Remembering the Space Age

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Datazoid

I very much regret having been born 20 years too late to truly appreciate the space program(s), and their effect on society. I grew up in the era where Star Wars was so much cooler than our actual astronauts. I grew up in the era where the space program was waning into ubiquity, no longer a frontier to be challenged as much as a scientific chore to be begrudgingly satisfied.

In the ’80s, we did develop the Space Shuttle, the first re-usable spacecraft. But we’d already been there, just not in such a nice plane. Obviously, now we were able to come back in the same plane, not a glorified bucket with a parachute on, but still. It was nothing new.

Regardless, I love the space age, the space race, the moon missions, all that jazz. I love that people have dedicated their lives to it, in many cases quite literally.

I’ve been doing a bit of research recently, and I’ve discovered that the world (and another one, we’ll get there in a moment) is full of little (and not so little) memorials to people who’ve died while pursuing mankind’s greatest adventure. I’ve compiled a little list. Please bear in mind that this is not a “top ten”, and these aren’t ranked. Because they’re freakin’ memorials. That’s just rude. Having said that, though, the last one is really cool.

The Space Mirror

The Astronaut Memorial, at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is a gigantic polished granite block bearing the names of 24 astronauts who have died. The astronauts names are arranged in a logical scattering, and are cut entirely through the block, so light can shine in from behind and illuminate them.

The Space Mirror. Image from Wikipedia.

Originally, the entire thing was on a giant rotating mechanism with a tracker to keep it facing the right direction for the sun to make the names glow, but the mechanism failed in 1997, and a decision was made not to repair it, as the phenomenal amount of money needed to repair it was deemed better used for education. Which I heartily agree with.

Laika

Laika was the first dog in space. In 1957, she became the first living creature to orbit the earth. No provision was made in her crude spacecraft, Sputnik II, for her to return safely to Earth — rather, she was intended to be euthanised by poisoned food after completing a few successful orbits. During the launch sequence, a malfunction caused part of the heat control system to fail, which unfortunately lead to Laika only surviving a few hours into the first orbit.

Laika, fittingly, has two memorials. One with her fellow cosmonauts, at the Monument to Conqueror’s of Space, and one on her own, standing atop a rocketship near the Moscow Military Medicine Institute. You can see a picture here.

Speaking of memorials to Laika the space dog, if you’re into crying volumes of tears, here’s Rockleetist’s English-language cover of the Hatsune Miku song “Laika”. If you like dogs, it’s pretty torturous.

Monument to the Conquerors of Space

This 110m-tall stylised titanium spire lives in Moscow, behind the Memorial Museum of Astronautics. The thing is actually a curved obelisk, shaped like the exhaust plume of a rocket, with a rocketship sat atop. The whole thing is plated in titanium. At its base, a statue of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, one of the pioneers of astronautics.

Monument to the Conquerors of Space, photo by Alexey Vikhrov.

Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 34

The Apollo 1 launch platform (also used for Apollo 7) remains in living memory of the three astronauts who were lost in the Apollo 1 fire in 1967 — Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.

You probably remember the concrete structure from its appearance in the film Armageddon.

The Apollo 1 Launch Platform, image from Wikipedia.

The Fallen Astronaut

By far the coolest, and possibly most emotional memorial to lost astronauts is the three-inch-tall aluminium spacefarer left on the surface of the moon by Apollo 15 in 1971. Here’s the Wikipedia page about it.

The statue was created by a guy called Paul Van Hoeydonck, and it now resides in Hadley Rille on the lunar surface.

The Fallen Astronaut, courtesy of NASA and Wikipedia.

It’s Orb-vious

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Datazoid

Some “paranormal” phenomenon can’t be easily explained. Some can. I suddenly feel compelled to explain one.

Orbs.

The usual story behind orb encounters is that a would-be ghost hunter, or some other kind of believer in orbish things will traipse through a “haunted” location taking happy snaps with their point-and-click digital camera. Upon viewing their photographs, they will more often than not find several of the photos are festooned with round objects, usually with hard glowing edges and often with tiny details inside of them.

