Monday Links from the Bench vol. CCCXIX

[SimonMac]

Time to have lunch, then settle down to read this lot rather than doing all that unpleasant work

• 10 Tech Bugs That Became Real Features - "Just because something didn't work the way you intended doesn't mean it's broken." HT to SimonMac for this one Personally, I’d regard the Space Invaders one as a clever way of turning a limitation into a feature; I can’t see any way that “computer takes longer to do more work” can reasonably be described as a bug.
  

Happy invoicing!

[vetran]

needs a wider audience from links

The lady looked impressive all over, far more realistic than other games even attempted. Complete realism wasn't possible, of course, and Gard intended Lara to have somewhat exaggerated dimensions from the start. While making test adjustments to her girlish figure, a slip of his mouse turned an intended 50% increase to her breast size into a 150% gain. It met with instant approval from the team before he could correct it.

not all bugs are bad!

IGN Presents: The History of Tomb Raider - IGN

[barrydidit]

With great difficulty?

yep

Whatever the plan, it can’t be done with roughly 30,000 cubic feet of water flowing by every second.

Except, it seems, >100 years ago. Maybe it's elf 'n safety...

[NickFitz]

Interesting re the Niagra falls thing - if they need to turn it off in order to replace the 1901 bridge, how did that get built in the first place?

With great difficulty?

[vetran]

In the original Space Invaders the level got faster as you killed more aliens. This was actually not by design but a by product of the graphics rendering being processor limited. As fewer elements were shown on screen the rendering got faster.

Awesome!

love the search engine, AtW why couldn't you produce something useful like that?

[barrydidit]

Interesting re the Niagra falls thing - if they need to turn it off in order to replace the 1901 bridge, how did that get built in the first place?

[mudskipper]

Time to have lunch, then settle down to read this lot rather than doing all that unpleasant work

• 10 Tech Bugs That Became Real Features - "Just because something didn't work the way you intended doesn't mean it's broken." HT to SimonMac for this one Personally, I’d regard the Space Invaders one as a clever way of turning a limitation into a feature; I can’t see any way that “computer takes longer to do more work” can reasonably be described as a bug.
  

Not in any way related, but this reminded me of the April Fool prank that became a real product

The running skirt that lets you pee on the move | Stuff.co.nz

[NickFitz]

Time to have lunch, then settle down to read this lot rather than doing all that unpleasant work

• The Wreck of Amtrak 188 - "Had you been standing anywhere near the tracks, you would have heard Amtrak 188 before you saw it, in the hum of the rail bed and the metallic shiver of the electricity in the overhead catenary wires. And then you would have felt it, in the vibration of the earth: the combined weight of a 98-ton locomotive and seven 50-ton cars, carrying a total of 258 people… investigators would turn their focus on the section of track between North Philadelphia Station and Frankford Junction. Three miles of train travel: the distance it took for an otherwise unremarkable trip, overseen by an engineer known for his prudence, to go violently, impossibly wrong.” An in-depth analysis of last May’s train crash in Philadelphia. It’s the NY Times, so here’s a tip if you’ve already been there a few times this month and it tries to paywall you: open a new browser window in porn mode - erm, I mean private browsing mode (Cmd-Shift-N on OS X, Ctrl-Shift-N on Windows, works on most if not all modern browsers) - and the paywall won’t block you
  
  
• The sound effects madman behind the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons - "Tregoweth Edmond “Treg” Brown was the genius sound-effects wizard responsible for sound editing the Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons starting in 1936… reviewing some of the old Looney Tunes cartoons as an adult, you tend to ignore how utterly ridiculous the doinks and twangs are, for they sound totally natural in context—a testament to Brown’s flawless editing of sounds demanded by the images.” This article includes a two-part documentary, CRASH! BANG! BOOM! The Wild Sounds of Treg Brown, along with a 42 minute compilation of sound effects from the cartoons
  
  
• Usborne 1980s computer books - "Many of today's tech professionals were inspired by the Usborne computing books they read as children. The books included program listings for such iconic computers as the ZX Spectrum, the BBC Micro and the Commodore 64, and are still used in some computer clubs today." And now Usborne have made their 1980s computer books free to download (in the right-hand column of the page), so you can finally get Machine Code for Beginners, dust down your Speccy or Beeb (it covers both Z80 and 6502 assembly languages), and get your first sprite-drawing routine working; or maybe try one of the other books and type in an entire text adventure in BASIC
  
  
• The legend of the Camden castles - "Peter Watts investigates a dubious rumour surrounding the origin of four Camden pubs and unearths a tale drunken navvies, broomstick weddings and shared hardship.” Some interesting bits of urban history emerge from what is, it turns out, an urban legend about Camden pubs
  
  
• When I Quit Cutting My Hair, I Learned How Men Treat Women On American Roads - Jack Baruth encounters a lot of assholes: ”The usual scenario goes something like this: I do something to upset another driver, like squeezing in front of them on the freeway (in my car) or lane-splitting past them in traffic (on my motorcycle). They can only see the back of my head, so they assume that some woman has gotten the better of them somehow. This leads to them breaking the laws of traffic, sanity, and sometimes even physics to get up next to me, blaring their horn and shouting. I then either look over at them (in my car) or remove my helmet (on my bike). At that point, they immediately stop what they were doing and either drive off or commence to looking straight ahead like nothing's happened.”
  
  
• Trail Of Guilt - "For nearly a quarter-cenury after 15-year-old Martha Moxley was beaten to death with a golf club in the exelusive Greenwich, Connecticut, enclave of Belle Haven, police were stymied. Finally, last winter [2012], Michael Skakel, son of a wealthy neighbor and nephew of Ethel Kennedy, was indicted for murder." Turns out people can evade justice for a very long time because their parents are wealthy. Who knew?
  
  
• Why We Picture Bombs As Round Black Balls with a Burning Wick - Jaya Saxena on the origins of the cartoon bomb: ”Cartoons have always relied on visual shorthand; the whole point of the medium is to convey as much information as possible into a small amount of space. But bombs actually did look like that for a while.”
  
  
• New York Is Going to Turn Off Niagara Falls. Here’s How - "Sometime within the next five to seven years, a section of Niagara Falls will go dry. This isn’t a case of the great western drought creeping east, but rather New York’s plan to, for lack of a better term, turn off the famed waterfall. The most astonishing part of the whole idea is that it’s not nearly as crazy, difficult, expensive, or novel as it may sound." Of course you’ll already know that if you read the links on the subject posted in 2013
  
  
• 10 Tech Bugs That Became Real Features - "Just because something didn't work the way you intended doesn't mean it's broken." HT to SimonMac for this one Personally, I’d regard the Space Invaders one as a clever way of turning a limitation into a feature; I can’t see any way that “computer takes longer to do more work” can reasonably be described as a bug.
  
  
• Frinkiac - Finally, a search engine exclusively for Simpsons screenshots! Quite simple really: they’ve indexed the subtitles. So if you search for something like monorail, you’ll get images from the times on the programme when that word is being said. Click on an image on the results page to see a larger version, together with the associated dialogue
  
  A search for “contractor” returns lots of pictures of Moe’s
  
  
  

Happy invoicing!