Angels from Another Pin

Angels from Another Pin
(Faithful, joyful, and triumphant)

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The socks were of NO HUMAN FORM!
Blood and squeak toys for my Lord Arioch! --Matt Pyson
I'm dancin' like a monkey!
At this tech level, you get a sock puppet. --Mike DeSanto
Both me and my expectations were always high.
My boss said I have exactly ten minutes to crush you like a bug, set you on fire, point, and laugh.
But thanks to you, our holiday to the Moon has become an inter-planetary war!
We've got three level 4 weird-asses still active on the East Coast, plus at least a dozen class 5's west of the Mississippi.
This story reads like a cross between a Danielle Steele novel and a software licensing agreement. --Mark Sachs
1990 called, they want their style back.
Keeping a straight face for the duration.
The streets are paved with diamonds and there's just so much to see.
I'm Cosmo D from outer space, here to rock the human race.
VENN DIAGRAM THAT LOOK LIKE TWO BIG CIRCLES EQUAL BAD PUBLIC POLICY.
I will most likely notify you all the next time I alter world trends
Canada: The Betamax of North America
The soap bubble of justice can never be popped by the toothpick of evil! --Matt Smith
There are two types of people in this world: those who think giant steam powered robotic spiders are stupid, and those who don't.
One more word and you're off to the fire mine. To mine fire. It hurts!
I'm coming to the conclusion that the past really is another country, one that sends invading armies into this one.

30 November 2001

Joe will like this one: Blackadder meets the Prisoner. It helps to have seen both shows which are being parodied.
You can make artificial life (of a kid-friendly sort) and release it into the virtual fishtank at the Boston Museum of Science. Your fish will interact with programmed background stuff (like a shark) as well as with the fish created by museum visitors.

29 November 2001

The ultimate wireless mouse: Disney's theme-park-wide radio network. Watch your credit card info fly into the void, protected by security through obscurity!	Mike Ryan
Another little online simulation/game: Make particles dance to sliding scales of mutual attraction, repulsion, and friction.
It's a cool, stylish yellow, it glows fluorescently, and it's mildly radioactive. It's uranium glass.

28 November 2001

Some folks are worried about the fact that the contents of your monitor can be read remotely via radio waves. (See Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon for a fictionalized version of this.) Well, there's no gaping security hole that some crazy European won't turn into a fun little software toy! Now you can turn your monitor into a short-range AM radio transmitter like Mr. Microphone. Too bad the program is only for Unix.

27 November 2001

Maniac Beetle, a.k.a. Ben Loukota, asks: What's your secret agent name?	Ben Loukota
At last, the complete answer to the koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" (It is not "cl" for the left hand and "ap" for the right, although that strikes me as the correct answer.)

26 November 2001

Have a castle you need knocked down? Contact the guys of Team Tormentum.	Mike Ryan
Random high-concept heroic action: Together they fight crime!
Ricochet Robots require your help! Help them get to their target in this cute little game/contest, which updates daily.

21 November 2001

Angels from Another Pin will be on hiatus until after Thanksgiving. Gobble gobble gobble.
Once again, There are many guards in the castle!
Need to practice your typing? Why not try some pangrams? A quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog...

20 November 2001

Jon Acheson mentioned that John Carmack (best known as the co-creator of Doom and Quake) has started his own rocketry company, Armadillo Aerospace. Turns out they have a Web site with lots of pictures.
In 1997, researchers created a composite of 48 minutes of pictures from satellites to create an image of the Leonid meteors as seen from space.

19 November 2001

The Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector at Kamioka Observatory has exploded.
I wish I had found this closer to Halloween: The complete works of H.P. Lovecraft. If you've never read Lovecraft before, try out his stories Pickman's Model and The Call of Cthulhu. For a quick introduction to Lovecraft, read the very short story The Statement of Randolph Carter.

