Shame I didn't get these up earlier - would have been interesting to see them mutated by that weird filter of admin's 
Happy invoicing!
- Building Photoshop - BasalGangster details the steps necessary to build and run Photoshop 1.0 from the source code recently released through the Computer History Museum: "Writers need to study the writing of others, and usually they do. Computer programmers? not so much. There is a lot written about programming, and most programmers read that stuff, but there are very few opportunities to actually read an acknowledged Great Work of programming from the past. So now that we have the sources to Photoshop, an indisputable software masterpiece. How can we make use of it?... To understand their stories, computer programs must be read in the order of their execution, not the order of the text in the files. For Photoshop, as for MacPaint, that means the code has to be compiled and running when we read it. We need to see it in its natural order, and while it is executing, so we can compare what it says to what it does. Only then can we learn its story."
- A King With No Country - "He ruled Rwanda for just nine months before fleeing a revolt and has spent the last half century in exile, powerless to stop the violence that ripped through his country. Now 76 and living on public assistance in Virginia, Kigeli V Ndahindurwa longs to return to the throne—but only if his people want him back." Fascinating profile of the deposed monarch and his nation.
- That Internet War Apocalypse Is a Lie - If you heard last week's news about the cyber attack that was threatening to bring down the entire Internet, and wondered why you hadn't noticed it, here's why: it isn't. Sam Biddle offers a thorough rebuttal: "Why are the only people willing to make any claims about the validity or scope of the attack directly involved: Spamhaus reps, the group's leader, and most dubiously, CloudFlare, the anti-DDoS firm Spamhaus enlisted to ward off the attack. And it's that last party that's responsible for the sky-falling internet weather report, the party that stands to profit directly from you being worried that the internet as we know it is under siege."
- Seeker - "I have heard of too many cases of people having icing, or engine failures, in instrument weather and just having no decent way to survive the resulting situation. Too many cases of people getting batted in the face by birds and not being able see well enough to fly the plane. Too many cases of having engine failures or fuel exhaustion or ice in the engine air inlets and just not being able to set up a proper glide down to the airport. And I realized I could CODE my way through those situations." Austin Meyer of Laminar Research is the creator of X-Plane, the flight sim so accurate that it can be FAA certified for pilot training. He's spent a year creating a new tool: an iPad app called Xavion that can, among other things, guide a pilot down on to the safest runway to aim for, even in zero visibility, with complete instrument failure and no engine.
- The Nazis’ 10 Control-Freak Rules for Jazz Performers: A Strange List from World War II - "....by World War II, jazz was intrinsically woven into the fabric of American majority culture, albeit often in versions scrubbed of blues undertones. This was not, of course, the case in Nazi occupied Europe, where jazz was suppressed; like most forms of modern art, it bore the stigma of impurity, innovation, passion… all qualities totalitarians frown on."
- Stanley Kubrick, The Shining, & New York City: The Filming Locations of Eyes Wide Shut - New York movie location scout Scout explores anomalies in some of Kubrick's sets: "Kubrick was famous for his meticulous attention to detail and realism, and Ager argues that he must have been told about these spatial impossibilities – which means he approved them for a reason. Were these subtle incongruities intentionally placed by Kubrick to mess with us on a deeper psychological level?"
- Charles A. A. Dellschau Dreams of Flying: The Amazing Story of an Airship Club That Might Never Have Existed - "They called themselves the Sonora Aero Club and, over time, they counted some 60 members, possibly many more. Their ranks included great characters, such as Peter Mennis, inventor of the Club's secret "Lifting Fluid," later described as "a rough Man, whit as kind a heart as to be found in verry few living beengs," despite being "adicted to strong drink" and "Flat brocke." The Aero Club's rules: Roughly once a quarter, each member had to stand before the gathered group and "thoroughly exercise their jaws" in telling how he would build an airship... Or perhaps they didn't. Perhaps Gustav Freyer never stood up among his comrades and proposed this ridiculous design. Perhaps there was no Gustav Freyer, no Friday nights at the saloon talking about flight, no clink of the glasses to celebrate a new-fangled airship design. Perhaps the Sonora Aero Club never existed at all." Very weird story involving strange books rescued from a fire.
- The Story of My App - Artist Christoph Niemann on his attempts to create an iOS app, with great illustrations: "As an artist you have to try new things... You can sketch and plan all you want. But, to discover new territory, you have to get your hands dirty and benefit from the flaws and accidents."
- ‘It’s all fake’: Vancouver exhibit’s ‘whale bone porn’ is not 19th-century scrimshaw, former museum director says - "When the Vancouver Maritime Museum opened its holdings of erotic carved whale teeth to public eyes this month, it not only assailed the sensibilities of its more prudish visitors, but exposed a collection that a former museum director had prayed would never again see the light of day. Not because they are naughty — but because they are fake." As to why somebody carved porn into whale ivory, that remains a mystery.
- 25 Microscopic Images of Snow Crystals - As it's still winter, despite being Easter: "At the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) in Maryland, you will find the US Department of Agriculture’s Low Temperature Scanning Electron Microscope (LT-SEM). One of the LT-SEM’s uses is for the study of snow crystals. Hydrologists study photographs of the grain sizes, shapes and associations in relation to passive microwave remote sensing in an effort to determine the water content of the winter snow pack. This information is critical to the determination of the nation’s water supply as well as protection from flooding." The images are taken from the research centre's own site where you can find more info about them.
Happy invoicing!
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