The real win here though is the link to Methods Of Mayhem. Some really awesome samples and a ton I recognize from Red Alert and Red Alert 2, including many of the voice clips (including the infamous Brain From Outer Space clips used in the Yuri’s Revenge soundtrack.)
This was a great electronic music mix show. There are over fifty episodes to listen to. I don’t know the inside story but it sounds like they had difficulty getting to the studio during the pandemic. Their archives are a treasure trove of electronic music recommendations. Get them while they’re hot (and still hosted.) They do a great job of linking to the music they play so you can find new artists.
Wikipedia talk pages are always an interesting place, but this one is a pretty interesting discussion, because it gets at the heart of Wikipedia’s role in our evolving Truth landscape.
A conversation about the ludicrous ‘AI summary’ feature that google debuted recently. The juiciest bit of gossip is that the SEO community has been playing with the feature for a year prior to release and thought for sure that Google wouldn’t release it in that form because it was so busted… and they just up and did it!
Intro contains a cogent explanation of why Google’s latest move is so bad for the web and web users. If anyone has an alternate search engine they’re planning on launching, best to strike while the iron is hot!
The Flashbulb (yes, that The Flashbulb, the guy who gave us Please Don’t Remember and The Bridgeport Run) talks about software Aphex Twin used. You probably already knew about Supercollider, Trackers, and Metasynth, but I’d only heard passing reference to CDP, for example. I wish he’d gone into a bit more depth about Supercollider and shown off exactly what sort of things you can do with it.
One thing that I found really interesting was the insight into one of my favorites; RDJ album. Tracker outputting MIDI triggering a hardware sampler, because trackers of the day couldn’t handle samples as nice as you hear on RDJ album. I suppose that suggests that HAB was using samples inside the tracker for drums and outboard synth for the melodies? At the very least it’s always sounded like someone manually playing with the cutoff in the first part of Arched Maid Via RDJ, it sounds great and it’s an effect I’ve often tried to emulate.
I’m surprised The Flashbulb considers Bucephalus Bouncing Ball the all time best. I mean it’s a great track and I love how the sweet melody sneaks in after the harsh metallic noises of the intro, then are just as quickly washed out by more crazy noodling. But the best Aphex Twin track at any given time tends to either be from his latest album or second to latest album. I’d put Rushup | Bank 12, Xmas, or Collapse up against anything from what he called RDJ’s ‘peak era’ (Windowlicker, RDJ, etc.) If anything, what the SoundCloud release shows is that the reason the Analord era sounds so different is that RDJ now feels happy (or financially motivated) to actually release (or at least DJ) more of what he makes rather than holding a ton of it back as he did during earlier eras.
Might not stick with that title, but I do want to stick to the format. We’re in a period where “algorithmic” content feeds and search are becoming less than ideal, and there’s been a trend towards a smaller, more human web. I’ve long maintained a links page both as a more durable bookmark list and as a curated set of links to share. But not everything is evergreen; some things are timely, and I think a regular feature would be a more appropriate place for that. Plus it would motivate me to write a bit more, so here goes.
That all changed thanks to a friendly leak a year ago that didn’t really garner much attention. However thanks to the efforts of the indefatigable SharkyNebula, we now have pretty much everything on the wiki. I plan to write more about this and back up the resources on IA, but until then just marvel at these immaculate ship sprites. This was some of the best CGI that the EVN community had to offer, back in the day. They still look great now!
Tracy Kidder’s Soul of a New Machine is one of the great pieces of literature written about the computing field, and it centers on the team (lead by Tom West) upgrading the Nova into the Eclipse. Data General is a fairly obscure minicomputer company; the only one people still know by name is their more popular competitor, Digital Equipment Corporation, of PDP and VAX fame. So actually playing around with one of these wasn’t possible back in the day. But now there’s an emulator! You can even run it on a Raspberry Pi, which is exactly what I plan to do. If I get it running, I’ll write up a how-to.
For hobby modeling fans, this is a nice database of old model kits including images and enough information about them to find them via google with only a vague description. I stumbled across it while trying to figure out the provenance of a strange but very cool model kit, which turned out to be a Perry Rodan spacecraft. The model kit was purchased either at Neckers Toyland (still in operation!) or War And Pieces in Hartford (long defunct.) Seven years after War and Pieces closed, a Games Workshop store opened in the same location.
