New Guestblogger: Karen Marcelo, teleobliteration engineer and code diva

When I first met Karen Marcelo, my ears were exploding and my guts were melting. Survival Research Labs was performing in a downtown LA alley. Geared up in an industrial protective suit, goggles, and a headset, she was hunched over the radio-control box that steered Flippy Bot (2.4mb MPEG movie) -- one of many robots at play that July evening. Flames, smoke, and deafening booms erupted in all directions, and the overwhelming sonic force made my blood ache. I felt nauseous, terrified, exhilarated, adrenaline-intoxicated, all at the same time. But as SRL's resident Internet telerobotics specialist since 1995, this was just another night with the machines for Karen.

I'm very pleased to welcome her to BoingBoing now as our new guestblogger. When she's not coding wireless deathbots with Mark Pauline and the SRL crew, Karen's working on other cool projects. Earlier this year, she completed a three-dimensional, autonomously conversing Prosthetic Head for performance artist Stelarc. She also runs dorkbotSF, a Bay Area tech culture event series for "people who do strange things with electricity." Previously, she served as research staff member in the Distributed Systems Group of CSL at Xerox PARC, and her software engineering projects have earned industry accolades including recognition at the international Ars Electronica festival.

Recently, the SF Bay Guardian named her one of the Bay Area's Ten Sexiest People, because "As every red-blooded San Franciscan knows, there's nothing hotter than a woman who says, 'I like to blow shit up.'" She's the kind of woman who shows up to a 2AM junkyard machine war toting rocket fuel and Chanel no. 5 in the same purse. She's equal shots glam and raw power. Pure punk rock. Poetry in code. Living proof that fembots have already infiltrated our planet -- and that we're better off for it.

And as the guestbar torch is passed, we express special gratitude to first-time blogger Jim Griffin, whose terrific contributions to the guestbar included wireless blog-posts from Antarctica, Finland, and Austria. Thanks in part to the enthusiastic reader response he received here, Jim has decided to launch a blog of his own in the coming months at his 62chevy.com site. Many thanks, Jim. BoingBoing will miss you. See you soon in the blogosphere.
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