Oscar the robot music critic ?
In the digital world in which we all more or less now live it would seem that the robots are gradually taking over. When was the last time you rang a large company for information and instead found yourself being moved from one pre-recorded message to another for instance ? Human -real human interaction is becoming sometimes difficult to find. So does what happened this evening prove the point? A live concert by real live musicians at Villa Moorings was stopped in its tracks by what could be described as Oscar the robot music critic.
Oscar’s real job is the automatic robot grass cutter - he keeps the lawns at the Villa in order. He scurries around all day long keeping the grass neat and tidy and all without a human hand in the operation.
He even returns to his house when the batteries are running down and recharges himself before once more powering off into action. A buried wire along the perimeter of the lawn that sends a stop signal to Oscar keeps him from straying off and cutting other people’s lawns.
We have published articles about Oscar in the past (article here) and there is even a video on youtube showing Oscar at work with a soundtrack from the 80’s pop icons - Boy George from Culture Club featuring the song “do you really want to hurt me?” It would seem that yes there was a bit of hurt around last night.
The band Organic Groove had just done a sound check and were ready to play when suddenly the power to all their equipment went off and the Hotel Villa Moorings was plunged into darkness.
It took a few minutes to find the culprit - yes, it was Oscar. Somebody had laid the main cable supplying the sound system for the Organic Groove across part of the lawn — well inside Oscar’s domain.
You can imagine the rest. Luckily no serious damage done. A few reset buttons pushed and once more the lights returned, the band played a blinding set and Oscar went back to work. His brief but eventful second career as a music critic put firmly behind him.
The recently updated and re launched Hotel Villa Moorings site can be seen here
Readers with a good memory might just recall an article that we published last year when the World Cup was taking over the hearts and minds of many Italians, featuring another robotic grass cutter - Ambrogio. He was kitted out in national colours as he worked hard keeping the grass trimmed around a pool in Barga. The sad news is that faithful Ambrogio finished his life in that same swimming pool when the perimeter wire buried under the grass was inadvertently cut by a workman and the electronic stop signal never reached poor Ambrogio as so he continued blithly on to his watery grave.
For anybody interested in more information about these robots - Ambrogio can be found here and Oscar here
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- everyone : you will be sorely missed.
- W. Shakespeare : Lear? Not at all! Those words are lifted from Macbeth's soliloquy:"....L ife's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
- Quentin Compson : Yes, Ma'am. It would be King Lear I believe, an allusion to the fool (and to Lear himself). But there is a more recent connection between Yokapatawpha and the Coldfields with a Biblical reference -- Absalom -- rather than the Shakespearean one to which you allude.
- poetry : Miss Coldfield, considered poetess laureate of Yoknapatawpha County, may simply be quoting Shakespeare, I do believe.
- Quentin Compson : Rosa: Stay in your own novel, please. You have no business in The Sound and the Fury, although I appear in both.
- Quentin Compson : Doggy, May I refer you to three sources on the Action-Theory dialectic? Albert Camus: "To do is to be." Jean-Paul Sartre: "To be is to do." Francis Albert Sinatra; "Do be do be doo." That should answer your question.
- Rosa Coldfield : ... it is a tale Told by and idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
- doggybag : Quentin - your constant focus on ideas over deeds makes you a highly unreliable commentator- quite often it is difficult to tell which of the actions you are suggesting are mere figments of your imagination and which you really do think should be acted upon.
- Quentin Compson : Hey, you two ought to get together sometime.
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- Santi : Thank you for answering my question.
- Cartier-Bresson : What a wonderful image of the equally wonderful Maestra Paola -- that could be no one else's elegantly gloved hand...
- Guest_4784 : the girl behind the bar is in the ALTANA rest. just inside the old city
- message for Santi : Altana
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- doggybag : Hello Santi - no - not the Alpino
- Santi : Is the daily image of the girl behind the bar is of Alpino?
- Casey Jones : Summer bus schedule to real station: see Forum Aug 5.
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- doggybag : you are welcome Guest_689 ... now if I could just fix the sound streaming system with is doing a serious chipmonk impression on some computers
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- Guest_3522 : Scottish emigration to Malaysia ? - see «link»
- Guest_878 : the most scottish town with the most scottish idiots
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- Guest_878 : è più bella alla volta dei Menchi, c'è un barista molto attraente.
