"Theory is when something doesn't work and everyone knows why. Practice is when something works, and nobody knows why. We practise both: nothing works and nobody knows why." - Kovu
Take Her to Sea, Mr. Murdoch!
Author: Kovu | Date: Apr 10 2012, 14:09:07 CEST
Originally I planned to post this at the date of Titanic's sinking, but I figured out there's more about this ship than the famous disaster, as the ship is something like a good old companion to me (I'm a big fan of the old lady), so... I prefer to celebrate its 'birth', or better said its maiden voyage... alright, here we go:
I'm not a religious person, nor do I really believe in souls and ghosts. But there is something familiarly mysterious about ships I couldn't describe with other words than 'spirit', 'soul' or 'ghost'. Interestingly, there seems to be no other type of vehicles humans feel equally tied up with as with ships. And probably the most famous vessel out there is a ship that didn't even make it for longer than 2 weeks: RMS Titanic. Everyone knows the Titanic with its four funnels (of which only 3 were used for the engines), a presumably 'unsinkable' masterpiece of engineering, that began its maiden voyage at the 10th of April 1912 in Southampton (with a stop in Cherbourg, for the boarding of central european passengers) but sank at the 15th of April (02:20 local time, UTC-3) after it struck an iceberg (14th of April, 23:40). When Titanic died and sank, she took 1517 human lives with her. Only 710 people survived the disaster, mostly because Titanic 'intentionally' lacked lifeboats (White Star Lines decided to only load half of lifeboats planned in order to have more comfort on the deck, because the ship was designed to be unsinkable), but also because the 'elite passengers' tried to avoid that the lifeboats would be filled with the passenger count possible and other ships like the Californian and the Carpathia simply were too far away or just failed to assist the Titanic. The tragedy enamoured people all around the world like no other naval accident, even though there were similar or even worse ones before.
73 years later, in 1985, the wreck of Titanic was discovered by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard. It lies at 41° 43′ 55″ N, 49° 56′ 45″ W, approximately 13.5 miles southeast the point of distress call. This released a new hype around the ship, somehow it's like Titanic's unbroken spirit was freed from its grave. There's circulating just as many myths about the ships sinking as do facts, of course, but people are talking about her, and she's still boosting everyones imagination, same as she releases fear among people. There've been made movies with her (she was even guest starring in Ghostbusters II), about her and on her (who wouldn't have enjoyed to play on James Cameron's Titanic-model?), even though she doesn't roam the seas for such a long time anymore. And while everyone knows what the Titanic is, hardly anyone remembers that she had 2 sisters, and that she in fact belonged to the Olympic-class: RMS Olympic, RMS Titanic, HMHS Britannic (formerly RMS Gigantic). The construction of the Olympic was finished at the 29th of May 1911, 2 days before the launching of Titanic's hull, and the ship was already in service when Titanic had its maiden voyage. She was on her way home to Europe when Titanic sent distress calls, but too far away to assist the sister ship at that time. After the Titanic-disaster, White Star Lines ordered the modification of Olympic's hull. A double walled hull, better watertight compartments and additional lifeboats should make the ocean liner safer. Between 1914 and 1918 she served as troop-transporter in the first world war, and despite all the dangers a war offers, the ship perfectly survived that service. Ironically, Olympic even made it to the title 'Submarine Killer', as it's probably the only ocean liner that ever sank an enemy warship: on 12 May 1918, captain Hayes ordered to ram the German submarine U103, which potentially threatened Olympic but wasn't ready to fire. Olympic's portside propeller slashed through the submarine's pressure vessel, and U103 sank. After the war, the legendary Olympic successfully served as ocean liner until 1935, when it was scrapped (last service: New York - Southampton 12 April 1935, scrapping in Jarrow 11 October 1935). The other sister of Titanic, the Britannic (originally Gigantic, the ship - still under construction - was renamed Britannic after Titanic's disaster), served as hospital ship in the first world war, but never its original purpose. On the 6 December 1915 admiralty put the ship in service, and it sank on the 21st of November 1916 in Mudros, mostlikely after it hit a German seamine.
Titanic isn't the only passenger vessel ever to sink. Yet it's probably the only one public will always remember. This year, on the 13th of January, the Costa Concordia hit a rock at Le Scole in the south of the island of Giglio (42° 21′ 20″ N, 10° 55′ 50″ O) and sank at the port of Porto. Luckily, the incident didn't count as many victims (32). Anyway, how fast will the Concordia be forgotten? Who remembers the Estonia, which sank on 28 September 1994, making up the biggest naval accident in European history after the war (852 victims)? Whenever a passenger ship sinks, people tend to compare it to the Titanic disaster, and that while there would be so much other reference. There's even worse accidents with higher death toll, such as: Doña Paz (20. December 1987 - 4'386 victims), Le Joola (26. September 2002 - 1'863 victims) or Tek Sing (1822 - approx. 1'600 victims). But none of them are really remembered.
