Thanks for git, Google!

I assume everyone else is in the know by now, too, but I still wanted to say a public thank you to Google for supporting git at Google Project Hosting.

Now I need to decide if it's worth the effort to consider switching from GitHub. I don't even know if Google supports the sweetly convenient ssh keys thing. At first glance, I don't see it.

At least I know git is an option at Google now, should I decide to go back.

Node.js on the way

I've been becoming a fan of Node.js. Liberally licensed, V8 speediness, JS enjoyment. I haven't followed all the news, and I'd missed the recent great announcement of Microsoft helping with first-class Windows support. Also, while job listings for Node.js are still few, they are caught up to Erlang and keeping pace with Scala.

I look forward to JS replacing Java (and the JVM) all around someday.

Robots that eat

For years, I've been occasionally distracted with a fascination about robots that eat, either plants or meat or whatever. I have not investigated research in artificial chemical reactions of this sort for producing energy, but I suspect some work has been done (such as this example).

I think a carnivorous robot could also make a great just-barely-sci-fi story. Probably also been done. There's nothing new under the sun. I just haven't run across it myself yet, nor have I searched such a thing out much. I'm not much a fan of horror, so I wouldn't take it there myself, but I don't mind getting a bit edgy and uncomfortable. I think it could be well done.

In any case, just got reminded of that notion by this blog post. I haven't actually watched the mentioned ads yet, but I'll likely get around to it.

And, of course, solar powered robots are a lot more palatable (pun considered) to our sensibilities and are clearly practical for some situations.