The Golden Transcendence

By John C Wright.

The final book in the trilogy sees wunderkind hero Phaethon with his doting angelic wife's clone Daphne Tercius at his side, tricking the super intelligent enemy, running rings around all the rest of humanity, building the most powerful space ship ever and fooling the super intelligent machines which run the Sol system all at the same time. As is normal with space opera, things all come together with the tidiness one might associated with Mozart and the feeling of reading true science fiction is dicarded some where along the way. There are plenty of twists in the plot, lots of Machievellan convolutions, but unfortnately, at no point did my mind feel any broadening sensations. All of the descriptions, concepts and ideas are staples of science fiction, even space opera and I've read it all before. Over all another disapointing end the like of which I've come to expect from trilogies.
2/5

Seeking employment

A new week begins and moif is up and about bright and early. I wish I could say I bring glad tidings but alas, all does not look good. My mother is probably dying of cancer. That is to say, the doctors have told her they cannot stop it. We spent saturday at my parents house and it was not as bad as I'd feared. Naturally there is a sadness looming beyond all, but my Mother appears to be coping with her condition quite well. She was tired and looked it, but her mind is crystal clear though some what jaded. I shall have to return soon without the distraction of my daughter.

There isn't really much to say. When my friend Føns died, it happened so fast that there was no chance to say good bye. One day she was just gone. If I hadn't happened to have called her that day, I doubt any one would have even informed me as I didn't know her parents and we'd not seen each other for a few years. My great regret is not having had the chance to tell her how much she meant to me.

Now I have the chance to tell my Mother how much I love her, I find there really isn't that much to say. Words fail to convey those thoughts and feelings which really matter. My Grandmother died a fortnight ago and I felt nothing for I hardly knew her. Now I'm told my mother will probably die, but there is no time frame. Thus it becomes important to enjoy the time that is left and possibly air all those things that one has left unsaid. With me, thats not much. I'm not certain I have anything left unspoken. Though we've always had communication problems, I love my mother very much and its hard to imagine a world without her.

In the mean time, I am now officially seeking employment. The family needs to grow and to do this we need funds. The long deep sleep of the last few years must end. Mette has found a job, small at first perhaps, but with great potential and an increase of income assured from the beginning and now I must follow suit. I have no idea wha I am able to do. My long term illness and my natural disinclination to seek attention stack the odds against me, but I must surmount these obstacles using that age old secret weapon; optimism!

I must be optimistic, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of my sociophobia's and regardless of my condition!

It may be difficult.

Of dog faced gods....

Imperial love, I am the essence of all things
To stand upon the balconey of life’s desires and look upon the huddled mass of your fears
I am the base nature and cruelty of humanity.
Deep within you, your hatred consumes your self esteem
I am that pit
The essence of all things human.

Rail against inevitability, it makes no difference.
Once the moment is upon you, ages have passed and time no longer has meaning
Your life is but an instant.
Clarity is fleeting, sobriety cuts like the cold wind of a winters morning.
Breathing frozen air like daggers of ice.
Stagger until you fall.

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YHGTBFJ!

All you gamers check this out.

James Burke's 'Connections'

I can't believe this was on You Tube in its entirety! I've wanted to see it again for years and here it is. 'Connections' by James Burke, along side his sequel series 'The day the universe changed' are, despite their age, still the most interesting and entertaining documentaries I've ever seen.






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James Burke's 'Connections' continued...

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Nudity

Apparently photobucket considered my sketch of a giantess to be improper because they terminated the link refering to it as a violation of their terms of service. Reading through this document again (its been four years or so since I last read it) sure enough, 'nudity' is forbidden.

Thinking about it, I suppose a pencil sketch of a nude female giant is still a nude, but I have to say, its pretty small minded to take offence at a sketch of a nude . Its too bad human beings are generally so worked up about their own bodies that they can't even stand to look at a graphic representation of one.

I have subsequently refreshed my mind on Bloggers terms of service also and indeed, they havemuch the same clause but with a slight difference.

Pornography and Obscenity: Image and video content that contains nudity, sexually graphic material, or material that is otherwise deemed explicit by Google should be made private. Otherwise, we may put such content behind an interstitial.

I suppose the image of the male giant below is in violation of that clause unless I make it 'private'. I'm not sure how to do that within the limitations of this web site, so I think I'll just remove the terrifying spectacle of his penis before I lose my blog...

Giants

Surfing for more info on giants, I came across this page which I thought was interesting enough to add here. How much truth there is in the claims of history is anyones guess, but here is a list of claimed discoveries of giant skeletons...

My model is around the same height as F.

A. Present day modern man which averages about 6-feet tall + or - several inches or more
B. 15-foot human skeleton found in southeast Turkey in late 1950's in the Euphrates valley during road construction. Many tombs containing giants were uncovered here.
C. Maximinus Thrax Ceaser of Rome 235-238 A.D. This was an 8' 6" skeleton.
D. Goliath was about 9 feet + or - a few inches. I Samuel 17:4 late 11th century
E. King Og spoken of in Deuteronomy 3:11 whose iron bedstead was approximately 14-feet by 6-feet wide. King Og was at least 12-feet tall, yet some claim up to 18
F. A 19'6" human skeleton found in 1577 A.D. under an overturned oak tree in the Canton of Lucerne.
G. A 23-foot tall skeleton found in 1456 A.D. beside a river in Valence, France
H. A 25' 6 " skeleton found in 1613 A.D. near the castle of Chaumont in France. This was claimed to be a nearly complete find
I. Almost beyond comprehension or believability was the find of the two separate 36-foot human remains uncovered by Carthaginians somewhere between 200-600 B.C.

