A Virus That Helps Charge Your Cellphone – NYTimes.com
The article is actually surprisingly detailed, and even includes a short (and possibly somewhat cryptic) video:
About a decade ago Fritz and I were *really* geeked about the International Space Station–which, as you’ll recall from my last post, fundamentally fails to impress my mom. Back then the ISS had just finished the first round of continuous human habitation (it’s now in round 31–a fact that complete blows my mind. Our space station is fully operational, and has been for more than a decade!) Sometime in late 2001 or early 2002 NASA quietly released the captain’s log kept by Bill Shepherd, who was Commander for the Alpha mission (i.e., that first team of long-term space stationers). The full complement for that mission was three guys, including Shep.
These logs–which are more than a little janky, with weird gremlin characters, extensive redactions, and large chunks set in Comic Sans–fascinated Fritz and me. During this period I was working at a school, teaching 1/4 of the time and doing office-drone stuff for the other 3/4, and lots of those office-drone hours ended up being spent pouring over these logs and imagining the awful wonder of living on a damn orbital space station.
While cleaning out my office this weekend (preparatory to the nice plumber with the jackhammer coming to totally wreck up the joint) I found the following essay. Now, at this point, I can’t recall precisely *why* I wrote this. Clearly, in part, it was sort of a gag about high school composition assignments (I was a neophyte English teacher for that 1/4 of my workday, after all). But more than that, it’s just a really honest expression of how much I loved those Captain’s Logs–real, honest-to-God *Captain’s Logs!!!*–which were the first really tangible evidence that I *was* living in a future that bore some resemblance to that OMNI magazine, matinee movies, and Scholastic books promised me when I was a boy.
WHAT I’VE LEARNED FROM THE ISS ALPHA MISSION
a brief essay by Dave Nelson
I’ve learned that astronauts like action and war movies (“Apocalypse Now” and all four “Lethal Weapon” films)–not suspenseful dramas (e.g., “The Sixth Sense,” which they only brought along because they mistakenly believed it was a sequel to the Fifth Element)/
If you lose anything, it’ll turn up in the air filter sooner or later.
Shep loves tools–his perfect day involves using both tools and schematics in unison. Russian cosmonauts love sorting things.
Most of the time on a space station is spent building more space station.
Astronauts love laptops (they apparently have 9 running, and are complaining that they don’t have enough table-space to accommodate the two more the’d like to get going). They are receiving email up there, using Outlook (considering the whole computer-virus situation with that mail program, I’d be nervous if I were them.)
Ham radio is still the most reliable form of communication with the earth.
Despite a dearth of tools and parts, Russians can fix or rig anything.
Even in space, folks celebrate Christmas.
And here’s another really lovely orbital water experiment with Don Pettit:
Aside: My mom is here to watch my newish baby while a friendly giant crushes my basement floor in order to swap out a collapsed sewer line. Mom glanced at this video and exclaimed, “He’s on the moon?!?” When I explained that, no, he was on the International Space Station, Mom was visibly let down. Guy standing on an inert hunk of rock and playing the digeridoo? *OMG!* Guy sitting in the crowning technological achievement of our species and playing a didgeridoo? *Menh.*
In a nutshell, this is everything that’s wrong with the Baby Boom Generation, folks.
(via here and here)
Continue reading “Astronaut Don Pettit Plays Didgeridoo in SPAAAAAAACE!”
I’m not just posting this because geeks and LEGO and Star Wars and nostalgia-singularity and *neat!* {*squeeee*} FREAKOUT! Yes, all that’s in the mix (plus, like most of you, I’m a depressingly unselfconscious Escher fanboy from small times), but I’m posting this because, simply as art in and of itself, this sculpture is lovely and worth meditating on. It is here to tell us something interesting about ourselves and our myths. For example, the artist’s blithely stated intention to *dismantle* this.
Take a second to click through and look at the detailed images. Please. Trust me:
Star Wars Relativity V2: A LEGO– creation by Paul Vermeesch : MOCpages.com
A gentle nudge: If you’re looking for a Dad’s Day gift for a fella with school-age children, you can do worse than my book SNIP, BURN, SOLDER, SHRED: Seriously Geeky Stuff to Make with Your Kids. Fully certified dads have said stuff like:
and
and
(That last one’s from Rob Malda, founder of Slashdot.org, and really nice cat.)
If you really want to stick it to The Man, you can always order directly from the publisher. You’ll get the ebooks (including a Kindle version) *FREE*, and if you use the coupon code SHRED you’ll save 35 percent.
Order soonishly from whoever and the book is sure to arrive in time for Father’s Day.
Alternately, if your dad or hubby is into clockwork sex robots, maybe try this steampunk novella on Kindle–or the supercool, handmade print chapbook.
So, that’s my pitch. Thank you, and goodnight!
I’ve worked with Bilal Ghalib in the past (we hosted one of his “Pocket Factory” 3-D printing crash-course workshops at Workantile), so it was a delight to see him pop up out of the blue with something new and rad:
Yup: He’s using the MakeyMakey USB keyboard interface (a Kickstarter project I geeked about a few weeks back; it’s now funded at 1,700% [!!!] with 6 days to go!) to play with his food. Nice!
This is precisely the reason I jumped on the MakeyMakey funding bandwagon: Obtuse interfaces for musical instruments inspire all sorts of crazy new ways to rock out, and I *love* that. Here’s another great MakeyMakey ad hoc instrument:
FYI, I’m just now starting in on my second DIY book with No Starch Press. This time around it’s going to be all musical instruments, mostly electronic; expect lots of janky little synths with nary an equal-tempered keyboard in sight, and inappropriate uses of conventional technologies. Also at least one ukulele.
