Apollo 11 Source Code

Jul 11, ’16 8:44 PM

Add this to the list of things I don’t understand but I like. Code junkies / NASA nerds just released all of the Apollo 11 mission’s computer code online for people to look at and comment on and use however they like.

In 2003 it first appeared online as a series of image scans on some MIT server someplace. First of all I know how hardcore it is to stand over a scanner and scan in a book. But look at this sucker. That’s a lot of pages to scan in.

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And Get this!

All those pages were transcribed by hand.

The AGC code has been available to the public for quite a while–it was first uploaded by tech researcher Ron Burkey in 2003, after he’d transcribed it from scanned images of the original hardcopies MIT had put online. That is, he manually typed out each line, one by one.

So now that it’s online what’s happening with it?

Not too much I guess. There’s not much use for it without the cool hardware that it was built for. There is an interesting simulation of it. But it’s interesting in the sense of “hey someone made that” rather than “I wish it was available for my phone.”

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How to Be Polite

Jul 7, ’16 10:57 PM

It may be a surprise for some, but I’ve gotten in trouble for being polite before. So when I read this article on politeness I thought there might be a cautionary tale in there somewhere. But, nope. Just a nice article on the benefits of social kindness. Polite

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This Little Bunny Stayed Home

Jul 7, ’16 10:03 PM

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I passed on a chance to play the Lost Wheels of Time show in Poland this weekend. The idea of 13 hours on a bus to make a 45 minute performance seemed a little tedious. It was a good chance to meet folks but in the end it just didn’t seem right. So this bunny stayed in Ljubljana.

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American Wizard Schools

Jul 7, ’16 10:23 AM

This morning I’m reading a new short story by JK Rowling about the American wizarding school: Ilvermorny! It’s pretty fun as far as it goes. Did you know the American school was founded by the Irish? But there are some problems.

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Native American wizards didn’t have wands before the school started?

Two more magical boys from the Wampanoag tribe had been joined by a mother and two daughters from the Narragansett, all interested in learning the techniques of wandwork in exchange for sharing their own magical learning.

Phooey.

Also the school is in Massachusetts which I suppose is OK, but come on, a wild west wizard school would be better.

Think about it:

  • Santa Fe
  • Pueblo wizards build a school into a cliff face
  • Wands are bird wings, turtle rattles
  • Spanish wizards are beautiful but gold hungry
  • Cowboy wizards want to leave it all behind, sing beautiful songs and move cows
  • Rattlesnake Parseltongue
  • Ghost Riders in the Sky

Maybe I should get into writing fan fiction. I think I’m on to something here.

 

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The Lost Wheels of Time

Jul 3, ’16 1:06 PM

Funny isn’t it how things work out?

Just a few days ago I was in a kind of panic that strikes the artistically self-employed. Nothing is coming, I’m broke, there’s no way forward. But within hours of voicing these sensible thoughts I got a call.

The background

My friend Justin was filling in for a street show in the Ljubljana street theater festival. They had lost an actor and were panicked looking for an emergency replacement for five shows. They got his number through the grapevine, he rehearsed for a few days, and boom! he was in the show. Unfortunately during the first performance he cracked his toe mighty hard on a set piece and after he got home he noticed it was swollen and purple.

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I took him to the hospital. (That’s where I found out about the animation Pat & Mat.) And we waited for hours for him to be seen, x-rayed and reported back to. It wasn’t broken, that was the good news. But the nurse told him to stay off it. The show he was hired for is violently active so he was faced with a problem, limp through and risk worse injury or take a pass on the rest of the performances.

The next morning I got a phone call from the street show saying they were an actor down and would I possibly have the time to learn the show and perform. Justin was out and he gave them my number.

I showed up Thursday at noon and paced through the show as best I could. Piece by piece under the summer sun it started to come together. By 9:30 there were about 200 people waiting, the music came on and I jumped out on stage.

So, how was it?

You know in some movies how people are in a boxcar racing down the tracks, they throw their bag and then leap from the moving car, pumping their legs as fast as possible in the air then they hit the ground and try to keep enough speed to avoid falling flat on their face? It went a little like that.

During the show I had a few moments of fear that I was about to fall headlong into a clock, and I did kick over the wind machine. But I survived, and I tell ya, my weekend is a lot more exciting than I had planned for.

Rabit_Bojan Okorn

We’ll play it once more, today at 7.30 in Nova Gorica, Slovenia. Then Adam and Spiros will pack their van and travel to Poland where I suppose they will be on the look-out for another rabbit. Another energetic and game actor to don the latex rabbit mask and leap from the train.

These photos were taken by Bojan Okorn and were published on the Ana Desetnica Flickr account.

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