Eppu – Page 18 – Co-Geeking

Living in the Science-Fictional Now: Photos from Another Planet Are Trivial

June 1, 2022April 24, 2022Eppu

One of the astounding things about living right now is the sheer amount of scientific knowledge and technical skills humanity has gained in the past 100 years or so alone.

These days it’s trivial, for example, to get high-quality photos from a neighboring planet brought to your personal device.

(Ok, it’s not truly trivial in the strictest sense since so many steps and technologies are involved, but at the same time: Photos. From another planet. Automatically delivered. Via the Internet. Which many (if not most) of us in the West have casual access to. Pretty much daily! So yes. Trivial.)

Specifically, I’m talking about the Persevererance Imgage Bot on Twitter. It’s a project by computer engineer Niraj Sanghvi. He has automated image tweeting mostly from NASA/JPL-Caltech sources for an impressive, ever-growing collection.

The photos are purely functional, of course, helping the rover to operate, but some are also quite interesting as photographs. Below are some recent favorite shots.

Twitter PersevereImgBot SkyCam and Stars

(Click on the image source links below to find more about each photo.)

As a bonus, here’s a short video of a Martian solar eclipse by the moon Phobos taken by Perseverance:

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Sees Solar Eclipse on Mars by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on YouTube

Cool. Cool, cool, cool. 🙂

Images by NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU via PersevereImgBot on Twitter: Rock and sand. Hilly landscape. SkyCam with stars. Smooth sand.

Out There is an occasional feature highlighting intriguing art, spaces, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Dwarven Windwalker Monk Transmog Tweak

May 30, 2022October 15, 2022Eppu

Besides the Blood Elf subtlety rogue transmog update I already shared, I’ve also tweaked my Dwarven windwalker monk’s mog for Shadowlands. This new look is more sombre and subdued in color as befits the expansion’s theme.

Shadowlands F Dwarf Windwalker Monk Transmog

As before, the head and shirt slots are hidden and the bracers aren’t visible. I also retained the two fist weapons mogs (Silithid Claw).

The update is built around the Bronzebeard Heritage Armor set. Since I tend to find the pre-made sets often a bit lifeless, however, I only used the shoulders, chest, hands, and feet, and filled out my new transmog with Dignitary’s Traveling Cloak, Stygian Belt, and Harvester’s Court Leggings. I was suprised how well the diamond-patterned quilting in the Revendreth pants fit with the diamonds in the Bronzebeard shoulders, and the red in the belt exactly matches the pants.

Finally, I added some red tattoos (Gryphon pattern) to match the pants color and the detailing on the shoulders.

If interested, you can have a look at the set in Wowhead’s Dressing Room.

Image: World of Warcraft screencap

Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.

Quotes: No Man’s Faculties Could Be Developed without an Extensive Acquaintance with Books

May 27, 2022October 15, 2022Eppu

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s speculative work The Last Man starts very much like a run-of-the-mill regency-era novel with its three-book structure. You even start to wonder whether much of interest is ever going to happen.

And then a plague hits. Book three, especially, where people drop off like flies, felt rather grim even before living through a pandemic myself. (I read it a few years ago.)

Since the plague aspect is a little too on the nose, I’m going to skip all of that for now. Instead, below is what the protagonist thought about reading:

“I felt convinced that however it might have been in former times, in the present stage of the world, no man’s faculties could be developed, no man’s moral principle be enlarged and liberal, without an extensive acquaintance with books. To me they stood in the place of an active career, of ambition, and those palpable excitements necessary to the multitude.”

– Lionel Verney in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man

Sounds astonishingly like Mr. Darcy’s line about a truly accomplished woman who must improve “her mind by extensive reading” in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, doesn’t it? It must’ve been very much in the air in the early 19th century.

If you’re interested, a free e-version of The Last Man is available on Project Gutenberg.

Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 2004 [originally published 1826], p. 124.

Image by Eppu Jensen

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

DIY Wheelchair Spoke Covers with Crocheted Solar System

May 18, 2022May 15, 2022Eppu

Caoileann O’Mahony crocheted some wheelchair spoke covers and blogged the instructions for the Glasgow in 2024 Worldcon bid. This isn’t your sleepy granny square crochet, though, oh no; O’Mahoney also made little planet appliques and turned the spoke guards into a model of our solar system.

