Random Facts

[Artemis]

Star Wars Day folks (aka Pun Day), may the 4th be with you and all that. (And just to add extra Random Fact Value, yep, there's a lot of Star Wars action figures in the collection, ranging from proper old ones bought when the OT was coming out right up to the most recent, a Black Series Fulcrum Ahsoka. Favourite's probably the Sideshow 12" Asajj Ventress.)

[Artemis]

Today's a good one - May 5th, 1822, the birthday of Sir Harry Flashman, VC, KCB, KCIE, celebrated Victorian hero (in fact, coward, bully, lecher, and all-around horrible person), antagonist in Tom Brown's Schooldays and 'original author' of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman Papers chronicling how he went from being expelled from Rugby to lionised as one of the greatest military champions of his age without once doing his duty if he could possibly avoid it. Apart from being an excellent series of novels (and in some ways better historical material than a lot of textbooks manage) that you should all go read if you haven't already, Flashman is without a doubt my biggest influence in writing - I don't really analyse my work very much, but it's always at the back of my mind that I'm trying to be like Fraser's work, lively and interesting and rich in detail. (Probably helps that, whatever else I'm reading, I'm always part-way through a Flashman book on the side.)

[Artemis]

Today (May 6, I'm slightly late, as usual on the weekend) is the birthday of Orson Welles, the guy behind Citizen Kane, the War of the Worlds radio broadcast, and of course the voice of Unicron in Transformers: The Movie. (That led to a terrific quote: "You know what I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy" ... "I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I'm destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen.")

[Artemis]

Just time to pop in before bed to provide today's Fact: a happy birthday to David Franklin, who's done a number of things (mostly Australian) but probably best known to us geeks as Lieutenant Braca from Farscape, Scorpius's faithful Smithers, who's got to be one of the best rags-to-riches stories of supporting sci-fi characters, going from random guy who's just there so the villain has someone to explain his plans to, through dependable henchman with his own personality, to finally being a bona fide badass Peacekeeper hero by the end of the series. Evidently that all came from the writers noticing they liked what he was doing with his 'glorified extra' role in early episodes.

[Artemis]

A double feature for today - in 1912 the founding of Paramount Pictures, and in 2008 the release of Star Trek (the one that annoys everyone by not having a subtitle to make it easy to differentiate, but is otherwise pretty good). Obviously I'm eagerly awaiting the new Star Trek series, although the downward spiral of the franchise last time it was on tv also has me a bit apprehensive, despite the movies hitting a recent high note with Beyond. Still, having Jason Isaacs and Michelle Yeoh in Starfleet uniforms will be pretty cool.

[Artemis]

History today - in 1901 the first Australian Parliament was opened in Melbourne. The choice of city became another facet of the long-standing rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney, resulting in Canberra being built so that Melbourne could get rid of Parliament and Sydney wouldn't have to take it.

[Artemis]

Today in 1962, Marvel published The Incredible Hulk #1, everyone's favourite giant green rage monster (he was originally grey, but they changed it because green was easier for the printers to handle at the time - although it is canon that he was grey, and on occasions he's gone through phases of grey alternate Hulk personalities). Not a lot of people have it high on their MCU lists, but I really liked the Edward Norton movie (although Mark Ruffalo totally won me over as soon as he showed up).

[Artemis]

Happy birthday to Shohreh Aghdashloo, who I've developed kind of a crush on lately - among various other roles she's Commodore Paris in Star Trek Beyond, Chrisjen Avasarala in The Expanse, and the voice of Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay in Mass Effect (quarians need distinctive voices, what with not being able to see their faces).

[thespian_phryne]

Happy birthday to Shohreh Aghdashloo, who I've developed kind of a crush on lately - among various other roles she's Commodore Paris in Star Trek Beyond, Chrisjen Avasarala in The Expanse, and the voice of Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay in Mass Effect (quarians need distinctive voices, what with not being able to see their faces).

I would pay money just to have her read me the phone book.

Ya.

[Artemis]

Can we get a rap battle between her and Morgan Freeman?