Now, to get back to my introduction of 'spirits' and 'souls': personally, I see them as a product of our own memories and imagination. We remember how people would think, feel and behave... I think it's that familiar feeling we miss but also enjoy after loved ones died. This is how people remain among the community, and what we can do for these 'souls' is quite simple: we should never forget them. If we preserve their history, advice and thinking, they'll exist forever. And, somehow, this is even projected on objects we feel tied up with. The old lady Titanic managed to be omnipresent. She had a short 'life', but infiltrated our brains to last forever. Whenever I see video records of the diving expeditions to Titanic's wreck, there's a feeling overtaking myself, a feeling that can't be compared with anything else, but also can't be explained... it's simply amazing when the bow of the lady - the ghost - appears, and I say that while I haven't ever even been down there (at a depth of 3'803 m) myself. Sadly, the wreck is about to discompose completely now. Ferro bacteria weaken the hull and construction, which will lead to a collapse within the next ten or twenty years.
Here's two nice videos of the wreck I found on YouTube:
In the age of video games and simulations there's various possibilities to make your own Titanic experience. Just some weeks ago, I rediscovered an old game I loved so much back at its time: TITANIC: Adventure out of Time by Cyberflix. The game dates back to 1996, which makes it 'almost as old' as the Titanic itself (measured by the progress computing technology makes year by year), but it's still fun to play and it's amazing how much detail went into the ship. You can explore almost everything, from the fake funnel over the passenger rooms to the bow cargo hold, everything, even the car is there.
Another great alternative (from which I've actually composed most of the 3D-Titanic-shots in this article) is VSTEP's Ship Simulator 2008, which comes with a highly detailed model of the RMS Titanic, allowing you to take control of this amazing ship, as well as to walk through the open decks.
For the fans of the wreck - as I've figured out recently - there's a simulation as well: Dive to The Titanic.
Also, what many people don't know: there's one ship closely connected to Olympic and Titanic that still exists: the SS Nomadic. The Nomadic served as tender ship to transport passengers from the port of Cherbourg to Olympic-class liners, because those were too big for the port of Cherbourg.
A very interesting place for Titanic's fans is Belfast's Titanic Museum. While I haven't ever been there, I've been told it's a great experience, even with replicas of rooms and stairs of the ship.
Remember the Titanic - she was a great ship with a tragic fate.
After PS Vita comes Orbis?
Author: Kovu | Date: Apr 02 2012, 10:20:59 CEST
It's probably just rumors, but an insider trusted by kotaku.com has spilled details about the upcoming Sony console. Obviously, the release of the next PS generation is planned for 2013, and it will follow the trend in gaming industry that used games are blocked from reuse.
I know this isn't entirely Sony's fault, but it makes me think about if it's even worth looking forward to the next generation consoles. Even when considering what a fan of the Gran Turismo series I am, I'll probably skip the next PlayStation, because the freedom of me as a user completely vanishes with the next generation of consoles. Also... seeing how they can't even guarantee that my data (which is stored in their cloud services) is safe from hacker attacks and can't be protected by myself... do I need that anymore?
When I legally own a copy of a game, why is it they can disallow me to play that game on a foreign console? This is just another attempt to produce more economic growth out of something that already reached its limits... it has nothing to do with law or piracy... it's just milking the users. Honestly, this shouldn't be supported. We should go back playing board games instead: when you buy a board game, you can play it whereever you want, whenever you want. They don't need no internet connection, no cloud services, same as they have no consumption of electric power.
Help, my Periphery Dissolves! ;)
Author: Kovu | Date: Jan 08 2012, 22:14:38 CET
I've been starting this discussion on several German speaking forums this week, however, I think this is of interest for anyone, and I want to know your thoughts about it.
Anyway - how this came up recently - I began to think about why any external computer device I bought during the past five years was faulty, somehow. The most prominent example would be the Logitech Laser-Wheelmouse I bought 2 years ago. I got it for my desktop PC, for graphics and vector drawing work. The mouse was perfect, very precise and all. However, last November, when 'reactivating' my Desktop PC after a long time (I've been entirely working on my EeePC, for the whole year actually [funny, ey? I don't seem to need those towers anymore]) for some vector drawing, I figured out the mouse wheel sticks to my finger. It must be something with the flexibilizer in the synthetic rubber or lack of stabilizer that creates this phenomenon. I thought, how can this be, I almost never used this mouse. This mousewheel discomposes while I have computer mice that are older than 10 / 15 years, which remain working perfectly...
And it isn't the first time I discovered this. The oldest 2 game controllers of my PS3, and all controllers of my PS2 show the same problem on their joysticks.
