I decided to ride Amtrak back home after visiting my folks, because I dislike the indignity of traveling by air in the United States. I’ve had more than my fair share of “random bag checks,” and I disagree with the security theater at TSA checkpoints that does more to insult than protect. While a train obviously takes longer than an airplane flight, it provides the individual with a dignified travel experience. You walk from the station to the tracks, board your train, and off you go. I opted for a roomette aboard Amtrak’s Silver Meteor so that I could sleep more easily on the overnight train ..read more

A few weeks, I had an opportunity to spend an afternoon at the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia before taking country roads south to visit my folks. The Museum of Aviation is HUGE! There are four buildings (some with multiple floors) full of planes, drones, helicopters, support vehicles, equipment, and exhibits. There is a VR experience and other interactive exhibits. The four buildings are surrounded by additional aircraft that you can walk around (I walked 1.6 miles while I was there). Admission is free (but donations are accepted). The museum is staffed ..read more

After discovering Don Crabb’s thoughts on AI, which I wrote about yesterday here, I did a little more digging in the Internet Archive. This turned up an incredible treasure trove of files collected by David Craig called Apple Lisa Document and Media Collection, which included a photocopy of Jef Raskin’s interview in the amazing book by Susan Lammers titled Programmers at Work, which can be checked out for reading on archive.org here or online at this website created by Lammers). Jef Raskin, who wrote the user manual for the Apple II and founded the team that would go on to launch the Macintos ..read more

While searching around for early uses of algorithmic text, image, and music generating software from yesteryear (which I have been documenting on this page), I stumbled upon Don Crabb’s Guide to Macintosh System 7.5.5 (1996), which is a guide to using Apple’s System Software 7.5 on Macintosh and Power Macintosh computers in the mid-1990s. In Chapter 5, “The Multimedia is the Message,” he writes the following prophetic passages that point to right about where we are now with giving generative AI access to our files so that we can chat with an AI about the contents of those files–for ideation ..read more

When Y and I lived in Atlanta, our house had a downstairs bedroom that we used for an office. However, it was an odd room. The kitchen and downstairs bathroom had tiled floors, and the rest of the downstairs–dining room, living room, and den–had hardwood floors. That downstairs bedroom had medium pile carpet. When our friend Masaya asked if he could visit us, we thought it was a good opportunity to refinish the downstairs bedroom as a guest room with hardwood floors. Here’s how we refinished its floor to match the stain of the rest of the downstairs. First, I pulled up the carpet in the close ..read more

In March 2019, I met up with my buddy Alan Lovegreen to visit the Intrepid Museum, a WWII-era air craft carrier that had been repurposed as an air and space museum moored on the west side of Manhattan. Alan and I had been hired the same year to work at City Tech in the English Department. While he was there, we worked together to inaugurate the City Tech Science Fiction Collection. Soon after that, he moved back to California for a new job. He was back in NYC to give a talk, so we picked a cool place to meet up. Some exhibits overlap those at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and ..read more

Concluding a week of aerospace museum posts (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, NASM Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, 1929 Ford Tri-Motor Model 4-AT Visit to SSI, and Deutsches Museum in Munich), here is one featuring photos of a visit my folks and I made to the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum just outside of Savannah, Georgia in July 2010. The Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum honors the Eighth Air Force which has its beginnings in World War II. It earned its “MIghty” moniker due to its overwhelming personnel and equipment capability, logistical prowess, and power application on the air batt ..read more

Yesterday, I shared photos of Y’s and my trip to the Stephen Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM). Today, I have some photos of our stop at the NASM on the National Mall in Washington, DC. I think of museums of technology, like the NASM, as a kind of technical communication medium. Of course, the work of the displays, diagrams, multimedia, and explanatory text are different kinds of technical communication created to facilitate learning, contextualization, and curiosity. But, the museum as a whole–the system of the museum and its totality, its holism–is ..read more

In August 2008, Y and I visited Washington, DC. One of our stops was the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum, which holds some amazing aerospace artifacts including the B-29 Enola Gay, an SR-71 Blackbird, and Space Shuttle Enterprise. There are also many military aircraft, space related artifacts, robots (and rovers), computers, toys, and even a Hugo Award. Below, I’ve included photos grouped around an artifact or theme, but they are not arranged in a particular order–kind of like meandering around such a huge museum. Enola Gay B-29 Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird ..read more

Skylab Orbital Workshop Interior, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, DC. Photo taken in 2008. As I wrote last week here, I reached out to Steve Lenzen via postal mail about Space Station L-4, the Earth Sciences Educational Program from 1977, after I found his contact information on an archived version of GPN’s website. He worked at GPN from 1976 to 2006, and he co-founded Destination Education. He kindly replied to me via email with important details about the history of GPN and why it might be impossible to find a copy of the series. He explains: "The series was produced by Childr ..read more