Orbs aplenty.

There are a bunch of potential paranormal explanations for the spots — ghosts, spirits, fairies. The description usually depends on the location, and what one expects to find there.

The reality is much more boring, though. The glowing items are just dust motes illuminated by the camera’s on-board flash, hovering somewhere outside of the camera’s focal plane. The hot-spots created in the photograph by out-of-focus illuminated debris are called circles of confusion.

Usually, these kinds of photos are only taken with cheaper point-and-click style digital cameras. The location of the on-board flash on these cameras is the cause behind the tendency for “orbs” to appear in the photos. The closer the flash sits to the lens of the camera, the more accurately the reflected light bounces back into the camera’s lens. Digital SLR cameras do not capture as many artefacts of this kind, because the on-board flash is positioned further away from the lens.

The focal plane is the vertical slice of the universe at the correct distance from the camera’s lens to be in focus given the camera’s shooting settings. For a camera with a wide aperture (f-stop), the focal plane will be narrower, a smaller aperture will produce a deeper focal plane. Adjusting the camera’s aperture controls two things: The depth of field (focal distance) and the amount of light that is allowed onto the camera’s sensor. A wider aperture means more light, but a shallower depth of field. Point-and-click cameras, when used at night, will usually automatically open the aperture as wide as possible and adjust all available settings to allow the best possible photographs at night, the implications of which are that the camera is then set up to perfectly capture orbs!

Dust motes, insects and rain will produce orbs in varying quantities. While “circle of confusion” is the term for an individual hotspot, the collective term for the effect is bokeh, a Japanese word describing the qualities of the out-of-focus parts of a photograph.

Quality bokeh in a photograph is desirable, and can be achieved by using prime lenses with stupidly low f-stops. The above photograph is bokeh produced by Christmas lights at f-1.8. The lights closer to the camera produce larger circles of confusion than lights further away.

Here are some fun links, from the pro-orb side of the fence, just for shits and giggles:

Some crazy talk about how orbs are ghosts — I’m particularly fond of the footnote on this one, which pretty much debunks all of the paragraphs above it with a bit of “oh, but they’re often just dust, too”.
Some more crazy talk — I’ve included this one because the sentence “No one has the true answer to this question yet” makes me want to slap people for lack of research.
orbs.net — this place has literally ones of photos of illuminated dust particles, all of which look eerily (if you’ll pardon the inappropriate adverb) similar to my examples above. Must be ghosts!
This article includes the advice to turn your flash off if you want to photograph orbs without the interference of dust particles. Desire to slap is still high, but at least it’s some progress!
Apparently some orbs are energy, and energy is spirit. I was under the impression that energy was energy. The law of conservation of energy insists that energy can’t be created or destroyed, only transformed. I guess it can be transformed into spirits, and therefore into orbs. Or not.

So. Orbs. Just dust. Next please.

Paddling about

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Datazoid

I’ve recently obtained an iPad, which leaves me with the quandary of exactly what the hell to use it for. This is illustrated in my first evening of having the new toy, wherein I spent a great deal of time sitting on the couch with it, using it to search the internet for “uses for an iPad”. There’s something so alarmingly meta in that, it hurts my head just thinking about it.

Once upon a plop

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Datazoid

Having learned that WordPress allows you to back-date posts, I’ve once again installed the great hulking behemoth of a front-end. As a result, you can now read up on a bunch of my old posts, dating back to 2002. Be warned, most of the early ones are filled with incredibly angsty rantings. I was an angry young man.

I’ll be adding some new old items as I come across them.

I’m not going to promise this will be updated regularly (or, indeed, at all), but at least it’s organised and all in one place. Thanks for your time.

