I drove up to Baltimore twice today. In the morning, it was a stop to Kinkos to print out three of my photos to hang at Holy Frijoles for the Bawlmer Flickr Show (1-6). My prints are in the bar area. As the hanging activity wound down, I chatted with a few Flickr photobloggers, and am looking forward to seeing everyone again at the reception on the evening of Nov. 22nd. The show opens tomorrow.

In the evening, I returned to town for a shoot at Trixie Little and Monkey's studio apartment (7-10). My task tonight was to capture them for a holiday card. They are finally getting a chance to open for John Waters at the 930 Club in DC on Dec. 22nd!

- mike lee - wheaton, md

Marjorie asked me to photograph her in retro pinup style because she liked my work with Trixie Little. Marjorie decided to bring her sister at the last minute. Together they played "good girl/bad girl."

Some of the original pix are on Flickr.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

Colleague Michael and I spent the morning and early afternoon today at Time, Inc. learning about the largely automated process by which articles from Time and 32 other magazines get extracted from page layout files to be tagged for entry into a content database. This database is used to feed source material to Time web properties, syndicated news services, mobile devices and more. Misc pix: 1) buidlings at Rockefeller Center 2) the Asian grill in the Time corporate cafeteria 3) a Leica IIIc camera on display in the conference center 4) View of Radio City Music Hall 5) a globe wrapped by Christo that appeared on the cover of Time 6) Free magazines to read on the train ride home!

- mike lee - nyc

I'm back in NYC for a meeting Friday. I didn't get in early enough by train to catch The Colbert Report, but I did finally catch up with HN blogger "Arepem" Rick for an historic first meeting. "Brianosaurus" was at our table too.

- mike lee -

Here's a funky digital FM radio (#12-232) on the hooks at Rad Shack. It has posable suction cup feet, a coil wire antenna, solid state tuning, takes two AAAs, and the front lens pops off so that you could presumably replace the "GPX" logo with your own photo or sticker. It's available in green or red. At $6.99, it'll make a great stocking stuffer or office party gift.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

A cool sight appeared in the lobby of our building this morning. Dan Stiehl was here from the MIT Media Lab Robotic Life Group with a stack of black Pelican cases labelled FRAGILE: ROBOT. Dan was in town to present at the Caring Machines, AI in Eldercare Conference, so I asked him to bring his huggable therapeutic robot to our offices for a demo. I've been watching the progress of the huggable throughout the year on my trips to the lab. The first whole prototype of the robot, which uses the skin of a Gund Butterscotch Teddy Bear, will be ready in January 2006.

Among other pieces, Dan demonstrated the voice coil actuators (4), which will articulate the head of the huggable without an annoying mechanical whirr, and be forgiving of pushback forces from the human.

Dan specializes in the engineering behind the huggable's electric field sensor-driven sensitive skin (5), which can precisely detect and pattern match hand motions such as petting, rubbing, scratching, etc.

The sensor data will be processed by several embedded circuit boards (6, pictured here in the form of a large engineering prototype that will be miniaturized to the size of a business card) and fed to a powerful mini-computer in the huggable's belly.

We'll be bringing Dan back to headquarters in the spring when the robot is completed.

Read more about the use of huggables in Japan.

- mike lee - washington, dc

A cool sight appeared in the lobby of our building this morning. Dan Stiehl was here from the MIT Media Lab Robotic Life Group with a stack of black Pelican cases labelled FRAGILE: ROBOT. Dan was in town to present at the Caring Machines, AI in Eldercare Conference, so I asked him to bring his huggable therapeutic robot to our offices for a demo. I've been watching the progress of the huggable throughout the year on my trips to the lab. The first whole prototype of the robot, which uses the skin of a Gund Butterscotch Teddy Bear, will be ready in January 2006.

Among other pieces, Dan demonstrated the voice coil actuators (4), which will articulate the head of the huggable without an annoying mechanical whirr, and be forgiving of pushback forces from the human.

Dan specializes in the engineering behind the huggable's electric field sensor-driven Read more about the use of huggables in Japan.

- mike lee - washington, dc

Here's a special tool from Campbell's Soup that makes it easier to pop the tabs on "easy open" soup can lids. People with motor skill impairment should be helped by the extra leverage in lifting fussy pull tabs. This tool isn't matched to this upscale contoured polymer can with aluminum lid though. The magnet is supposed to capture the lid so it doesn't flop around. This lid flopped and splattered some chowder on me. The tasty microwaved chowder was reward for the effort.

More on soup can engineering...

- mike lee - wheaton, md

Walking through the forest just after sunset, the emerging vibrant colors of fall foliage are reduced to neutral tones in the silhouettes of leaves against the twilight sky. What becomes more apparent are the sounds: wind whipping through the canopy above us, our feet rustling through the carpet of fallen leaves, child speaking happy-speak, clinking of dog collar, and our own breaths. These echo through dinner, bath and sleep to feed pleasant dreams.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

Having dim sum lunch and visiting the lucky cats at Hollywood East Cafe.

- mike lee - wheaton, md