Left mouse: thrust | Right mouse: fire

That right there is why kids need to pay attention in trigonometry and physics classes!

And speaking of kids, you can get to see a posh kid spectacularly fail to fly the craft in the intro-video provided with the A3000, introduced by the poster-boy of the BBC Computer Literacy Project, Fred Harris, who patronisingly tels the kid “he’s getting to lever, aren’t you?” and then points out that “it’s harder than it looks”, while the kid 1) nose-dives into the sea 2) explodes on the launch pad (always a favorite) and 3) manages fly up a hill to before hesitantly slamming into the ground.

Earlier, on Nightsoil:

zarch
virus update
archimedes-emulation

One from the attic - 1961s “The Elements of Design” by Donald M. Anderson surveys the graphic landscape encompassing pretty much all modes of representation from the modern mathematic to the archaic organic, commercial to the avant garde through its 218 pages of largely black and white illustrated text. By treating visual matter in formal categories such as colour, shape, line and texture, the illustrations on any given spread cut across both time and culture to make some often surprising juxtapositions.
As a textbook, it is largely intended to be taught, and each chapter suggests a few solid exercises, but really deserve a bit more theoretical expansion and certainly in the colour section may have benefited by some more colour plates. The text delinates between fine-art and design practice, often denigrating the world of fine-art to a niche.
Whilst some of the examples are a little retro, the complete lack of digital imagery is subtly refreshing, and the echewment of the dominant image making mode of our time (the photograph) in favour of a myriad of other ways of making - tapestry, x-rays, type-collage, painting, and the thinking that goes along with those media likewise excites the optic nerve and whets the creative appetite.
I believe I picked it up in Hay-on-Wye as an undergraduate - attracted predominately by its landscape format palm-to-elbow ratio size (I built a similarly proportioned sketch-book) , brown, embossed leather-effect exterior and plethora of ideas
It looks like you can buy secondhand copies of the paperback version of the Elements of Design at Amazon (might make a great gift for anyone in arts/design-education).

It’s been a few weeks now, and everyone has had their spooky fun, so I taken the steps to replace it with an alternative message - in my own geeky game of trick or treat. Of course, I’d thought about spamvertising before, but decided this time to promote a good cause - cancer screening. It can’t be certain that old threads get read or noticed, so designed it with a strong use of (oldschool computing) colour and plenty of space around it and the competing area - whilst keeping the file-size extremely low (lots of hits = lots of bandwidth). Perhaps it is garish and attention seeking, and perhaps it might be noticed and maybe make a difference.

In the US there is the Ad Council which does public service advertising. In the UK, the approach to public service broadcasting follows a slightly different model, with its Public Information Films however, as far as I’m aware - this only goes as far as broadcasting, with OPSI / HMSO (or is it the COI?) carrying out the majority of print-based propaganda public information. Either way, ethical-advertising bringing attention to social and health-issues (along with nation-internal propaganda) doesn’t appear to have the same creative-driven approach that the yanks take to it, and mores the pity. More to the point - it’s not visible on bus-shelters, train-stations or online, and with an (ahem) diversified media landscape, if kids aren’t glued to the TV - how on earth will they learn to say “No” to strangers, or not to put rugs down on freshly polished floors? fore-warned is fore-armed.

Many cancers need not be fatal if caught early enough. Screening is a big part of that, and perhaps making somebody consider it might be enough to prevent it.

But what hard drive? there are countless wireless networkable media stations. Problem? they look like really quite ugly computer hardware. This ‘thing’ has to live in the living room.

Fortunately for me, LaCie asked Ora-Ïto to design a HDD, and they came up with the “Brick” - a hard disk which looks like an oversized lego brick. That’s a bright red, 500GB lego brick. The combination of over-powered hardware in toy-like housing just tickles me - 500GB? That’s roughly 125000 songs, or perhaps two Godspeedyou Black Emperor albums.

Plugged it in to the iBook G4 - and it just appears - exactly like any other HD, transfering files seemed reasonably quick, about the same speed as a usb thumbdrive. It does vibrate a little as the disk spins, and having it on a desk whilst hands were resting on a keyboard it was noticable. Not shown in the photograph is that it’s not USB powered and that it needs an external plug - there are probably sound engineering reasons for not having a motor-driven hard-drive running off of USB power but it does rather spoil the aesthetic, having a large power converter hanging off the back (it comes with its own UK and Europe plug - which is nice). It is fanless and almost silent - so perfect for media storage and playback.

And of course, bright red kinda goes with the bright red Smeg fridge and the Pro-Ject lemon yellow turntable.

Revisited News from Earth - added a brand-new analogue clock feature (get time, rotate object) and shifted the type to be more in-keeping with that as used on the spacecraft screens in 2001 - it’s still the best sci-fi inspired bbc rss newsfeed gathering widescreen desktop screensaver in the galaxy (download it).

Oh, and it’s still Windows only.