[The] catapult was installed on board the U.S.S. North Carolina during the late summer of 1915. The first test was made with a plane which carried no pilot, with the controls lashed in flying position. The experiment was successful so far as the catapult was concerned, although the plane stalled at the end of the track and spun into the water. This was sufficient proof for Lieutenant Commander Mustin, commandant of the station, and he ordered the second plane aboard to be prepared for a catapult shot. Climbing in and warming up the engine he flew the first plane off a catapult mounted on a ship. After several live shots, the next attempt was to catapult a plane while the ship was definitely under way. Lieutenant A. A. Cunningham, U.S. Marine Corps, was selected for this experiment. This shot, however, failed and the plane struck the water with one wing and turned over. Fortunately, the pilot swam out from under and was picked up by a boat.
The Password [via].
Seen that scene many times, but it wasn’t until recently that I connected it to something I read years ago.
The Code Breakers” by David Kahn is a classic book on the history of cryptology. In Chapter 2 he described the simple alphabet letter-shift that every schoolboy knows, but then he double-encrypts the shift with a password. Kahn used SWORDFISH as an example.
Using a simple alphabet shift from A to B:
TACKYRACCOONS reads SZBIXQZBBNNMR. Lot of repeated letters, but if you add a key like SWORDFISH to the shift, you get LWQBVGIUJGKJ, and it’s tougher to crack. That’s kind of how the WWII German Enigma machine worked.
Grace Slick’s vocals (sans backup music) on White Rabbit creeps me right out [via]. “Remember what the door mouse said.” Oh shut up. Go feed your cats or something.
I need an aural palate cleanser after that one, so let’s roll with this:
Yeah, Ernie Andrews, one of the greatest big band soul singers of all time, and “Do I Worry” is one of my all-time favorites.
Have a great weekend or two, folks. We’ll keep the porch light on.
I read an opinion recently in a nation-wide Sunday publication [Parade Magazine] suggesting that organ donation should be mandatory by default, unless a person acts and chooses to “opt out.” Think that one through, and it should scare the hell out of you.
Training the bot is pretty cool. How it was made is cooler:
[Found here. Don’t worry, it’s a safe site. They had a coordinated WOT report attack years ago by some people who didn’t like their opinions. If you subscribe to WOT, please mark the site as safe. They don’t deserve this unwarranted abuse. Never have. SFK. SFW.]
Redwood logging in 1946. Dangerous work. [Found here.]
Hypnotizing art “installations.”
Maxim Zhestkov (b.1985, Russia) is a media artist and director whose practice centres around the influence of digital media on shifting the boundaries of visual language.
He grew up in a small town on the Volga river named Ulyanovsk. From childhood, Maxim was fascinated by art, physics and computers which led him to university, where he studied architecture and fine art.
I’m kinda in an odd mood, change of the seasons, sun angles and all, so let’s roll with it.
“Psychotic Reaction” by The Count Five, peaked at No. 5 in 1966 on the Billboard Hot 100. Classic garage band / early psychedelic rock. Since then it’s been covered by a number of indy/punk/rock bands, including this one by The Cramps in 1983:
Meh. I can do without that, but this one’s not too bad:
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers probably did the best cover of ‘”Psychotic Reaction” in 1991, preserved the soul of the original.
The intro is cool, song starts at 2:20.
Have a great weekend, folks. Be back here tomorrow for more stuff and stuff.
A television screen is inset into an avant-garde cabinet for canned music called the “Kuba Komet” at the Radio and Television Exhibition in Frankfurt, West Germany, Aug. 5, 1957. As well as the television set, the Komet houses a radio, a record player and a tape recorder. The upper part of the assembly swings on a vertical axis to face any direction.