually good version of a home robot assistant so I don't have to hack

- kelbot

Recreation

Stinky Pinky
by kelbot

To play Stinky Pinky you will need to read the two descriptions below. They each describe a word and the two words rhyme. Example: 1. Smelly, 2. Finger; Answer: Stinky Pinky. Get it? You can email your answer to the address found at the bottom of each smolZINE to confirm if you are correct. The first to answer wins...uhhh I haven't figured that out yet so my congrats will have to do for now.

Small blue and white creature
Gnarly watersport

Community Contributions & Discussion

Please consider taking part in making this zine better and more diverse by contributing your thoughts and finds. If you are interested in contributing a short article or capsule picks email me at: smolzine (at) cyberbot.space.

If you have any feedback or just want to discuss anything related to gemini or smolZINE hit me up at the above email or ping me on the fediverse at kelbot@retro.social and/or use the #smolZINE tag.