I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.
In this episode, I chat with NASA systems engineer Bobak Ferdowsi about Mars, Curiosity, JPL, Space Boat, Star Trek, social engineering, and phe-nominal.
I will refuse to use phrases like Rocktober. October does not deserve such a title. It is merely an OK month for me. Folktober might be more accurate.
Despite my apathy for the month, some rocking things did happen. Let us look at my favourites.
1) SPACE!
I like space stuff. By the sheer fact that I refer to it as “space stuff” you can probably tell that I’m not very knowledgeable about any of it. But you know who are? NASA. They’ve got a website called Astro Pic Of The Day and it gives you an awesome picture like this:
And an easy to read description of what it’s all about. Apparently this is the remnants of a star, just like our Sun, that ran out of hyrdrogen. At the very center you can see a white dot which is what remains, a blue-hot white dwarf star. Cool, huh?
As the title suggests they give a new picture everyday and you can follow on Twitter too which is pretty handy.
2) The Ohio State University Marching Band
As many of you may know, the OSU Marching Band is famous for being pretty bad-ass and for a long time now have been putting on awesome shows at half-time. How awesome you ask?
Yes, you did just see Pikachu and yes you did just see Mario jumping on the flag. I know, I told you it was awesome. It was from the 6th of this month during a game against Nebraska.
And marching band people are not considered cool over there? You Americans are crazy.
3) Felix Baumgartner
There are times when I think we, as a species, should give ourselves a pat on the back. Curiosity rover on Mars was one moment this year. Another is a dude dropping from the edge of space and walking away from it like a boss.
Felix, I salute you, you crazy diamond. Here is a short video from Red Bull, who sponsored the whole thing, documenting the event. Makes me want to stand up and chant “HU-MAN RACE! HU-MAN RACE! HU-MAN RACE!”.
4) PR Done Right
The internet has been awash lately with companies handling their online public relations all wrong: Managers of restaurants attacking people for negative reviews on sites. Online product sellers abusing clients for returning products. Et cetera.
One company that has it’s head screwed on however is Bodyform. For those who don’t know, Bodyform is a tampon/sanitary pad company who have been famous over the years for their advertisements such as this little beauty showing women in various different situations enjoying themselves.
A man by the name of Richard Neill posted this comment on their facebook page on the 8th of October:
“Hi , as a man I must ask why you have lied to us for all these years . As a child I watched your advertisements with interest as to how at this wonderful time of the month that the female gets to enjoy so many things ,I felt a little jealous. I mean bike riding , rollercoasters, dancing, parachuting, why couldn’t I get to enjoy this time of joy and ‘blue water’ and wings !! Dam my penis!! Then I got a girlfriend, was so happy and couldn’t wait for this joyous adventurous time of the month to happen …..you lied !! There was no joy , no extreme sports , no blue water spilling over wings and no rocking soundtrack oh no no no. Instead I had to fight against every male urge I had to resist screaming wooaaahhhhh bodddyyyyyyfooorrrmmm bodyformed for youuuuuuu as my lady changed from the loving , gentle, normal skin coloured lady to the little girl from the exorcist with added venom and extra 360 degree head spin. Thanks for setting me up for a fall bodyform , you crafty bugger“.
Not ones to be outdone with a bit of comedy at their own expense, the guys and girls at Bodyform crafted this response. It is, I think you’ll agree, brilliant.
5) Stay Safe
And finally, as the east coast of America gets hit by a pretty nasty storm all our thoughts here at FRED are with our friends and family out there. Hope everyone makes through it OK.
As inspiration, here is a shirtless horse-headed man running through the streets of the storm. You can do it, guys. Let him be your spirit animal.
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And that’s it! My favourite things of the last month.
– Aaron Poole is the creator of chocolate keyboards. He is also more accurately an internet whore and rarely leaves the house. If you like what you read here check out his blog http://aaronfever.blogspot.com
Once again I give you the run down of my favourite things of the past month because when I enjoy myself, I like to share it.
…ladies.
1) Strange Love: Married to the Eiffel Tower
I have to be honest, when I was introduced to this documentary at the start of the month by a friend online I couldn’t stop watching it. It follows two women who are objectosexuals. That means that they don’t fall in love with human beings but instead inanimate objects. The documentary illuminates some of the reasons for this so I won’t go into it now but needless to say, it’s fascinating.
I just loved the idea that someone was actually able to marry the Eiffel Tower and to see just how much joy someone got out of looking at a fairground ride. It’s all a little mad but you can’t help but like these women. They speak clearly and honestly (often with too much information) but that’s their life and I found it a little wonderful to spend 45 minutes in it.
You can watch it in it’s entirety below. (slightly NSFW)
2) Randy Parcel
Despite the fact that none of us here at FRED were invited (cough cough) many of our friends took part in Jonathan Coulton’s “JocCo Cruise Crazy” cruise type thing. Apparently it was a lot of fun. We wouldn’t know. We’re not bitter though. Nope. Not us.
Anyway, after folks got back lots of footage and pictures emerged online of the fun that went on. My favourite? Well that has to be from Paul F. Tompkins’ karaoke night when a young man by the name of Randy Parcel delivered what I can only call, the greatest karaoke performance ever. Seriously. It’s great.
Watch as he sings SOLO the classic duet “You Make Me Feel Brand New”.
