Seriously, who doesn't need a protocol droid? Especially one who speaks Bochi! Who doesn't need an effeminate butler to follow you around and complain? To tell stories with cool sound effects? To listen to all your problems? To be really shiny?

I mentioned yesterday that one of my crazy ideas was to make a C3PO. Sadly, this was not a crazy idea I had when I was a kid...it was just last year. Even crazier is I have no clue on how to do any portion of such a highly complicated robot....sorry, "Droid."

Now there are lots of tutorials out there about how to create your own R2D2, but nothing about 3PO? Why? Because it would be infinitely harder.

First of all, 3PO talks and walks and stuff.

While it's easy to have R2 appear to speak through his beeps and whistles....they're just beeps and whistles. 3PO is supposed to be fluent in 6 million different forms of communication!

R2 rolls on three wheels in his tripod form, 3PO is supposed to walk on two legs, a problem that modern robotics is still trying to figure out...in fact most have abandoned bipedal walking for other more efficient means of locomotion. Like Johnny Five's trac rollers.

But even beyond that...3PO has to be able to think...the Holy Grail of computing and robotics, Artificial Intelligence. And no matter how many big pc's have been made smart enough to kick the best Chess player's collective asses, not a single one has achieved independent intelligence.

So, of course, I decided I could bypass fifty years of research and without any training in robotics or programming, just do it myself....yeah, it didn't work out. Apparently that kind of knowledge and training and more importantly money is required to do all of these things...and I had none of it. Thankfully, the only money lost on this endeavor was for a couple of books on do it yourself robotics...books that I discovered I'm not really dedicated enough to use...or smart enough, probably...so no real damage was done.

I was pretty bummed, but the world was safe from any premature appearance of SkyNet or armies of terminators...so that was a good thing...I guess.