In 2007 there was apparently some drama in the YoYo community. This would make an excellent Netflix special along the lines of The Pez Outlaw. I have no idea what the veracity of the story is and it contains some fantastical elements, but it’s also exactly the kind of foot-in-mouth emergent screwup that happens when you put enough people in a room and ask them to make decisions about how they should interact with their customers. I’d love to hear the other side of the story.
If they still gave awards for “web site design” that included little site badges for the winner, this site would deserve them all. I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface with it. Be warned – I have no idea what’s lurking under the surface here.
Ed Zitron has been on a tear lately with a lot to say about the tech industry. The basic observation that we’ve been frogboiled into a truly lackluster Google search experience is a correct one.
A short story by Theodore Sturgeon, in Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1947. I have a very vivid memory of this story as one of the first proper scifi short stories I ever really clicked with. Reading Del Ray’s history of early scifi made me think of it again, so I figured I should save the link for next time.
test_fruit_salad gets called when you run tests, and it will automatically pass the result of fruit bowl to test_fruit_salad. This pretty much blew my mind when I first saw it.
The following decorator helps you achieve something similar with your own functions. It lets you do something like this.
@opt_in_args
def request_a(foo: str, *, a: int):
print(f"Foo is {foo}, a is {a}")
@opt_in_args
def request_b(*, b: str):
print(f"b is: {b}")
@opt_in_args
def request_both(*, b: str, a: int):
print(f"b is: {b}, a is: {a}")
request_a("Blarg")
request_b()
request_both()
Note that the * args just mean “everything after this is a keyword argument only”, it helps guard against accidentally passing in bad kwargs and you should always use it, but the above program will work the same without it. The output of the program looks like this:
Foo is Blarg, a is 123
b is: foobar
b is: foobar, a is: 123
First let’s look at the implementation of the decorator:
import inspect
def opt_in_args(func):
def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
signature = inspect.signature(func)
opted_in = {}
optional_kwargs = {
"a": 123,
"b": "foobar",
}
for kwarg, value in optional_kwargs.items():
if kwarg in signature.parameters:
assert signature.parameters[kwarg].annotation == type(value)
opted_in[kwarg] = value
return func(*args, **kwargs, **opted_in)
return wrapper
Let’s look at a few specific lines to illuminate what it’s doing:
This is standard decorator magic. The outer function has the function in-scope, the wrapper is (because we return it from the decorator) what actually gets called in place of the wrapped function, so we capture *args and *kwargs so we can pass them along.
signature = inspect.signature(func)
Note that we imported inspect at the top of the module. Inspect lets you introspect on python functions, and in this case we use it to grab the signature. signature.paremeters will now have a key for each parameter the function accepts; we can now write any code we like based on the params.
optional_kwargs = {
"a": 123,
"b": "foobar",
}
for kwarg, value in optional_kwargs.items():
if kwarg in signature.parameters:
This approach is totally optional. There are any number of ways you can enumerate the optional kwargs. You can make another decorator and supply functions which are only called if they’re requested (I think pytest fixtures must be doing something like this) or you can have a bunch of ifs to decide what to instantiate and put in.
This I just put in there to show one way you could enforce typing on the keyword arguments. This is of course also optional; you could write your decorator to only care about the name by removing this line.
opted_in[kwarg] = value
return func(*args, **kwargs, **opted_in)
We create a dictionary called opted_in and populate it with the additional kwargs we want to pass. The final line of the wrapper function calls the wrapped function with the args and kwargs the caller sent, unmodified, and finally with the opted_in args the function asked for in its signature.
For such a slick effect, this is a surprisingly easy decorator; decorator magic often is.
“Enjoying ‘walks’ is sort of a cliche. I consider myself an avid pedestrian, but while technically relaxing I also see walking an act of impatience. I like bloody-minded trudges from point A to point B when other means of transport would require waiting. So to experience the famous Golden Gate, I figured the most appropriate way was to walk from one end to the other.