3) The $8 Billion iPod
Rob Reid gives a great TED Talk about how the copyright industry fudge the numbers on piracy. It’s really interesting but also quite important to know with the likes of SOPA and ACTA trying to police the internet based on “facts” like this.
4) Evolution of the Moon
I’ve always loved stuff like this. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter helped compose this video about how the Moon got it’s appearance. It’s both informative and beautiful to watch so watch it.
5) I Like To Shift Girls
To play us out, the notorious Rubberbandits are back to educate the world in the ways of shifting. I’ll be fascinated to see if this phrase takes off outside of my country because it’s usually hilarious to hear non-Irish try our colloquilisms.
(very NSFW) (actually NSF brains)
God help us all.
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And that’s it! My favourite things of the last month.
– Aaron Poole is the creator of the doughnut lottery. He is also more accurately an internet whore and rarely leaves the house. If you like what you read here check out his blog http://aaronfever.blogspot.com
I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.
In this episode, I have another chat with astronomer, writer, skeptic, and blogger behind Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait, about USENET, Craig Ferguson, Enya, NASA, space, gauntlets, bullying, and the future.
I don’t know about your area, but the weather this summer has been crap. August especially so. Which means there is no better reason to revel in some of the madness the internet has brought us in the last month.
It beats going outside.
1) Astronaut Suicides
No, I’m not sick. I don’t revel in the death of others. This is actually the title of an art project by Neil Dacosta, a photographer with a point to make about NASA’s lack of moon exploration.
It’s a series of photographs taken of an astronaut who isn’t taking the news very well. Here we see the astronaut reading about the story.
Then, as the title suggests, we are shown a number of different attempts to end it all. Here are two of my favourites.
You can see all the pictures and in their full size by clicking THIS LINK. Despite the dark subject matter, they’re really fantastic looking photos and make an interesting protest towards the NASA budget cuts.
2) The Lonely Island – Threw It on The Ground
I’m probably not exposing a hidden gem, considering that at the point of writing this the video has accumulated 4,444,404 views (wow, that is a lot of fours) but this is a list of my favourite things after all and for that reason, it qualifies.
It’s not the best Lonely Island song either, not by a long stretch, but like others it is an ear-worm that you’ll find yourself humming a lot. I also actually laughed out loud at the phone bit. Enjoy!
3) Mattias Inks
Remember Jesse Lonergan and his comic sketches I had talked about before? Well he tipped me off to another sketch blog which he adores and now I do to. http://mattiasa.blogspot.com/ is the home of Mattias a Swedish illustrator with an amazing talent.
Just check out this “doodle” in his moleskin book.
Click here for the large size so you can really see all the detail.
And this traffic scene. Look at all the car designs and other crazy things.
Miniclip has created another game this month worthy of wasting your time. This strategy game is based around the idea of raiding buildings and controlling the land. It pits the Aztecs, the Romans and the Chinese empire against eachother in some sort of strange alternate universe where this was going to happen.
Unlike some stategy games, you have to be quick on your toes if you want to win. Each level starts with a mad dash to cover as much ground as possible and steal the empty buildings before your enemy does. Then it’s time to try and take your opponent’s base with an attack dependant on having the most troops.
You can employ some magic attacks too but I found that building up the stats of your troops after each round can be sufficient in taking down most enemies.
There are some big bosses which are quite difficult because they are timed challenges. So again, a frantic gameplay experience can be found at every turn with this one.
There are lots of extra modes that you can unlock along the way, like Zombie mode, which really stretches the replay-ability of the game. To give it a go and waste away the hours, like I did, click this link here!
5) Shameless Self-Promotion Time!
Coming up very soon is Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia. This year once again both myself and Ken Plume will be doing some panels for your entertainment. I’ll just quickly plug the two we’re doing together as to give you the full list of our individual ones would take far too long.
So if you’re there please pop in to say hello at the following:
FRED Panel-Palooza-Extrava-Thingee-a-Doodle
Time: Fri 04:00 pm (Length: 1 Hour)
Location: Regency V – Hyatt
FRED Presents Yet Another Panel About Doctor Who
Time: Sun 01:00 pm (Length: 1 Hour)
Location: International North – Hyatt
Rumour has it we’ll even have an actual dragon there. Rumours.
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And that’s it! My favourite things of the last month.
– Aaron Poole is the creator of birthday balloons. He is also more acurately an internet whore and rarely leaves the house. If you like what you read here check out his blog http://aaronfever.blogspot.com
While going through some old papers, I ran across a trifold schematic of the controls of the Space Shuttle Columbia, which had printed on the reverse side the ground track for the first half of the 7-day STS-3 flight. STS-3 was the third space shuttle mission, lasting from March 22, 1982 to March 30th, 1982.
Near as I can remember, I received this in a pack of materials from NASA after I called them out of the blue when I was a Young Astronaut in the mid-80’s. Yes, I called. That’s also how I managed to secure a box full of Space Pepsi cans from Pepsi-Co for my Young Astronauts chapter. I did stuff like that.
By the way, I’m still not an Astronaut.
I feel I’ve failed someone. Somewhere.
Anyhoo, here are scans of the fold-out. Click on the thumbnail below them for a larger view.
I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.
I’m Ken Plume, and soon you’ll be listening to “A Bit Of A Chat” with me, Ken Plume.
