Roaming Madrid, confirming our future - it is full of robot overlords!

 

Hello world!

This blog is coming to you from Madrid where we have chosen to subsist for the last couple of months and for the next couple of months (at least for me)

I would like to start this blog off by saying that the next part of our journey has been planned as of today, we have now bought our tickets from Madrid to Canada, ready for the ski season (Kyran) and for a white Christmas (for me).

So that is something exciting that we are looking forward to. 

Lets start this blog off with a little Botany or we could say Dendrology*. 

The above photo is of a tree that is commonly seen around Madrid it is know as the Strawberry Tree

or 

Arbutus unedo

It is an evergreen shrub or small tree in the family Ericaceae, native to the Mediterranean region and western Europe north to western France and Ireland. 

If you think that this tree sounds familiar it could be because I briefly mentioned it in a previous blog.

The tree makes up part of the Coat of arms of Madrid (El oso y el madroño, The Bear and the Strawberry Tree) of the city of Madrid, Spain. In the center of the city (Puerta del Sol) there is a statue of a bear eating the fruit of the Madroño tree. 

The fruit is a red berry, 1–2 cm diameter, with a rough surface, maturing 12 months at the same time as the next flowering. The fruit is edible, though many people find it bland and meally; the name 'unedo' is explained by Pliny the Elder as being derived from unum edo "I eat one", which may seem an apt response to the flavour.

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 *Dendrology is often confused with Botany. However, Botany is the study of all types of general plants, while Dendrology studies only wooded plants. Dendrology may be considered a subcategory of Botany that specializes in wooded plants.

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The photos and stories that you will see follow the route shown below:

 Above: The Air force Headquarters is considered to be one of the most important buildings in Moncloa and was build after the civil war. 

To the Left : A Fighter C101, which is commonly known as the Blackbird and is a Spanish manufactured aircraft. 

It is supposedly the first C101 to be delivered to the Air Academy and the first to be retired.

Above: A photo of a random side street that seemed particularly photogenic

  Edificio España

Is one of the tallest buildings in Madrid, Spain. With 25 stories and a height of 117 m (384 ft), it is the 14th tallest building of the Spanish capital, along the Cuatro Torres Business Area highrise buildings. It is also one of the best examples of 20th century architecture in Spain. 

The building formerly contained a Crowne Plaza Hotel, a shopping centre, apartments, offices, and a rooftop swimming pool.

The building was acquired in 2014 by Wang Jianlin, owner of the biggest fortune in China and the real estate group Dalian Wanda, which specializes in luxury buildings and hotels.

 

Plaza de España 

 is a large square, and popular tourist destination, located in central Madrid.

 It features a monument to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra*.

The tower portion of the monument includes a stone sculpture of Cervantes, which overlooks bronze sculptures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Next to the tower, there are two stone representations of Don Quixote's "true love", one as the simple peasant woman Aldonza Lorenzo, and one as the beautiful, imaginary Dulcinea del Toboso.

(See image below)

*Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 
29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616), He was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright.
His most famous writings, Don Quixote, considered to be the first modern European novel, is a classic of Western literature and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written. it is a pretty crazy story though, I'm sure someone was on drugs at the time.

 Above another water fountain that was in the Plaza de España however I was unable to locate any information on it as it was over shadowed by the previously mentioned famous sculptures.

 














 Left and below: North-eastern side of the Cervantes monument.

Below are some streets and views that I found interesting, the photos are from the Plaza de España and Gran Via area of our walk.  

 

 Once on the Gran Via ("Big Way") we walked up to Callao Metro Station which is close to an "El Corte Ingles" ("The English Court", a fancy chain of stores similar to Myers) and on the 9th floor there was an observation deck amongst all the restaraunts up there. The photo below is from the observation deck where you can see the Royal Palace of Madrid in the background off to the left.

Not far from where I work I stumbled upon a shop that I made the mistake of telling Kyran about it is call Juegotronica, the following photos are of the shop window.

Robot Comments courtesy of Kyran

The Nao is one of my pet hates, over-hype miniature humanoid which is only 58cm tall, and weighs a mere 5kg at most. These little buggers are everywhere these days! They have become synonymous with robotics, and featured the QUT Robotronica event last year, and will be in another one next year, I'm sure of it! They are reasonably complex, with some nice sensors and with many years of software development I'm sure something useful could be made with them.  

We found a very large scale model at the Juegotronica toy store, next to it's buddy the ASIMO.

ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative MObility) is a little humanoid robot developed by Honda over the last 30 years. We saw a 1:1 scale replica, and damn it's short! The robot is only 130cm tall, and the real one weighs ~55kg. It can run, recognize people and speed, and lots of other crazy Japanese things. it is quite fancy, in terms of robotics, with 57 degrees of freedom in it's body parts allowing it to do very complex and accurate motion.
 
 A Funny Story:

Kyran's childhood dreams were always to play Airsoft.
However it is not legal in Australia so to the rest of the world he had to go to indulge this childhood fantasy.

This is the gun he decided that he would buy despite not having anywhere to shoot it. 

So at home he would shoot at a cereal box with a target that was painted on it.
However as far a playful couples go it was a matter or time before either he would shoot me or I would shoot him, so early on a rule was made that if you shoot one person you had better be ready to be shoot back.

Lets just say that today Kyran decided that a cereal box was not so fun any more and that he would like to shoot near me just to scare me. What he didn't account for was the pellet ricocheting off the door and hitting me. 
Below is the damage that he did to me followed by the damage i did to him... lets just say that due to my poor aiming skills his is located on a tender part of his bottom.

Depending on what we get up to tomorrow there my be another blog tomorrow or this could be it as I am starting to feel the effects of my 'Ebola' strand (small cough and headaches).

Until next time,

 I leave you with a quote from Mark Twain.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”