History today - in 1926 the airship Norge flew over the North Pole, becoming the first vessel to do so, and owing to various arguments about whose account to believe, its crew the first explorers confirmed to have gotten there. Arguing all the way evidently. This was back when airships didn't only exist on parallel Earths as they do now (the reason you always see the Goodyear Blimp flying around is its crew are trying to find the dimensional rift leading back home).

[gorn]

The most important thing you will ever read -->
http://www.startrek.com/article/the-imp ... f-the-gorn

[Artemis]

That was really good. I hope the new series gets it at least somewhat right, I could use some optimism in sci-fi...

Today's fun fact: back in 1787, the eleven ships of the First Fleet set out from Portsmouth to carry 1000ish convicts and various minders to sunny Australia, to establish a colony at Botany Bay. They chose Port Jackson instead after deciding they didn't want to live on Botany Bay, a tradition which continues to the present.

Accounting for inflation the whole thing cost about ten million pounds, which is less than you'd need to get a place on the harbour nowadays, so at least they had that in their favour.

[Artemis]

Happy birthday today to George Lucas, yeah, the guy who came up with Star Wars, but I feel like that's the kind of thing people (myself included) really need to take a moment to let it sink in properly: the guy who came up with Star Wars. Also Willow (the movie, not the witch) - if you haven't seen Willow, you really should, it's quite a gem.

[Artemis]

Quite a recent one - today last year, a fun little documentary about life in the Australian outback was released called Mad Max: Fury Road. We all had a good laugh about the rest of the world mistakenly thinking it was post-apocalyptic.

[Artemis]

Today marks the anniversary (pre-anniversary?) of 2248's Battle of the Line, a doomed last defence of Earth against the vastly superior Minbari war fleet, launched solely to buy a few more minutes for civilian transports to flee the system, because despite what every other sci-fi franchise (and Babylon 5 itself later on, sadly) would tell you, being plucky newcomers with 'indomitable human spirit' doesn't count for a whole heck of a lot when you piss off a species with a thousand year advantage in space combat technology.

[Artemis]

Science today - in 1969, the Soviet Venera-6 probe began its descent into the atmosphere of Venus. It survived 51 minutes, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you take into account what Venus is like, that's pretty impressive.

Also (of less historical note) a couple of cars ran into each other on the roundabout in front of work today - nothing serious, just crunched their noses together. If anyone else has watched enough Achievement Hunter videos, yes, I did at first think the stuff leaking out of the front of one of them was headlight fluid.

[Artemis]

Today's birthday - Andreas Katsulas, born 1946, sadly no longer with us. First came to nerd prominence as Tomalak, Picard's recurring Romulan nemesis through the middle of Star Trek TNG, but cemented himself in the outer space hall of fame as Ambassador G'Kar on Babylon 5, one of the best characters in sci-fi tv to this day.

[Artemis]

Eek, I missed a day - work's been busy (scanning is the bane of my existence; can't just start it up and let it run on its own). Anyway, yesterday while I was hand-feeding B1 plans into the scanner one at a time, it was the anniversary of the launch of Mars 2 in 1972, the lander of which became the first human-made craft to reach the surface of another planet, although owing to a failure of the descent rockets, it reached the surface a heck of a lot harder than it was designed to. On top of the USSR's series of Luna moon probes, it also secured their dominance in the field of Unimaginative Spacecraft Names, until Futurama finally went one better in 1999 with the Planet Express ship 'Planet Express Ship'.

And today in 1891, Edison's kinetoscope was put on public display for the first time, one of the early steps towards modern film. I haven't double checked, but I'm pretty sure scientifically speaking that means sometime around tomorrow (in 1891, obviously) the first kinetoscope porn was doing the rounds.

[Artemis]

I missed another day! No work that time, I was just cleaning the house over the weekend - it always takes ages, because I invariably get stuck tidying up one very specific bit of one room and won't get anything else done. There's still no room on my desk for my new laptop (which is what I'll be using to finally get some updates onto Looking-glass, so yes, that will eventually happen) but I have finally got a shelf properly arranged with all the Lego sets of the Clone Wars-era Republic army. Except the Venator-class Star Destroyer, there wasn't room; I'm trying not to empty the shelf and start over again just because of that. (Seriously, Star Destroyers take up a stupid amount of space, although I suppose they're kind of meant to...)

