[AccessD] OT: Friday non-humour

Funny this came up as the entire series of Cosmos is showing again on PayTV in Australia and I have been watching it again. I remember watching it amazed many years ago.  Whilst the CGI animation and even the information about the planets and moons is dated now, the sheer passion and depth of the series still shines thru.  Definately worth a second watch. :)

I am still amazed at the Voyager craft and how they are still returning data even today, and they are pretty much at the edge of our solar system now - excellent stuff and a credit to the men and woman who designed them.

Am a big fan of the Mars rovers as well...!

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller
Sent: Sunday, 24 February 2008 12:58 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] OT: Friday non-humour


Gustav,

An old and much-cherished friend of mine, Jon Lomberg, did the opening to
Contact. He has worked with Carl Sagan several times before, and won the
Emmy for art direction on Cosmos. Jon also finagled me into being one of the
200 people selected to choose the music that went out on the disk in
Voyager. What actually ended up on the disk was much more political fiasco
than attempt to communicate, but it was a fun and challenging exercise up
until the politicos got involved.

Speaking of old friends, Jon and I and another guy named Bob McDonald at one
point shared a house. Bob is now the host of a radio show called Quirks and
Quarks, about science news, broadcast on CBC radio on Saturdays. (You might
be able to pick it up from radio.cbc.ca.) That house was quite the
household. Another guy who lived there was for 7 years the CDN chess
champion, and later moved on to backgammon, where he was twice the world
champion. It seems that I was the runt of that litter.

Arthur

On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 8:21 AM, Gustav Brock <Gustav at cactus.dk> wrote:

> Hi Arthur
>
> The transporter, yes, a remarkable piece of movie animation!
>
> Contact is one of my favourite movies - I was fascinated by the simple
> method of transmitting a series of prime figures as the proof of the
> transmitter to be intelligent.
> It is indeed in my small collection of DVD movies. So I could easily pull
> a part of the soundtrack ... and your clients would love when your app
> fails!?
>
> As a side note on weird happenings and findings, this morning I listened
> to a broadcast with a scientist researching the inner behaviour of our
> Earth. He played back an ultra subsonic soundtrack recorded in an old quiet
> mine in Germany for three months last year covering the last big earth
> quake. However, to be audible, it was transposed 19 octaves(!) to a duration
> of about 15 seconds, and the earth quake and its echo sounded like a stroke
> on a rusty bell. From this, he told, you could hear that the resonance
> frequence of the Earth is very close to the tone A - a coincidence? Who
> knows.
> If that wasn't enough, he played back the recording transposed 21 octaves
> and now you could hear a warbled summing tone - actually the deformation of
> the surface of the Earth of about 1 m caused by the moon during the rotation
> of the Earth.
>
> Too much on a Saturday morning.
>
> /gustav
>
> >>> fuller.artful at gmail.com 23-02-2008 02:57 >>>
> I would soooo love to figure out how to play that whenever a program
> crashes. Wouldn't that be great as the intro to an error handler? The
> innocent client using your app, diligently working away, when suddenly...
> It
> just needs a soundtrack, maybe from the movie Contact when the transporter
> breaks up.
>
> Arthur
>
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 5:41 PM, Gustav Brock <Gustav at cactus.dk> wrote:
>
> > Hi all
> >
> > Today it was a storm here, and a 40m diameter windmill collapsed due to
> > malfunctioning brakes.
> > A neighbour catched it on video (flash player needed):
> >
> > http://nyhederne.tv2.dk/video/index.php/nodeId-10546306.html
> >
> > This happens extremely rarely with modern windmills.
> > No people were hurt.
>
>
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> Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
>
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