Building a giant

As if I didn't have enough on my plate already, I've gotten side tracked and am now making a 28mm scale giant (possibly two). This came about when in last thursdays gaming session we had a giant brought on the table and this started a train of thought in my head. What would a real giant look like? Naturally, my friend Oleg already had a rational concept (he's cool like that) so I used that as my starting point. A humanoid giant would have to be built like elephant in order to stand up without actually breaking his own legs under the weight of his body. Like an elephant, or one of those super dinosaurs they've been finding in South America in recent years, his legs would have to be solid pillars. His body would also have to be huge in order to power his own locomotion, and as a humanoid (assuming giants are primates) he'd no doubt have long powerful arms.

Working from this point, I designed a giant. I came to a few aesthetic conclusions that contradicted Oleg's original concept. First, I made the giant really tall. Oleg's concept has giants standing at a maximum of circa 4 metre's, or 'twice the height of a human being'. To me, thats not 'giant enough', so I doubled it again, after all we are dealing with a mythical beast. My original concept was thus 8 metres tall (See below image). Second, Oleg argued that giants would most likely resemble gorilla's. I agreed with this up to the a point. If a giant looks like a giant gorilla, then you've lost the 'giant' and just replaced it with a very big ape, thus, I've kept such human features as a humanoid face, over all body shape and large external genitalia (Gorilla's are not well endowed). However I've elongated the arms and shorted the legs considerably giving him a certain 'gorilla stance'.

I've also given him stuppy fingers so they don't seem too unlike his elephant like feet and also because I wanted to avoid hands which were 'too human'. The sketch below is not accurate in this regard as it was drawn before I started playing about with modelling putty but you can see the current arm and hand to the left. The female image is some what more accurate as it was drawn after I'd settled on the final concept. I have not decided yet if I'll also make a female giant though I'd like to.

I began the model using FIMO. I did this with my triffid models (as yet unpainted) also as it cuts down on the cost. With the giant, I decided to make an 'under body' with legs already attached, that fit the general concept, but this proved pretty difficult. In the end I had to make the torso seperately, then two buttocks/upper legs and two lower legs with knees and feet. The end result is better than I'd expected, but has a serious problem in that the buttocks reach down to the giants knee's due to my inexperience. Luckily FIMO can be carved, even when it is hardened and the giant will eventually wear a kilt or what ever it is giants wear in order to conceal this flaw in my sculpting.

The giant 'under body' also toppled over in the oven when it was being hardened so his 'toes' curled up and now he doesn't stand very well. This is not to great a problem as the finished model will be leaning slightly forwards as if taking a step anyway so he will be attached to a base that supports him. Currently the giant stands at 11 cm so it is actually 25% shorter than my concept drawing. I made this decision based on how the 'under body' looked beside a human sized figure. Now the giant stands three times as tall as a human but its bulk makes it appear much more imposing than I had imagined. I also made a seperate 'under head' in Fimo and attached it with a dollop of greenstuff.

I've begun adding body details now in greenstuff and this is where the hard part starts. I'm not a good sculptor (Mette is) and greenstuff has its own secrets (like how to smooth it out). I know to use water to prevent it from sticking to the sculpting tool, but thats about the extent of my knowledge. From there on in its all guess work.

I've made two 'skeletal arms' from some plastic melted to the right angle and I'll build up the arms seperately in greenstuff I shall add them last I think, once the body and head are finished. I'll post more images if this project leads any where.

Smack my bitch up

Another old favourite. Apparently inspired by a night on the town in dirty old Copenhagen, that fat old whore of a city!
There's also a curious MTV mash of this track with Enya's 'Sail away' here.

Not a good idea to watch this video if your offended by nudity, homosexuality, drug fuelled violence or any other such good things.

The Duellists

By Joseph Conrad.

I finally got to read the original story (e-text can be found for free here) after all these years watching the film and since I already knew it was a short story, I wasn't disapointed. I've already read a few of Conrad's books so I knew his style was old fashioned but enjoyable and this was much as I expected. I was curious to see what in the film was genuine and what was not, and sure enough one or two details I'd always noticed stood out. A particular line by Tom Conti's character, (who is very different in the story) was one of these. I suppose it must be the difference in how people write now in the twentieth century as opposed to the styles of a century and a half hence (like using the word hence).

One of the biggest surprises was the addition of an entire character to the film; D'Hubert's camp follower/lover Laura. I suppose she must serve some narrative purpose to the film, quite alot of explanation regarding D'Hubert from the original story is missing and no doubt Laura serves to build up D'Hubert's character. Either that or Gerald Vaughan-Hughes who is credited as a writer on the IMDb site felt the film required a female character.




The Duellists.



Dir: Ridley Scott.

Currently sharing the top slot in my favourite films list with 'The Seven Samurai', this is Ridley Scott's first full length motion picture, released in 1977 and filmed on so small a budget that there are no studio sets any where in the entire film. Frankly, I feel the film benefits from this. It seems real and it has that peculiar 1970's style which lends itself to authenticity so much better than anything we currently see, and that includes recent work by Scott too. I love his films, but he'll never recapture his edge I feel. 'Bladerunner', 'Alien' and this film all have that rough gritty edge that makes them work so well. Its too bad people back then didn't appreciate it and Scott had to make mediocre rubbish like 'Black Rain', 'Thelma and Louise' and 'GI Jane' just to keep going. Poor sod. Fiction set in other worlds is what he's best at but it took the rest of the world twenty years to figure that out.