16 November 2001

The Huge Robot was cluttering up the design of this page, so I moved it over to the Permanent Links page.
Even when they're wrong, conservatives can be pretty funny. Ignore the politics and the commentary (which are quite stupid) and read this as if it were science fiction (which, since it reflects the world-view of a man whose mind is made up and no facts will change it, it might as well be): "Good evening, and welcome to 'All Is Lost,' the nightly public affairs program produced by NPR and the BBC. I am your host, Perfectly Modulated Voice of Reason."
If you're looking for something to do this weekend, why not go to the World Toilet Summit? Bring a magazine...	Ben Loukota

15 November 2001

Local boy makes good: Afghan general Sayed Jaffar Naderi is a former fast food worker from Allentown, PA. Would you like grenades with that?

14 November 2001

We now have a recipe for Sumerian beer; all we need is the Sumerian word for "D'oh" and we can complete our archaeological picture of the mythical Sumer Simpson...	Ben Loukota
Xerxes' Canal was real but short-lived. It was 50 feet wide, built completely by hand labor, and failed to allow the Persians to conquer and hold Greece.

13 November 2001

In Vernor Vinge's novel The Peace War, there is a game called "Celeste" where one tries to pilot a spacecraft around the solar system within certain fuel parameters. I have always thought this was a cool idea (I had implemented a version of that idea on the startup disks for the IBM systems in a lab at Penn State back in the late 80s, long before I read the novel). In this vein, some kind soul has created a penguin-based orbital simulation in Flash. After the first couple of levels, you get to the sections with gravity and orbits. My high score is 173634.

12 November 2001

There's not much on the Web about Therese Humbert, even though she scandalized France in the early twentieth century and nearly brought the Third Republic to financial ruin.
At long last, the sordid tale of Dogbert's origin can be told!

9 November 2001

"I see a great hand, reaching out of the stars..." Header art clipped from the latest Bob the Angry Flower. If you folks like it, it stays. (P.S. Babylon 5 sounds!)
Some enterprising fellow has built his own 80s-style arcade game cabinet. The site gives info on how to do it yourself. It would only cost a couple of hundred bucks. Hmmmm.	Glenn Juskiewicz
Matt Jeffries, the art director for the original Star Trek series for whom the "Jeffries Tube" is named, is auctioning some of his stuff. He owns a few gewgaws like Captain Kirk's tunic and the Enterprise itself.	Glenn Juskiewicz

8 November 2001

In the 1960s, The CIA was stealing ideas from the Disney playbook: They were using cats as mobile spy platforms. The first cat the CIA used was run over by a taxi.	Ben Loukota
Yahoo is showing a slideshow on the unearthing of an Egyptian doctor's tomb.	Glenn Juskiewicz
Warning: The Future Is Here. Teleportec can rent you a room where you can hold a meeting via holographic telepresence. Glenn wants the cool Star Wars holographic phone calls; I want to be able to address the UN Security Council via a 100-meter-tall hologram. From the Moon.	Glenn Juskiewicz

7 November 2001

At Ivy's request, the Permanent Links have returned. You'll find their new home over on The Side of the Angels under "Features."
If you know even the tiniest bit about British electronic music, this fictitious chat log is great. Warning: Contains copious bad language.
The weather on a neutron star is probably much like weather here on Earth--except that the winds cause the atmosphere to fuse more fiercely...

6 November 2001

Today is election day in the U.S. Go out and vote!
Archaic bacteria will one day create cardboard, paper, and perhaps two-by-fours.

5 November 2001

World Power Systems. Bask in the scams of another era. It was a simpler time...

2 November 2001

Automatic Spirograph. Automatic Spirograph? Automatic Spirograph!
The most recent scramjet test failed.	Ben Loukota
Southern Delaware is the world headquarters for pumpkin cannonry, better known as Punkin Chunkin. I'm goin'.	Eric Furrow

1 November 2001

Halloween is such a cool holiday that I'm extending it a day. Witness a mad heiress' obsession and that staple of 1970s TV shows, the Winchester Mystery House; the weirdest building anywhere. And I'm including the math and physics buildings at Penn State in that estimation.
This tongue-in-cheek three-page how-to guide explains how to make a crop circle. Perfect for signalling any aliens who may be lurking behind nearby comets.