Monday Links from the Gap Between Teams Meetings vol. DCCXX

[NickFitz]

Let's try again

• The Man Who Invented Fantasy - ”All those wizards, ogres, and barely-clad elf queens in the bookstore? You have Lester del Rey to thank.” How the fantasy genre was created in the 1970s by a publisher who realised there was a market for Tolkien derivates.
• This is the largest map of the human brain ever made - ”Researchers have created the largest atlas of human brain cells so far, revealing more than 3,000 cell types — many of which are new to science.” Should you want more detail, there are no fewer than 21 papers to read :
• Earth's Hidden Eighth Continent Is No Longer Lost - ”Zealandia, considered a candidate for the Earth’s eighth continent, was mostly lost to the sea. Geologists say they’ve now mapped the entire nearly two million square miles of the underwater land mass.”
• Newly found rooms in Sahura’s Pyramid challenge what we know of such structures - Barratt Pyramids at work: ”Cheap construction reduced the monument at Abusir in Egypt to rubble over millennia.”
• What's The Real Human Equivalent of Your Dog's Age? Here's a New Formula - Work out if your dog is entitled to a bus pass: ”No one knows how it started, or where it came from, but the idea that you can convert your dog's age to human years by multiplying by seven? Total myth… Finding an accurate way to do so isn't easy, but a team of researchers has developed a formula. And it's based not on some arbitrary metric, but on changes to DNA over time.”
• The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City - ”Anarchic, organic, surreal, this enclave was once among the most densely populated places on Earth.” A remarkable looking place, though possibly not somewhere you'd want to live unless you're a hardcore Blade Runner cosplayer.
• We asked an aero-engineer and a scientist whether Barbie’s Jet would work in real life - Perhaps not: ”Our independent analysis, by aero engineer Joe Wilding and Jim Smith, reveal a litany of serious aerodynamic and structural issues that would curse it, if it were made into a real aircraft.”
• Bingo Calls: The Complete List - Make sure you know the difference between Kelly's Eye and Top of the Shop: ”Here is a complete list of the bingo slang meaning with regards to the numbers and other strange words that you might come across if you play bingo online or in person.”
• Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor - Ken Shirriff upgrades to 32 bits: ”You might think of the Intel 386 processor (1985) as just an early processor in the x86 line, but the 386 was a critical turning point for modern computing in several ways… In this blog post, I look at die photos of the Intel 386 processor and explain what they reveal about the history of the processor, such as the move from the 1.5 µm process to the 1 µm process.”
• 4K Rivers - Beautiful images generated from geographical data: ”An ongoing series of vibrant river and delta images from North America and other parts of the world. The images are constructed using high-resolution elevation data. To learn more about the rivers and to download the 4K-resolution versions, use the links at the bottom of the page.” This one is derived from the Red River along the border of Oklahoma and Texas
  
  

Happy invoicing!

[ladymuck]

[*]The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City - ”Anarchic, organic, surreal, this enclave was once among the most densely populated places on Earth.” A remarkable looking place, though possibly not somewhere you'd want to live unless you're a hardcore Blade Runner cosplayer.

Interesting read!

I had a visit to the Kowloon Walled City Park on my to-do list when I visited Hong Kong pre-pandemic when the security law protests were in their infancy. Never got around to it and, now I know more about its history, I think I should make the effort next time.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Who knew the 386 was so complicated when we only wanted to play solitaire & minesweeper?

Aha! found it: "Badge of Infamy" and "The Sky is Falling" by Del Rey in a Galaxy MAGAbook two in one edition.

If I read it it'll probably fall to pieces such being the quality of pulp paperbacks of the era (1963 but written early 50s).

It takes real talent to design something that glides worse than the Shuttle.

[northernladuk]

• The Man Who Invented Fantasy - ”All those wizards, ogres, and barely-clad elf queens in the bookstore? You have Lester del Rey to thank.” How the fantasy genre was created in the 1970s by a publisher who realised there was a market for Tolkien derivates.

Liked this one. I've always been a believer in 'vanilla' D&D being brought up playing the game. In my mind that set the 'rules' of the fantasy world. All the basic monsters, character classes and so on. I always preferred books that followed these rules and never really counted the LotR's as following them. Granted each author has their spin on it but always edged back to the classic world. I loved the Shannara books and didn't realize they came before TSR D&D. I guess D&D just put the manuals around it with all the monster guides etc.

Always disappointed more of the fantasy novels made it to film and endured. I kind of get why because it's all a bit of sameness. There was a Shannara film which I thought was pretty good but wasn't mainstream stuff. Maybe someone will give it a go but Game of Thrones has sated everyone's appetite for dragon films for awhile I expect.

Examining the silicon dies of the Intel 386 processor - Ken Shirriff upgrades to 32 bits:

Love these break downs. The fact that the designers left their initials all over the boards was a great (nerdy) snippet. Didn't know that and it's pretty cool.

[vetran]

Who knew the 386 was so complicated when we only wanted to play solitaire & minesweeper?

Aha! found it: "Badge of Infamy" and "The Sky is Falling" by Del Rey in a Galaxy MAGAbook two in one edition.

If I read it it'll probably fall to pieces such being the quality of pulp paperbacks of the era (1963 but written early 50s).

It takes real talent to design something that glides worse than the Shuttle.

My first PC was a 286, ran excel 5 and made a telecoms giant really happy. They paid the bill and everything.

386 I coveted. Then I turned up to do an upgrade in Winersh triangle explained their existing 386 lacked oomph, their IT bod pointed me at a stack of pentiums in the corner and said take your pick! A couple of hours later their system was going like the clappers. My phone is now faster than the lot of them.