steve is currently certified at Master level.

Name: R. Steven Rainwater
Member since: 2001-02-25 23:17:55
Last Login: 2009-07-04 02:28:31

Homepage: http://www.ncc.com/humans/srainwater/

Notes:

I build robots, talk about robots, write about robots, and photograph robots. In addition to being an editor of robots.net, I'm also a contributing editor to Servo Magazine and have contributed to Robot Magazine, The Robotics Practitioner Journal, and the Robot Explorer Newsletter. I've written robot articles for internal corporate publications too. If you'd like me consider a writing project that involves robotics, please let me know

My ramblings about robots have been quoted in Forbes, USA Today, the New York Times, and other assorted non-technical publications. I've also done numerous interviews on the subject of robots. I've been interviewed multiple times for the well-known Robots Podcast. I've also been on KZSC radio's Timothy Jordon show to talk about the future of robots and on local Dallas radio talk shows. If you need an interview subject on robotics, please let me know

Recent Interviews

Luxury Robots, 2005, Forbes Magazine
The Robot Blogosphere, 2008, Robots Podcast
At Home With Robots: The Coming Revolution, 2008, Vivian Wagner, TechNewsWorld
Robots 2009 New Year's Special, 2009, Robots Podcast

I've been consulted on robot documentary films and videos including the Nova series, a Discovery Network reality show, the Scripps Network and, surprisingly, even a CSI: New York script. Need a consultant to give you some expert robotics advice for your next project? Please let me know

My robot photography has appeared in Servo Magazine, Robot Magazine, and the Italian robot magazine, I-Droid01.

I've maintained the Usenet Robot Competition FAQ for over a decade. I'm a member of the Dallas Personal Robotics Group, one of the oldest robot special interest groups in the world. In the early 1990's I was the editor and publisher of the AI CD-ROM, an annual collection of software, papers, and documentation on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and other advanced machine technologies. Even further back, in the pre-Internet days, I used to maintain the Interocitor BBS, which was the largest AI and Robotics related BBS around back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Life isn't all about robots, though. You can read more about my other interests in my blog or on my Advogato profile.

If you want to get in touch, feel free to email me.

Projects

Lead Developer on Robot competition FAQ
Developer on CF Walker

Articles Posted by steve

Random Robot Roundup 5 Mar 2009 at 23:45 UTC
Help Name This Robot! 3 Mar 2009 at 17:32 UTC
Industrial Surplus Transformed into Art Robots 2 Mar 2009 at 16:42 UTC
Using Astrobotics to Prepare a Lunar Outpost 25 Feb 2009 at 22:20 UTC
Random Robot Roundup 24 Feb 2009 at 17:31 UTC
Another Breakthrough in Rock, Paper Scissors 20 Feb 2009 at 21:53 UTC
Why Sleep is Needed to Form Memories 19 Feb 2009 at 20:18 UTC
RSSC 11-Robots-at-Once Mini Sumo Video 19 Feb 2009 at 00:57 UTC
CRA/CCC Robotics Initiative R & D Roadmap 17 Feb 2009 at 19:39 UTC
Robot Control Console for Google Android 16 Feb 2009 at 19:00 UTC

Complete list of articles by steve

Recent blog entries by steve

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30 Jun 2009 »

June is gone already!?

Yes, it's June already and feel like I haven't gotten anything done. Work has been taking up most of my time. Since I last posted I've been to A-Kon 2009. I shot few A-Kon cosplay photos plus a few time exposures of the A-Kon Friday night rave. I also shot a few photos at Jerry Chevalier's 2009 Texas Build Off, a cool event where movie robot replica builders from all over the world gather to show off their robots and, more importantly, share building techniques and help each work on robots.

I've never managed to blog much more than a couple of times a month, so if anyone reading this actually cares what I'm up to, you might want to follow me on twitter or check my canonical home page where you can see the relatively frequent photo stream updates from my crappy mobile phone camera. By the way, if you're looking for other robot builders to follow on twitter, check out Wired's list of 52 Robot Geeks on Twitter.

