• Visitors can check out the Forum FAQ by clicking this link. You have to register before you can post: click the REGISTER link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. View our Forum Privacy Policy.
  • Want to receive the latest contracting news and advice straight to your inbox? Sign up to the ContractorUK newsletter here. Every sign up will also be entered into a draw to WIN £100 Amazon vouchers!

Monday Links from Windy Corner vol. CDXXXII

Collapse
X
  •  
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Monday Links from Windy Corner vol. CDXXXII

    One hundred years ago today, my Great Uncle James was killed in the German Spring Offensive near the French town of Festubert. So I’m posting this from a car on the A26 near St. Omer, on the way to visit his grave in the Guards Cemetery, Windy Corner, Cuinchy.
    • The Radical Freedom of Dungeons & Dragons - C.J. Ciaramella on the current resurgence of interest in the fantasy game: "The sinister-sounding allegations in Gygax's FBI dossier (obtained by Reason via a Freedom of Information Act request) hint at an explanation. It's not a surprise the game's creator was a self-declared libertarian or a proud pen pal of prison inmates. He was an individualist at heart who had always chafed against discipline. That perpetual inclination to seek out ever more possibilities—"why not?" rather than "why?"—is baked into D&D. The same thing that drew the ire of overheated evangelicals and parent groups is leading to the game's newfound popularity today."

    • The Bloody Family History of the Guillotine - "Though the people thirsted for public executions, the person responsible for taking a life was deemed spiritually polluted. The knowledge of this weighed heavily on Sanson, and he worked hard to cleanse the family name… As it turned out, the tide was in Sanson’s favor: the way executions and executioners were regarded within French society was in the middle of a seismic change." How a once-disdained occupation gained new respect in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

    • Interview with Mike Livesay - Dating from 2001, this interview with the programmer of several versions of Miner 2049er has a lot of insights into the games industry as it was in the 1980s: "I went ahead and reversed engineered the Coleco and put together my own dev kit, based on the Apple II CP/M system. I was able to rewire one of their game carts to use a zip socket so I could insert EPROMs in them. Thus I was able to develop games by coding them on the Apple II system, burning the code into an EPROM which could be run as a game cart on an actual retail system… there was no debugger, so if things didn't work, you debugged by saying ‘Gee, I wonder why it didn't work’. It was a little crude, but it worked well enough to develop a game."

    • An Inordinate Fondness for Wasps - Could parasitoid wasps have the greatest variety of species on the planet? ”They can spend much of their lives hidden inside the bodies of other insects. And since they specialize in body-snatching, they can be incredibly small… It seems that every species of insect is targeted by at least one species of parasitic wasp—if not several. There are even parasitic wasps that exclusively target other parasitic wasps—they’re called hyperparasites.”

    • Read the comic the CIA kept classified for over 50 years - "Follow “Donovan of Central Intelligence” as he dodges bullets, drinks heavily, and makes out with women who are obviously spies.”


    • Huis ten Bosch: Only Miffy can save us now Part One, Part Two, Part Three - The remarkable Dutch theme park in Japan: ”A $3bn theme park answer to a quiz show question nobody asked. Monumental in its conception, extravagant in its execution, and epic in its failure… the park is more than three times the size of Tokyo Disneyland and still bigger than Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea combined, awing the resident-visitor of these cramped lands with its sheer scale.”

    • The Making of 'Pillars of Creation,' One of the Most Amazing Images of Our Universe - An explanation of how the famous image was put together: ”The researchers block out much of the light using a filter, and only look at plates covering certain scientifically interesting light wavelengths at a time. In the case of the famous Pillars of Creation image, they were interested in the light emitted by certain excited oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur atoms… This translates to green light and two indistinguishable shades of red—probably not the best three colors for an image to present to the public. Instead, the researchers combined the three images, depicting the oxygen emission in blue, the hydrogen in green, and the sulfur in red.”

    • Turning a MacBook into a Touchscreen with $1 of Hardware - A clever hack described by Anish Athalye: ”We turned a MacBook into a touchscreen using only $1 of hardware and a little bit of computer vision. The proof-of-concept, dubbed “Project Sistine” after our recreation of the famous painting in the Sistine Chapel, was prototyped by me, Kevin, Guillermo, and Logan in about 16 hours."

    • London’s Pedways are back – and they’re magnificent - Ian Mansfield on the revitalisation of the 1960s aerial walkways around London Wall: ”We’re so used to elevated walkways being simply providers of access, a way to get from one side to the other, that the idea that they would be a destination in themselves is a strange one. It can be a surprise to see seating up here. Places to rest and relax on the journey from here to there.”

    • ‘The Wickedest Road in Britain’ – Birmingham 1968 - "In 1968, Harvard graduate Janet Mendelsohn was a student at the University of Birmingham’s new Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. An essay she wrote involved taking photographs of Balsall Heath – an impoverished area where many first-generation immigrants had settled in. Mendelsohn focused in particular on ‘Kathleen’, a 24-year-old prostitute and mother who worked the infamous Varna Road. A street at the centre of the area’s busy red light district where as many as 200 women offered sex for sale. It was often dubbed “the wickedest road in Britain”."



    Happy invoicing!

    #2
    Back in the UK now. I prefer the road signs here

    Comment


      #3
      Varna Road 2015
      https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.46...7i13312!8i6656

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by SunnyInHades View Post
        Changed a bit!

        Comment

        Working...
        X