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28 June

Um, I'm still here, believe it or not, working on ProjectX. This website will be replaced eventually and all will be explained, but given a choice between coding and writing web pages I'll go for coding every time! Bear with me. In the mean time, if you're interested in cognition, evolution, a-life, AI, atheism or preferably all five, be sure to visit this great site:

16 Jan

Happy New year everyone! As some of you know, I'm working hard on an exciting new project. I'll put some information on this site soon, but I don't want to talk too much about it yet. I just thought I'd mention it because it's a reasonable excuse for why the site hasn't been updated for ages. Watch this space.

By the way, I'm on TV on Wednesday (Jan 18th) - BBC4, 9pm, Under Laboratory Conditions.

7 December

This is just to publicly record my thanks to my pen-friend Norm Nason, who I've never even met but can say with conviction is one of the nicest people in the world. A few days ago my computer died and I had to replace almost all of it. Except, that is, for its ancient hard drive, since I was trying to keep the cost to a minimum. This morning a brand spanking new 250GB drive arrived on my doorstep without explanation. It turned out to be a gift from Norm, to help with my work. What a genuinely nice guy! I'm really touched.

I guess I might as well update you all while I'm here. Lucy is, I'm afraid, still shut down. However, this is because I've been working very hard writing a new A-life simulation, called Simbiosis (sic). It's actually an idea I've been trying to make happen for nearly 30 years, sometimes in software form, sometimes in hardware. It'll be my first commercial application since Creatures, which came out getting on for a decade ago now, and it's great fun to be back coding something that will (hopefully) entertain and enlighten people again, after all those thousands of lines of deep computational neuroscience that only Lucy and I ever saw. I don't really want to talk about the program yet, because the project still has a good year to run, but I will start blogging about it fairly soon.

Hi to Sue, and thanks for bullying me into updating this page. Hi also to Toby - nice to talk to you again after all this time. And happy birthday to my son Chris.

Not much has been happening in my life. I happened to be in the House of Commons for a reception on the day the government was defeated over the Terrorism Bill, which was quite exciting. I gave out the prizes and certificates at Westfield School in Yeovil recently, which was surprisingly enjoyable, given how much I hate public speaking. My old school chum Tony's film is out now in the US - MirrorMask - stunning stuff. I've done a few more lectures, and I had a nice time on Radio Four's Material World programme a few weeks ago. Apart from that I've just had my head down coding. ...So that's all the news there is from misty Somerset!

28 July

As you may have noticed, things have gone a bit quiet around here lately, even by my standards. I came into the workshop this morning to find that Lucy the Robot had acquired a large cobweb, so maybe that's a hint that I should finally admit defeat and call it a day.

The Lucy project has been shut down for several months now, due to lack of money, and it doesn't look like I'm going to be doing any research for the next year at least, while I try to earn a bit of cash to pay the mortgage. I'll leave her on the workbench for the benefit of the spider, so it's not all wasted.

Unfortunately a few potential projects and funding applications fell apart, and that's why I have to shelve my research. I have some tales to tell on those subjects but there's no point griping about it. The UK is a really shitty place in which to try doing anything genuinely innovative, and collaboration is a greatly overrated concept, that's all I'm saying.

Most of the things I'm working on now won't be of interest to you lot because they're fairly off-topic - a children's book, a large artwork for a cinema - so I won't talk about them here. I am working on a software project that I promise WILL interest you quite a bit, but it remains to be seen whether I can find enough money and time to have a chance of bringing it to market. If it continues to develop I'll let you know, so don't go away!

Um, I think that's about all. I've uploaded a new(ish) IEEE journal essay here (probably the last thing I'm going to say about AI for a while). I'm on the telly some time next month, whingeing about science funding. You can ignore my bit, but the programme itself sounds interesting - it's on the inner workings of science and presented by a friend, Daniel Glaser, who I think will make a great presenter. I don't know the title or date yet. (Incidentally, in relation to the aforementioned essay, does anyone happen to know if I turn up on the DVD of I, Robot? I did an interview for the DVD extras but I'm not interested in the movie and can't bear to watch myself, so I haven't bought it. I just wondered if they used it.) [Postscript: Wow, isn't the Internet amazing? Within hours of posting this I'd heard from Mark, who made the documentary. So there's no need to tell me now (yes they did use it). Thanks Mark. By the way, it wasn't you I was referring to in the essay when I talked about "stupid questions" - yours were good ones!!!!] [PPS: Mark just emailed to say this was actually a complete coincidence and he hadn't read this blog at all. Telepathy? Synchronicity? Weird.]

