My procrastination produced this list, so yours doesn't have to:
Happy invoicing!
- A Boy's Own Broadmoor - "Not far from London is a high-security psychiatric hospital that has held some of Britain's most violent criminals. The novelist Patrick McGrath grew up there—and loved it..." A remarkable memoir of a childhood spent in the infamous hospital, from the son of the long-serving medical superintendent Pat McGrath: "He hated the stigma attached to mental illness, and was furious whenever he heard Broadmoor described as a prison, or his patients as criminals, or himself as the warden of a fearsome jail inhabited by howling legions of homicidal maniacs".
- The CD, At 30, Is Feeling Its Age - "It's been three decades since the first CD went on sale in Japan. The shiny discs came to dominate music industry sales, but their popularity has faded in the digital age they helped unleash. The CD is just the latest musical format to rise and fall in roughly the same 30-year cycle." NPR's Joel Rose looks back at the history of the CD, and the sound reproduction technologies that preceded, and have supplanted, it.
- Sky-high gas prices in California reveal energy infrastructure ripe for sudden collapse - "If you're in California, you're paying sky-high prices for gasoline this week. At some stations, prices are over $5 a gallon. But you might not be aware of why you're paying this price. The answer may be more than a little disturbing: California's energy infrastructure is so fragile that a power outage at a single gasoline refinery caused state-wide prices to skyrocket." That's about 68p/litre, and they act like the sky is falling
On the other hand, the stuff about how fragile LA's water supply is is quite disturbing. And the photos of the California Aqueduct are cool.
- The Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz - "The Polish resistance had been hearing horrific first- or second-hand accounts about the conditions inside Auschwitz... It is into this environment that Witold Pilecki, a 39-year old veteran of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921 who fought against the initial Nazi invasion and a member of the Polish resistance, volunteered himself in 1940. Pilecki's mission was to allow himself to be arrested and, once inside Auschwitz, to collect intelligence for the Polish resistance in the country and the government-in-exile in London, and to organize a resistance from inside the camp." Astonishing. Of course, having survived three years of Auschwitz before escaping, and then played a crucial role in the Warsaw Uprising, he was later murdered by the Soviets.
- The long tail of Lego - "With few exceptions, [Lego] doesn’t make twentieth-century weapons... Today, [Will Chapman's] company, BrickArms, goes where the Danish toy giant fears to tread: hardcore weaponry, from Lego-scale AK-47s to frag grenades that look like they came straight out of Halo 3. The parts are more complex than the average Lego component, but they’re manufactured to an equal quality and sold online to thousands of Lego fans, both kids and adults, who want to create cooler scenes than the standard kits allow." Epic Plan B: there's a whole cottage industry around making and selling the specialist Lego components that Lego themselves don't bother with
All we need now is cheap 3D printers...
- The Making Of: Q*bert - "Similar to Pac-Man in gameplay, Q*bert bounced around a pyramid trying to clear the screen while staying away from his cartoon-like enemies – Wrong-Way, Ugg, Coily, Slick, Sam and the Whammy Balls. But unlike Pac-Man, when Q*bert got caught, he did something that all players do. He cursed." Edge Online talks to Warren Davis about his classic arcade game.
- Victorian Railway Stations that Tried to Span the Thames - "Blackfriars railway station has recently become the first station to span right across the River Thames, with entrances on both sides of the river – but it wasn’t the first time that someone tried to put a railway bridge across the Thames. There were a number of attempts, two notable ones which are quite interesting, and had they been completed, the railway history of the centre of London would have been very different." Interesting look at some unfulfilled railway plans, by Ian Mansfield, who's been here previously with info about the bomb that took out a disused Northern Line tunnel during the Blitz.
- Stack Computers: the new wave - "Published in 1989, this was the first book to explore the new breed of stack computers led by the introduction of the Novix NC4016 chip. The author commences with an overview of how stacks are used in computing, and a taxonomy of hardware stack support which includes a survey of approximately 70 stack machines past and present. Detailed descriptions, including block diagrams and instruction set summaries, are given for seven new stack processors from Harris Semiconductor, Novix, Johns Hopkins University/APL, MISC, WISC Technologies, and Wright State University. Major topics covered also include architectural analysis of stack machines, software issues, application areas, and potential for future development." As a Forth programmer I loved the Novix NC4016 processor's design. Sadly, stack machines have yet to become commonplace, although I haven't given up hope
- No, you’re not entitled to your opinion - "The problem with “I’m entitled to my opinion” is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for “I can say or think whatever I like” – and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful. And this attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse." Philosopher Patrick Stokes on General.
- Sleeve designed by Peter Saville - Portfolio of Peter Saville's record sleeve designs from 1978 to the present day.
Happy invoicing!
Comment