Via Pasa Bon! we are presented with an educational toy in the form of a mechanical computer invented and marketed in 1965 by John “Jack” Thomas Godfrey called the Digi-Comp II that used marbles rolling down an incline through customisable, programmable interventions, like a pinball game (Flipperkast) or pachinko to teach coding. These basic calculations were accomplished—less kinetically—on the predecessor game with gears and latch circuits as a demonstration of binary logic. Much more to explore at the link up top including a giant model and a Lego version of the visual calculator.
Monday 11 January 2021
Sunday 3 January 2021
it is pitch black—you are likely to be eaten by a grue
Via Waxy, we learn that in homage to the first text-based version of the pioneering computer game Oregon Trail (see also) that began circulating—peer-to-peer—in the winter of 1971, Aaron A. Reed of Substack will be looking back at the past five decades of gaming and its evolution with an in depth retrospective year week for the coming year. Watch that space for new instalments. You have died of dysentery.
Monday 28 December 2020
like the back of your hand
We always enjoy a cartographical challenge round but of course don’t always excel with a random destination or especially remote outliers that do not really test one’s general or specialised geographic knowledge.
And so we appreciated this novel quiz from Maps Mania that lets you choose familiar environs and prove how well you know your neighbourhoods. There are no thoroughfare, street or road names (see also) until you check your guesses, and it’s not too forgiving if you are more than a kilometre off, taking me several tries to get my orientation correct. Cities and towns world-wide are available for exploration.Thursday 24 December 2020
nittel nacht
Observed in some Jewish communities dating back as far as the late seventeen-hundreds with scholastic reinforcement in the following century, the Yiddish term (ื ืืื ื ืַืื) for Christmas Eve likely comes from natalis but may also refer to the hanged one, nitleh, an epithet for Jesus during the Middle Ages. In medieval Europe, non-observers were often forbidden from being seen in public—with Yuletide often signalling the beginning of attacks on Jewish neighbours by Christians—so this was a good excuse to staying in and specifically not studying the Torah and abstaining from enjoyment so as not to give any glory to the day, though for some, reading the Sefer Toledot Yeshu (an alternate hagiography that portrays Jesus as a womanising charlatan though possibly accounts themselves are exaggerated as another excuse to label people as blasphemers—that is, megadef) as an acceptable activity to engage in. Chess and card games became a tradition, in lieu of other pastimes, and children were apprehensive about being snatched away on this night by demon Jesus.
Monday 21 December 2020
acrostic
Tuesday 15 December 2020
8x8
don’t wait for me beneath the mistletoe: the Allusionettes compose a festive carol for 2020
ashika: chubby seal pillowsextravehicular activity: a brilliant infographic of every spacewalk undertaken—from Voskhod 2 onward
your branches green delight us: a stunning abstract Christmas tree in Tokyo crafted from a thousand corded mizuhiki balls
solargraph: a forgotten pinhole camera took the longest exposure photograph on record
oinฤ: archiving images of a ubiquitous red ball with white polka dots in Romania’s recent past
disbarred: US attorney general to step down before Christmas
boughs of holly: a round-up of seasonal plants beyond the tree and trimmings
Tuesday 8 December 2020
m.a.s.k.
I can vaguely recall this line of action figures from Kenner circa 1985 that tried to carve out a niche between Transformers and G.I. Joe with the special task force Mobile Armoured Strike Kommand under the leadership of Matt Trakker. These characters donned masks to give them super powers and transform their regular vehicles into combat one. I had one toy character with a neon green motorcycle that converted into an attack helicopter. Brad “Chopper” Turner’s mask apparently projected holograms and the power was called “hocus pocus.” I think I mostly remember it because I was playing outside with it and lost it rather quickly—that and the fact that the men were tiny and ill-proportioned for working with other action figures. The M.A.S.K. team was assembled to contain and conquer their nemesis, an international criminal organisation called V.E.N.O.M.—Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem.