Scott has always described himself as a fan of Stanley Kubrick (how could he not be) and its interesting to note that this film follows 'Barry Lyndon' by a mere two years. There are some strong parrallels between the two films, but the biggest difference I note is that this film is entertaining where as 'Barry Lyndon' isn't. 'The Duellists' has the same other world quality in abundance. I've watched this film hundreds of times and I've never ceased to be amazed at how well made it is. Every scene is framed and shot as if it were a painting by an old master, as if Ridley Scott had Whistler, Courbet and Dupre watching over his shoulder and giving him tips. The art direction is by a man called Bryan Graves who though he also worked on Polanski's 'The Tragedy of Macbeth' (another favourite from the 1970's) and 'Excalibur' by Boorman (which I didn't much care for), was never again given the job as art director!. Its beggers belief that such obvious talent gets discarded so easily and I cringe when I consider the slop that gets served up as art/entertainment these days.

The music by Howard Blake is also good. It fits the mood of the period and has a curious haunting quality. I recently acquired the soundtrack and have been enjoying it but lamenting the brevity of each track. As with Graves, Blake is another master passed over by the industry.

All told though I think my favourite scenes in the film have to be the duels and maybe this is why the audience never opened their eyes to this masterpiece. You sort of have to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate the nuances of the Napoleonic iconography inherent in the imagery. The uniforms and the lurking history, the small details.
Each duel is different and as they rise in rank, the protagonists also go from lighter to heavier weaponry, echoing as they do the rising tide of Napoleon's fortunes until finally ebbing away into old age. Both actors carry this off to perfection, especially Keitel who's brooding silences and meaningful looks carry far more weight than his spoken lines. Note that the second duellist in the video clip above is not D'Hubert.

If you consider yourself interested in either martial history or art per se, then you should have watched this film already.



Trailer.

Space ship concepts: Combat in space

Here we go again. Having digested my first post on this subject, I've decided to look at military star ships in popular media.


First up is a personal favourite: USS Sulaco. Named after a town in the book 'Nostromo' by Joseph Conrad, this is a design by none other than Syd Mead himself (with help from James Cameron and Ron Cobb). When it comes to designing the future for the big names in sci fi cinema, you don't get bigger than Mead. The name of the ship is a nod to Ridley Scott's first film in which the spacecraft was called Nostromo. Click on the above image for more views of a model of this ship.

This is the US Marine's star ship in which Ripley returns to battle the aliens in James Cameron's film 'Aliens'. (Video 2) We can assume the USS Sulaco is an interstellar warship given that its carrying both marines and weapons from one star system to another. Like the HMS Camden Lock, it has the utalitarian look about it which gives it an aura of realism (deserved or otherwise). As far as I am aware, this is the most thought through 'war ship' design yet presented in a science fiction movie though originally Mead envisioned the ship as being a sphere radiating hundreds of sensor spines. The weapon systems shown in the film (rail guns and cannon) are obvious, but unobtrusive, the ship does not engage in 'space battles' but carries marines to a mission and at no point do we see evidence of energy shields or weapons (thus keeping within the parameters of known science). Of course the idea that this ship could travel between stars at all is unrealistic, but at least when it does, the crew are in a form of stasis. Not a very good stasis I'll admit, but still the concept is there. According to the Wikipedia site devoted to this ship it carries numerous other weapons systems but I've ignored these as they are never revealed in the film. What essentially makes this ship work (for me) is the fact that it never actually engages in combat. It remains aloof, an orbital weapons platform rather than a 'battleship in space'.



Compare the USS Sulaco to the recent TV space ship design in Battlestar Galactica and several points of comparison become evident.


BSG as its most often called, has a few interesting points of interest, but for a true sci fi fan, its just another space opera. The Galactica is a sort of 'carrier in space', obviously conceived with current US aircraft carriers in mind (more so in the reincarnated series) and apparently utilising human piloted fighters as its primary weapon system, backed up by rail guns and nuclear weapons. It is obvious fro the get go that this design is meant for fighting other ships.

The idea of human piloted fighters participating in space combat is anachronistic and deeply flawed. Space combat would most likely take place at ranges which required enourmous acceleration, with very high g forces to reach the target before being destroyed by enemy counter measures. Conceivably, warring space ships would detect each other whilst still millions of kilometres apart and barring long range energy weapons, would launch drones as soon as possible. Rail guns on the opposing ships would then try to destroy any incoming projectiles before these could hit. In TV and movies, battles (with WW2 style dog fights) take place with opponents within hundreds of metres of each other. Often in Star Trek 'weapons range' is so close the ships are almost colliding!



This sort of thing makes for dramatic art, especially when Hans Zimmer is provinding the score, but its hardly realistic. Drones would rip human piloted fighters to shreds. They'd be faster, react quicker, be much better able to handle radiation and wouldn't care about dying.

I haven't seen all of BSG, but I do recall the Galactica surviving a nuclear blast in one early episode. Here is a description of how a nuclear warhead would act upon a space craft. Its the last bit in particular that gets my attention.

