hylobatidae.org

eBay is brilliant for potentially terrifying US Postal Service operatives with dodgy-looking packages from Belarus. What's inside? Bit of Soviet-era optical equipment. Why did I need it? Well, some idiot (namely me) forgot to properly bolt his chunky old USSR-constructed LOMO microscope into its carrying case properly when emigrating to the USA, allowing it to rattle around inside without any kind of protection - resulting in ... a slightly bent monocular head for the eyepiece.

Apparently, Soviet-era optical equipment is built to last.

With the replacement, everything is back in focus again! I'll post micrographs of microscopic things on Flickr as soon as I figure out how to align my dSLR-carrying tripod correctly.

Stupidly enough, it wasn't this purchase that got my credit card temporarily blocked - it was trying to buy $5-worth of groceries at a nearby Safeway. And this reminds me, I still need to post packages out elsewhere...

What’s your favourite thing about space? Mine is space.

Decommissioning the Space Shuttles - now neatly installed in museums, they required gutting first.

Fate of the Soviet Buran shuttle - still, the US shuttles had a less traumatic fate than the Soviet version...

Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror - how do you land a giant nuclear-powered rover on another planet? Extra: full animation is similarly dramatic...

Cosmonaut survival training - forget landing on a runway in Florida, or splashing down in a tropical bit of the Pacific. Extra: Soviet space-pyjamas!

Bonus Antiquated Soviet Rocketry corner:

• Venera: the Soviet Exploration of Venus - including reprocessed images from the surface.
• LOK Lunar Orbital Spacecraft - 'roughly equivalent to the Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM) "mother ship". Basically a souped-up Soyuz, it served as transport vehicle & living quarters for the 2 man lunar crew to and from the moon.'

Also, dear readers - who are you people? I've already got loads of subscribers to the RSS feed - but you're all remarkably quiet. Do post comments. Don't be shy!

Another assorted selection of things entirely derived from the bowels of my bookmarks list...

Anatomical Atlases - from the National Library of Medicine's collection. Despite some being centuries old, can unsurprisingly get a bit graphic - so be warned...

Splendidly fast lenses - from a German camera wiki. No idea what the article's about, but the pictures are nice... Extra: about the f/0.7 lens used to film Kubrick's Barry Lyndon

Inertial Navigator Platform - navigation system originally used on the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, apparently. Extra: Ms. van Vark has a splendid selection of hardware.

Bonus Morbid Incidents of Mystery corner:

• Dyatlov Pass incident - fabrication? Fact? What did cause the mysterious and violent deaths of nine hikers on the flanks of a Russian mountain?
• An abandoned lifeboat at world’s end - a ship's lifeboat, found washed ashore on Bouvet Island - perhaps the loneliest place on Earth. Who was on it, and why?

City of Shadows - long, black-and-white exposures of a newly post-communist Saint Petersburg, from Alexey Titarenko.

Video and Optical - bulbous, insectile machines, monitoring and watching and listening, from Bjoern Schuelke.

METACHAOS - feeling cheerful? Sleeping well? Change all that with this frankly horrifying animation - filamentatious, ferrofluidic writhing by way of Silent Hill and Cyriak's worst nightmares, from Alessandro Bavari.

Had enough? Here's an emergency bonus Cuddly Fluffy Animal Corner to aid the recovery.

Leopard Moth - from Wikipedia.

Cockchafer Beetle - also from Wikipedia. Do you find its name ... amusing, eh? You disgust me!

Fifty greatest matte paintings - yeah, it's a list, but it's got some weird and wonderful stuff. And Hitchcock was an absolute master of showing things that weren't there, it turns out.

Tailsitter Aeroplanes - as with anything in the early Cold War, completely and utterly insane.

Last house on Holland Island - since fallen into the sea. Reminds me a bit of the Brighton West Pier...

Giant cross-section of ITER tokamak - currently under construction in the south of France.

Bonus Cuddly Robots of DOOM corner:

• Ping Bot - tiny robot which scuttles around a table, beeping curiously - before releasing a tiny knife-missile which plunges through your sternum.
• Yellow Drum Machine - samples its own beats tapped out on its surroundings, then samples your own screams as it burrows through your skull.