Monday 7 December 2020
8x8
ัะฐัะฐ́ัะพะฒ-2:some urban spelunking leads to a Soviet computer graveyard (previously) with some early machines thought lost to the ages
indented writing: this case of an invisible will recalls some more recent forensic intervention to retrieve the words of a blind novelist
parallel dimensions: one-hundred twenty-five artists render different computer-generated environments on one basic template of a character walking towards a mountain
starfleet bold extended: the typography created for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (see previously, premiering on this day in 1979)
♚: the real-life Queen’s Gambit in Georgian chess champion Nona Gaprindashvili
the panoply of digital phrenology: the coming subprime attention crisis and the bursting of the ad-serving bubble
petroglyphs: more on the amazing expanse of pre-Columbian art discovered in the Amazon
ฮบฮฟฯ ฮผฯฯฮผฮญฮฝฮฟ ฮผฮต ฮบฮฟฯ ฮผฯฮนฮฌ: exploring an abandoned factory in Patisia Greece
Sunday 29 November 2020
ping-pong
Originally created by programmer Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assignment from Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell (also the businessman responsible for Chuck E. Cheese restaurants—establishing a venue and a franchise for arcade games), Pong—the table tennis themed video game, was released on this day in 1972, having been prototyped at a local bar in Sunnyvale, California since August of that year.
Patrons visited Andy Capp’s tavern just to play the game, at a quarter per play with each unit projected to generate forty dollars a day, quadruple the revenue of other coin operated entertainments like jukeboxes and pinball machines. Among the first commercially successful ventures in the field, Pong was instrumental in establishing the industry of gaming and drove emulation and competition.Thursday 26 November 2020
6x6
surrogate: Trump issues pardon to former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pled guilty twice to making false statements to the FBI involving his Russian connections
thermochromic: windows go from transparent to tinted while generating electricity
l’atlas: an intriguing new approach to mapping France’s natural glory—via Things Magazine♚: reimagining the Queen’s Gambit as a MS DOS PC game
fry guys: one intrepid connoisseur revives a long lost recipe
stonks: only pausing to take credit for and praise the teetering high of the Dow Jones, Trump presents a very abbreviated brief
Friday 20 November 2020
8x8
vangelis: with ambient sounds and moments of dialogue interspersed, the soundtrack from Blade Runner is extended into a feature-length soundscape
metaphorical portraits: deep and heartfelt images of table-scraps and toss-aways
sessile by nature: a nice crafted series of time-lapse movies illustrate how houseplants move throughout the day—via Things Magzine
adobe add-on: after the announcement that support for Flash Player will be discontinued, crippling huge swaths of the early web, the Internet Archive comes to the rescue again with a forever home to hundreds of filesupton sinclair was an optimist: chicken processing plant executives place wagers on how many workers would get sick with COVID-19
waiting in the wings: clear and present implications of delaying the trans—Dcccf Rex zzz. @#z@smaan anaNN—see also
you deserve a break today: a detailed look at a bespoke Nintendo DS game created as a training tool for a fast food franchise—see also
patch cord productions: the musical stylings of Moog maestro Mort Garson
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฑ, ๐, ๐ถ, ๐️, ๐พ, ๐ท, Blade Runner, networking and blogging
Monday 2 November 2020
270
Via friend of the blog Nag on the Lake, though not a commercial success and never brought to market due to competing similar board games, the rules of play for Landslide—though written prior to the passage of the Amendment XXIII to the US constitution of 1961 that extended the franchise residents of Washington, DC—are nonetheless a good primer for understanding America’s electoral college (see previously) and perhaps revealing that the system’s time has expired and overstayed its usefulness. Supporters of maintaining the status quo argue that it is fundamental to the ideal of federalism and promotes stability and moderate political partisanship by reserving the states’ role in the presidential election, whereas detractors call for reform and describe the departure from the standard of “one person, one vote”—like malapportionment and gerrymandering—to be antithetical to the American experiment and compels candidates to concentrate attention and resources on a few swing states.
