Your Own Segway

Do you want a Segway HT but can't quite afford one? Try building one at a fraction of the cost. One caveat:

There is no redundancy or backup system. It is not even robustly made. Loose wires literally dangle out the bottom. In the fairly likely event of the software crashing, a wire coming loose, a component failing, or the batteries running low, the wheels will lock and the entire kinetic energy of the system will be used to accelerate my head toward the ground.

If that turns out to be the only tradeoff, I'd be suprised.

Happy Birthday

For lack of anything better to write, I turn 0x1A years old today.

Other things that happened on this day (September 29) according to The History Channel:

• 1547 Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is born near Madrid.
• 1888 William Steinway, a car enthusiast, concluded licensing negotiations with Gottlieb Daimler gaining permission to manufacture Daimler cars in the U.S. long before any other import.
• 1907 Actor and singer Gene Autry is born in Tioga, Texas, to a horse trader who also worked as a Baptist minister.
• 1913 Rudolph Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, jumped overboard while crossing the English Channel on a cruiser - committing suicide at age fifty-five.
• 1941 The Babi Yar massacre of nearly 34,000 Jewish men, women, and children begins on the outskirts of Kiev in the Nazi-occupied Ukraine.
• 1988 Stacy Allison of Portland, Oregon, becomes the first American woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.