No rides, just a lot of standing around in line

Communist chic hits mainstream.

Massine Productions GmbH hopes to recreate a 10,000-square metre (107,600 sq ft) replica of East Germany, complete with surly border guards, rigorous customs inspections, authentic East German mark notes, and restaurants with regulation bland East German food.

Back in 1991 I distinctly recall saying something about how there would eventually be a paintball knockoff game where one side is the East Germans, the other side are the guards with the object being to cross Checkpoint Charlier without getting hit.

[via Fark]

Space shuttle crash description in Niven/Pournelle’s Inferno

A thread on rec.arts.sf.written excerpts a weirdly prescient description of a space shuttle re-entry crash from Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Inferno:

“One of those days,” Corbett said. “First, a twenty-six hour hold while we replaced one of the solid boosters. That was only irritating. We lost one of the three main motors going up. Then after we made orbit one of the fuel tank clamps jammed. Either of you know what a space shuttle looks like?”

“Yes.” “No.”

“Well, the tank is big and bulky and cheap. We carry the main motors down aboard the dart, the winged section, but we leave the tank to burn up in the atmosphere. If we couldn’t get the tank loose there wouldn’t have been any point in going down.”

“Did you?”

“Sure. We fired the orbital motors in bursts until the clamp sprung open and let us loose. Then we had to use more fuel to get back to our orbit. We were supposed to dump cargo and change orbit, but there wasn’t enough fuel. We had to go down.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I spacewalked out and looked at the fuel tank clamp. I swear there was nothing wrong. But maybe the metal fatigued, or maybe the hatch over the clamp lock got twisted–anyway, we were halfway down and going like a meteor when we got a burnthrough under the nose. I heard the maintenance techs– they were the cargo I couldn’t jettison– screaming in the instrument room, then the whole nose peeled back in front of me. I woke up by that ferryboat. The crowd pushed me along to Minos, and he threw me into the whirlwind.”

Customizing Mail.app attribution lines

A recent article in comp.sys.mac.comm talks about how to change the attribution line in Mail.app (using OS X 10.2.x).

  1. Edit /System/Library/Frameworks/Message.framework/Resources/English.lproj/Message.strings in TextEdit.
  2. Change REPLY_MESSAGE_PREFIX and REPLY_MESSAGE_24HOUR_PREFIX to whatver
    you want, such as "%%@ said:\n\n"
  3. Save your changes

Don’t forget to make a copy of the original file before you start editing things.

The Museum of Soviet Synthesizers

Apparently, the Soviet Union had it’s own synthesizer manufacturers – no big surprise since they had their own builders for things like electric guitars, etc. but it’s still wild to see. Much like the western manufacturers, the Soviets built some normal looking ones, and some completely off the wall.

Anyway, all you analog-heads should check out the Museum of Soviet Synthesizers and prepare to pick your collective jaws up off the floor.