A nuclear explosion in space, will look pretty much like a Very Very Bright flashbulb going off. The effects are instantaneous or nearly so. There is no fireball. The gaseous remains of the weapon may be incandescent, but they are also expanding at about a thousand kilometers per second, so one frame after detonation they will have dissipated to the point of invisibility. Just a flash.

The effects on the ship itself, those are a bit more visible. If you're getting impulsive shock damage, you will by definition see hot gas boiling off from the surface. Again, the effect is instantaneous, but this time the vapor will expand at maybe one kilometer per second, so depending on the scale you might be able to see some of this action. But don't blink; it will be quick.

Next is spallation - shocks will bounce back and forth through the skin of the target, probably tearing chunks off both sides. Some of these may come off at mere hundreds of meters per second. And they will be hot, red- or maybe even white-hot depending on the material

I imagine space combat, that is to say combat between two or more warring space vessels beginning with an intial phase of ECM and ECCM probing. 'cloaking' or hiding would be near impossible in the monotone void of space so obscuring one self behind a blur of white noise and static would be SOP. This would mean targetting systems would be partly or completely paralysed, so targetting and tracking drones would be launched first. These systems would be path finders for numerous other drone types which would fan out into multiple approach trajectories. Drones would carry their own submunitions, missiles and secondary defensive weapons. In some Peter F Hamilton novels these are refered to as 'Combat wasps'. As this was happening the ships would start firing long range hyper velocity projectiles at each other. The initial phases of space combat between two war ships of comparative strength would be very fast with computers making lightning fast computations and decisions and with all munitions accelerating at formidable rates.

Any missile, drone or hyper velocity projectile that hit its target would likely destroy it and its crew. Armour against weapons in space would not be very effective as we can read from the description above of a nuclear warhead hitting a space ship. Anything designed to kill at such long ranges is going to do a horrendous amount of primary and secondary damage with the radiation levels cooking anything unshielded. Even a hyper velocity projectile would like as not completely destroy anything it hit. From the Atomic Rocket site:

Rick Robinson's First Law of Space Combat states that "An object impacting at 3 km/sec delivers kinetic energy equal to its mass in TNT." In other words there are 4,500,000 joules in one kilogram of TNT (3,000²m/s * 0.5 = 4.5e6). This means a stupid bolder traveling at 2,000 km/sec relative has about 400 kilo-Ricks of damage (i.e., each ton of rock will do the damage equivalent of 2e12 / 4.5e6 = 400 kilotons of TNT or about 20 Hiroshima bombs combined).

Ricks = (0.5 * V²) / 4.5e6

where:
V = velocity of projectile relative to target (m/s)
Ricks = kilograms of TNT worth of kinetic energy per kilogram of projectile

So a projectile moving at 200 km/sec (20,000 m/s) would have about 4,000 Ricks (4 kilo-Ricks) of damage, approximately the same as a standard one-kiloton-yield nuclear weapon. By that I mean it has the same damage per kilogram as a nuke, counting all the nuke's framework, electronics, fissionable material, and whatnot. (for the projectile to do the same damage as a standard nuke, it would need to be the same mass as a standard nuke, about 250 kilograms) A projectile moving at 3,500 km/sec would have about one mega-Rick, which is the same damage per kilogram as the ultra-compact 475-kiloton-yield W-88 nuclear warhead.

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Some space ship concepts

This post is an outspring of the Enterprise comments thread.

I always get interested in how space craft are designed in TV programmes and the movies. There is a delicate balance between the aesthetic and the practical that rests on the old maxim of nature being an equilibrium between form and function. So it must be for any machine, biological or otherwise. The ratio of power to mass must be right. Too many weapons for example just looks wrong. Consider a tank. Its main gun is large, but actually quite small when compared to the size of the tank. Secondary weapons systems are often completely underpowered and designed for anti personnel or soft hulled vehicles. Concepts which feature oversized weapons are most probably unrealistic.

Designed to exist in a hard environment, the power plant and armour take up much of a tank. A space craft by its nature shares the same needs. It must exist in the deadly shower of stellar radiation so some form of armour is essential even without combat and in order to power a vessel of such requirements calls for a serious powerplant. Weapons would be small in size but potent. Unless one discounts the notion of energy weapons being effective I cannot see the need for more than one primary weapon system either when one has a starship drive at ones disposal. Naturally, attack drones, torpedo's and other submunitions are to be considered but essentially these are secondary weapon systems (though drone fighters bearing energy weapons could conceivably be used as a primary weapon system). Modern warships use far more missiles now than they do cannon. So much so that guns have largely become defensive weapons due to their limited range. Energy weapons, moving at the speed of light would be far more effective at long range than drones. A single laser, powered by a starship drive and targeted by a machine mind could conceivable destroy an entire squadron of drones before these ever got into range.

Returning to the aesthetic design aspect though, a space ship, by its conjectured nature is like a sea faring vessel so its always a good idea to look at how sea ships are built. Big ships are always compact. Designed to face heavy sea's catamarans and trimarans above a certain size are extremely rare. Out riggers, which provide stability to smaller vessels only function so long as they are strong enough to bear the weight of the vessel. Once the pressures of the vessels weight increases, the out riggers fail. As Brando pointed out, the warp nacelle's of the Star Trek style vessels would be ripped clean off by the force of momentum once the ship moved beyond a certain speed. Thus we can conclude, that like an ocean going vessel, a space ship, designed to operate within the parameters of hard vacum, and without any form of 'energy shield/bubble' to compensate for the effects of velocity, would have to be as compact as possible. Thus, a single hull containing all the ships parts.