What we're talking about here is planned obsolescence. It's not like one wouldn't know about it. The term isn't really new to me. But it takes some time to realize that, actually, everything we buy and use, is somehow designed for planned obsolescence, because industry wants us to buy new products instead of using the old one (even though the old one would still perfectly serve its purpose).
Whatever we buy, it really doesn't matter if it's cheap or expensive, if it's a watch, a car, a printer, ketchup, clothes, underwear... it's all designed to fail at some calculated point, normally after the warranty time line has passed. It's designed to fail, it's designed for 'trash', in order that we continuously buy new stuff. Most of economic growth bases on this.
Now, if you're lucky, you bought a product that really gets a mechanic malfunction after the planned time of usage. If not, you bought a product that actually can't be designed as malfunctional as the producer wants it to be. In that case they simply implant it a chip that defines after how many usages the device fails. Most prominently this happens with printers. Some have a chip that sends an error message after, say, 4000 prints and then blocks the printer. Normally, the user can't reset this chip, or at least mechanically solve the problem. The user is forced to send the printer to the service technician. However, in most cases the technician is more expensive than a new printer, and voilà, we bought a new printer (however, the clever ones search the internet for downloadable software allowing to reset said chip). Another attempt of planned obsolescence in printers is the consumption of ink in inkjets. They are programmed to increase the consumption of (often very expensive) ink print by print. This is waste of ink to produce growth.
Considering there's light bulbs that can last longer than 100 years CLICK HERE, why would 1000 hours be an optimum life expectancy?
What annoys me is that I feel highly manipulated. To be honest, how can we ever again buy products without thinking: 'they are cheating me'? Not only that. It's ecological nonsense. If we're forced to buy new products in short lifetime cycles, we also produce waste in short cycles. Toxic waste. And we waste considerable resources. And guess where our western waste is dumped: not in the western world. Our waste is dumped in underdeveloped countries, because the western world thinks it's too expensive to properly separate waste in our own countries.
I wish you a merry christmas and a happy new year!
New 3D Images
Author: Kovu | Date: Oct 15 2011, 21:01:54 CEST
There's a lot of new 3D images I've been uploading recently, and some of them are really cool. The latest update provides you with shots from the 'Gondwana - das Praehistorium' exhibition in Schiffweiler (near Saarbrücken, Germany), as well as interesting new Landscape and 'Gran Turismo' shots:
I've constantly been updating the 3D anaglyphs section during the past few weeks. Along with some other random pictures, there's nice new shots of flowers, and some really cool paleontology ones I've taken in Aathal this week.
Enjoy!
Selling Our Lives to Google & Co.
Author: Kovu | Date: May 15 2011, 20:52:18 CEST
You know what really annoys me these days? Well, it isn't like it's anything new to computing world, we've known of it for years, but... it's cloud computing. Internet based cloud computing (because I think it's a difference to have a private cloud in your own network), to be exact.
Sony's current Network Outage (after Hackers stole sensitive data of millions of Playstation, Qriocity and other users) perfectly demonstrates how cloud computing can't be safe. Its biggest problem is its often propagated advantage: centralized data. Hackers no longer need to break into your individually protected home network and computers, they simply take it where everything is stored: at the company's servers.
But that isn't the only problem I'm having with those services. What annoys me even more is how we sell our lives to companies, which will inevitably exploit our biggest good: everyone's privacy. What's the interest of big companies like Google or Facebook when providing us with free services? Nothing is for 'free' in todays world. Somehow we pay for it, and we pay for it with our privacy. Our privacy is exploited, our data, our behavior is collected... the data is either sold to third party companies, or simply used to personalize adverts. I know, this has happened before, otherwise Google wouldn't be what it is today, but, Google is taking the next step to make profit from our privacy: cloud based notebooks and cloud based music services...
Granted, it's practical if one doesn't have to synchronize music devices anymore, I see that, but - at what price will we use the service? It means that Google, and with that probably music industry too, gets control over our own music collection. Google wouldn't offer this service if it couldn't exploit it. I may be of the older generation of *.mp3-listeners, I know, but I simply like to actually get me a hardware copy of an artist's Album (on a CD) and to rip it down on *.mp3's for my own digital collection. I wouldn't ever buy *.mp3 tracks from a store. I don't want DRM on my own files. I don't want media players forcing me to use their directory structures. And I don't want Google to exploit my privacy up on my music collection.
Further, regarding Chromebooks, I don't see what's so great about processing and storing files in Google's cloud. Again, this will be exploited. Our copyrighted material will be exploited. Not to mention what happens when hackers break into Google's cloud where our files are stored. At PSN it was just some personal data and credit card data that has been stolen... but what will be stolen in Google's cloud? Half our lives... our text, our images, our friends information, our contacts, our bookmarks, our e-mails... all with just one attack.
There's good reason to be frightened of this technology... and it shouldn't be supported, no matter what advantages companies promise to come with these services.
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