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You would be forgiven if you thought the "F" in F# -- which made its debut as part of Visual Studio 2010 -- stands for "functional." After all, F# (pronounced "F sharp") is a functional programming language for the .NET Framework that combines the succinct, expressive, and compositional style of functional programming with the runtime, libraries, interoperability, and object model of .NET. But Don Syme, inventor of F# and leader of the team that incubated the language, has a different, truncated, and entirely whimsical definition. "In the F# team," says Syme, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, "We say, 'F is for Fun.' F# enables users to write simple code to solve complex problems. Programming with F# really does make many programming tasks simpler, and our users have consistently reported that they've found using the language enjoyable." Indeed, F#, which has been developed in a partnership between Microsoft Research and the Microsoft Developer Division, is already popular with the .NET developer community. The language is widely known in the academic community and among thought leaders, and the list of admirers will only increase as Visual F#, the result of a partnership between Microsoft Research Cambridge and Microsoft's Developer Division, becomes a first-class language in Visual Studio 2010.

Imagine that a guest is about to depart from your house. She (or he) pauses to check her appearance in an antique-looking mirror mounted near the front door. Suddenly, the image of your guest undergoes a Matrix-like 'ripple' and is replaced with a strange face saying… …actually, we'll move on to consider what the face might say in a moment, but first let me introduce you to a few underlying concepts. Just a few days ago as I pen these words, I came across about a very cool website that describes a really cunning idea called a Magic Mirror (http://diymagicmirror.com).

Honda and the Ars Electronica Futurelab are collaborating on a human-robot interaction study this week in Linz, Austria (September 2nd ~ 8th).  Although they say their goal is to determine how robots ought to interact with people in the future, I think this may be just an excuse to let the public have some one-on-one fun with ASIMO.  In any case, these sorts of studies should help steer Honda’s engineers in the right direction when designing the next version of the world’s most famous humanoid robot.

You may think that all of those crazy robot competitions that we like to cover are just fun and games, but there’s a serious side. Really, there is. For reals. Mindful of this, ROBO-ONE held the second annual Humanoid Helper Project last weekend, where teleoperated human-sized robots completed (or attempted to complete) three seemingly simple tasks, including pouring liquid from a plastic bottle into a cup, carrying ping-pong balls on a tray, and a 30 minute endurance race. I don’t know about you, but the last two would be a bit of a challenge for me, and they certainly were for the robots:

There's an interesting video on YouTube from Binary Millenium showing how to make a 3D model out of real objects using Microsoft's Photosynth. It's an interesting idea that while unofficial, may be a big time saver and a lot of fun for many of you. This will work best if you use a Photosynth that not only has a high rate of 'synthiness' but also tons of points in the point cloud. A point in the point cloud means that a specific feature in two more photos has been identified allowing for Photosynth to some degree determine where in space that point exists. While a good Photosynth might have 100% synthiness, meaning all the pictures were connected, it doesn't necissarily mean there will be lots of points in the point cloud.

When Sven Groot was in town a while ago we dropped by Erik Meijer's world and got a look at what he and team have been and still are working on (thus there is no out-of-date property of this fun and insightful interview that is off-the-cuff as it gets: deep Channel 9 ). It's great that we were able to put a real live Niner into fire in one of Erik's team meetings. There is a great deal to learn here. Thank you, Sven, for being a real sport! Great stuff in here. Tune in!

Yes, you may laugh at me all you want... but here's my latest eBay adventure. =P I incidentally came across possibly one of the last survivors of the floppy disk era, a 9 year old external [USB] Microtech floppy drive that has somehow been sitting  in it's box somewhere waiting.. getting bored... not being used...! =P

There's an interesting video on YouTube from Binary Millenium showing how to make a 3D model out of real objects using Microsoft's Photosynth. It's an interesting idea that, while unofficial, may be a big time saver and a lot of fun for many of you. This will work best if you use a Photosynth that not only has a high rate of 'synthiness' but also lots of points in the point cloud. A point in the point cloud means that a specific feature has been identified in two or more photos, allowing for Photosynth to determine to some degree where in space that point exists. While a good Photosynth might have 100% synthiness, meaning all the pictures are connected, it doesn't necessarily mean there will be lots of points in the point cloud.

On 10 July, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft will fly within a few thousand kilometres of 21 Lutetia, a main belt asteroid that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Lutetia is an unusual object. It is classified as an M-type asteroid, which are thought to be made mainly of nickel and iron. However, Lutetia's spectrum does not seem to show any evidence of metals. In fact, exactly what Lutetia is made of puzzles astronomers. That's partly why it was chosen for the fly by. So come July, astronomers should know the answer to this conundrum. But in the run up, they're indulging in a little fun. The game they've invented is to see how good a prediction they can make about what Rosetta will find. Today, Irina Belskaya at the Observatoire de Paris and a few friends take a stab. They make several detailed predictions about Lutetia based partly on observations dating back to the 1960s but mostly on data taken since 2004, when interest picked up after the asteroid was chosen as a flyby target. So what do they think Rosetta will find?

Leading up to the San Francisco Game Developers Conference (GDC), BBC Worldwide today announced a major new partnership with game developer Three Rings to create BBC Worldwide's first ever free-to-play multiplayer online game centered around the blockbuster drama television show, Doctor Who. For the first time ever, players from around the world will be able to follow in the footsteps of the eccentric and brilliant Doctor by travelling through time and space, exploring new worlds and encountering many alien races, both friend and foe. Titled Doctor Who: Worlds in Time, the game allows players to enter the TARDIS and be set a challenge by the mysterious Time Lord to help him defend civilized culture against infamous Doctor Who enemies.

A couple things come to mind. For one, this is our last issue of "Angel" the ongoing hitting this week, but there's still one more issue of "Spike" which ties directly into Spike's reappearance in "Buffy." That hits next week, and then the week after is "Angel Yearbook" which is our final note with all these characters in the Whedonverse. I do a little two-page story that's essentially a goodbye and thank you to everybody. And what I'd leave you with here is just a huge appreciation for the fan base. These are a lot of people who haven't read comics regularly, and they are going to the shop every week and talking on message boards. That kind of passion and loyalty is really hard to get, and it's something you want to live up to. As we've done "Angel" for the last six years, the best I can hope for is that people are sad it's going away. I know fans will follow the characters to Dark Horse and their stories will continue, but the fact that there are a lot of people who have said they'll have a really hard time going on after us speaks a lot to their passion and loyalty for what we were doing. That's hugely appreciated on our part and made this really fun to do.