Below is Andrew Glazebrook's excellent HMS Camden Lock, from the British TV series 'Hyperdrive'. Based on a communications tower in central London it conforms to all the above critieria. I also find it aesthetically pleasing as it appears to have the form/function ratio that is all important for a realistic looking concept (though I'm not sure about the British having their own space craft). Link.

HMS Camden Lock has a nice set of holes in the back, so I guess we can assume it is driven by these. I'm not too sure about the cluster of smaller boosters since they are sitting outside the main structure and could be rippped off if their energy output exceeded the strength of what ever is holding them to the rest of the ship. The difference between this design and the Star Trek design is that HMS Camden Lock appears to have its main thruster in the centre of the configeration, thus the velocity of the main structure would match the outer boosters. It depends on how fast the ship is meant to travel. From the name of the series, it appears that the ship moves very fast (I haven't seen much of 'Hyperdrive' yet).

One of the biggest problems in designing space vessels lies in how to define the powerplant. Anything capable of producing the power output needed to move a ship at the speed of light would have to be a monster engine which by its nature would produce a lot of radiation thus shielding the crew from the effects of radiation would be a paramount consideration. The more powerful the powerplant, the more shielding required.

In the mid 1970's the British Interplanetary Society set about designing a realistic interstellar vessel named Project Daedalus (see below image). This vessel was designed with the specific goal of sending an unmanned probe to Barnards Star (6 light years from Earth). The vessel is in effect a pair of giant fusion engines, the larger being a super booster to get the smaller up to maximum velocity. The conjectured power output of the design is enourmous. Fully loaded with fuel and 500 tonnes of automated payload, the ship weighing an estimated 54,000 tonnes in total (20 times the size of a Saturn V rocket) would produce several times the entire energy output of planet Earth today!

The Daedalus design works on a very simple concept. A pellet of deuterium and helium 3 frozen to -270' C is injected by a special gun into the engine (the large dome to the left of the drawing). As the pellet reaches the target point (the centre of the dome) dozens of beam generators hit it with high energy electrons, causing it to ignite. When the pellet explodes it produces a fireball which pushes aside a magnetic field which is restrained by the metal walled dome chamber. The force of the detonation is transmitted by the field to the walls of this chamber and the remnants of the explosion are ejected. As well as driving the vehicle, the magnetic field also enables some energy to be drawn from the explosion by a coil placed around the engines propulsive exit. This energy then recharges the electron beam generators ready for the next fuel pellet. The repetion frequency of the explosions would be 250 explosions per second.

In other words, the Daedalus design is akin to a giant machine gun firing hydrogen bombs that push the ship forwards. The vessel is designed to continue doing this for almost four years so it is mostly all fuel and very expensive (it would take the entire Earths economy several decades to build). Being unmanned the shielding requirements are not as great as they otherwise would be, but put a few people on board and the ship would have to double in size in order to provide all the shielding, life support machinary and stores human beings would need.

The kicker is, this design wouldn't even get faster than 12% of the speed of light...

Then there is the small problem of gravity. Long term exposure to space on board the Mir space station and the current ISS have shown that human beings wither horribly fast. The rate of atrophy in zero gravity, even with constant exersize means there is a distinct time limit on how long a human being can survive without gravity. Star Trek and other sci fi drama's get around this by means of 'gravity plating' or a gravity field', but the truth is, there are only two ways to recreate gravity in space and that is good old fashioned centrifugal force or moving the ship forwards at a constant velocity of one G. The latter would mean the ships decks would be stacked one atop the other like a tower rather than a submarine, and the ship would lose its gravity when it reached orbital velocity around a planet. Another down side of using forward momentum is the crew would be incapacitated once the ship went to full speed. It was essentially this problem which has led to all serious interstellar designs being unmanned probes (that and the cost of building such a vehicle balanced against the pitiful rewards).

There is a simple way to get around this problem but it requires a leap of faith. One could put the crew into stasis and wire them up to the ships computer. They could live the whole voyage in an artificial reality which generated any form of interface required whilst their bodies, cushioned in liquid cells, 'slept'. So far I personally have not encountered any science fiction novel which has seriously looked at this idea, though the idea of sleeping during a space voyage is as old as the hills. I once had the idea of writing a science fiction novel around the concept of a stasis reality gone wrong, but I have since discarded the notion as my technical understanding of the matter (not to mention my story telling ability) is not up to the job.

So much for the Millenium Falcon then. It looks good on film, but as an interstellar vessel it defies everything in the book. At best it might pass for an in-system vessel. That is to say a vessel which operates within the confines of a single star system, but even then, the design is horribly unrealistic.

Some time back I set about trying to design star ships which were both pleasing to my eye and, if not wholly realistic, then at least as close as I could get them. In those days I favoured an open hull design that resembled the Eifel Tower with a lot of Daedalus style fuel cells clutterd about for interstellar ships. An electromagnetic spike to the rear to direct the flow of energy and an O'Niell torus at the front for life support. I later abandoned the torus idea as it was simply too fragile. A life support section could be deployed once a journey was finished perhaps, but along the way I realised only stasis makes sense. If you look at the lower right hand side of my drawing (below) you can make out a simple diagram of this design. The ships are meant to be 'realistic' interstellar spaceships. That is to say more realistic than the Millenium Falcon.

The ships are to scale and if you look closely there is a tiny figure of a man standing at the nose of the smallest ship to give a rough idea of the sizes I was thinking about then.



