Art Tech

Years ago, I saw a documentary by artist David Hockney that argued that the Dutch Masters achieved their extraordinary photo-realism with aid from secret lens-based devices.  Now a new film is being released with a similar theory, in which an American inventor with no art training attempts to recreate a Vermeer painting using advanced-for-its-time lens technology.  Although art experts prefer the "he was just a genius" idea, this seems very convincing as a way to make photos before photography was invented.  What is fascinating is the lengths people had to go for something we all take for granted now.

More Old Computer News

The National Museum of Computing has a new exhibit, a 1960s ICT 1301 otherwise known as "Flossie". Weighing in at over 5 tons, this one only has few tubes but is full of early germanium transistors, along with apparatus for punched cards, tape storage and printing.  It's claim to fame is being the first mass-produced business computer, and as one of the curators says, this meant that no special wiring/ducting was needed in the office where it was installed.  The once cutting-edge looks were apparently shown off in a Bond film, and I also suspect a similar device was the titular star of the second sequel of a certain other spy film series.

John Carmack

How to become every programmer's favorite programmer:

1. Write the Doom and Quake 3D game engines.
2. Release the source code for free.
3. Found your own space rocket company.
4. Become CTO of a virtual reality company.

Walrus

Having been reading a bit of Lovecraft recently, I was amused by this silly story from El Reg about a walrus buried in a London graveyard.  Rather than a mad scientist's "walrusoid abomination", it was probably just a bit of medical research. The best bit is at the end when a researcher confesses that it's fairly mysterious:

"...we drew a blank.  There was a reference to Prince Albert riding on the back of a giant tortoise, but unfortunately it wasn’t relevant."

As a commenter says, this statement should be quoted whenever anyone references the results of any research.

Clone

The Altair 8800 was an early home computer which came out in 1975.  You programmed it by flipping switches and watching the lights blink.  The picture is actually an Altair 8800 Clone; it turns out that original ones are now super expensive so a guy made a version with modern components.  What used to be a box stuffed with circuit boards is now empty - the work is done by a chip the size of a penny. It's a bit like old tube radios...

Badgers

Cannot resist a badgers/technology story; North Yorkshire residents will have to wait for their superfast broadband connection while the engineers laying the cable figure out if they have to re-route around protected badger setts.  Slashdot has the best headline so far: "Badgers Block British Broadband Buildout".  It is apparently the job of a "badger expert" to decide if there are badgers actually living there. Perhaps the badgers are all getting ready for a parade?

Quote

Homer:    Congratulations.  Welcome to the Homer Simpson Program.
Ned:      So, what happens next?
Homer:    One day soon, I will come for you.  And then the game will
          begin.  Could be in the middle of the night ... could be when
          you least expect it.  Or, whatever's good for you, I don't
          care.
-- "Viva Ned Flanders"

Old Code

If someone wanted to visualize what software looked like if it was only made of wire, they would probably be not too far off with this picture. There's a firm in Texas that still uses a computer from 1948 for it's accounting.  It weighs 3000 pounds and uses punched cards - this is what one of their 'apps' looks like.  I would not like to debug this.

Games

This is how the web works; you go to a site for one thing and you find other great things while you are there. In this particular case I went to read about the (very technical) details about the 3D rendering engine for 1998's Thief: The Dark Project. The other thing on this site was a non-3D but very addictive laser-based puzzle game. Go ahead, download it; it's only 39,936 bytes.

Papers

Suppose a company received donated written material which was then reviewed by other people for free.  Should the company then turn around and sell that material for thousands of dollars?  It sounds absurd, but it's basically how academic publishing works. Seriously, Harvard can't afford these prices.  Open access outfit Public Library of Science (PLOS) charge less to publish and is free to view, but PeerJ have gone one better- $99 buys you lifetime membership, their peer-review system promises a refreshing openness and they've even reduced the notoriously long time from submission to publication.  Sounds like a step in the right direction for fair access to knowledge.

Weather Report

"And so ye faithful,
there is no shadow to see
An early Spring for you and me."

 -  Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, 127th Groundhog Day

Old Computer

The Harwell Dekatron is officially the world's oldest working digital computer, again.  (I missed the story of its restoration last year, but El Reg pointed me to it yesterday). The Dekatron part of the name refers to the 10-position clock-face style glowing number valves, which were the best thing at the time for storing digits until the transistor changed everything a few years later.  It was no faster at sums than a man with a mechanical calculator, but the point was that humans get tired, and this beast could chug along for hours. Its 2.5 tonne bulk is now over at Bletchley Park.

Moon Flyby

You may know that the GRAIL lunar orbiters finished their mission of mapping the moon at the end of last year; the JPL just released a cool video they took of flying low over the moon.