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Observations from an outlier

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From drawing board to being ready to install in single day? Colin, same guy that is now selling wifi robots, salvaged an old power drill to go with the new Lithium-ion battery pack for my chair. More Ardiuno and IOIO protects are possible now that I have a power supply I can remove and charge myself.

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Summer is in full swing and we are going to set up the climbing rig in Squamish on August 21st. We have done this route several times, but with everyone in different jobs. I’m going to put all the details here because much of the planning is buried in email and will be best to keep it public. We are going to hog the crag. Shamelessly. Once a year…

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These are a few videos we made with Dr. Elliott (sexual health doctor) discussing sperm retrieval and vibro-stimulation with Dr Ip (family doctor). This is basic information for quadriplegics that want to avoid dangerous Autonomic Dysreflexia while being sexual. More here on TED

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In past posts, I’ve ranted about resistive vs capacitive screens for typing. Apple’s phone and tablet are great, but as a quad with poor hand function, most will prefer to use a finger nail to type. On my Nokia 5800 this works well and the new firmware has better smooth scrolling (inertia in the flicking though contact list for example). Some technology that came from eye tracking has seen…

This made me feel ill…watching the nukes go off as your birthday goes by. Pretty disgusting way to spend allot of money! So now that the cold war is over, how does the MAD Doctrine keep the balance? If a terrorist bomb goes off, no one knows how allegiances will shift. Lots of books (Tom Clancy) play out the scenario of a nuke or dirty bomb going off and…

Regardless of how you feel about big oil companies, government and hippie activists… light needs to be shed on how many super tankers are in local waters. One good friend that works in the environmental business (yes that’s a business like any other) says that it is not fair to compare the unending leak from the earth’s crust with an oil tanker. Sure.. I’ll take a known volume on…

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squamish paralympic torch relay I wish I had more to say in this video. It really took some time for it to sink in. Certainly a once in a life time opportunity. Everyone was really excited and to be honest.. the thing I remember the most was the things fellow torchbearers said. I recall two guys that had autism and were better prepared to answer the question than I…

I enjoyed the Asimov books my Dad has collected, and very much want to believe that people want to learn. That, in general, people prefer learning to passive entertainment because engaging. Game designers leverage this all the time to get us to strive to get to the next level of a game. Only when we know there will be a test after do we recoil in horror.

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Candice explains how a paraplegic and a quadriplegic differ in exercise response.

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If Dr. Andrei Krassioukov gets his way, the days of some Paralympic athletes putting their lives in danger to increase their athletic performance may be over. Despite an international ban on the practice, some Paralympic athletes with spinal cord injuries are using a dangerous technique called “boosting” to increase their blood pressure in the heat of competition. Dr. Krassioukov studies autonomic dysfunctions, which are dysfunctions in the parts of…

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I’ve been following Boston Dynamics awhile now. They seem to be the most stable legs around..

I never thought I’d say it, but Windows 7 is good, great even! I got my hands on a Beta copy and installed it.. and it all worked. Yes, everything worked first time with no snags. Admittedly I had low expectations thinking of past installs and driver nightmares, but not one dialog box asking for a CD to be inserted. All my hardware was detected and a drivers were…