Looking back at these designs now I realise now that they were heavily influenced by the ships in the game Homeworld. The 'Apollo class cruiser' design (the big one) in particular resembles the design aesthetic from the game.

My basic design was simple enough. The ships are built around their power plants with weapons pylons and sensor towers mounted to the sides of it giving direct access to the ships power and bypassing the central section with its heavy shielding. To the fore are the crews area's, life support, drone and small ship bays &tc. The hull is heavily armoured and radiation shielded with all sensors residing within and being deployed only when needed. The crews for these vessels are small with every one being locked in stasis. Computers run everything (I've assumed AI is possible) with two thirds or more of the crew being artificial constructs with numerous back up copies in case of emergencies. Reduncy systems back up everything on the ship but the actual powerplant. I also pondered on energy shields, electromagnetic field generators and stuff like that, but my comprehension of how effective such things might be is pitiful at the best of times.

The flat looking ship in the centre of the drawing is a seperate concept. It is actually a design I borrowed from 'The Art of the film Judge Dredd' book (in which it was a concept design for a ground effect shuttle). I decided I liked the look of it and thought it looked like a ship that could be designed to skim the surface of a gas giant with large 'gills' in the front of the ship that would scoop up and process the atmosphere (to mine helium 3 for star ship fuel). I wrote a short story a few years ago featuring this ship (which I then gave a star drive despite myself) and called it Hasdrubal.

Looking back on my playful designs I realise now that they are far too 'submarine like'. They have a clear top and bottom which seems unrealistic. They ought to be more 'omni directional', like HMS Camden Lock.

Below are a few concept drawings from Homeworld2 which I've never played. I've incuded them as I like them. The bottom two in particular are nice, though obviously those are not interstellar craft.

'Just like you imagined'

Todays You Tube discovery is from Nine Inch Nail's. I wondered where this track came from, and now I know.



Another cool NIN video, from which the above has pilfered much of its iconography, can be found here.

Pan & Maenad

In case any one is wondering, the new wall paper shows Pan with a willing Maenad. (none so willing as a Maenad! the ancients certainly knew how to have fun)
My screen resolution is set to 1024 x 768. so any one with a different setting will probably get a screwed up image. Sorry about that but I don't know how to manipulate the code to make the image fit to the viewers browser.

Autumn in Århus

Picking up Freja today I took a few pictures of the day care and neighbouring school where the leaves have turned to such a glorious hue. The above is the entrance to the vuggestue (day care) on Ny Munkegade, which is the same street we live on and the lower image is the folkeskole behind it. The last image is the sky a few weeks ago (with added contrast).

In rememberance

Major Anders Storrud from Denmark was killed in the Gheresk Valley of Afghanistan yesterday. He died of wounds inflicted whilst recovering a damaged APC. He was 34 years old. Thus far Denmarks fatality list in the 'War on Terror' reads as follows.

• Afghanistan. 6th march 2002.
  Oversergent Thomas Kruse Butzkowsky (26), overkonstabel Brian Juul Nørløv Andersen (26) and overkonstabel Kim Carlsen (35) all killed in Kabul along side two German soldiers whilst attempting to render soviet era missiles inoperative.
  
• Iraq. 16th august 2003.
  34 year old overkonstabel Preben Pedersen from the Jydske Dragoon Regiment is shot and killed by another Danish soldier who mistook him for an insurgent in the darkness. The episode took place on a routine patrol south of the Danish camp at Al Qurnah, Basra.
• Iraq 1st october 2005:
  21 year old premierløjtnant Bjarke Olsen Kirkmand is killed by a road side bomb in a suburb if Basra.
• Iraq 2nd november 2005.
  48 year old oversergent Arne Ziegler dies from an aneurism whilst asleep in his tent at Camp Danevang in Basra.
  
• Iraq 23rd march 2006.
  20 year old overkonstabel Jesper Nielsen is killed by an IED to the North of Basra..
• Iraq 6th juni 2006.
  23 year old overkonstabel Dennis Ove Hansen is killed during an accident whilst taking part in an exersize at Shaiba Log Base. His vehicle over turned and crushed him.
• Iraq 23rd september 2006.
  36 year old flyverspecialist Kim Wadim is killed by an IED in Al Hartha, Basra.
• Iraq 5th october 2006.
  20 year old konstabel Martin Hjorth dies from wounds received during a fire fight in Al Hartha, Basra.
• Afghanistan. 3rd maj 2007.
  24 year old premiereløjtnant Steen Rønn Sørensen of the Reserve died at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen four days after being seriously wounded in Helmand, Afghanistan.
• Iraq 14th maj 2007.
  20 year old konstabel Henrik Nøbbe is killed, and five others wounded by an IED attack and subsequent fire fight in Al Hartha, Basra.
• Afghanistan 26th september 2007.
  Two konstabler, 24 year old Mikkel Keil Sørensen and 22 year old Thorbjørn Ole Reese (known to friends of mine) were killed during action against the Taliban in the Upper Geresk Valley, Afghanistan.
  

The moif supremacy

Woke up this morning and for a moment I couldn't remember who I was. The world was spinning about me and I heard the distant sound of The Cult in the back of my mind. Something was nagging at me, something dangerous. There was a presence close by.

I rolled out of bed, cat like, bringing up the concealed pistol but the enemy was on me, springing from the shadows. We grappled briefly, he was strong and fast, but I countered his attack easily. I parried the short knife that came from no where and broke his wrist, kicking him back into the mirror and then shooting him quickly through the temple. Felt good but I was still dazed and confused. Who was I?

