Comments | greatblondelf: Robot Area

greatblondelf

Robot Area

Jan 19, 2006 13:41

So, it looks like my penchant for collecting computers and rolling my own parallel clusters has finally gotten to people, and I'm getting a better office and some lab space in a nearby building. But, um, I was just over there, and ( Read more... )

Comments 10

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greatblondelf January 23 2006, 21:02:29 UTC

After talking to Liz, I realized that it could be the Robot Maid Construction Area. I'm not sure if it's more or less terrifying in that case.....

erinthewanderer January 20 2006, 09:43:17 UTC

safety first!

just don't go up any of the ladders that they don't specifically tell you that you can, and you should be fine.

greatblondelf January 23 2006, 21:01:06 UTC

But they're so tempting.......I keep thinking there might be free ammunition up there.....

erinthewanderer January 23 2006, 22:12:52 UTC

no ammo for you, just a hidden thing that kills the curious.

algeh January 20 2006, 15:07:16 UTC

If I ever need to censor a picture with one of those black boxes that says "CENSORED" for some reason, I think I shall label the box "ROBOT AREA" instead. It just calls to me.

guenievre February 1 2006, 10:43:22 UTC

"Robot Area" is even better than the "death ray" that graced my lab before we relocated. That's right, death ray. I heard they burned things with it, but I preferred to think of it as a defense against any day-walking vampires that might have ventured into my geeky abode. And let it be known that scientists who work until all hours and never see the light of day can strongly resemble said vampires.

Extra ammo might not be sufficient impetus for the climbing of unknown ladders, but have you considered the possibility of extra lives up there? Or maybe even one of those Gluon guns... and then you'd be able to melt the robots, should they turn hostile.

greatblondelf February 3 2006, 17:20:04 UTC

Wow, a "death ray" definitely puts my "robot area" to shame. One has to wonder - just what was it emitting to cause all the death - or, as its name implied, was it a machine to literally create and emit a beam of death, no doubt via some obsucure particle interaction. *thinks* "mortons"...err, no, maybe...the "scalar demise field" Anyway, that's thanatastic. :) Let's hope the software running it didn't blue-screen.

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure what you have to do to get a "death ray" is to put a cat into a box, and [cliched gedankenexperiment removed], then open the box without looking in, and accelerate the contents with a bias voltage, through a perpindicular magnetic field and toward a beam splitter. Clearly, then, on the other side there had to be a "life ray." After being split in half, the feline wavefunction would have a hard time collapsing in just one place, so I wouldn't get anything in the way of the beam - it'd likely become a catastrophe.

guenievre February 8 2006, 15:20:49 UTC

Thanatastic. I think I just acquired a new favorite word. ;)

Actually, the name sounds far more spiffy than the actual device, at least from the technological standpoint. No scalar demise field here, folks. Said death ray (or rays, since there were two of them) were simply a redirection of sunlight by a painstaking arrangement of mirrors. Apparently, one of the guys who had too much time on his hands decided to apply his brilliance to finding a way of focusing the equivalent of 67 and 112 suns, so he mounted several dozen tiny mirrors at various angles on hinged, semi-vertical platforms. My speculation in explaining this low-tech approach to science involves the fact that the software and equipment running the plasma thruster next door did seem more than a bit... glitchy. I'm not sure how much of a point he was trying to make with this little endeavor ( ... )

tabyk February 3 2006, 12:32:32 UTC

Anime party!

( ... )

greatblondelf February 3 2006, 16:06:11 UTC

Best. Graphic. Ever.