Well, shit. Had a really good post here, courtesy of half a liter of whiskey and a shot of brandy, but what's the difference between CTRL+R and CTRL+T? About two centimeters. Easy mistake to make. Y'all missed out on a great rant on the English language and proper nouns and the contraction of "It is" versus the possessive case of "It", but that's gone now and I don't feel like re-typing it.

Yes, I just typed "Y'all". It's a perfectly valid word of which the English language is in dire need. The Deutsch language differentiates between the singular and plural forms of "You", and it's a damn handy thing to have around when you are addressing a large group of people. Consider: What if a person collapses from a heart attack, and someone says "You! Call an ambulance!" In the English language, "You" is horribly undefined. It could mean anyone. It could mean a whole group of people. Thanks to the Bystander Effect, everyone is going to assume that someone else will step forward and help the poor guy. I've seen it in action. It's fucking surreal. I'm at a Hugo workshop on... something. Back in 2015. Details escape me at the moment. All I can remember is that Teresa Nielsen Hayden was one of the speakers and she didn't look to be in good health. She needed a walker to get up on the stage, so it was amazing that she wasn't the guy who had a heart attack. But somebody else collapsed and she called for somebody to call emergency services, and fifty people sat around waiting for somebody else to make the call. And then, I shit you not, somebody else muttered that she should be asking for somebody in specific to make the call. This other lady knew about the bystander effect and I knew about the bystander effect and we both knew that nobody was going to make that call unless they were specifically called upon. Buy neither of us made that call. I don't know what her defense was, but I didn't know the emergency number for the Spokane Convention Center. That's my excuse. But somebody made that call, and I got a newfound appreciation for how screwed up the Bystander Effect is.

In short, we need to treat "Y'all" as a proper word in the English language and not something that stupid hick Texans say. Because the Texans are on to something. By the way, where did they get it? I seem to recall that there was (Is "There's" a valid contraction of "There was"?) a sizeable population of German immigrants in Texas since before the Civil War, and it could have bled over from the Deutsch language. Food for thought.

Anyhow, "Digitigrade feet" means that the locomotor in question walks on its toes, as opposed to "Plantigrade" which denotes locomotors that walk on their toes and the middle part of their feet. No, wait, it's the toes and the soles of their feet. Look at a dog; see its elbow? That's actually an ankle. Same with cats and herons and horses, but horses have hooves and they're called something else. Doesn't matter. I think you mean "Digitipod", which combines the word for "Digits" like fingers and toes with the Latin root word for "Foot".

So this Method-1 needs digits on each of its pods? For humans (And presumably other bipeds) toes are integral to the body's balance. Cut off a guy's toes and let's see how well he can walk. Ah, I guess the pain from walking on severed stumps for feet is going to throw off his gait. And if we pump the test subject full of oxycodone, he's going to have trouble balancing anyway. This experiment might be harder than I thought.

More seriously, what will digits accomplish? They help the human body balance, but the Method-1 Amplified Mobility Platform Lookalike is bigger and heavier than a human being. See its gait? How it sashays back and forth like a drunken hooker? I've heard that the larger therapods (Read: T-Rex) probably walked like that, and I can see why. It balances all of the weight on one foot. If Method-1 walked exactly like a human, it would probably sway back and forth like a drunken sailor thanks to the center of mass being just off to one side of either of the feet. Now consider a Method-1 Not-Quite-A-Cyclops built with digits so that it rolls its feet like a human being. Once during every step, all those tons of steel and wiring and hydraulics are concentrated into an area less than the size of one of its current feet. How much less? A third? A tenth? One twentieth?

There's another option I saw as a kid, might work better. Back when Jurassic Park II came out, there was a shitton of dinosaur toys that came out. I seem to recall one series where the dinosaurs had removable patches of skin, and this was advertised as "Realistic dino-damage" or something. Whatever. Loved the way the toys look, but it's been about twenty years and those memories are unreliable. Heck, I just Googled it and the advertising slogan was "Removable Dino-damage wound!" And the toys weren't as awesome as I remember. Damn. I seem to recall more sets in the aesthetic of the abandoned compound from The Lost World, but my mind is playing tricky buggers with me.

There was a T-Rex toy back then that could walk on its own, and its feet were messed up. They were like... interlocking horseshoes. Better yet, take your hands, curl your ring and pinkie fingers in, and then lay your hands flat on the desk in front of you so that the tip of your right index finger is meshed between the index and middle finger of your left hand. Now advance your left hand so that the index finger is meshed between the index and middle finger of your right hand. Now do the opposite. That's how the toy walked, and that's how inwards-pointing digits might work on the Method-1's feet. Would make turning and half-steps a bitch and a half, though.

Peace out.