The bridge itself was massive. Better writers than I have described its grandeur. It’s probably the biggest single thing I’ve encountered. It felt as solid as stone gazing at its cable stays, the tension invisible, but you could feel the legendary elasticity of the steel structure underfoot when vibrations from traffic rippled across its surface.
Do I recommend crossing it on foot? Well, it’s a bit loud. The views of the city, bay, and mountains are very nice. The constant reminders that people jump off the thing were a bit spooky. The traffic tended to stay below 80db but a bit louder as vehicles hit rough patches (joints?) in the road. I wouldn’t recommend earplugs, because you’re going to need your situational awareness to avoid blocking bikes.
About halfway across, I spied a lookout on a mountain high above the roadway. ‘I am gonna climb that‘ I said to myself. As I got further, my resolve strengthened; the view was bound to be amazing.
I didn’t spend much time at vista point-I was eager to get to whatever path lead up that hill, which turns out to be the former home of Battery Spencer. There was a nice shortcut to avoid the road and see some wildflowers.
Battery Spencer had some great views of the bridge and the headlands, but I couldn’t help but once again gaze up! Roads cut into the sides of these mountains invited me to climb higher. Once again, I elected to press on.
The views of the mountains sweeping down into Kirby Cove were breathtaking. I really lucked out on the weather. There was a rough path beside the road. The grade was merciful, but you couldn’t escape the feeling of being at the top of a very long fall. The roadcut had changed the erosion timeline for these hills, and every inch seemed to threaten imminent rockslide. Thrilling, to be sure.
I’d told myself ‘ah, I can make it to the observation deck’ but once I got there, again, I saw a higher peak: there was a great lookout (and more treacherous road) at what turned out to be Hawk Hill.
I was starting to feel the climb then; I regretted not taking any water with me, that would have been smart. But as unplanned hikes go, at least this one was done on a full stomach. I salute the bikers who were passing me on the way up-this must have been a tough climb. The reward on the way down, I imagine, is probably worth it.
Hawk Hill turns out to be not just one observation deck with views of the city, but also an unfinished battery ‘129’ with tunnels you can enter – fans of STALKER or Fallout will enjoy the ruins here.
The very top was only a short climb away, and the view was well worth the hike. Walking the headlands was a much more pleasant experience than the bridge with its noise. Somehow the actual danger of those sheer cliffs was more tolerable than the much safer bridge plastered with memento mori.
I will admit, dear reader, that when I reached the summit of Hawk Hill I felt ready to call it quits and take a Lyft back to civilization. It was not to be, however, so I descended back to Vista Point once again on my own steam.
After recovering in Sausalito and taking the ferry back (a trip I highly recommend even if you skip the hiking) and enjoying the ferry terminal, I took a slow (recovery?) stroll through the city (go to City Lights if you can) before one more time being seized by the desire to walk up a hill.
Telegraph hill turned out to be the toughest climb of the day. I went up Filbert Street, which attacks the hill head on. After a day of lazily winding roadcuts, it was brusque to say the least.
You’ll just have to take my word on the last bit, I’d burned out my phone battery so no pictures exist!
I’ll admit it: This list from Ars Technica got under my skin. Perhaps it was calculated to do so – I agree that the Enterprise C is one of the coolest Trek ship designs, but I recognize that it’s a dark horse pick. Nonetheless, a discord conversation lead me to this, ranking the Enterprises. I’m not going to include any I haven’t seen, and I’m going to include other federation starships at my discretion because ‘only classes with an enterprise’ is arbitrary.
I don’t usually blog pop culture nerd hot takes, but I do have a passion for fictional scifi starship design, so if you’d like to indulge me, read on.
13. Constitution
There’s no saving this misproportioned relic from the goofy raygun origins of Star Trek. It’s hopeless. It looks like it would have difficulty staying in one piece if it was a model, much less an enormous starship exceeding the speed of light. Somehow the disconnected nacelles of Discovery future ships are more credible than this toothpicky monstrosity.
Many attempts have been made to make it look good, but they have failed. At some point we need to let go of the past and stop rehashing it endlessly for nostalgia money.