The second attack happened on the street as I exited the apartment. Two men, former KGB by the look of them were sitting in a merc across the street. They saw me at the same time I saw them. One of them pulled up a Remmington, jacking a shell into the chamber. I wasted no time. I crossed the street straight forward bringing the pistol up and...

Wait a minute, thats not how it was... I need to stop eating cheese at 2am. What actually happened was Freja woke me up by standing on my face this morning. I (eventually) staggered to the kitchen to make her some breakfast after parking her in front of Winnie the Pooh. Mette was still asleep and I woke her up. I'd only been asleep three hours or so and unless she had a good excuse, I didn't fancy taking the Snoos to day care.

Later in the day I went to se my Mother on the cancer ward. She's feeling okay, all things considered, but she's still got a fever and temp and they can't tell her why. Amongst other pleasantries we discussed my grandmothers funeral (on saturday) and the fact that my youngest brother has just been diagnosed with the same condition I have.
There after I walked through the city, enjoying the autumn air and marvelling at the leaves which have reached that point in their lives when they are red, orange, coppery gold and so beautiful it takes your breath away.



Escapism is a survival trait!

Satisfaction

Ha ha! I just came across this video again and I am compelled to reveal my base nature by posting it here.

Extraordinary things. Revel in your time.

...its nothing the god of biomechanics won't let you in heaven for.

To boldly go where lots of people have gone before

I changed my wallpaper again. The last image wasn't working. It was too fussy. Too 'Victorian'.

The current image is a temporary one until I find something more fitting to my personal aesthetic tastes. The ship is my Republic Fleet Firetail frigate, from the MMORPG EVE.

Anyway, on with the show. Its time for moif's review of:


Star Trek Enterprise

I'm currently into the third series and, more or less enjoying it as I go. This is in part due to the ship itself as I really like its 'UFO look'. I've never liked the ships in Start Trek much. Voyager was the best until now, with its sleeker profile, but on the whole, they all looked ungainly and awkward. I'm a big fan of space ship concepts though, so the CGI ships in this series are all so much eye candy to me that I'm prepared to look beyond the horrible characters and accept the appalling moralizing and just enjoy the shows for what they are. Fluff with great (if unrealistic) space craft. Also I like to complain.

If I'm totally honest, I have to say that even without the ships, then I'd probably watch it any way, at least until I reached the vomit point. I even managed two seasons of the revamped Battlestar Galactica!

The characters then... well they are pretty much all horrible. The show revolves around the same set of hired actors portraying the standard Star Trek bridge crew. These, despite the large anonymous crew who they pass in the corridors, do everything. They run and repair the ship, they go on all the 'away missions' and other adventures and they generally have all the speaking parts.

Unfortunately they don't get to have much fun as their Captain Archer, a granite faced softy who reminds me of the 80's sitcom puppet Alf, gets to hog the screen and about 75% of all the various capers the ship gets involved in. He flies the shuttles into the asteroid fields, runs secret agent ops in to enemy alien installations, gets into duels and courtroom drama's and time travel paradox's and even saves humanity on several occaisions whilst all the time preaching about his humanity. Unlike the legendary Captain Kirk however, Archer does not appear to have a sexuality at all.

In one instance whilst explaining his lack of any desire to enact revenge on some villain or other he tells his sexy Vulcan science officer that it is our humanity (read pacifism) which makes us human. I thought this was a rather amusing line given that the majority of the human race, for most of human history, has not been particularly bothered about exacting revenge on which ever villain happens to be in fashion. Its kind of ironic also that a man in a uniform (who does not regard himself as military) who regularly engages in star ship combat (though he does not consider his ship a warship) should hold to the view that his pacifism is an indication of his humanity. There are so many battles in Star Trek it makes EVE look placid. Not that I mind star ship combat. I just get bored to tears with the after battle sermon.

Most of the rest of the crew are equally tedious. There is Trip the Texan engineer who appears to be a descendent of George W Bush and who has a strange habit of getting marooned. And there is Lootenant Reed, an uptight Brit 'tactical officer' who snaps at every one, makes snide remarks, is constantly being bailed out by his captain and appears to fall apart when ever death stares him in the face.
Being Star Trek, there has to be a well curvacious woman in a one piece skin tight garment of course. After all, Star Trek NG had Troi and Voyager had 7 of 9, and so Enterprise has T'Pol. (Don't worry, she's only that thin because she's not a human being).

Even without the story, one gets the feeling that one is moving over familiar ground, and then comes The Story. Seasons one and two are just a series of one off episodes in the typical Star Trek format with a loose common thread concerning a 'temporal cold war' plot that goes no where slowly. This all comes to an abrupt end at the end of season two when unknown aliens attack the USA and kill Trips sister!!!! (+7,000,000 other people) for no apparent reason.

Popular pacifist and war hero Captain Archer soon discovers why however and immedietely volunteers his ship on a long, long, long mission to find the enemy and make them stop their attack before they exterminate all humanity. Does this make sense to you? Some aliens who live a long way from Earth find out from contacts in the future, that the human race will one day, a few centuries down the line, wipe them out, and so they embark on a pre emptive attack to destroy the entire human race. They do this by launching a single attack against Earth with an under powered prototype weapon that cannot possibly destroy the planet. Then, they set about building and testing a bigger, super bad variant of this weapon.