Speaking of twitter, I really need to find a good way to get that integrated into mod_virgule. And speaking of mod_virgule, I once again completely failed to find time to work on it. But I've exchanged some email with another programmer who might be brave enough to start doing some hacking on the code, so maybe that will get me motivated in July!

28 May 2009 »

May Miscellany

Time for a quick update. May started off with the VEX Robotics World Championship here in Dallas. I was one of the judges evaluating the 270 teams and their robots. I'll probably write a little more about it in an upcoming issue of Robot Magazine for those who are interested.

I created a robots.net twitter feed and robots.net facebook page for robots.net this month. So far the facebook page is ahead with over 160 fans while the twitter feed only has about 38 followers so far. To be fair the facebook page went online a couple of weeks earlier so we'll see if it hangs on to the lead over time.

I'm still struggling to find time to devote to mod_virgule but squeezed in a few more hours of C coding on the new HTML parser. It's now running on a test server with a subset of Advogato's database. So far, so good. Blog aggregation and parsing seems to be working, as do local blog posting, article posting, and article comments. The magnitude of the changes makes this update a bit of scarier than usual for robots.net and Advogato. If nothing breaks in the next week or so of testing, though, I'll cross my fingers and make it live.

I continue to drag my Canon 40D around with me everywhere and since my last blog post, I've shot photos of the Funky Finds Spring Fling craft show in Ft. Worth, the Aveda Walk for Water event in Dallas, the aforementioned VEX Robotics World Championship, the Cottonwood Arts Festival in Richardson, the 2009 DFW Dragon Boat Festival in Las Colinas, oh, and a few pics of my friends at Vivanti Group in Deep Ellum. In the retro-photo department, I posted some BW 127 photos shot with a Kodak Brownie Reflex Synchro. Yesterday, a package arrived containing that rarest of things, color 127 film, from a small manufacturer in Canada. I'll probably run a roll through the Bencini Comet S sometime soon.

10 Apr 2009 »

Retro-Photography Update

I posted a while back about my experiences repairing and using a Bencini Comet S 127 film camera. Since then I've acquired a few more interesting old cameras. One is an Argus C, an American 35mm camera made in 1938. I bought it at an estate sale for $10. The Argus C series cameras were also know as "bricks" because they have the same form factor, aesthetics, (and seemingly the same weight) as a brick. The Argus was in very bad shape and required a lot of work to get it operational. I shot a roll of film and got some interesting results despite a chronic focus error.

The next camera I got my hands on was a German Bilora Bella 3b, made between 1955 and 1957. I got the Bella on eBay for $8. It was in remarkably good condition, requiring only some minor repairs to the case to solve a light leak problem. The first roll of film produced some interesting photos but also revealed a strange optical artifact, possibly produced by light reflection in the lens.

So far the most interesting images were produced by the Bencini Comet S and I've continued to shoot with it. I'm still looking for old film cameras at estate sales and will post more results to my flickr photostream as I can.

4 Mar 2009 (updated 4 Mar 2009 at 23:05 UTC) »

Advogato and Syndicated Blogs

Over on Advogato, cdfrey asked whether syndicated blogs were good or bad for the recentlog. He asked whether the authors who allow their blogs to be syndicated into Advogato's recentlog stream actually stop by to read the recentlog anymore. I'm sure some of them don't but I'm equally sure some of them do. In any case, I can verify at least one person who syndicates to Advogato reads the recent log - me! :)

ta0kira followed up with some further comments on the topic including the question of whether other sites interleave syndicated posts with content that originates locally. There are a few such as Facebook (see below) but Advogato has always done things that were a little, ummm, experimental in nature. He has a good point that it would be nice to be able to select whether or not to see the syndicated posts. It has also be suggested in the past that an ideal solution is to give each user the ability to create their own personalize recentlog view.