Now excuse me while I write the rest of this list heavily biased by nostalgia.
12. Enterprise J
Kinda cool I guess. Or at least cool-adjacent. From that one angle. It’s a one off future that isn’t nearly as clever as the more fleshed out future in Discovery while still trying to communicate the same progression we see from Constitution (big nacelles, small saucer) to Galaxy (small nacelles, big saucer.)
When seen from other angles though, you realize it’s a silly twiggy thing that’s about as sleek as a caltrop.
11. NX-01
It’s trying to be an Akira, but also look like the Phoenix (the little rocket from First Contact) and also like the Constitution. It fails on most of those counts. Everyone inside is dressed like NASA astronauts but the ship looks like a flying saucer. Or a misshapen loaf of bread. In the opening credits we see something that looks like a Lockheed Venture Star with warp nacelles. That would have perfectly matched the vibe the show was going for, but they needed it to look like every other trek ship presumably due to branding. Product of compromise I say.
10. California
The Cali is jank, but of course it’s jank. It’s supposed to be jank. That’s the whole point. It fits the story role and theme of Lower Decks perfectly. It’s the Trek aesthetic taken to a silly extent. It’s unbalanced. It’s got a weird configuration. It looks like it’s about to tip over.
Still gets a low ranking, though, because its jank is somehow more severe than the other jank. Where is your center of mass, Cali?
9. Excelsior
Big long and stately like an ocean liner. Also good looking enough that I don’t hate that it’s the generic federation ship they always use when they need another ship to avoid confusion with the hero ship. Kinda funny that it’s introduced as an unreliable heap dismissed by Scotty and later it becomes the backbone of Starfleet!
It would probably be higher if it’s elbow pylons weren’t so out of place on the otherwise elegant flowing design.
8. Intrepid
Good design overall, but the proportions are very weird and the inline nacelles never looked right. Has some good angles, some weird angles. Don’t get me started on the articulated nacelles!
It definitely sells the premise of a small under-equipped ship far from home though, a muscular design like the Akira wouldn’t have fit the bill.
Would have been pretty sick if they’d visibly patched it with Delta Quadrant tech so that by the end it looks unrecognizable, but the budget certainly wasn’t there for that.
7. Defiant
Federation BOP. It looks and flies more like the Millennium Falcon than any Enterprise. In the grand scale of Trek ships it’s more like a fighter than anything else a Starfleet captain gets to play with. It’s a runabout with all the concentrated high tech rage the Federation can muster bolted on, and wrapped snug in a hull instead of revealing its extremities. How they got around the ‘nacelles need empty space between them’ is anyone’s guess, but this is the only ship on this list that looks like it could take a hard landing and ever fly again.
‘What if Starfleet but no more Mr Nice Guy’ is not only a perfect description of this ship, but also of it’s Captain, Benjamin “For The Uniform” Sisko. That’s right, Benjamin “In the pale Moonlight” Sisko. It has the rare distinction of being the only ship on this list (to my knowledge) employed to ruin a planet’s biosphere on purpose.
6. Sovereign
They blew up the Enterprise D because they thought they could design something that looked better in widescreen.
Let that sink in.
The Sovereign has pretty good proportions but it’s a bit long (widescreen!) and looks less impressive from below. On top and on the side, though, it looks tough. It’s got the benefit of the whole TNG era development of design language plus a special effects budget. It’s sleek and a bit mean, befitting the darker, edgier take on Piccard in it’s debut film, First Contact. After it’s one action sequence, it spends most of the movie getting taken over by aliens, which is the normal occupation for a TNG starship.
5. Crossfield
You have to admire the decision to go with something so different from other Federation ships-unique design elements like the multi ringed saucer and huge delta shaped engineering hull and (eventually) disconnecty nacelles that float around adorably during spore drive jumps. It’s a bold design that signaled that the show wasn’t going to be a rehash in the way that the movie series that preceded it was.
4. Nova
The Nova takes the aggression of the Sovereign, cranks it up, and packages it all into a cute little spaceship smaller than an Intrepid. It’s design wasted on a science vessel; it would have made a better design for the defiant if it had existed a few years earlier.