Oh yes. On a lighter note, some time ago I said I might make a Tesla coil for a bit of fun (and in connection with a book that doesn't seem very likely to happen now). I haven't had time to do more than lash it up so far, and because I don't have the right kind of transformer it has to be a DC coil, which is trickier to build and will doubtless cause Nikola Tesla to spin in his grave like a dynamo! But the lash-up shows promise, so here are a few photos.

28 April

This update is on account of John Mancine, who kindly wrote and asked me to get off my backside and write something! Frankly I was trying to keep a low profile, because things have been going a bit pear-shaped lately. I've run out of money (again), and trying to earn some by setting up book contracts and grant applications has taken me away from robotics.

Still, Lucy is making slow but sure progress (well, slow anyway). I had to give up on the spinner muscle idea, much as I loved it, because I just couldn't engineer the spinners accurately enough. So I had to compromise a bit. The next idea was to try counterweights - this was nearly wonderful. By precisely counterbalancing her limbs I could drive Lucy's joints with a completely un-geared DC motor, producing a fantastically graceful, quiet and sensitive motion like a kinetic sculpture. Sadly the motors would overheat too easily (no speed to move the air around). So then I discovered some nice little plastic gearboxes at £1.60 ($3) each. These are fairly low ratio, so I can still move Lucy's limbs to guide her and she can still feel the effect of obstructions and external forces. I've butchered them to include some quadrature optosensors for speed and position. The low gear ratio combined with the smooth motion of the counterweights seems to work quite nicely. I've designed and built some PIC-based H-bridge controllers and now I'm programming them to simulate antagonistic muscles. (This is the whole point, by the way - nobody would be stupid enough to use these techniques to build a practical robot, but my goal is to gain insights into how the brain works, so getting the right dynamics and feedback is far more important than practicality). Click here for more information.

Anyway, like I say, it's all happening dismally slowly for lack of cash and time. Sadly I think I may have to shelve the project completely for a couple of years now, while I earn some money to refill my overstretched coffers. However, I'm hoping to divert some of the ideas from Lucy into something that I think many of you might get quite excited about, although this is currently in the lap of the gods and a story for another time!

So what else is new? Oh, this is pretty off-topic, but since it's about muscles I thought I'd share it with my reader. Do you suffer from headaches, migraine, chronic fatigue or backache? I get awful neck aches that lead to migraine-like headaches. It's a mixture of stress and RSI that causes them, but knowing this doesn't really help much - I can't easily reduce my stress levels and if I had to give up using a computer I think I'd just wither and die. So since doctors don't seem to be much help I set to work looking for causes and solutions on that wonderful interwebnet thing. Anyway, after weeks of studying biochemistry and suchlike I suddenly found the answer to my problems. It's what you might call a well-kept secret - something that has been known about since at least the 1940s but for some reason hasn't risen into the general medical consciousness. Once the link has been made, lots of information can be found on the web, but very few medical portals mention it. Which is strange, because it is the primary source of misery for an awful lot of people.

My problem turned out to be myofascial trigger points in my neck and shoulders (and arms and chest...). If you suffer from headaches and have never heard of these things, then boy have I got a treat for you! Trigger points are small regions of spasm in muscle (at the motor endplates, where motor nerves join the muscle). They clench up as a result of traumatic or chronic muscle strain (probably aided by various nutritional and genetic factors) and they can stay clenched continuously for months or years at a time! Just imagine how you'd feel if you had to hold your arm up in the air for a year! They seem to be the victim of a number of positive feedback loops. For example, once a trigger point contracts it constricts its own local blood supply and lymph transport, thus starving itself of oxygen and poisoning itself in its own waste products, which perpetuates the contraction. Then, because of the constant signals in the pain nerves, these change structure, producing different neurotransmitter receptors that sensitise the nerves still further. Changes also occur in the spinal cord, producing widespread pain and triggering further spasms in other muscles.