Thursday 29 October 2020
6x6
mother lode: the Hubble Space Telescope spies a metal ore asteroid worth an estimated ten-thousand times the global economy of 2019 (previously)—via Slashdot
8800 blue lick road: one of the best accidental, immersive gaming experiences of the year is this virtual real estate tour
franchisement: we enjoyed this pairing of articles about the “I Voted!” stickers—first with an overview of their contested origins as a badge of participation once democracy moved towards the secret ballot and the civics exercise that has artists reimagine them
lorembarnak: a Quรฉbรฉcois curse (see previously) generator—via Things Magazine
seaweeding: Victorian-era hobby lends insight on our changed oceans
one parsec: a breath-taking visualisation of ten million stars at the centre of the Milky Way
Thursday 15 October 2020
6x6
mega project: unrealised plans from the 1930s to divert the Thames and reclaim land in central London—via Things Magazine
messiner effect: researchers achieve room-temperature super conductivity with a novel metallic hydrogen alloy—via Kottkecrying wolf: a misinformation training exercise (see also) in Nova Scotia goes awry—via Super Punch
sea of seven colours: a tour of a pristine island reserve off the coast of Colombia
minuet: ะะพัะพะฑะตะนะฝะธะบะธ was not Tetris’ only theme tune
karlลฏv most: deconstructing and rebuilding a fourteenth century bridge in Prague to span the Vltava
Saturday 10 October 2020
coin-op
Wednesday 7 October 2020
mavis beacon
Thursday 1 October 2020
8x8
cheese tetrahedrons and synergetic stew: a celebrity cookbook presented to author and futurist Buckminster Fuller (previously) reissued for the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth
lรผften: tried and true ventilation and fresh air may be the most effective way to stave off more infections
heart of sharkness: winning images and honourable mentions from a drone photography contestfรถrรคldrapenning: a South Korean man living in Sweden documents his daily routine
adobe flash: an appreciation of the platform that shaped the internet and the implications of suspending support for the multimedia plug-in and player—via Kottke
disaster constitutionalism: EU taking the UK to court, despite only breaking international law in a “specific and limited way”
can our government be competent: celebrating Jimmy Carter’s ninety-sixth birthday (previously) in campaign buttons
eat fresh: with tax implications for the franchise, Irish high court rules that one fast food chain’s bread cannot be called bread or a dietary staple due to its high sugar content—via Boing Boing
Wednesday 26 August 2020
happy home designer
Via Boing Boing, we discover delightfully that IKEA’s latest catalogue has been faithfully reproduced in part in the Animal Crossing (previously) game, platform, plane of existence. It would have been a monumental undertaking to recreate every page but the furniture and rooms selected are pretty impressive, especially considering the limited set of objects and artefacts there are in play. Before you get sticker shock, the items are priced in Taiwanese dollars. The title refers to a 2015 spin-off game that focused on architecture and interior decorating. See more highlights from Kotaku at the link above.
Sunday 26 July 2020
7x7
you gotta eat them plums: an arcade version of William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just to Say” (see previously)—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links
op art: more on the Hungarian-French artist Victor Vasarely (see previously, born Gyลzล Vรกsรกrhelyi, *1906 – †1997) whose work informed the movement
earth for scale: ESA solar probe finds new “campfire” phenomena on the Sun
manhatta: a 1921 short considered America’s first avant-garde experiment set to the verse of Walt Whitman
slob serif: awful typefaces (not this one) for awful protests—via Memo of the Air
primary pigments: more colour stories (see also) from Public Domain Review
hasta la pasta: the history behind linguini, fusilli and every variety in between
Thursday 23 July 2020
9x9
rewritten by machine on new technology: record industry going after a neural network called Weird A.I. Yankovic that generates parody songs in the style of its namesake—via Slashdot
my beautiful laundrette: elderly couple dress up and model the apparel left in their laundromat—via Nag on the Lake
an atmosphere for simple communication and dating: once Russia cinema reopens, the Ministry of Culture is banning drama and dreary movies until at least the spring of 2021
it’s portraits all the way down: an Inception of self-portraiture—see previously
search history: a New York Times styles reporter documents and annotates everything term she researched online for a week—via Kottke
be the first to like this post: pigeons look for other career options
the tetris effect: a film about the game’s origins is in production but it won’t be another Battleship—via Miss Cellania’s Links
karen alert: they keep getting worse
good guy: Billie Eilish’s song Bad Guy performed in major key—see also—via Kottke