I will confess some bias here; it’s one of the ships you can fly early on in Flash Trek: Broken Mirror, and it made me feel like I’d made it as a starship captain.
They also gave Harry Kim one as a joke (it’s small and they named it the Rhode Island) which is hilarious.
3. Ambassador
Remember how this started as a response to Ars’s ranking of starships? This is the part where I pretty much agree.
The Ambassador somehow manages to nail the ideal proportions for a standard configuration starfleet vessel. The nacelles aren’t too big, the engineering section isn’t too flat, everything is just right. It’s like if you asked a kid to sketch a new starfleet vessel and didn’t nerd rage when they failed to perfectly match the jank of the Constitution and the Galaxy. It’s design fades into the background like a good soundtrack.
I will confess to bias here too, because I had the micro machines version of this (as well as others) but this is the one that no adult could recall from the show and thus impose some sort of story value on it; I was free to make up my own space adventures for this little guy.
As you can see, Galoob took liberties designing this model, it’s more detailed than the studio model in some places!
2. Akira
Another tough looking federation ship. This looks like starfleet took a nod from the Klingons. The downward angled arms give it a fierce bird-of-prey visage. It has a couple of weird angles, but overall it looks great and has solid proportions. It shows up in the beginning of First Contact to represent a starfleet ready to fight the Borg after the disaster of their last serious showdown, and has some great shots executing Piccard’s plan to blow up a Borg Cube. It looks sleek and mean but still weighty which is a rare mix for a Trek ship.
1. Galaxy
I don’t care if it looks jank or top-heavy. The biggest statement it makes is: this ain’t hard scifi. It’s carrying a whole civilization around in that giant saucer. A world that the audience will love to inhabit episode after episode. So of course it’s got a big silly saucer. It still somehow looks less likely to fall apart than the Constitution.
If the constitution says ‘this is schlocky space western stuff’ the Galaxy says ‘This is high concept science fiction that we are going to take extremely seriously, perhaps too seriously for a few seasons.’
If the Defiant is the Federation’s closed fist, this is the Federation’s welcoming wave. It says “look, we mastered physics completely, but we don’t want to fight about it, we just want to party on the holodeck while we explore the farthest reaches of the universe.” And that’s the kind of optimism that Trek can, on a good day, embody.
Looking back at this list, it’s interesting what stuck with me. They’re all vehicles! I guess I just find vehicles appealing. Some vehicles toys are well documented, so I won’t bore you with a repetition of the hotwheels wiki. What i want to consider today are what you might call modern “Penny Toys” are the kind of thing you’d find in a gumball machine, or on the table at the end of a party, discarded. They’re of a sort of hard to find now: not tied (legally anyway) to a franchise or character. But there’s something alluring about the mystery of trying to track down who made them, so let’s do it.
Bruder Mini: Space
Bruder is a toy company that still exists, making die cast vehicles. They no longer support their line of “mini” plastic vehicles, though they mention it in their history. There was a space line in silver, white, and blue, and more realistic vehicles in bright colors.
In Unit 01 colors no less. I’ve seen a small number of other palettes online.
I don’t know if the zany colored ones came out before or after the more common blue/white/silver ones.
Saucer in classic colors
Bruder Mini: Trains
Though long lost, I definitely had an an engine and a couple of passenger cars. Managed to find a lot of them on Ebay. They’re still adorable. They’re a neat combination of bright colors, crisp detail, and functionality. Not perfect fit and finish by any means, but at this price point, who’s complaining?
Accoutrements/Archie McPhee
These designs seem familiar
Not everyone was content to use public domain designs like flying saucers.
The easy part of figuring these out is figuring out where the design comes from-they’re mostly vehicles from thunderbirds (ignore the Star Wars one for now.)
You can see that the mold has been altered-it used to say Hong Kong but that’s been scratched out and China has been added.
The holes made them perfect to mount on Micromachine star trek stands
I initially had a tough time finding any attestation of these neat little plastic ships online. I know that at one point Accouterments sold them in a big tub (probably a gross each) but I can’t find that product photo any longer. I know I discovered this during the google era, because the models on the left are ones I purchased online.