The thing about the pain from these trigger points is that it's referred to other locations. When I get a pain in my temple it is actually caused by a trigger point in my neck, and the pain in my neck is caused by points in my shoulders. But once you know about these referred pain patterns it's easy to trace them back to the source. Strong localised massage on the spastic region of muscle gradually encourages the trigger point to relax again. Next time you have a headache, try prodding around the muscles in your neck and shoulders. If you find a really tender spot (perhaps you can also feel a small lump or "rope" in the muscle), try pressing really hard on it for a good 30 seconds (enough to starve it of oxygen). If the pain in your head gets worse, you've hit the right spot. Keep up the pressure and the pain will probably subside. The instant you let go, the headache will likely disappear. Just like that! Honestly. My headaches are completely debilitating, but now I can usually stop or reduce them in a matter of seconds.

I've got some other miracle cures too, but I'm still testing these yet. I thought I'd pass this information on because it's so hard to find unless you hit lucky. Start by buying this book - it's worth its weight in gold!

That's about it for now. I'm working on all sorts of things at the moment - several book projects, two potential software projects, maybe a couple of TV programmes - but there's nothing to report on these yet. Oh, just one last link for any Creatures fans: if you've not already seen the Creatures Wiki, set up by Laurence Parry and friends, then go there right away. It's an amazing resource.

19 January

Crumbs, five months since my last post. Where did that go?

Oh well, I'll get round to it. Lucy's new body is at last making some progress but I might as well wait until there's something to see before I tell you about that. In the mean time, if you like holiday snaps, here are some of our recent hiking trip to Gran Canaria. Here's one of me and the Missus outside the bar. Here's one of me and the Missus inside the bar...

13th August

Bloggers can be incredibly diligent. Some of them blog several times a day, but it's a whole two months since I last updated this page. Perhaps nothing interesting happens to me. Perhaps my life is indescribably boring. Maybe I'm just lazy. Yes, I think that must be it.

So, dear diary, what have I been up to lately? Mostly trying to find ways to make enough money to continue the Lucy project without starving in the mean time. Not much success so far - I may now have some sources of income to plug the present funding gap (hope so!) but the work is going to take up all of my time, so Lucy will have to wait. Should Paul Allen or Bill Gates be reading this page, I'm open to offers, guys!

Having not learned my lesson from the last newspaper article, I wrote another one this week. This time the tagline they've added makes it look like I'm claiming that AI is impossible. That'll get me into trouble, yet again. I'm not really saying that AI is impossible, just that none of the techniques we've developed so far is going to lead to the solution. But what can I say in 800 words, when so many people suffer under so many false preconceptions about both AI and natural intelligence? I think I put it a bit more clearly in an upcoming IEEE Intelligent Systems journal article, but even 3,000 words to an expert audience can't capture the subtlety of the point. I'm beginning to hate writing short pieces - people read what they like to think I've said, rather than what I've actually said. I should just keep my big mouth shut.

The DirectX 9.0c Summer Update came out this month, and the Managed code is a great improvement. Thank you, Microsoft! I didn't use the previous SDK's sample framework for the educational ecosystem simulator I'm writing, but the new one is really nice and adds some very handy GUI features. Pity it isn't documented, but that's nothing new. So I'm starting to port the code into that, which is turning out to be harder than I'd hoped but it'll be worth it in the end.

Oh, and while I'm thanking Microsoft, let me say thanks for WinXP's Service Pack 2. People get so sniffy about the big M, but heck, SP2 cost a billion dollars to write and they give it away for free. I call that a bargain. The news sites keep calling SP2 a "patch", like it's covering up for some stupid mistakes. But it's not Microsoft's fault that the world has turned sour and all those bright kids are wasting their talent writing pathetic viruses and trojans. When Windows was developed it seemed like a good and helpful idea to expose as much functionality as possible. Who would have guessed that people would turn around and abuse it instead of using it?

Lucy and I recently gave our last public lecture until November, which is a big weight off my mind. The paperback of my Lucy book is out now - I really like the cover. Thanks to everyone who has sent me fan mail about the book lately - it's much appreciated and it's great to know my ideas have some impact.

An old school friend got in touch recently, which was a nice surprise. He's a film cameraman now, so I'll plug his latest movie for him while I'm here - watch out for MirrorMask, coming soon to a cinema near you...

Another quick plug: The Faculty of Problem Solving at the University of Openness has just made Lucy their official mascot, so since I'm a big fan of the autodidactic lifestyle and lateral thinking, here's a link to their web page.

