Sunday Things - post-infinite edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday March 31 2013
Today's somewhat abbreviated Things has been slightly delayed due to finishing Bioshock Infinite. Oops. Mini-review: excellent. Also, people claiming the ending doesn't make sense? Amateurs. Any fan of Fringe would follow it just fine...
Soyuz TMA-22 launch - further to last week's article's Feynman love-in in the comments, here's a counterpoint to the Space Shuttle's tendency to explode when launched in cold weather. A Soyuz launching during an actual blizzard? Hell yeah. Around 22 seconds in - gorgeous.
Rare Images From Inside a Soyuz During Flight - shots from inside Soyuz TMA-20. So what's it like inside one of those things? Kind of cramped. I suddenly understand exactly why they developed a six-hour flight to the International Space Station to replace the usual two-day one...
Tupolev Tu-160 - while we're at it, have a lovely photo of this monster from the latter days of the Soviet Union. A book I had as a child had a few artists' impressions and a fuzzy satellite image of this thing. And plenty of information on the American B-1.
Bonus Would Give Cyriak Nightmares corner:
- Man Spaghetti - contains neither man nor spaghetti. Utterly surreal, disturbing animation. via b3ta
Sunday Things - rocketry edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday March 24 2013
Quick space-oriented edition while I catch up with stuff.
F-1 Engine Recovery - if you launch a skyscraper-sized monster up into the air, it's not going to disappear. Some of it will come back to Earth - or the sea in this case. And decades later, a billionaire will fish rusty bits of rocket engine out of the ocean. Corroded, destroyed '60s space hardware? I'm happy. via Jeff S.
The Fading Grandeur of Abandoned Soviet Space Facilities - meanwhile, on the other side of the planet - a nice compilation of links, including the previously mentioned Lana Sator's rocket factory infiltration. See also: the fate of the Buran. via locworks
BLACK ARROW - and then, on another side of the world, in Woomera, Australia - there's the remnants of the British space programme. Our first satellite is quite likely still beeping away up there, should anyone care to listen in...
Bonus Yet-to-upload-to-Flickr-but-there's-my-frequently-updated-photos-to-look-at corner:
- Space Shuttle Discovery - saw it some weeks ago, outside Washington (DC). It's big, scarred and decidedly more impressive than my 1:72 scale model. This model has a much better paint-job than mine.
- Space Shuttle Interior - I got inside! Albeit the full-sized trainer in Washington (state, just south of Seattle). Typed while watching this - at twenty minutes in? Piss off, that's not a Shuttle. Way too roomy for a start...
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Sunday Things - demoscene edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday March 17 2013
Never excuse 'programmer art'. Witness the demoscene - hackers making hardware do audiovisual things it wasn't supposed to.
elevated by Rgba and TBC - fantastic 4kB demo. As in, it's a four kilobyte Windows executable. Essentially just some fancy shaders running on the GPU and a tiny software synthesiser, it's bloody amazing what it manages to produce. pouet.net page with download links etc.
Agenda Circling Forth by Fairlight and Carillon & Cyberiad - so what happens when demo coders have somewhat more than 4kB to play with? Frequently, they escape the tedious world of polygons and investigate the land of particles. Nifty. pouet.net page
Where Have All The Pixels Gone? by cmucc - but what do they do when pixels themselves seem needlessly futuristic? Get hacking on a Vectrex from the early 1980s. pouet.net page
Pimp My Spectrum by ate bit - but there's no risk of getting stuck in the past. Take some simulated '80s Sinclair hardware and launch yourself into a glorious alternate future - this demo is absolutely a tricked-out Sinclair Spectrum emulator... pouet.net page
Starstruck by The Black Lotus - it's not just virtual hardware being upgraded. This is a demo built for a souped-up Commodore Amiga, but true to the spirit of the platform wars which epitomised the demoscene, here it's running much better on an accelerated Atari Falcon. Never forget which side I'm on. pouet.net page
Bonus No Hardware Available! corner:
- OHP Megademo 9000 - TRSI & DES!RE - never underestimate nerd determination. pouet.net page
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Sunday Things - early flight edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday March 10 2013
Go read about aviation history on Wikipedia. A few brief highlights:
Ader Avion III - primitive, steam-powered, ineffective - but looking like an escapee from an alternate, steampunk universe. Clément Ader's earlier Éole did make a brief, low powered flight in October 1890, albeit in a completely uncontrollled manner.
Horatio Frederick Phillips - forget the monoplanes, biplanes, triplanes and other near-wingless attempts at flight. Mr. Phillips' multiplanes eventually made decent powered flights in 1907, long after simpler designs proved adequate...
Zeppelins! - from experimental beasts to explosive monsters via dropping bombs on Birmingham, these things grew to be huge.
R101 - the Germans certainly weren't alone in developing airships. Part of a British government programme "to develop civil airships capable of service on long-distance routes within the British Empire", this home-grown hydrogen-filled leviathan crashed and burned on its first flight to India... The enormous airship sheds at Cardington still stand - you've probably (not) seen them in the recent Batman films, being ideal cover for film sets.
Bonus Random Pavarotti Disease corner:
- Rex the Runt - Vince is my god. All three series and more uploaded to Youtube by Aardman themselves. Plasticine heaven!
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Sunday Things - Weekend edition
posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday March 3 2013
Multiple links from readers this week! Cheers muchly.
Railway tunnel construction beneath Grand Central Terminal, New York - New York has extended upwards, and downwards. Now they're extending it more. via phuzz
Preventing "Sick" Spaceships - humans are disgusting. So human spaceflight has to deal with mould, dust mites and grapefruit-sized blobs of dirty condensed water floating behind instrument panels. Erk.
Russian jellyfish of the White Sea - just one of Earth's branches of alien-lookalike lifeforms, here find the jellyfish.
Bikers visit Kadykchan, Siberia - are there any post-Soviet exploration games with motorbikes in? Seems like a gap in the market. More photos of the place here and here. via elel
Bonus Who-Invented-The-Tablet-Computer-Anyway corner:
- Atari ST Pad - prototype 'pentop computer', with the wholly-unsuited-for-mobile-usage TOS/GEM as the operating system. BUT AT LEAST IT'S A REAL COMPUTER.
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