kollektief

An intrepid photographer named Thierry Legault has captured the shuttle Endeavor and the space station crossing the sun:

also check this out, a certain NYC band gets a fleeting public reference:

1. experimenting with stencils and screens

I’ve been working on some printing lately. I started out with spraypaint stencils, but then wanted to try for more detail, so i bought myself a nice nortech 18×20 inch screen and a photo emulsion kit. I really like the nortech, but i’m worried that it may be difficult to properly stretch my own fabric onto later. They have a strong solid frame, but they glue the screen on instead of having one of those things like the speedball with the mitred groove.

here’s my first experiment (salvaged from a bigger print that wasn’t very perfect):

2. quantum tic tac toe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tic_tac_toe

This is a pretty cool game which is a lot like normal tic tac toe, except that whenever it’s your turn you choose two spots instead of one, which you then label X1 and X1, for example. You have not yet actually occupied those squares, but you have quantumly entangled them. Each square can be entangled with as many other squares as the players want.

When three squares become entangled in a loop (one square connects to the next, which in turn connects with the next, which then connects back to the first square) the squares in question all collapse to classical tic tac toe spaces and are evaluated as normal. It sounds like fun!

3. Apollo 11 code

NASA has released the original Apollo 11 Command Module and Lunar Module code as open source. This code, which was developed at (what was then MIT’s) Draper Labs, can be run on the Apollo Guidance Computer emulator yaAGC.

source files for the Command Module: Comanche055
source files for the Lunar Module: Luminary099

The Master Ignition Routine has some cool comments, i especially liked the use of latin religious phrases:

#	Assemble revision 001 of AGC program LMY99 by NASA 2021112-61
#	16:27 JULY 14, 1969
...
# Page 731
# BURN, BABY, BURN -- MASTER IGNITION ROUTINE
...
# THE MASTER IGNITION ROUTINE WAS CONCEIVED AND EXECUTED, AND (NOTA BENE) IS MAINTAINED BY ADLER AND EYLES.
#
# 		   HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE
#
#	***********************************************
#		TABLES FOR THE IGNITION ROUTINE
#	***********************************************
#
#                       NOLI SE TANGERE

P12TABLE	VN	0674		# (0)
		TCF	ULLGNOT		# (1)
		TCF	COMFAIL3	# (2)

et cetera et cetera
and at the end:

...
  		TCF	GOTOP00H	# V34E TERMINATE
  		TCF	P40A/P		# RECYCLE
GOBACK		CA	TEMPR60
  		TC	BANKJUMP	# GOODBYE.  COME AGAIN SOON.

4. astronaut spoor

and just in case any of you missed it, the lunar orbiter caught this picture of the Apollo 14 leftovers:

http://johnsmyth.ie/blog/

He has some cool commentary.

I discovered it through some early morning research i was doing on sugar beets. Did you know 30% of the world’s sugar comes from sugar beets?

This is a big pile of them waiting to be processed in late winter Ireland 2005.

Irish sugarbeet production completely shut down in 2006 after the government stopped subsidizing it.

The Czechs make a kind of rum from sugar beets called Tuzemak, apparently little czech grannies use it when they are making christmas cookies. That sounds nice.

I’ve started colleting an archive of old pokernight emails and putting them on line.  I’ve only got a handfull of them up so far, but wanted to solicit comments on what people think of the site.  It’s your standard sort of WordPress deal.  The neat trick is that I’m making each email an individual post which I’m back-dating to the time the email was sent, so WordPress’s built in archiving system takes care of sorting and navigation.  You just click on “October 2002,” for example, to get all the emails from October of 2002.  I’m also trying to apply relavent tags.

It’s located here:

http://www.infinitydayweekend.com/pokernight/

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/obit-chittick-0722.html

Chittick was also an alum of Phillips Academy, where he roomed across the hall from–and feuded with–Humphrey Bogart, who was a classmate. He was Phillips Academy’s oldest living alumnus, recently celebrating his 90th reunion there this year. He was also the oldest living Beta Theta Pi member and oldest living patent lawyer.

After leaving MIT, Chittick was offered a job by Thomas Edison, but ultimately turned it down to take a job with a manufacturing company that produced golf clubs.

“I had to tell Mr. Edison ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ I went to work for a company that manufactured golf clubs. I guess I was more interested in golf than I was in a laboratory,” Chittick told the News Office in 2001.

I thought this walking shopping cart kinetic sculpture was worth passing along. Sorry I don’t have more time to write what I liked about it, but really the video speaks for itself.

my friend erik pointed out to me that David Rees is still writing Get Your War On, and they’re still really good. This reminded me that Rees was kind enough to send me the demo disc for his former band The Skeleton Killers, and i thought i’d share it with you all as i am enjoying relistening to it.

also equinox!

i love this page: photoshop disasters.  it’s a wonderful painful joy.