Ooh, ooh! In the spirit of being a mad scientist I bought myself a 15kV transformer on eBay recently. Here's a photo of a Jacob's Ladder I made with it. Next up is building a Tesla coil and then I'll be able to conquer the universe, but that will have to wait until I have some spare time. I also bought some nice Neodymium supermagnets, so as well as zapping 15,000 volts through all the delicate circuitry in the lab I'm in serious danger of wiping all my credit cards. It's getting a bit hazardous round here. Just wait until I find a decent high-powered laser...

And finally, my robotics lab has at last been officially recognised as a Bloke's Shed, thus making me look a bit less like a nerdy wuss. Gareth Jones' book "Shed Men" comes out in September - my shed is on page 86.

14th June 2004

Is it cool to be the one who gets to define your field in an encyclopaedia? Probably not, but it might wind a few professors up a bit, since I'm just an amateur. Anyway, it doesn't matter what anyone thought the term Artificial Life meant before, because now it means whatever I say it does. Oh the power, the power... The forthcoming Encyclopaedia of Non-linear Science is a snip at only $195. Order your copy now!

Wrote another Guardian article last week. It was so heavily edited down, though, that I barely recognised it (despite having been asked to make it longer). I'm beginning to think I'm not 'straight down the middle' enough to write for newspapers. Perhaps it also doesn't help that I haven't read one since 1980...

Hey, talking of 1980 I'm now the proud owner of a Commodore PET! I fell in love with them as soon as I saw one in 1979 and it's only taken me 25 years to get my hands on one of my own. Sadly it's not a calculator keyboard PET 2001 (they sell for too much money) but a PET 4016. I don't care though. For one thing there's something really attractive about computers that boot up instantly, and for another I can at last get back to writing that Lunar Lander game. Best of all, I get to pretend I'm Mr. Spock. Boy, haven't computers come a long way in the last quarter century, though? Here's a nice little PET page for anyone old enough to remember the Good Old Days of computing.

Did you watch the transit of Venus? It's so rare for it not to be raining when something astronomical happens here in the UK! I had a bash at photographing it (4" reflector stopped right down and covered with loads of coloured gel). Doesn't quite compare with the Cassini probe's latest photos of Phoebe, though.

 

27th May 2004

Well, I've been planning to rebuild our website "any day now" for over a year! My apologies to those of you who check these pages frequently - life's just been a bit hectic.

So what have I been up to while you weren't looking? Do you care? I don't suppose so for a minute. On the other hand this site gets thousands of visitors so I guess somebody must be interested in what's going on around here.

The main news is that Lucy the robot has had a bit of a rise and fall. A year ago I was given a NESTA Dream Time award, which gave me about a year's money to work on building Lucy MkII. Fantastic! I was able to stock up on lots of juicy kit, like a lathe, a small CAD-CAM machine, lots of tasty electronics and so on. Everything was going well until I hit some snags with Lucy's muscles (look here for the whole story). Things then ground to a halt rather, and before I knew it the year was over and I was broke again. Lucy's on hold for the moment while I try to generate some income to pay the mortgage.

The other main thing that's happened is that I finished my second book, which is all about Lucy. It seems to have been well received - I get quite a lot of nice feedback from readers, which is very cheering. The downside of writing books is the publicity. First you try to cram twenty years of thoughts into a hundred thousand words. Then, just as you're patting yourself on the back for having squeezed most of it in, people come along and ask you to condense the whole thing into a 45-minute lecture. Then to publicise the lecture, journalists want you to give them the whole story in a soundbite. Some things are just incompressibly complex, and Lucy is one of them!

Anyway, I seem to have done nothing but give talks and interviews about the work that I would have been doing if only I wasn't spending all my time talking about it. This hasn't exactly helped with the family finances! Still, I'm glad people are interested, and some of these talks involve going to exotic places, swanning around in embassies and meeting fascinating people, so it isn't all bad and I shouldn't complain.

One particular highlight of the last few months was being invited to Buckingham Palace, to a reception for British Pioneers. What an evening! I counted 30 Nobel laureates, quite apart from assorted record breakers, astronauts, inventors, rockstars, heroes and other luminaries. Plus little old me. I soon dropped back down to earth with a bump though. In the space of thirty minutes I managed to go from nibbling caviar and supping whisky with royalty, to munching a burger among the drunks on Paddington station. A lot of my life seems to be like that.

 

 
Copyright © 2004 Cyberlife Research Ltd.
Last modified: 06/04/04