@pauldrye@spacey.space
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

pauldrye

@pauldrye@spacey.space

Software design by day, table-top RPG and science fiction/fantasy writing by night. Fascinations: Unbuilt crewed space projects, phantom islands, alternate history, Muppets, Atomic Age design, retrocomputing, languages, cartography, old cutaway diagrams. Canadian with malice aforethought. Baggage Books on DriveThruRPG.

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BigJackBrass, to random
@BigJackBrass@vivaldi.net avatar

#Mosstodon?

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@BigJackBrass Ah yes, a bust of Sir Le Mon Drizell, third Baron de Beignet.

pauldrye, to random
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

I've been getting interested in retrocomputing, but as I'm not savvy about the nuts and bolts of old machines I'm going the route of emulating on a Raspberry Pi. My 400 is due to arrive Monday.

With that in mind I've been looking for stores nearby that sell cheap hardware of various types, possibly obsolescent. I've been reminded that custom-built computer stores have all but gone but noticed that one where I once worked is still going. Where I once worked FORTY YEARS AGO.

crumbles into dust

StefanEJones, to random
@StefanEJones@dice.camp avatar

1/ A bajillion year ago, when I was a kid, there were fewer TV channels, and no infomercials.

On weekends when there were no sports programming, stations showed old programs. Sitcoms, cop shows, old movies.

Most of these were of no interest to me as a kid.

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@StefanEJones Yeah, I think sometimes about how "Saturday morning cartoons" is an alien concept now that there's many kid-oriented channels.

That and the Flintstones or Gilligan's Island playing in syndication at 4:00 once you got home from school. AND THAT WAS IT YOU LOUSY GEN ALPHAS

thomasfuchs, (edited ) to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

Really fantastic work to give in to COVID deniers and antivaxxers, with absolutely no long term consequences

(If you don't know, H5N1 has ~50% fatality rate.)

(via https://bsky.app/profile/octocryptid.bsky.social/post/3kseq2usc4c2b)

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@thomasfuchs So, to get immunity from H5N1 infection they're checks notes trying to infect themselves with H5N1?

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

Well this is embarrassing.

I've never been a fan of Doctor Who, since is only marginally science fiction. But I just watched the first two episodes of Series 14, and I rather enjoyed them.

[1] I personally like scifi that if it cannot be scientifically accurate, is at least internally self consistent. E.g. the history of baby station.

[2] I am fond of movies and shows where the characters are nonplussed by absurd things that go shambling by. E.g. the goblin ship.

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@nyrath Next episode is more in the way of fantasy, but Space Babies was fast and fun. A great example of Hitchcock's maxim that he only has to get you to the end of the story and if you start finding holes while you're on your way to the refrigerator after it's not his problem.

nixCraft, to random
@nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar

This is funny. OpenAI, who scraped the entire internet to build its product, is now enforcing copyright via notices. They still don’t give credit for stealing content from everyone, yet now acting like holier-than-thou https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cnvyzp/

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@forgifuzzbutt @mentallyalex @nixCraft And since you posted this, this has become next to top main comment....

muellermeier, to Furry
@muellermeier@bark.lgbt avatar

A spacecraft and spacesuit 2-in-1 concept with furry micro-macro-shenanigans. Furries sharing a spacesuit with micros is something I want to explore more in the future. Seems like such a funny concept, I wonder why it hasn’t been done before? Or is it I just haven’t seen it be done?

The suit is loosely based on something called the “Command/Control Pressure Suit”.

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@muellermeier Oop, one in my wheelhouse...if your followers are interested in the suit, it was designed by Brand Griffin (an employee of NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center, but I think he may have been a contractor at the time) back in the 1980s:

The suit: https://spacearchitect.org/portfolio-item/command-control-pressure-suit/

Griffin: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37088472759

overholt, to random
@overholt@glammr.us avatar

Donald Duck says protect your children with DDT-infused wallpaper. https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/mg74qm295?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=042924

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@overholt Hey, Ma-aaa! The 1950s are doing that thing again!

pauldrye, to random
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

"The Panama Canal lies open and exposed to attack by modern bombers. Ships wait in line for their turns to thread its outgrown passage from sea to sea...WHY NOT BUILD A TUNNEL FOR SHIPS FROM ATLANTIC TO PACIFIC?"

Art for an article by Jorge Cortinez Delfino in June 1956's Popular Mechanics, signed "Weeks". I haven't been able to find the artist's full name.

I've been reading about Soviet mega-engineering visions, but happened across this New World one this morning.

BigJackBrass, to France
@BigJackBrass@vivaldi.net avatar

Spoilsports.

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@BigJackBrass Wokeness is ruining everything.

Tim_Eagon, to fantasy
@Tim_Eagon@dice.camp avatar

I want to see your favorite fantasy and sci-fi cover art! Books, magazines, RPGs, comics, whatever!

