KitHack Model Club, Firebot for Mac ✶

Two bits of excellent news:

  1. KitHack Model Club, formerly known as KitBash Model Club, heretofore known as Balsa Model Flight Simulator, is out in early access once again!

  2. Firebot is now available for macOS!

Airplanes, Friends, Gardening, Electricity, Video Ninja

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Morning

Worked on solutions to work tasks and replied to emails.

HyperTextHero and TimmyThumb walking by a Grumman OV-1 Mohawk in real life.

Edited photos of airplanes and Tim after we met at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo yesterday. Excellent person and place! I wish I could have met Bruce, too, when he was at Lake Geneva. Next time!

Tight, comfy fit!

Seeing so many airplanes from so many eras made me want to fly again, both in simulators and in real life! Private pilot’s license first for the experience, and then maybe go the ultralight route, perhaps electric, later?

Sat in a F-16 cockpit used for training, and even bought a little C-172 model to keep on my computer, because they didn’t have a C-152 one.

Afternoon

Called Nesh and played a messy version of Happy Birthday to You.

Covered part of the garden with plastic to “solarize” the weeds (heat the ground to kill the poor weeds and their seeds). Dug paths around the garden beds in preparation for more planting.

So far we have radishes, broccoletti, komatsuna, spinach, swiss chard, peas, garlic, onions, fennel, and cavolo nero. Will the bunnies eat everything? They didn’t last year, and neither did the raccoons, moles, “woodchucks”, chipmunks, various birdies, animalcetera. Maybe the cats help keep the plant peace.

So many wires, so little information. Lets get to work.

Later installed a cover over an electrical breaker box and set up vdo.ninja (cheat sheet) on a second pocket computer to observe lamps remotely and find out which breaker breaks what connection in a bizarre house wiring setup.

Am about 1/4 of the way done with this, and will begin playing Wired soon to help me learn more about electricity, which is becoming another strong interest in addition to airplanes and video games.

Ciao ciao!

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    .　. 　˚　.　 ੈ  ✧̣̇ ˳ · ˖ ✦ .

Tuesday, 23 April 2024

Assistive Access for iOS ✶

Apple’s iOS has a feature called Assistive Access designed for people with cognitive disabilities such as elderly parents. Thanks to CharlesW on HN.

Certainty Breeds Insanity ✶

“Certainty breeds insanity”, or “make a pledge and mischief is nigh” are two translations of one of the three things inscribed at Delphi.

The other two:

  • “Know thyself.”
  • “Everything in moderation.”

Good advice, difficult to keep in mind!

Atom ✶

A pencil drawing of an atom.

A pencil drawing of an atom with electrons around it to remind that everything in the universe is connected.

One of the most interesting things about atoms to me are electrons, which can be in two places at once.

This drawing is also the HyperTextHero base subscriber badge.

Sunday, 21 April 2024

Plant Root System Drawings ✶

At Wageningen University. Via Kevin Kelly.

Wired The Game ✶

Video game that helps you learn about electricity made at the University of Cambridge. You can play it in a web browser or in Windows and Mac computers, so I’ve added it to the list of Mac video games.

Friday, 19 April 2024

Scale of the Universe ✶

Warmly recommended version of the same thing in meditative video game form: Everything.

Get Real ✶

Anna Wiener speaks with Epic’s Tim Sweeney and others about video game engines, computer graphics, simulations, virtual, and real realities.

Arma gets a mention, and the New Yorker issue cover by Ana Juan contrasts well with the piece.

Thursday, 18 April 2024

Feathers ✶

Feathers kept B6 warm overnight while it flew above the Pacific Ocean. Feathers repelled rain along the way. Feathers formed the flight surfaces of the wings that kept B6 aloft and drove the bird forward for nearly 250 hours without failing.

One might expect that, considering all the time humans have spent admiring, using and studying feathers, we would know all their tricks by now. Yet insights into these marvelous structures continue to emerge.