Comic back cover ads #4 and #5

Posted on September 7, 2008 by Datazoid

Spin Doctors. They’re a band from the ’80s. You’ve probably never heard of them. They had approximately one hit, in the form of “Two Princes”, which was essentially “Mmm-bop” by Hanson with less sucking and more synthpop. Bonus points for the use of the Bellbottom font, and the phrase “terminally funky”.

Def Leppard. Possibly the least enthusiastic band ever. Look at them. A funeral is going to break out any second, now.

Comic back cover ad #3

Posted on August 29, 2008 by Datazoid

It took some time for me to realise that this was not the image of a gigantic rectal passage. It then took some time for me to realise that despite that, I was still staring up someone’s arse.I never played Pitfall II. I don’t know what to say about it. The computer looks supremely chunky. It practically sports love handles. And the game looks very orange. That is all.

Comic back cover ad #2

Posted on August 21, 2008 by Datazoid

Are you man enough for Megaforce?

Chuck Norris is. Look at him. There he stands, wearing only a belt and a calculator, not a gonad in sight. Erupting from behind him, a motorcycle with dinnerplate wheels, a decepticon DeLorean blasting whipped cheese from its windshield, a squadron of dune buggies and the entire US Air Force from the Vietnam war. Save up your dollar, you too could be the proud owner of a Megaforce patch, membership card and bike decal. You can proudly display your lack of genitalia, resting assured no one will question your nudity or calculator-laden chest because you’re a card-carrying, patch-weilding member of Megaforce. If anyone questions you, just point at your glistening bike decal and laugh in their faces. Don’t have a bike? Stick it on your DeLorean.

Bill Bryson: What the hell?

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Datazoid

I’ve just finished reading Bill Bryson’s “Mother Tongue”, a reasonably amusing edutainment book exploring the history, complexity and potential future of the English language. All in all, it’s a suitably entertaining read, but I find it’s somewhat flawed by the small issue that factually, it’s probably wildly innacurate. I base this assumption on the various passages devoted to the Australian dialect of the English language, most of which are fundamentally, well, wrong.

While I’d like nothing less than to simply reproduce these passages verbatim for your own edification, I have a moral aversion to plagiarism, and shall instead address the various “examples” of Australian speech/grammar/spelling, and then we’ll discuss whether or not anyone ever actually uses them.

Another temptation I shall avoid is the urge to address Mr. Bryson’s quoting from “Lets Talk Strine”, a comedic parody of a book written in 1965 by this bloke, and not representing anything realistic whatsoever about the way anyone did, does, or likely ever will speak.

Anyhow, the actual examples that annoy me:

“Tucker”. This word means “food”. It’s commonly used as part of the term “bush tucker”, and by Australia’s version of rednecks. It’s very quickly disappearing from the language. (And good riddance, say I.)

“Slygrogging.” I have never ever heard this word spoken, nor have I read it prior to seeing it in this book. Apparently (and somewhat evidently, I admit), it defines the act of sneaking out to have a drink. Where I come from, we call that “sneaking out to have a drink”.

“Nong.” A nong is an idiot. No one has used this word since 1987.

“Don’t come the raw prawn with me.” Oh, god. How I both love and loathe this phrase. This alleged common element of Australian parlance, along with various others (”technicolour yawn” for vomit, as cited in this very book is another) survive thrivingly on tea towels and in useless Australian language phrase books. No one ever says them.

Furthermore, the next paragraph in the book proposes a few additional facts that are entirely debatable:

“In Australia, people eat cookies, not biscuits.” No, we don’t. We eat biscuits. Americans eat cookies. If you want to be thoroughly pedantic, we eat cookies when we buy them from Subway.

“They spell many words the American way – labor rather than labour, for instance.” To hell we do. If I’d have spelled the word “labor” in school, I’d have been sorely reprimanded for it, and rightly so. The Australian Labor Party is a vestige of some idiot’s idea of modernising the image of the political party (well, as modernised as it could get in 1912), and is the only time we spell the word without the “u”. As a rule, we follow British spelling conventions, not American conventions. No “-ize” endings, no “-or” endings. And no fucking nukular.

