Whats in the Backroom?
All of us who love the theater, the stars as recreated, and those marvelous machines that recreate the magic, we stand in awe of the stage. That stage is the monster in the center, projecting heaven.. that stage is the very firmament above reflecting the glory that can be within reach. But equally fascinating is the backroom .. backstage - where the fuel for the furnance is kept, developed, hidden away perhaps for years before bursting forth in new uses and combinations to light once again the stage.
I remember well my one visit to Universal Studios north of Los Angeles, I was fascinated with the sound stages and recreated outdoor sets of course, but it was those prop warehouses that were the most crazy to me. Giant lions .. all manner of beasts, columns, facades, lights, and you name it... all silently gathered together remembering moments in the sun or under the stars.
Blessed is the backroom - nurture it.. pile it high with new things and old, and shop there regularly ..
I have an old tobacco/hay barn that serves that purpose .. 2 stories, upstairs it is a cathedral laced by ancient petrofied tree limbs from decades ago .. below its ancient stalls now hold treasure of a different sort . Planetarium museums .. magicians warehouses .. restorers of divine engineering feats of the past - look in the backroom. Go on safari through the these places late at night and listen for the whispers of the exotic and commonplace-turned-exotic. Admire and build the stage yes! But treasure whats behind it.
If you don't, you just may be missing half the adventure!
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Incremental Progress
Home planetariums very much require incremental progress on a number of fronts, even if you just go out and buy a Homestar. For unless you are going to use it as a nightlite, you won't be content with turning it onto your celing. You need a place! Accessories! And thus it begins ...
These lessons I learned in early school computer classes. In high school we both machines that required the ancient plug in circuit boards - you'd literally plug a 10 character field with 10 cables to move it somewhere else. They also had an old Burroughs Corp machine that used pin boards to write programs, like pushpins today. The uptown computer at the board of ed (this is about 71) was an IBM 1440. I remember having a program that computed absolute mags of stars. At Michigan State, it was all keypunches, and you'd submit your 'job' to be run. The compiler we had to write as our senior project had to read some language like Fortran, scan it through something they call a lex, then parse it to see if it followed the language rules, then break it down into Control Data (the hardware they were using, I dont think the company CDC exists anymore?) Control Data assembly language called Compass. Then you had to have an assembler that took the Compass and broke it down into binary commands. This was boxes and boxes of cards - I remember waiting hours to get on a keypunch. I often wonder, where have all the keypunches gone?
Then, the compiler had to 'optimize' the code - if it found redundancies, it had to eliminate them. Finally , we had to write program that performed matrix multiplication, compile it, assemble it, and run it. I was like, I just want a job as a computer programmer, WHAT am I doing here? After I graduated from MSU in 75 there WERE no jobs around Detroit so I ended up balancing reports for K-mart (then Kresge) at their HQ on 16 Mile road. What a long strange trip our careers become from those heady days in college!
But that basic lesson stuck long after the details receded into the mists of time, and when Ron Walker mentioned incremental progress, that's the only way a big complex job can get done by one individual. just keep tweaking. Advancing the yardsticks here and there as time, money, or inspiration moves you. I waited 53 years to see the Southern Cross. I waited 10 years to see my stars move from 9 feet to 15 feet. A home planetarium typically takes years, and the road is littered by abandoned starballs and dreams!
You can tell im trying to fire myself up to begin the 32 foot dome. All domes around here begin with a single 4x4 in the ground!
Incremental progress. Do SOMETHING today. It will get you closer to your goal!
These lessons I learned in early school computer classes. In high school we both machines that required the ancient plug in circuit boards - you'd literally plug a 10 character field with 10 cables to move it somewhere else. They also had an old Burroughs Corp machine that used pin boards to write programs, like pushpins today. The uptown computer at the board of ed (this is about 71) was an IBM 1440. I remember having a program that computed absolute mags of stars. At Michigan State, it was all keypunches, and you'd submit your 'job' to be run. The compiler we had to write as our senior project had to read some language like Fortran, scan it through something they call a lex, then parse it to see if it followed the language rules, then break it down into Control Data (the hardware they were using, I dont think the company CDC exists anymore?) Control Data assembly language called Compass. Then you had to have an assembler that took the Compass and broke it down into binary commands. This was boxes and boxes of cards - I remember waiting hours to get on a keypunch. I often wonder, where have all the keypunches gone?
Then, the compiler had to 'optimize' the code - if it found redundancies, it had to eliminate them. Finally , we had to write program that performed matrix multiplication, compile it, assemble it, and run it. I was like, I just want a job as a computer programmer, WHAT am I doing here? After I graduated from MSU in 75 there WERE no jobs around Detroit so I ended up balancing reports for K-mart (then Kresge) at their HQ on 16 Mile road. What a long strange trip our careers become from those heady days in college!
But that basic lesson stuck long after the details receded into the mists of time, and when Ron Walker mentioned incremental progress, that's the only way a big complex job can get done by one individual. just keep tweaking. Advancing the yardsticks here and there as time, money, or inspiration moves you. I waited 53 years to see the Southern Cross. I waited 10 years to see my stars move from 9 feet to 15 feet. A home planetarium typically takes years, and the road is littered by abandoned starballs and dreams!
You can tell im trying to fire myself up to begin the 32 foot dome. All domes around here begin with a single 4x4 in the ground!
Incremental progress. Do SOMETHING today. It will get you closer to your goal!
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