One aspect to consider is that there are several ways of syndicating your blog to Advogato that may go unnoticed. Posts syndicated by RSS or ATOM are explicitly marked as such in the recentlog but syndication by XML-RPC or the older HTTP POST method go unnoted. My blog posts, for example, originate on my personal blog and are then syndicated to Advogato and robots.net using the HTTP POST method; and to Facebook by RSS. Facebook's blog syndication services are horrendously bad incidently, turning each blog post into a nondescript thing called a "note" with no clear indication of what it is or why it exists.

Another recentlog issue that's been mentioned several times lately is that some people are piping their twitter feeds into the recentlog via RSS. I agree this can be annoying but rather than block twitter feeds, I'd like to see them rerouted into a user status field, much like Facebook or Myspace. For example, I use twitter and my tweets update my user status field on Facebook. Maybe it's time to add a user status field to mod_virgule sites like Advogato?

5 Feb 2009 »

Adventures in Retro Photography

Susan and I frequent estate sales these days. For my part, I'm usually looking for interesting metal objects and potential robot parts. Occasionally, I see something I'm not looking for that's weird or interesting enough that I have to buy it. That was the case recently when I spotted a Bencini Comet S 127 film camera. I'd never heard of Bencini and the camera was in pretty bad shape but, hey, for $2, why not?

An initial inspection revealed a spare film takeup reel inside. The camera still included a metal screw-on lens cap. The shutter appeared to work. On the downside, the focus ring wouldn't turn, the lens and viewfinder had years worth of dirt on them, and the black leathery covering had partially peeled off the front of the camera.

A little Googling turned up quite a bit of information on the camera from Camerapedia, the Vintage Camera Museum and other sites. The Comet is a 127 film camera made by CMF Bencini in Milano, Italy in 1950. The Comet is a half-frame camera, meaning it takes 16 portrait aspect ratio photos on an 8 exposure roll of 127 film instead of the usual 8 square images.

I took the camera to the weekly DPRG meeting. That might seem odd, but we do a lot more than build robots. Basically anything geeky is on topic there. Another DPRG member, Ed Paradis, helped me disassemble and examine the camera. The focus ring problem was due to solidified lubricant. With careful application of solvent we were able to remove the old lubricant. Then we added some new, non-oil-based lubricant. The focus ring worked like new when we were done. I cleaned up the rest of the camera as best I could.

I discovered there's actually a growing community of 127 users on flickr. Surprisingly, flickr is apparently exposing (no pun intended!) a lot of people to film for the first time and helping bring back interest in a number of dying film formats. I found helpful information there on how to load and use my camera.

There is one type of 127 Black and White film still manufactured, Efke, made by Fotokemika in Samobor, Croatia. Efke R100 film is manufacured using a "classic emulsion" formulation, meaning the photos look very much like they would have when the first 127 films were in use. Efke R100 is inexpensive through B&H photo at $5 a roll, so I ordered a few rolls. Coincidentally, Susan received a replica plastic Diana F 120 film camera from her sister as a gift around thsi same time, so we picked up some color 120 film for her and we went out to shoot a couple of test rolls with our new arsenal of cheesy cameras.

As it turns out, the real problem isn't buying 127 film, it's finding a lab willing to process it. While it's technically possible for any professional photo lab to process the film, most don't offer the service. Most 127 film users rely on mail-order processing through either Blue Moon Camera and Machine in Portland, OR or Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, KS. With all the film labs in the Dallas area, however, I was happy to discover The Color Lab, Inc very close to my office. They process 127, 120, and most other film formats. They're inexpensive, offer prints or scanning to CD and I've gotten same-day service so far. I highly recommend them if you're looking for a photo lab in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area.

After getting my negatives back from the Color Lab, I scanned them on an Epson V500, cropped the images in Gimp, and parked them on flickr where you can check them out if you want to see what sort of photos a Bencini Comet S can produce.

As a final note. I recently discovered a Canadian manufacturer is now making 127 color film in small quantities. The film is called Bluefire Murano 160. It can be developed using standard C-41 color processing. It's available in the US through the Frugal Photographer website for $7 a roll. I haven't decided if I want to do any color with the Comet. For now I'll probably stick to the Efke R100.

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