NaNoWriMo 2015

~ Jake ~ Leave a comment

Hey all!

I’ll be participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year and I am planning to post updates here on my site. I am trying to tackle a suspenseful murder mystery at a rate of 1,667 words per day! Feel free to cheer me on and/or critique as I work towards the goal of 50,000 words by November 30th.

Look for the NaNoWriMo tag, or the NaNoWriMo 2015 link at the top of jakehillmanblog.

Detective Smith BPD

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Detective Smith BPD

Join Detective Smith, a homicide detective with the Baltimore Police Department, as he works to solve a murder through his sarcastic intellect, witty humor, and shear blind luck. Detective Smith is a loud mouth, vulgar, walking lawsuit so good at his job he is unable to be fired, find out what we mean in this first installment of his story by clicking the link above.

Project Ara – Modular Super Phone

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Phonebloks

Remember that “Phonebloks” video from a couple of years ago? Well essentially it was a proposal, a cry for help almost, that we reconsider the way we design phones, citing that “our electronic devices are not designed to last”. The video talks about how much electronic waste is generated each year from our obsession with always having the newest cellular device at the time or how a single component failure can often brick an entire phone, and how that is negatively affecting our environment.

Phonebloks proposes that we create a new type of phone, one that is modular, upgradable, and more affordable. The phone consists of essentially a logic board that you attach different “blocks” to in any configuration you like. Each block is its’ own self-contained component, which can be anything from the screen, battery, camera, charging port, or cellular antennae. The concept is essentially that you choose which features you want to have, and if at any time those blocks fail, or a newer and better version comes out, you can simply swap it out and there is no longer a need to replace the entire phone to receive better features. Continue reading →

Hitchbot is DEAD!

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Meet HitchBOT:

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HitchBOT is a “free-spirited robot who wants to explore the world and meet new friends along the way”. He has had many travels in his time on this Earth, including a trip across Canada, exploring Germany, and having a nice laid back vacation in the Netherlands. All by way of hitch-hiking, extended thumb and everything. He was equipped with a solar-powered battery, 3G and wi-fi, speech recognition processing (he tells jokes too!), world knowledge via Wikipedia, and the capability to take pictures and video. He was an avid instagrammer and tweeter, and became a social media super star when he first made his trip across Canada.

The premise behind the hitch-hiking robot is quite interesting. Essentially his “family” (the group of people out of Point Credit, Ontario who created him) drops him off in a location and HitchBOT, utilizing his built-in 3G and social media capabilities, sends out his location and awaits being picked up to begin his journey. Good Samaritans and fans alike pick up HitchBOT and assist him in his travels, as he has no other means of transportation. On each of his journeys HitchBOT has a “bucket list”, essentially a list of culturally significant activities or locations in the country he is travelling in. For example, in Canada part of his bucket list was to attend a wedding, and many other fun things. HitchBOT made the journey across Canada in 26 days, travelling from Halifax, Nova Scotia on July 27, 2014 to Victoria, British Columbia on August 21, 2014.

HitchBOT’s Demise

On July 17, 2015, HitchBOT began his hitch-hiking adventure across the greatest country in the world, the U.S. of A. Starting in Salem, Massachusetts, his final destination was planned to be the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA. Continue reading →