That's why I'll always be around

[austin_dern]

I thought it was odd the clothing store had a lucite box full of apples. So I went in, was quickly greeted by a clerk, and left alone. The apples were very good plastic replicas; only the seam gave it away visually. Finally I got to ask why they kept a box of fake apples.

``Oh, it's because our store colors are red and yellow, we wanted to show them.''

Why wasn't there something yellow?

``We didn't have anything. ''

When the light for the crosswalk -- not at the intersection of streets -- turned to ``walk'' we mere pedestrians couldn't. Blocking the whole width between the white lines was one of the extra-long bendy-busses. Plastered along its entire length: the cartoon lion and slogans of the ``Let's Be Courteous And Share The Road'' campaign.

Another bus -- one I rode downtown -- had a very cautious, by which I mean glacially slow, driver. I appreciate it may be practical on a local route not to take the bus out of first gear, but he left his in one-half gear.

Trivia: Pioneer 10 and 11 had six-bit intensity data for each pixel. Pictures were stored in a 6144-bit buffer. Source: Pioneer Odyssey, Richard O Fimmel, William Swindell, Eric Burgess. NASA SP-396.

Currently Reading: Lethe, Tricia Sullivan.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

It can be quite curious, riding one of those articulated buses - stand in the rear section, and you get to see half the bus turning while you're still moving in the same, previous direction. But I'm easily amused.

The other driver was, perhaps, inspired by old cable car footage, seeing people jump on and off without any need to actually stop completely. This would, of course, also result in savings on brake wear, which must be significant for buses.

Pictures were stored in a 6144-bit buffer.

That'd have to be a partial rather than full framebuffer, ne?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I actually like riding on the joint in the bus; it's fun watching the world turn around you. You just don't see busses doing that often enough.

As for Pioneer, yes, they didn't store an entire picture in memory; instead they were scanned in one strip at a time, like a TV picture.