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Thursday 6th May 2021

Here's some of what you missed at The Thirsty Robot:

Technical Musings

Technology Topic - Bicycle Spoke Ornaments

Discussion almost turned to WiFi at first, but veered in a totally different direction: bicycle spoke ornaments. Yep, those bits of reflective plastic that came in cereal packets and which you fastened to your cycle spoke so that you were more visible at night (and in the day). I can't think of a better way to show how discussions can change in The Thirsty Robot!


It seems that you can still get them, but not free in cereal packets...

Of course, the photo of a bicycle used here just had to have spoke reflectors in it! Photo by Daman Singh on Unsplash  

Technology Topic - AI

Previously, AI has been a discussion point, but this time, things were different. We weren't sure if the people behind this thought that their visualisation was good, or bad...

https://replika.ai/


One sentiment was: 'Can't we just use the InterWeb?' Maybe technical people are just averse to rather creepy-looking fake humans fronting AI systems that are often nothing more than a bit of Machine Learning and a lot of simplistic assumptions. Or the Next Big Thing, of course. And so we eneded up at: 'Turing Complete':

Code Golf (Haven't we mentioned this before?)


Snog, Marry, Avoid... (Media to Avoid)


The 'Recommended Media' section nearly got renamed, but it was decided that adding a new section was better: media to avoid. As always, just the biased opinion of the people who were at The Thirsty Robot:



[ Ugly developers who smell! - available all over the UK, apparently ]

[ Big Sky - on Amazon Prime in the UK ] Not this one...

[ Big Sky - Strymon ] Not this one either...

[ Big Sky - Kate Bush ] And not this one either...


(Moral - 'Big Sky' isn't a clever name to give your media if you want it to be unique...)

[ Meetings with Real People! (Seriously, does anyone want to go back to that?) ] Curiously, searching on Google for this ONLY gave results that assumed you wanted an alternative to a Dating App! That is very revealing about how often these searches are re-indexed,,,


Things We Didn't Know Existed! But We Do Now!


We weren't expecting this one: 

We thought this one was called a Ferrule:


Recommended Media


[ Talk - DIY Satellites - On Meetup, Online, Soon! ] From the person who knew what an aglet was!

[ Lindsay Ellis - Thoughts about Media YouTube, Nebula... ]

[ What Can You Do With An Accelerometer? Reddit ]


[ The Score for John Cage's '4'33"' - Musescore ] 

[ Arrival - on Amazon Prime in the UK ]

As always, we reckon that movies or films (and some other media forms) are best enjoyed if you haven't seen the trailer beforehand...

Repeated Theme


There was definitely a repeated theme at this meeting: The Rules For 'Just A Minute'. There was a lot of deviation, and some repetition (see 'code golf').


Quote of the Week:


"David Cameron, Nigel Farage, Theresa Coffee. I made fools of them all."


Now, don't you just wish you had been here!


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A lot of discussion happens at The Thirsty Robot. This blog is an edited, biased summary of just a small fraction of the conversation, links/URLs and references that were mentioned. It is an imperfect record and is definitely not complete - for that you should visit The Thirsty Robot!

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The next online meeting at The Thirsty Robot is on Thursday 13th May 2021 at 7:30pm GMT.











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