They were called ‘alien and spaceship invasion.’ No luck on the star wars ship. I do wonder if it came from the same factory, but I have very little to go on for it. It uses a different type of plastic, but I swear the overall sensibility is similar enough. It came in a grocery store blister pack with a cooler looking spaceship with the same ‘moulded top screwed into acrylic bottom’ design, and a short knock off lightsaber type thing.
Z-Cardz
These plasticard punchouts came in randomized packs. The ink has held up surprisingly well. Influences are sometimes clear-a couple look like they’re from Cowboy Bebop, and I think I see a Droid Fighter. Classic shmups seem to have influenced these heavily as well.
We had a lot of fun building these back in the day. I managed to get my hands on some un-punched ones, remind me to scan them so you can make your own copies out of plasticard. If that’s important to you for some reason.
This product line eventually evolved into much larger more detailed models, and apparently a tabletop game.
Shackman & Co Five Piece Train Set
Five to a pack
It was surprisingly easy to find these considering I had only a single one and no accompanying documentation. I think I just searched for “small plastic train 90s” and the like.
These seemed to have a random assortment of colors. They’re four parts: two sides, top, and chassis. Very neat little pieces. All identical. They shipped in a Christmas ornament which itself looked like a train. Something about the soft shape and tiny size made them super appealing to my kid self. Always wondered if there was a whole line of these, but it’s just the one mold.
Pretty close to N scale though.
I heard you like trains so I put a train in your train
It’s no secret that I’ve been captivated by trying to make vehicle driving feel good for as long as I’ve been programming. Initially Hovertank 22 (formerly OWTD) used Kinematic movement as described here. But it wasn’t quite right. I have a strong memory of how much more fun World Of Tanks was after they introduced proper physics. I decided that if a third person perspective (as oppose to top down) was going to be used, I should probably use some sort of physics.
As you can see, though wonky, the Tilter is able to navigate the terrain. It’s using a single visible steering wheel in front and the tracks are represented by two invisible wheels in the back. This movement model is, of course, built for car driving games, so the trike configuration cuts into the stability badly. The requirements of “Eamonn’s Ideal Vehicle Game” and thus Hovertank 22, however, call for tanks. Unfortunately, this has major disagreements with the movement model.
The basic idea, I figured, for implementing tank movement has been to treat each track as a series of wheels. To turn right, you drive the wheels on the left side and brake or reverse the wheels on the right side. In a real tracked vehicle, this causes it to turn. In Godot’s model, however, wheel slip seems to be very all-or-nothing: the vehicle stays in motion nicely but as soon as you cut the wheel and one track slips, the whole vehicle starts to drift uncontrollably. While some amount of drifting was desired, this turns out to be unplayable. And, worse, messing with wheel slip values didn’t really help.
Editor screenshot showing how the Cobra’s wheels are configured
Another problem with this movement style was that when the vehicle was in motion, differential steering worked far more effectively than from a dead stop (I assume that this has something to do with how overcoming friction is coded.) In order to turn from a stop you need to overcome the friction of all of the wheels, so turning while stopped was impractically slow. I implemented a fix which increased power when you weren’t moving but it was unsatisfactory and resulted in a vehicle that jerked around suddenly and violently.
I suspect that customizing the 6dof version might be able to overcome these limitations, but I don’t have the bandwidth to try it. Similarly, it might be very possible to implement this sort of thing as a custom integrator and bunch of rays, but again, that was more of a lift than I had time for.
Faced with basically a negative result from this experiment, I’ve decided that I’m going to roll back (ha) from the VehicleBody approach. I may switch back to a top-down perspective, and also may try switching out heighmapped terrain for tile terrain.
So what did I learn from this little excursion? You really need to validate your assumptions about how something is going to behave before you stake a project on it. I’m glad I didn’t fully do that (I still have a path forward for Hovertank ’22), though pulling it out is definitely going to be a setback.