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@Tim_Eagon I've always been partial to this one of Angus McBride's, and these other two by Daniel Thorne's and Dennis Beauvais':

image/jpeg
image/jpeg

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@Tim_Eagon McBride was a bit of an odd man out compared to other RPG artists at the time -- he would have been about 50 at the time, lived in South Africa as an immigrant, and had extensive experience for Osprey & various British educational magazines before working with I.C.E.

sudnadja, to traveller
@sudnadja@vivaldi.net avatar

Imperial Bureau of Propaganda and Statistics report: Resurce Unit distribution through some of the Imperium: A green disk represents a world with a positive RU value, a red disk is negative, black points are 0 (for whatever reason). Through the travellermap data, RU is distributed approximately as a normal distribution with mu = 496, sigma=1906. The size of the disk represents how many standard deviations above the mean that particular world is, with red disks how many standard deviations below 0 the world is. Between 0 and 496 are all collectively treated as 0. Interestingly, the Solomani Sphere doesn't have all that much economic power, world by world.

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@sudnadja It does put an interesting spin on why the Imperium was willing to end the Solomani Rim War without conquering the whole Confederation.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

I wonder how much data you could route through these if you used the capsules to carry 8Tb or greater SSDs between i/o terminals?
https://swiss.social/@johnmacintosh/112199694398616359

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@SteveBellovin @karlauerbach @cstross I'll be right back -- just setting up an online petition to make Elon trick out the interiors of any future construction like this:

pauldrye, to random
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

James Bond skiing and also EXPLOSIONS

pauldrye, to random
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

Kyle Sudrow was an actor, not hugely famous but most associated with the soap opera The Guiding Light.

He also did some work for the SF radio programs X Minus One and Dimension X. So, rather appropriately, he tried to launch a little bit of the future in the early 60s with the Helipod, a one-person VTOL craft.

DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS (Single Place Version): == = GrossiWeighti At 700 Ibs. Maximum Speed: 65 mph Service Ceiling: 10,000 feet Maximum Climb 900 fpm Maximum Range 300 miles Maximum Wing RPM 800 RPM Emergency Descent (Power Of) 12-14 fps The propulsion system is 40 HP, 4-cylinder, 2-stroke gasoline engine, and is mounted just below the rotating wings. Honeycomb fiberglas is used extensively in the construction materials. For example, the pod skin is a semi-flexible fiberglas epoxy laminate. The pod shield and wing skins are of similar construction. This configuration can be built in versions seating from one to five persons. Control of the Helipod wing environment is augmented by enclosing the rotating wing in a circular wind shield. The shield (or shroud) also provides the safety feature of protecting ground personnel while the Helipod is being operated on the ground. For further information, write to: The Whitehall Building, 17 Battery Place New York City 10004 Phone: (212) Dlgby 4-0500
A prototype of the same craft shown in the illustration on image 1.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

"Problems with this fuel include its toxicity and its characteristic of bursting into flame on contact with the air. Furthermore, its exhaust (when used in a jet engine) would also be toxic." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentaborane(9)

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@nyrath @cstross And the kicker is that this is colloquially known as "stable pentaborane" because pentaborane(11) is even worse.

christianp, to random
@christianp@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Who can find a street with a number in its name that's bigger than the number of any building on that street?

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@christianp There's a First Street in Horden, UK that -- as far as I can tell -- has no numbered buildings on it at all. Some face it, but they all look to be addressed to another surrounding street.

nyrath, (edited ) to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

Orbiting experiment for study of extended weightlessness Final report

Design, mission, and development of orbiting experiment to study extended weightlessness using monkeys and Apollo applications vehicle

(note candidate designs to collect free-fall monkey poop)

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19680004371

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@nyrath Picture #3 is the greatest piece of space concept art ever drawn.

pauldrye, to retrocomputing
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

"Portrait of a Dead Witch" is a painting by John Yeadon. It shows WITCH, previously known as the Harwell Dekatron computer, which currently holds the record as the world's oldest functioning digital computer -- the witch having "got better", as they say.

The computer itself is in The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, while the painting is in private hands, hung on the wall of the Jam Street Café in Manchester (209 Upper Chorlton Road, if you'd like a look).

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

The Young Adventurer's Pocket Book of Space Travel (1954)

https://dreamsofspace.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-young-adventurers-pocket-book-of.html?m=1

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@nyrath @RogerBW How about the Aeriolus, "the submarine of the air"? Also helicopter and rocket -- or at least gun-propelled in space.

From 1920, particularly Marcianus Rossi's A Trip to Mars: https://archive.org/details/triptomars00ross/page/84/mode/2up?view=theater

pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@nyrath @RogerBW "Secretly tested by Denmark" feels like the aerospace equivalent of "my girlfriend lives in Canada"....

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar
pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@nyrath Absolutely mental when you stop to think about it.

ComicContext, to random
@ComicContext@mstdn.social avatar
pauldrye,
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

@ComicContext Kidnapping is spelled with two P's so now I'm kind of concerned about what "kidnaping" is.

pauldrye, to random
@pauldrye@spacey.space avatar

In today's news, old age pensioners giving my Traveller players ideas.

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