Sunday Things - launch site edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday June 23 2013
Sunday Things - reading list edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday June 16 2013
Enough pictures and videos. Have some readings to read instead!
- Iain Banks: the final interview - political, profane and hilarious - much missed already. If you have a UK IP address, see also BBC Scotland's tribute on the iPlayer.
- The Martian Chroniclers - jumbo-sized New Yorker article on some of the people behind the oft-mentioned-here Mars Science Laboratory mission. Bonus Curiosity pictures: night shots taken on Mars. They mostly come out at night. Mostly.
- Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names - humans are complicated beasts, and any societal norms you expect are likely to be incomplete. See also - Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time.
- Mindscapes: First interview with a dead man - perhaps not the ideal link to place alongside the Banks interview above, but here's an experience of Cotard's syndrome, in which sufferers believe that they don't exist.
- Alternate Reality Game puzzle design - look at me! I can type lots of text!
Bonus This Time It's A Video corner:
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Iain (M.) Banks - 1954-2013
posted in Obituaries by Cargo Cult on Monday June 10 2013
My heroes are dying. I knew it was coming, but now it's Iain Banks' turn.
At least I had the chance to thank him first.
I think my first exposure to his writing must have been a brief snippet of the Wasp Factory, late at night on Radio 4. It involved an open brain and maggots. It was very late at night.
While at university, following various upcoming computer games, someone online mentioned that the writing for the forthcoming 'Halo' kind of resembled that from a certain 'Iain M. Banks'. Ooh, I thought, let's investigate. A trip to the nearby Blackwell's resulted in a paperback copy of Consider Phlebas - which turned out to be much superior to the unreleased digital alternatives. I commenced the reading of everything else Banksian I could lay my hands on.
I was having a pretty difficult time at university - the escapism, pitch-black humour and leftist sensibilities helped me rebuild some semblance of a functioning mind. The full spectrum of conscious thought - from the breathtakingly ugly to the brilliantly sublime seemed contained within those books.
The novels stayed as an irregular rhythm to my life, an intermittent backdrop as I started to write fiction as part of another unconventional medium - being ever-so-slightly inspired by that Mr. I. Banks, with or without the 'M.'. Additional evidence - the username I go by on many online systems. It's not just a comment on other modders' game development practices...
Eventually, I inadvertently ended up with another job as a result of those spare-time efforts. And, shipped over to the USA, I’d quietly suggest the books of this almost-unheard-of ‘Iain M. Banks’ to friends and colleagues, quietly proud as his name spread through the efforts of publishing companies and others.
The older covers for Banks books in the USA are awful. Yes, I went to an American bookshop on my first trip to the USA - where I did manage to find numerous absent-from-UK-bookshops titles from Stanisław Lem, who'd had the temerity to die just days beforehand.
I never had the chance to meet him. And now I never will. I raise a (sadly American-sized, albeit with a Black Mesa logo) pint in his honour.
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Sunday Things - quick edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday June 9 2013
Couple of links. You get the idea!
Bonus More Programming Revealed by Radio-4-Matic corner:
- Wireless Nights - Jarvis Cocker's explorations of the night, with musings on the National Grid, organ donors, disconnected islands and so much more. Perfect for listening to late at night. Sadly not followed directly by Sailing By...
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Sunday Things - anniversary and disk crash edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday June 2 2013
Good news! This blog has been going for an entire year, and I haven't missed a single Sunday Things.
Bad news! My laptop's hard disk has just died, taking with it numerous bookmarks I'd been collating for this week's edition. I've got full backups of everything up to about a week ago; email and suchlike is unaffected. But still, there's the annoyance factor. Curse you, Seagate! The disk's just over a month old, too...
So instead, have a somewhat curtailed, text-only antiquated British technology edition:
- The Letter of Last Resort - radio drama about the hand-written letters from an incoming prime minister to the captains of the UK's nuclear submarines - instructing them on what they should do should the UK government be obliterated. My orders would be for them to nuke the poo out of Milton Keynes, just to make sure it was gone.
- Radio 4's long wave goodbye - one of the means of determining whether Blighty has fallen is whether BBC Radio 4 still exists. Unfortunately, Radio 4 Long Wave's transmitter is on its last legs, requiring huge, antiquated valves to operate. And they're steadily running out, with no way to obtain new ones... via UA
- Low-level Vulcan bomber flypast - the last of Britain's Avro Vulcan bombers being VERY LOUD. I've learned my lesson after a speaker-wrecking Soyuz launch. Also, have some non-British Polish MiG 29 'Fulcrum' photography via phuzz.
Bonus Sunday Things anniversary corner:
- Comic Sans edition - miscellaneous linkage and some horrifying biology, with a coded-specially-to-celebrate-the-Higgs-boson Comic Sans ability.
- Urbex edition - seemingly just a couple of photos, but then you realise each photographer has vast archives of rusty stuff to look at. Also: Flickr is horrible now!
- Historical edition - in which I retype some auroral sarcasm from 1859.
- Demoscene edition - hackers making stuff do what it can't, in the complete opposite of 'programmer art'.
- What the heck, just go look at the archives edition - so many things...
Please feel free to post prior (and new) interesting things in the comments. I'll be busy attacking my laptop with a screwdriver.
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