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Sean Effel from Drupal Therapy just put up a wonderful screencast on how to pull blip.tv videos from RSS feeds into Drupal. Check it out, www.drupaltherapy.com/node/34.
Preliminary Report on Unidentified Object 92002, "The Chiron Derelict"
I created a video to demonstrate the (hand-cranked) flickering backlight of the Neuronal Node. (This is the Director's Cut - if you saw the video when I posted earlier pictures, the music is better now and the whole thing has been reworked. The video is over on YouTube, because Flickr's video player doesn't seem to work very well.) Enjoy!
Discovered by a robot probe exploring the minor planet 2060 Chiron, object 92002 appears to be nothing less than an interstellar spacecraft of nonhuman origin.
The relevant probe imagery was suppressed, and an unprecedented manned exploration mission was dispatched to investigate the artifact.
Adrift, apparently long abandoned, the vessel is nonetheless far from lifeless. Indeed, the ship itself is alive. It shows every indication of being a complex colony organism composed of many disparate subunits, which the exploration team calls "nodes".
This appears to be no natural space-going lifeform, but a deliberately assembled combination of biomechanoid modules. Most of the nodes are so completely self-contained, so tightly specialized, and so efficient at their functions, that they must have been genetically engineered with near godlike skill.
This "neuronal" node appears to be a small-scale neural network, equivalent in decision-making power to perhaps a few dozen biological neurons. These nodes - many thousands of them, no two exactly alike - are part of a larger apparent network that covers the derelict's surface in complex stripes and webs, integrating other types of nodes at times.
Many of the derelict's neuronal nodes seem to be still active, even when excised and placed in shielded storage. There are dark patches, but it would be prudent to assume that the derelict as a whole may be, even now, intelligent and aware.
The unexpected discovery of such an advanced alien artifact so close to Earth is alarming, and the apparent abandonment of the vessel by its presumed crew is hardly reassuring. If they - whoever they are - are not still on board...where did they go?
This is an illuminated alien/organic greeble study for Greeble De Mayo 2015, Week Three.
We saw free, public aerobics classes in a number of towns along the Mekong and in Bangkok.
This photo appeared in the following ideotrope albums:
Thailand - all photos - This scrapbook contains all the photos we decided to keep. For a more-edited subset (though there's still ~350 photos, yikes!) and more documention click here.
Vientiane to Bangkok - Links for:
Thailand Nov, Dec 2006 main doc
Previous set of Thailand photos
My short dispatch about the end of the trip is written from Boulder two weeks after our return. Hopefully I'll still be able to capture a bit of Thailand magic even as it fades from my daily experience.
Vientiane, Laos: not an early-rising city. The morning market hadn't opened when we arrived at 7 so we walked to Laos' national symbol, the golden stupa of That Louang. We waited for that to open and ... well, the view from the outside is all you need. After barely 30 hours in Laos I'm hardly qualified to comment on the country even from a tourist's perspective, but I will say that Thailand was a great choice for our entire one month cycle adventure.
The return ride to Nong Khai was quick and uneventful. The trip to Bangkok on Thai Railways was comfortable and on schedule. Two days in Bangkok with Oliver was a culinary treat retracing our route. We had fantastic curries from Central Thailand and perhaps the best meal of the entire trip, lunch at Yum & Tum, an Isaan-inspired restaurant with Bangkok flair.
Christmas morning we packed our bicycle so we were able to enjoy the rest of the day without worrying about our upcoming departure. We found a traditional US (or British, I guess) style Christmas lunch at a British pub near Oliver's apartment. Then we spent the afternoon wandering Lumphini Park watching giant lizards and Thais exercising. For dinner Oliver treated us to a wonderful Thai meal on a boat cruising the Chao Phraya. What a great way to end our culinary journey in this welcoming country.