The Topic of Great Randomness

[Lazy Leopard]

At Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes there's the UK's National Museum of Computing. Bletchley Park was the place at which a great deal of code-cracking work was done during WWII, and that it's now a museum campus owes a great deal to the work of a few individuals, one of whom, Tony Sale, died today. The project for which he'll be best remembered is, likely, the re-building of Colossus, and he was actively demonstrating the re-built machine last year when I visited the museum. It's a fascinating legacy. If you're even slightly geeky, and ever in the UK anywhere near Milton Keynes, make sure to pay Bletchley Park a visit. It's one of the birthplaces of the computer age.

[Lazy Leopard]

...and in the "Random Old News Hits The Headlines" department, I must confess to being slightly surprised that the story about the recent supernova in M101, which I first heard about a fortnight ago, has somehow, suddenly, founds itself splashed across various major news organisations' headlines in the last day or two. The trouble with stories like this getting excess media attention is that the media over-blows the drama, and folks who go looking into the night sky come away thinking, dissapointedly, "Was that it?". Sure, it's relatively near, and relatively bright (given it's 21 million light years away) but most folks are going to be hard pushed to identify it correctly. It's a good news story for astro-geeks (like me) but not really for major headlines...

...but hey, there was a fine APOD showing it a couple of weeks back!

[LifeSong]

Jane Goodall. LIVE. -flail-

Today automatically counts as the best day of my entire life up until this point and will probably continue to be so for a very long time, because I just got to see Jane Goodall speak . . . LIVE . . . and . . . and . . . TALK to her . . . and . . . get my book signed . . . and . . .

This was at the WCN Expo in San Francisco, where my mom volunteered for the day and so managed to get a free ticket to the room where she wouldn't be speaking live, but there would be a simulcast. The main auditorium where she was speaking was sold out, but there was a line of people hoping to get in if other people canceled. Since I'm very slightly crazy, I got in line about two and a half hours early and camped by the door with a snack and a couple of YW books, therefore managing to get a ticket into the main auditorium where she'd be speaking ^_^

And then got my book (The Ten Trusts) signed by her . . . and probably acted like a total idiot, because I don't know how to act around the person who's been my role model ever since I can remember. I did go around with a stupid grin on my face for quite a while afterwards. Actually, I still am . . . grinning stupidly, that is.

Now I'm going to go flail some more . . .

[Stellazira]

Haha! I did something similar when I met a bunch of game developers from this company that I'm fond of. I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off because I didn't know if I could get a copy of my game signed before they started the podcast and I didn't have the time. It was all sorts of embarrassing for me. >.< :P

[dorotheia]

tipping forward. Hips hurt, but when I got there and stood straight for awhile, that eased. Then I focused on waving and so on; it was very fun and I didn't have to talk at all. Yay!

It occurred to me that this must be what wearing a mochteroof is like: slowly manipulating the hands and feet; wondering how you look to the outside; moving inside, and involuntarily moving everything else at the same time. It's very natural, but at the same time, difficult because the "body" dimensions are so different. Which then led to the question: how do mochteroofs for smaller

[Lazy Leopard]

It's not been a good couple of weeks for computer wizards. First we heard of Steve Jobs death (and there was plenty said in the media) and then we heard of the death of Dennis Ritchie. A fair few folks might well say "Who?" when they hear that second name, but he probably had a much greater effect on the foundations of computing than Steve Jobs and Bill Gates put together. He was one of the quiet wizards who built the basic tools with which modern computer systems were built; Unix and C are the two most often associated with him, but, for sure, there's code he wrote working away in the systems you're using to read this. Thanks, Dennis...

[dorotheia]

For Curiosity's Sake, in Curiosity's Name...

What in the world is a spider? (Spy-der? Spiiiiider? Spy + d + er)

If you go on the main forums page, scroll to the very bottom and you'll see it. At the moment RIGHT NOW 11:00 pm October 23, 2011, there are 9 "presences" on the boards. 1 member (me), 5 guests, a Yahoo! Slurp spider and two Google spiders.

What. Is! That?!!

They change their orders every so often, too, depending on their location, I think. It's freaking me out. They don't bite, do they? (Yeah, okay, I'm jesting. But really now

[Lazy Leopard]

What in the world is a spider? (Spy-der? Spiiiiider? Spy + d + er)

They're systems that go around the web looking at content and following links in order to build up the kinds of indexes that the likes of Google and Yahoo use when you hit the search button.

[Stellazira]

What are you talking about? They are the eight-legged crawlies that people put up when they decorate for Halloween. /jokes

[Lazy Leopard]

Heh! Theyre a bit creepy either way. Either they're creeping and crawling around in cobwebs and corners waiting to pounce on the unwary, or they're creeping and crawling through webspace and catching all sorts of weird stuff...

[Stellazira]

I had to help my Dad clean up the garage earlier this year so we could refinish the kitchen table. We hadn't done any cleaning like that ever and we moved in about eleven years ago. That was a lot of spider carcasses, and even though I know they were just empty exoskeletons they really creeped me out.

There were live spiders too of three different species, so that was fun. Not.

[Lazy Leopard]

There's another gap in my world alongside the gap left by Peter Murray's death four and a bit years ago.

A good friend of mine died last week. His car was involved in a three-vehicle collision, and he died at the scene. Like me (in fact, probably much more so) he was an SF fan, and read a lot. You'll find his name among the list of contributors to The Big Meow, and he'd also read most (possibly even all) of DDs published SF. He was a techie; one of those wizards who looked after the sound and light at conventions, particularly at filk cons, and made sure the audience could hear the performers. I worked many cons with him. He was also a musician (though he'd quite likely qualify that by adding "sorta" as an after-thought), and I'll miss him at least in part because he sang bass/baritone beside me in a small a'capella choir that performs at the UK filk convention each year. Back in '07 that choir was Guest of Honour at the Canadian filk convention FilKONtario. At that convention my friend was inducted into the Filk Hall o Fame. The penultimate paragraph of his citation there reads:

Were he gone, the hole would be very large.

There's a gap in my world; shortish, roundish, greyish, and wearing black. A friendly, interesting, talented wizard, and a most excellent friend, who won't be there at the next rehearsal, or the next convention, or behind the sound desk, or on the air...

Rest in peace, Christoper "Keris" Croughton.

[mysss]

pen from SYWTBAW

So...I haven't been on the forums in (I think) literally years, but I just discovered the silver ink Fisher space pens and totally geeked out. And of course I had to share my excitement with someone! Now I want one since the idea of a pen that might be able to write in the Book of Night With Moon is...well, you understand. So I guess now I'm curious if anyone else has one?

[96bookworms]

Space Pen

I've got one! I got a space pen for my birthday...was it 2 years ago? I think so...I'd mentioned it to my parents a lot, since I love these books so much! I also used it on my science test the other day, and I'm pretty sure I did well on it...it's a fact: you do better on a test if you use a space pen Unfortunately, my pen seems to be slightly broken, though... the spring inside must be pushing on it, since the bottom part of the pen seems to be splitting off from the other, rather often. Oh, well. It still works!

[Stellazira]

I got a space pen for Christmas quite a few years ago. I still have it. I call it Fred. XD