Way back in middle school, my favorite show on television was "The Screen Savers", a live program on a network called TechTV (which later was taken over by G4, a channel targeted at a large group of neanderthal elitists known as "gamers"). For a long time the show was shot in San Francisco, which was within driving distance of my home, and at some point they implemented a small "studio audience" area on the set with room for about 20 people. Viewers could request tickets, and if fortunate enough, would eventually be invited to come see the show in person. Eventually I was able to do so my self, and as tribute to this momentous occasion, I hacked together a computerized hat with an old alphanumeric LCD module to continuously flash "TSS ROCKS!" I thought that perhaps this would gain the attention of the hosts (at that time, Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton) and gain me a few seconds on live national television.
As it turned out, I got a fair bit more than a few seconds of exposure. I will write a more detailed account when I have time, but for now, please enjoy some framegrabs and a video clip of this episode, which took place on October 18th, 2002.
"Yes, we do have a robot in the audience tonight"
"He's more of a cyborg..."
"Cyborg? He's half 'bot, half boy?"
"Can we get a shot of that? It's very cute... 'TSS rocks,' it says..."
"Well it's a lot better than 'TSS sucks,' isn't it?"
"It could-- well, I think he's got another button there..."
"Uh oh, wait a minute... how fast can you run, kid?"
"Wowww..."
"How long did it take you to get this to work?"
"Do they teach you this in eighth grade now?"
"No... I'm afraid not."
First, a quick note... In the clip I extol the virtues of the Parallax "BASIC Stamp" embedded controller. These are the words of a naive middle school student. Although the Stamp is an excellent learning platform, those who want better performance and more room to grow should consider the Microchip PIC or Atmel AVR series of microcontrollers.
That having been said, click here to download the video clip (~23.8MB AVI).