hylobatidae.org

Greetings, readers across the world! I had a quick peer at my web-stats whatsits, to see followers from as far afield as Austria, Latvia, Peru and New Zealand. Hello, whoever you are.

This week is mainly retro space-related, with some bonus 1970s horror.

Scarfolk Council - life is increasingly imitating art. 'Scarfolk is a town in North West England that did not progress beyond 1979. Instead, the entire decade of the 1970s loops ad infinitum. Here in Scarfolk, pagan rituals blend seamlessly with science; hauntology is a compulsory subject at school, and everyone must be in bed by 8pm because they are perpetually running a slight fever.'

NASA Johnson Space Center's Shuttle II - the original Space Shuttle was meant to be the beginning of a series of spacecraft, each more advanced than its predecessors. Instead, we had the 1970s original design running well into the 21st century. Here's one of the proposed replacements, from 1988.

Rams Un Rums - splendid Soviet space robots in this children's book from the early 1960s. Like something out of The Cyberiad or Machinarium.

Bonus Terran Trade Authority corner:

• Spacecraft: 2000 to 2100 AD - I remember finding a copy of one of these compilations in the appropriate-looking Heanor Public Library some time in the late '80s. Best thing ever.

For more information please reread.

Thematic!

W. Heath Robinson's Inventions - I was thinking the other day about Heath Robinson and his splendid inventions, having seen some of the works of Rube Goldberg and been distinctly underwhelmed by them. One thing led to another, and I soon discovered that the Wikimedia Commons had scanned the entire, out-of-copyright contents of the same Heath Robinson book as owned by my grandfather. With cartoons depicting humorous solutions to both World Wars to solving the problems of communal living, via inter-war sports, manufacturing and transportation, I love how the people depicted are all so terribly serious about it all - these inventions are important, and not to be laughed at.

Wintergatan - Marble Machine - speaking of Heath Robinson, have a Terribly Serious Swede with his fully functional but ridiculously over-complicated, ball bearing-operated music machine. Here is your ear worm for the day - annoyingly catchy.

Bonus Additional Eccentricity corner:

• The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society - in their words, "glorious everyday mundanitude of these simple silent sentinels the world over". May include electricity pylons.
• John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme - You Are Not A Geek - many here will understand the sentiment behind this sketch, from the remarkable John Finnemore (and Radio 4).

Are you following Techmoan? You probably ought to be - a northern gadget nut who's been acquiring, repairing and documenting all sorts of weird and wonderful old bits of home entertainment systems. Most of which I've never heard of before...

Bonus Quantel Corner:

• Quantel DVM8001 Mirage - Demonstration Video - showing off some fancy new 'computer graphics' and digital video processing. Might catch on one day. The British Quantel will definitely lead the way!
• A Quantel Paintbox For Christmas! - The Complete Story - the tale of a glorious nutter who acquires an old Quantel system and hacks it back into working order again. Wonderfully bizarre machines, and definitely not intended for the consumer market.
• Quantel V-Series Paintbox Tour - imagine being able to draw and paint on a computer. Like a super-early, hardware-assisted Adobe Photoshop, this particular machine is a descendant of something even older.

A hangar, neglected and abandoned since soon after the war became irrelevant. Sunlight streams through grimy windows on to faded plastic and tarpaulin sheeting covering unidentifiable mechanical shapes, spattered in the dust and detritus of decades.

He walks over to one of the lumpen masses, its covering still faded but clear of dust. Pulling aside the sheeting, he pauses briefly to admire the war machine beneath.

Built in the closing stages of the war, not long before both sides' struggle became pointless in the face of a third, ascendant superpower - its shape clearly echoing the lines of earlier machines but with a last-ditch internal hardware layout inside. This particular specimen is clearly not abandoned, at least not now - cleaned up access ports and new umbilical cabling show the man's work over the years. But beyond this functional rehabilitation, unmodified - true to the day it first left its long-forgotten factory.

He pulls out a device from his backpack, tiny and implausibly powerful in comparison with the old war machine before him, but still a direct descendant of that new enemy's clunky past. Loaded with newly engineered firmware, designed to circumvent this relic's system limitations - he plugs it into a cable harness, preparing for upload to the old bird. Firmware to make the machine's main engine and awkward yet hugely capable auxiliary power unit beat as one, in perfect synchronicity - firmware designed with the knowledge and experience of decades of work, to carry the weapon originally wielded by that new enemy but in a manner long thought impossible.

Transfer complete, he begins the boot process. The Atari Falcon030 shall fly again - and a friendly flight over old Amiga territory seems strangely appropriate, just for old time's sake...

Bonus Soviet NASA corner:

• NASA Armstrong Fact Sheet: Tu-144LL Supersonic Flying Laboratory - NASA-operated Soviet-era supersonic airliner, the Tupolev Tu-144 being the Buran to the Space Shuttle Concorde.

Quick selection this week - opening up 'Other Bookmarks', waiting for it to slowly (so slowly!) scroll near the end, then randomly clicking on a few things.

Train to Nowhere - How Cincinnati tried, and failed, to build one of America’s first subways - while watching QI recently, there was a brief mention of an abandoned, half-constructed underground railway network beneath Jerry Springer's home town. I had to go investigating on these intertubes. More photos via Wikipedia.

An-225 Mriya is the world’s largest aircraft - remember how last week I was getting excited about photos of and inside the Antonov An-124? Well, this week - have some photos of and inside the closely related, but even more ridiculously massive, An-225. I've now got a new mystery photo blog to add to my subscriptions, to complement Lana Sator's solely-in-Russian urban explorations. Not understanding Russian only adds to the fun.

Arecibo Uncut: First Visit to the Platform & Dome with Dana Whitlow - over an hour long, this GoPro-on-a-hard-hat video is an extensive tour of the Arecibo Observatory, in particular the 900-ton platform suspended above the dish. Captured as part of the project to regain communications with and control of the then-abandoned International Cometary Explorer probe with the aim to return it to an Earth orbit, said probe sadly revealed itself to have run out of nitrogen gas used to pressurise its fuel tanks, and has now returned to its ghostly heliocentric orbit between the planets...

Bonus Crap Hardware corner:

• CGA in 1024 Colors - a New Mode: the Illustrated Guide - or, how to make PC graphics not look like shite. Do I need to apply these tricks to my modern gaming PC?
• Meanwhile, on the Atari ST - upgraded version of the same PhotoChrome I trolled the acolytes with data from some years ago.