It’s inconsistencies like these that make me doubt the other “facts” presented in the book, particularly when I’m unable to verify them myself and am forced to take them at face value.

I also dislike the easy-to-digest approach when it’s used to present incorrect information, because, frankly, people are more likely to remember rubbish when it’s presented in an amusing format.

I’ve had my whinge. You can all go home now.

Time, Under Fire, apparently

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Datazoid

I have a weak spot for two-dollar DVDs. The more ambitious the plotline, and the more the cover looks like it’s been designed in Paint Shop Pro, the more likely I’ll buy it, and the more likely I’ll enjoy it for all the wrong reasons. To wit:

“Time Under Fire”

Starring: Jeff Fahey, Richard Tyson, and absolutely no one else of any significance.

The U.S.S. Alabama, or AMT/ERTL kit #2919-P.

Plot: A nuclear submarine cruising around the Bermuda Triangle is inexplicably drawn into a luminescent undersea vagina –

That can't be good, surely.

– that throws it into the future. In this bizarre alternate timeline, the captain of the submarine encounters himself as a militant rebel leader, and must fight his way through a thoroughly confusing series of events involving another, bigger, and spectacularly unexplained submarine, Richard Tyson with no neck performing the worst Jimmy Stewart impression since Jimmy Stewart, and Emperor Palpatine if he was from Alabama.

There's no possible way this character could have been inspired by Star Wars.

Worth watching for: Some of the worst split-screening actor duplication ever, and easily the most horrific sex scene since Titanic.

Just because you can split-screen, doesn't mean you should split-screen.

Also, random goo-oozing robots.

At least he can't bleed on the sofa.

Overall: It’s extremely shit, but that was to be expected. It appears to have been filmed on a budget of about sixty cents and a licorice strap, and the plot is so thoroughly confusing even the most basic elements of it fail to make any sense. The special effects are decent. However, it would have been an adequate movie if more time had been spent ironing out the spectacularly convoluted storyline, rather than spent trying to find a way to crow-bar in some exploding cloned robots with green paint on.

Also, if anyone can explain to me how the evil submarine can at one moment be randomly hovering in a vacuous black space inside a warehouse, and the next moment be submerged at the deepest depths of the ocean, you’ve won yourself a gold star.

Oh, of course, it's in the submarine warehouse.

Comic back cover ad #1

Posted on August 7, 2008 by Datazoid

So, there we were, walking to the railway station. In the rain. And kind of in a hurry. Almost at the corner, there’re two green environmentally friendly shopping bags, their contents covered in cling wrap with a small sign with my favourite word on it: “Free.” After spending a day in the city, we return to explore the freebies. Under the layer of moist cling wrap lay two foot-high piles of comic books, ranging from this year’s latest obscurities to some Teen Titans comics from the early ’80s. Also, some “mature aged readers” arthouse comics (read: badly inked porn) and the instruction manual for an iPod.

Atari Lynx. It consumes food, apparently. I remember the Lynx.I remember it being gigantic, yet, at the time, beautifully designed and executed. The screen, capable of displaying approximately four crudely coloured pixels (and capable of draining approximately six AA batteries in the time it takes to turn the power on) was amazingly crisp compared to the Sega Game Gear, and the ability to rotate the device to play games vertically was awesome. Even though there were virtually no games made that exploited this gymnastic skill.This advertisement was on the back of a comic from the early ’90s. The alarming brown stains on it are probably just water marks, but I chose not to delve further into their origins. Atari made a brave choice in comparing the Lynx to the Game Boy in the advertisement, considering the original Game Boy (as displayed) was little smaller than a housebrick. Here, the Lynx galumphs over the Nintendo handheld, threatening to crush it like so many a teenage knee. In the centre, Steve Irwin attempts to outrun the Game Boy by surfing headlong into a game of mastermind. I vaguely want a Lynx, now. I’d buy one on eBay, but the postage charge for something the size of an arcade table would be phenomenal. I miss the ’90s.