Speaking of Star Wars though, yesterday in 1980 was the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back. And today in 1906 the Wright Brothers were finally granted a patent for their newfangled 'flying machine' - which was actually a glider they'd designed in 1902, the important bit of the patent was the means of controlling the thing, rather than powering it. Their first powered flight had been back in December of 1903; naturally, it was overbooked.

[Artemis]

Not a very exciting one today - in 1995, the first version of Java was released (the programming language, not the one that Krakatoa's east of, except it isn't) So when you think back to a time before your computer was continually pestering you to update Java, this is the dividing line.

[Artemis]

Engineering time - today in 1940 Igor Sikorsky told the world "This is how you build a helicopter" by taking his VS-300 up for an untethered flight, and in terms of rotor design the world agreed he knew what he was talking about and is still pretty much following his advice (the 300 got developed into the R-4, the first mass produced helicopter). The company he founded still makes badass helicopters all over the place, and occasionally evil Transformers.

[Artemis]

Happy birthday to the late great Peter Cushing - recently recreated for Rogue One, and I thought they actually did a pretty good job of it (I mean, you could tell, but after the first scene of being surprised to see him and deliberately looking at the effect, I just went with it and I thought it looked fine). Not to mention all his Hammer Horror work coming back to mind with this monster filmverse The Mummy's evidently supposed to be kicking off. And he's probably the only guy who could be called 'Doctor Who' and have all the Whovians love him anyway.

[sweet satin lover]

It's my sisters birthday today

[sweet satin lover]

It's my sisters birthday today

[Artemis]

Happy birthday sweet satin lover's sister!

And she's in good company - aptly enough with Peter Cushing yesterday, today's the birthday of Sir Christopher Lee, aka Dracula, Count Dooku, Scaramanga, Saruman the White (he even did some extra voice work for the Lego Hobbit game, which was a really cool surprise), and so on and so forth.

[Artemis]

This is a good one - today in 1951 saw the first radio broadcast of The Goon Show. The what, you ask? Here's some, and there's plenty more where that came from. I actually first encountered the Goons in The Goon Cartoons book when I was young, then discovered they were being rerun on ABC radio, and after that got a whole bunch of cassette tape volumes of the show (I did say this was when I was young, tapes were still a thing back then).

[Artemis]

Back to science today - in 1999, the space shuttle Discovery became the first flight to dock with the then-new International Space Station. I like the ISS - I mean, it's not the Citadel, but at least we've got something substantial up there.

[Artemis]

Still on science, today in 1971 Mariner 9 was launched off towards Mars, where it became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet (the USSR's Mars probes turned up a couple of weeks later, and shuffled around looking embarrassed as a result), and photographed 85% of the planet's surface, giving everyone back here the first clear look at extinct volcanoes like Olympus Mons, canyons (Valles Marineris is named after it), craters, dry river beds, and deposits of Illudium Q-36 (not really). Although switched off after exhausting its fuel, it's still up there, and projected to last until 2022 or so when it'll finally hit the atmosphere for good.

[Artemis]

Historical today - but also kind of science, in the manufactured technology sense... anyway. Today in 1859, Big Ben was started up. The tower (now called Elizabeth Tower, previously the Clock Tower, to clue the members of parliament in to what was making all that racket every hour) was designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, back when that was the kind of name people had, and the clock is famous for its reliability, including how reliably it gets blown up, disintegrated, or crashed into by every alien spacecraft that goes within a hundred miles of London.

[Artemis]

Happy birthday today (the first of winter down here, and if you're not in direct sunlight, wow is it obvious) to Rene Auberjonois, best known (to me anyway) as Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and notable as one half of my first proper shipping experience, because it was really important that Kira and Odo got together (and they went and spun it out for six years). You may also have seen him (with his own face, rather than Odo's near-enough approximation) in Boston Legal, and having a glance over his wikipedia page today I discovered that he's also the current voice of Pepe le Pew.