We got the news this past Saturday morning that one of my good friends' mother passed away. Yes, a day after Christmas. It was a very cold morning, especially in Minnesota. She died in 27 F degree temperature, when she wandered off outside in the middle of the night. A very sad way to go. She had Alzheimer.
I was thinking of her and other people who were dear to our heats and no longer with us. I really do miss them.
Especially at the close of 2015, I am reminded once again of a poem written by my cousin's late wife.
It meant a lot to me 15 years ago. And it still means a lot today. Please enjoy the love found in this poem. Yes, she was a musician also. ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫
To search...
even when you think you have found something.
To wish for an opening in your heart.... and mind..... and soul.
To be willing to consciously work, and bear the burden graciously.
To give away what is still valuable.
To laugh at what is truly funny, and yourself (when you are not That funny)! To fill up on great feast, great friends, great thoughts, and great music..... To really know what love is....and to live it as many moments as possible. I never knew the words to this song. But I was lost in the words when I heard it. I also feel connected to this late cousin's wife as I do with my mother, even now, years later. We know our heart will go on, when time or distance does not separate us.
This is our symphony!!! Please also enjoy this special rendition of Pachelbel's Canon in D ..... Christmas Canon!
Let's see the old year come to an end and welcome the New Year filled with hope and love! ❤❤❤
As you can tell from the lack of posts during the past few weeks, our lives have been super busy lately.
You want to eat healthy but don't have time to prepare delicious and healthy meals. What to do?
How about Moley, a robotic chef that can prepare your meals for you?!
It's like having a personal chef at home to cook for you everyday!
From Smithsonian.com December 2015
This Robot Will Make You Dinner
Moley Robotics is developing a robotic kitchen that can prepare a meal from start to finish—cleanup included
The disembodied robot arms look like they’re conducting an orchestra as they glide back and forth over the stove top, waving their articulated fingers. But the robot isn’t making music, it’s making dinner.
Mounted above a small counter, stove and sink, the two arms are part of a robotic kitchen, developed by UK-based Moley Robotics, that prepares meals from digital recipes. Users select the meal they want from an online database, enter the number of people that are eating and then set out pre-prepped ingredients. They tell the robot when to start, and, sure enough, it makes shrimp risotto, say, or eggplant parmigiana. The unit has an attached fridge and cabinet, which the robot can access, and a built-in dishwasher, so it can clean up after itself.
Computer scientist Mark Oleynik dreamed up Moley’s robotic kitchen in 2014, when he was sick of eating out and wanted good food at home. He'd worked in public health. Before Moley, he founded a company called Medstarnet, which helped hospitals get medical devices. Ultimately, Oleynik's goal is to make eating fresh, healthy food effortless. He decided handing over the work of getting food on the table to a robot was a way to do that.
Oleynik worked with the London-based Shadow Robot Company, which also makes robotic hands for NASA's Robonaut program, to develop the cooking robot. The hands are made of 20 motors, 24 joints and 129 sensors. According to Rich Walker, Shadow Robot's managing director, they replicate the fine movements of human hands. They’re deft enough that they can deal with a whisk or a blender, although they’re not yet programmed for chopping. Moley Robotics worked with Shadow Robot and a team from Stanford to develop an algorithm for the robot to follow, so it knows when to add ingredients and how to incorporate them.
The robot has learned 50 recipes by mimicking human chefs who, for the sake of Moley's recipe database, wore motion sensors on their hands as they cooked. Tim Anderson, the 2011 winner of the BBC’s MasterChef competition and owner of Japanese soul food restaurant Nanban in London, came up with the first batch of recipes—crab bisque, for example, and cod with pesto sauce, all with nutritional information included. Moley is recruiting other chefs to add recipes. Eventually, users may be able to upload videos of themselves preparing family recipes. The robot could then learn the recipes from these videos and take over in the making of Grandma's marinara.
In addition to the touch screen on the unit, Moley Robotics is developing an app, so that owners of the kitchen can select a meal from the iTunes-like recipe library, even when they are away from home. The robot will start making dinner just as they're leaving work.
Moley debuted the chefbot at Hannover Messe, an industrial trade show in Germany in April. In May, it won the “Best of the Best” award at the Consumer Electronics Show Asia.
Oleynik and his team are still building the app and working out the kinks, like how to teach the robot to chop, but they suspect the robotic kitchens could be available in 2018 for about $35,000. A pretty penny, though Oleynik argues the cost is on par with an average kitchen remodel.
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Wouldn't that be a wonderful Christmas present?! (If you have that kind of money to spend for a present!) It would be cheaper than hiring a world renown chef for a year, I assume. (^_-)-☆ One question remains. Can Moley cook with human chef's intention of love and passion?