Tuesday, 16 April 2024

For Love of Pixels ✶

I first made pixels with Adobe Photoshop 1.0 on a Macintosh LC III, but I first moved and was moved by pixels with video games like Space Invaders.

In that spirit, and in response to Jeffrey’s post, here are some of my favorite things visibly made from the little squares raked across many of our windows to this and other worlds.

Sunday, 14 April 2024

What Is Success ✶

By Ralph Waldo Emerson.

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and
the affection of children;
To earn the approbation of honest critics and endure
the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To give of one’s self;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and
sung with exultation;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you
have lived -
This is to have succeeded.

Saturday, 13 April 2024

Returning Home ✶

Documentary film about Canada’s Residential Schools system and the disappearing salmon that hopefully can be helped back. Found via the music of Melody McKiver.

Sunday, 7 April 2024

Does Microsoft Flight Simulator Simulate the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse? ✶

Close, but not quite, it seems. Probably user error? Let me know in the comments!

Friday, 5 April 2024

Midnight & To Body ✶

I’m enjoying the work of Amelia Winger-Bearskin that I found in a search for indigenous games while reading Braiding Sweetgrass.

Who determines the protocol for looking at the sky? Like moss and fungi, animals and plants, and indeed most living beings, the sky does not have borders. It moves and is part of a larger system that includes the moon, the sun, and the stars. MIDNIGHT is a companion project of SKYWORLD/CLOUDWORLD, a more extensive series by Amelia Winger-Bearskin.

Open Source Quality Institutes ✶

Tim Bray:

There are other essential human activities that lack a business case, for example tertiary education, potable water quality, and financial regulation. For these, we create non-capitalist constructs such as Universities and Institutes and Agencies, because society needs these things done even if nobody can make money doing them.

I think we need to be paying more attention to the quality generally, and safety especially, of the Open-Source software that has become the underlying platform for, more or less, our civilization. Thus OSQI.

Tuesday, 2 April 2024

Total Solar Eclipse 2024 Merch ✶

Typographic design of a solar eclipse with a lunatic typeface saying Total Solar Eclipse 2024 April 8th.

Typographic design added to the shop to celebrate the total solar eclipse of April 8th, 2024. See also an alternate version using letters moving quickly.

My favorite canvases for this one are the t-shirts and the clock.

Sunday, 31 March 2024

When Exactly Will the Eclipse Happen ✶

Solar eclipses are good reminders of our tinyness in the universe.

Saturday, 30 March 2024

JackTrip ✶

Open source multi-machine audio system software to jam with your friends over the Internet.

Sunday, 24 March 2024

A Conversation with J.J. Cale ✶

PM: It seems that in your well-deservedly lucky career, you got all the best stuff, the success without the grind and the glitz that you really wanted no part of.

JJC: Yeah. I started doing that early on. I had played guitar for famous people in the early part of my life. And being famous, it’s great for your ego–I mean, hey, “Everybody loves me!” But I noticed if you got real big, man, you don’t have a real life. It affects the way you look at life. So when I started making records that went outside my hometown, and went, “Whoa, they know who I am in Paris, France,” that kind of thing, I kind of laid back on the publicity. And they’ve called me a recluse because of that. I’m not a recluse, or whatever.

PM: Yeah.

JJC: But I kind of laid back on the machinery that elevates you into the super big time, for the simple reason that I went, “Well, if I live long enough, I’d like to play music and have enough people to listen to it when I want to do that, or I’d love to make records and have enough people to buy the records to where it pays for making the record and putting it out without having all the”–so early on I had that kind of thing. I’ve backed it off a couple times when I thought it was getting out of hand. “Well, do you want to be on The Jay Leno Show?” And I’d say, “Not really.”

PM: [laughs] “Not really.”

JJC: You know what I’m saying? That way I can have my music, it doesn’t get real big, but I still make a profit, and I don’t have to jump through hoops, man, and be something I’m really not.

PM: That’s beautiful.

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