Captain Archer, having received permission to take humanity's best fighting vessel then flies into 'the expanse' to find these mysterious aliens and their doomsday device, before they can complete it.

Now, looking beyond the fact that this entire story arc is a poorly written blatent Farscape (FTW) rip off, one is forced to wonder at the logic of launching a pre-emptive, out of the blue, surprise attack against the human race when the aliens have centuries of time to perfect their doomsday device. Thats alien logic for you! Instead, they alert the humans as to the threat they pose, giving Captain Archer months of time to find them and prevent their nefarious plans whilst all the time engaging in the humanist tradition of space combat.

Actually I kind of like the idea that humans riding in a ship laden with lethal weaponry travel to new world and preach to aliens about what great people we human beings are. All Archer really needs is a horse, some rats (he already has a dog) and small pox and he fits right in with all the other great conquistadors. Naturally a Bible is out of the question.
That would be silly.

And why is this post so long if Start Trek Enterprise is so bad?
Because I like to complain.

moif world update

Well, we've all been sick as can be these last several days with the latest bug from Freja's day care. This one apparently took out two thirds of every one there.

Freja got it first but of course breezed through it with two days of appetite loss and a single days 'diaper hell' (I am obliged to call them diapers due to the fact that I get more hits from the USA than I do from any where else). Then Mette and I began to get the first symptoms. I had a pain in my stomach (nothing new there) and Mette woke up during the night and vomitted mightily into the toilet (I smelt it and it was really bad).

TMI? Too bad.

I never got beyond feelings of nausea, but I did have the loose stomach and fevered sweating as hot n cold waves took turns to wash through me. Today was day three of the 'bad period' but I think we're coming through it now. Mostly we're just feeling sorry for ourselves. Freja has been okay ever since the first day we both took ill and has made it somewhat difficult, but not impossible. The above image is a few weeks old and shows Freja on the beach to the north of Aarhus. It was taken by her maternal grandmother.

There is good news too. Mette may have landed a job as a designer for a childrens clothing company now! Its still only a part time thing as its a new company, but if it goes well then it may lead to a full time job. Naturally she is overjoyed. I've asked her if it makes a difference that its kids clothing but she is unconcerned and tells me that kids clothing is just as fun, if not more so than adult clothing. She's also done some designs for a company which runs elephant polo in Nepal (how weird is that for an unemployed Danish designer?) and we're still waiting to hear how that goes. They're not the easiest people to deal with (geographically speaking).

As for me, I've been puttering about, sleeping off the illness and painting some figures for my planned Takshendal game (I'll post details later). Unfortunately, I came down just at the point where I was due to go to an interview with a job seeking expert. I don't know what these people are called in English, but they help people like me find work. I'm hoping to find a job too since Mette can hardly be expected to support us all, but my health is such that I am at a loss as to how to go about it. My next appointment is not for another two and half weeks.

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A few musings

I haven't written any political thoughts on this blog for a long while, and I don't actually intend to do so in future (much). Frankly it gets me down.

The above image is a communist party poster calling Denmarks youth to arms for the cause of a 'youth house'. The text reads, When Justice becomes injustice, resistance becomes duty. Youth House now.

In the light of the ongoing socialist youth movements running battle with the police and various authorities, and the fact that today is the anniversary of the death of the left wings number one poster child, I thought I might just post a couple of remarks made by the 'hero' they call Che.

"Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!"

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary...These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall!"

--Ernesto 'Che' Guevara


What I am wondering now is, who is the right wing equivalent of Che Guevara?

Artist of the Month: Seerey Lester

One of my favourite branches in the field of commercial illustration is nature illustrations. There are many contemporary commercial and private artists in this field whose work I admire, not least Carl Benders, Alan Hunt, and Richard Sloan. Any one of these could have been selected as artist of the month, but I've chosen John Seerey Lester because where as his images can be equally as true to 'hyper life' as these others, more often than not, there is a strong element of the abstract present in his work also. Hyper realism, or photorealistic illustration, is an old trend thats been around for several decades now. Most popularly it is used to depict cars with chrome fenders or urban city scapes, but it is also a popular method amongst nature illustrators.

Often, these artists sell prints of their work and as far as I can figure out, don't actually do much commision work. Often they go on field trips and lug a ton of camera's with them, finding their subjects and all the reference imagery they need and composing the final image in a sketch book. Most probably the animals are often photographed in a zoo, but not always. Some of these illustrators do a tidy side line in photography also.

(If you follow the link via his name above then you'll see he shares his web page with Suzie Seerey Lester. I'm not sure if this is his wife or his sister, but who ever she is, she's pretty excellent also and well worth a look.)

The Chandlery

My latest model. This one is a commercial building with a large workshop at the back and a shop and an office at the front. The idea is it will have a barn like appearance that will give it a cheaper, seedier look. As usual it is as generic as possible. When its finished it will be quite a large building, but not as big as the inn or Cthulhu House. The latter being still 90% finished and awaiting its first storey walls (yes I got side tracked but I've not forgotten it)

Guess who's back!

The BBC is reporting a new short film with Wallace and Gromit in the pipe line. 'Trouble At' Mill' will feature the dynamic duo as bakers with Wallace finally getting a girl friend.

GW monster display table

For all you gamers....

Its a bit depressing how easy they make it all look. I love the scope of it, though I'm not big on GW species types. I never unerstood the appeal of Skaven at all. I love the Aztec like fortifications though.