I came to steampunk writing fiction, so when I started occasionally going to cons and speaking on panels, I was caught flat-footed by the whole dress-up end of the movement–which actually seems to be the genre’s dominant facet (which was news to me, which is why it’s sorta shocking that people invite me to speak on panels). I’m not a huge dress-up guy myself (although I’ve got a childhood soft-spot for Ren Festivals, and am as impressed by bodiced/corseted decolletage as the next human that’s into ladies), but the handy-craftsmanship folks bring to their steampunk garb is eye-catching. Beyond sewing (little of which is simple), there’s a whole universe of leather-working, woodworking, metalworking, soldering, tinkering, and scavenging necessary to make these costumes. And, man, then there’s the *hats and goggles!*
I’m sort of inclined to write off the dress-up end of any artistic movement as foppish preening, but it’s been interesting to see elements that start out just being costume-ball frippery filter back into the literature. For example, you see that breather mask? As near as I can tell, these came into steampunk fashion from some backwater tribal-industrial post-Burning Man rave-scene affectation. I find them creepy, and kind of assume they have Mad Max sexual overtones. Whatever your opinion, they aren’t abundant–or even notable–in canonical steampunk lit. But I’m now seeing breathers like these show up in *stories*, the rationale being that *if* you had the Industrial Revolution lead directly into high-level computation, then you’d have exponentially increased the consumption of fuel–which was all wood and coal–and thus brought on the complete blighting of London, for example, much, much more quickly.
I spent a lot of time kicking around the merchant hall at the World Steam Expo last week, pawing fancy hats and generally making a pest of myself. Now, maybe I’m jaded, but when I’m looking at a huge display of hundreds of funky leather hats, my inclination is to say “Man, there’s some crazy Upton Sinclair nightmare of a factory in Shenzhen where 10-year-olds crank these out for nickels!” But then I ended up talking with the sales folk–who it turned out were *actual* milliners–and I was just gobsmacked: They crank these out from scratch in Fremont, OH. The company that made the pith helmets in those pics is Blonde Swan, and their janky website doesn’t even come close to doing justice to the variety of their hats, or the craftsmanship of those lids. The Universe where I’d pay $150 for a hat that *can’t* save my life or grant wishes is far, far away from here, but I’m gonna level with you: These hats are *cheap* at that price. The gal I was talking to (not pictured, sadly) was a cutter–whole days spent cutting leather to make top hats, twenty at a time. And they’ve got seamstresses there that can crank out those hats as fast as she can cut the leather. This is an all above-board, all-American operation. That there is this kind of demand for leather top-hats with brass gewgaws stitched to them, in this economy, simply boggles the mind.
Likewise, I spent a goodly amount of time talking to Abbey Manalli of Altered History, from whom I bought these patches:
(my boy claimed the monocled lion, but I get to keep the Navy squid)
First glance: they’re nice designs competently wrought; a solid buy. But then you pick them up, and discover that they’re not your standard-issue glue-backed embroidered patches (which are sort of a post-WWII technique), but rather an embroidered design on wool felt. Why’d Manalli bother? Because that’s how insignia were made in the late 19th and early 20th Century. She wanted to be period to a period that doesn’t exist, so she tracked down the only wool felt producer in the US (located in rural Massachusetts) to source the material, and then hooked up with a crazy embroiderer in Milwaukee who was into the aesthetic, and thus willing to futz around with a material no one had used in mass producing patches since my *grandfather* (now of blessed memory) was born.
So, there’s no big point here, except for to say that there isn’t a Hot Topic for steampunk fashion yet; even if someone’s togs are strictly store-bought, there’s still a helluva lot of good ole American elbow grease[*] in the making.
Neil Gaiman Addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012 on Vimeo
Gaiman offers *excellent* advice for *any* sort of freelancer at the 14-minute mark. The rest is good if you like Gaiman, or writing, or fiction, or comix, or art, or English accents, but the minute starting around 14:00 is *vital* of you roll freelance. The bit at around 18:40 hits me in the right place as well, because I’ve been pretending like I am what I am for a solid 20 years, and it’s more-or-less working.
Jeri Ellsworth and her Commodore Bass.MOV – YouTube
This crazy C64 SID-enhanced bass is *awesome!* Her achievements are *crazy!* (Yeah, she doesn’t have my looks, but it seemed sorta petty to bring that up, so I’m letting that go.)
A few weeks ago I guest blogged about “voice in writing” for Shimmer. That essay starts something like this:
and ends like this:
In the middle I specifically cite David Foster Wallace and Stephen King as examples of how a Voice–even a very ornate one–arises from a process of reduction. So, I was interested to come across this note DFW sent Harper’s magazine regarding this nifty lil piece he wrote about Kafka for that magazine in 1998. The note reads, in part:
I share this, because DFW was fundamentally wrong. I was a UofM comp lit student with a subscription to Harper’s when that essay was first published, not to mention an embarrassingly enthusiastic fan of DFW’s, and I remember reading that piece–feeling how breezy and conversational it was–and I’ve gotta say that this sense of the piece’s voice wouldn’t have been at all affected if DFW had elected to use Chicago Manual of Style-compliant punctuation after his abbreviated Latin introductory clauses, instead of being a royal prick.
The takeaway: Don’t do this; don’t squander even a few minutes from your limited store of earthly hours fussing over pinches of pepper on what is already a really damn good steak.