The central feature of Westfield State University’s campus is a large globe sculpture. This has been true for a while, but not always the same globe. In 2015, during the excitement around the Patriots Superbowl win, enthusiastic students cleared the benches, rejoiced on the green, and climbed inside the globe. This wasn’t the first time the campus had hosted an impromptu outdoor party of this nature – I seem to recall a similar reaction to a Redsox championship in 2013 (but it could have been a playoff game – my memory is foggy. But this time, the globe sustained major damage. The overly enthusiastic students shook the globe until it strained against its joints, and ultimately failed in several places. Tectonic plates torn asunder like something out of a disaster film.
You may notice from these pictures that the entire continent of Australia is missing. However, this was a pre-existing condition – I’m pretty sure the absent continent left a hole which allowed the revelers access to the interior. So consider this excerpt press release that the school released about the incident:
The university inherited the Globe from Stanley Home Products and it is missing the continent of Australia because it was not within Stanley’s global business reach.
This is an incredibly weird statement. As you can see from the first image in this article, the globe used to feature Australia. The loss of Australia running joke on campus. Rumors abound about where it ended up (which I won’t relate to protect the innocent… or guilty.) The story was, however, that it up and fell off. To my knowledge, no great effort was made to replace it.
So why make up this absurd lie? It’s so easily verified to be false – campus promotional material (including the desktop background of campus PCs, the file photo above!) contained images of Australia on the globe. Anyone who’d attended the school during or before 2011 (latest possible year it could have fallen off.) It’s just a silly idea: nobody commissions a globe sculpture missing a continent. It’s not a thing people do. Nobody would accept a donation of an incomplete globe like that.
I guess I’d never imagined that level of brazen dishonesty from an institution before. I suppose that was a very naive, 2015 attitude to have.
The author of the statement was contacted for further insight, but there was no response.
The damaged globe was replaced by a much nicer sculpture which does feature Australia.
EV Nova was a formative game for me. One thing I noticed about it, and wanted to document, was that there are a lot of what I’ll call name collisions: names that are almost the same but refer to different things. Did I miss any? Leave a comment, I’ll add it.
Temmin Shard / Shard (faction)
LPAD station, where Temmin Shard takes you
Temmin Shard is a character in a side quest. However, “Shard” is also used to describe a faction formed when you win the Fed campaign and everyone else comes after you.
Krane / Kane (incl. Port Kane, Kania, and the Kane band)
Port Kane
Earth, with Kane band, but also a place where you might encounter Krane
Omata Kane invented galaxy-spanning hypergates and a bunch of things are named Kane in her honor, including earth’s artificial ring, the Kane Band. There’s also a Port Kane in the Kania system. Krane is the sociopath leader of the secret fed faction that you work for in some campaigns. Very different people.
Glimmer / Gli-Tech / Gli-Tech-Nia
Home of the GLi-Tech corporation (formerly known as GLiMMER until the discovery of the Glimmer system)…
Both are companies that make missiles. Huh? Gli Tech also owns an entire planet, called Gli-Tech-Nia. But wait, Glimmer is also the name of a star system. Surely this piece of fluff for Gli-Tech-Nia clears it up:
Associated Guild Of Free Traders / Free Traders
Pirate carrier used by both
Two opposing pirate factions that fly the same ships. One is hostile by default, the other isn’t. No idea which one though; and feds don’t care which one you blow up either. According to Word Of Atmos this is intentional.
Polaris / Polaron Cannon / Polaron Torpedo
Polaris are one of the game’s major factions. Polaron refers to a Federation weapon. But the weapon is pink… the color of Polaris technology. And the Polaris have a Polaron Torpedo which is pink but apparently unrelated. Maybe Polaron refers to some specific scifi gubbin, but then that’s still colliding with the Polaris.
Vella / Vell-os
Vell-os are a race of psychic transhumans and mostly extinct, Vella are a neighboring Arouran subfaction.
Wraiths / Wraith Cannon / Wrathii
A wraith
Wrathii fired from a Wraith cannon (no relation)
Wraiths are a race of sentient space-monsters, Wrathii are pink projectiles that the Polaris fire out of a Wraith Cannon. Also the Wraiths are right next to the Polaris.
TOWCB / TCTLIDS
The Ones Who Came Before are your standard ancient race of aliens trope, TCTLIDS are The Creature That Lives In Deep Space harvested for drugs, an abandoned plot hook that somehow remained in the timeline preamble.