O'Mahoney Wheelchair Spoke Covers w Solar System

And round and round it goes. I like the color selection (although I wish the photo were a little clearer). Saturn and Uranus even have their rings. How cool is that?!

Found via File 770.

Image by Caoileann O’Mahony at Glasgow in 2024

In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.

Estonian Muhu Skirts Dyed with Mine Chemicals

May 2, 2022April 24, 2022Eppu

Kadri Liik shared on Twitter some of her family history of using mines to dye fabric for colorful folk skirts in western Estonia in 1930s.

Strictly speaking, of course, it’s not mines themselves that were used in dyeing, but the picric acid in them. Russian World War I battleship Slava sank in 1917 between Muhu island and mainland Estonia, only 12 years after putting to sea.

Estonians scrapped the ship in the early 1930s. During that process, picric acid was extracted and put to use. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, picric acid was first used in dyeing in 1849, initially of silk. In Muhu, it was apparently used with wool.

The bright yellow derived from picric acid was locally known as mine yellow (miinikollane). Below is the Muhu skirt made from scratch by Liik’s grandmother or great aunt in 1930s:

Apparently, Muhu skirts enjoyed such popularity that older women might be doing their everyday chores in them as late as the 1960s.

It’s quite striking, isn’t it? It seems that some of these traditional patterns survive, either in traditionally woven textiles or as prints on modern fabrics, which is fabulous. I’m not sure I’d like to know exactly how the picric was extracted in the 30s, though…!

Images: map of Muhu island by Google Maps. Skirt by Kadri Liik via Twitter.

How It Happens is an occasional feature looking at the inner workings of various creative efforts.

Trailer for the Obi-Wan Kenobi Series

April 20, 2022April 17, 2022Eppu

Obi-Wan Kenobi, a live action series with six episodes, is nearly here.

Apparently, the series is supposed to gap the pain of Ewan McGregor’s young Obi-Wan and the hope of Alec Guinness’ old Obi-Wan. That makes for an unusual angle to approach a Star Wars story from, and the first Disney+ series I have any interest in seeing.

Obi-Wan Kenobi | Teaser Trailer by Disney+ on YouTube

At this writing, Obi-Wan begins streaming on Disney+ on May 27, 2022. So soon! (It was supposed to be May 25, 2022, the 45th anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars, but apparently something something—publishing is weird, and tv publishing doubly so.)

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Space Telescope Test Image of Star Captures Background Galaxies Too

April 6, 2022March 20, 2022Eppu

The James Webb space telescope, launched into orbit at the end of December 2021, is going through some mirror alignment steps. A test image was taken, and it shows the astounding potential of the telescope in space imaging. Take a look:

2022 03 NASA STScI James Webb Alignment Eval Image

Not only does the focal point star stand out conspicuously, you can see other stars and galaxies(!) in the background.

The significance of James Webb summarized in NASA’s press release for the alignment test:

“While some of the largest ground-based telescopes on Earth use segmented primary mirrors, Webb is the first telescope in space to use such a design. The 21-foot, 4-inch (6.5-meter) primary mirror – much too big to fit inside a rocket fairing – is made up of 18 hexagonal, beryllium mirror segments. It had to be folded up for launch and then unfolded in space before each mirror was adjusted – to within nanometers – to form a single mirror surface. […]

“Webb is the world’s premier space science observatory and once fully operational, will help solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.”

I don’t need to be a STEM person to be delighted at the progress!

Image by NASA/STScI

Blood Elf Subtlety Rogue Transmog Tweak

March 30, 2022January 28, 2024Eppu

It was time to re-do some of my World of Warcraft transmogs. Among others, I updated my Blood Elf rogue’s look. I still like her previous shadow concept mog a lot, so this update was more a teeny tweak than a grand change.

Her chest remains mogged to Ghostclaw Tunic, but I updated her legs to Jadefire Pants and hid her belt. Then I dinked around with her weapons and ended up with Enchanted Azsharite Felbane Dagger as a partner to the ever-gorgeous Ethereum Phase Blade.

Here is the outfit in Wowhead’s Dressing Room.

Image: screenshot from World of Warcraft

Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.

Hide a Gaming Room behind a Swinging Bookcase

March 23, 2022March 13, 2022Eppu

Lisa Natcharian at The Storyteller’s Cottage transformed a long, narrow room into two smaller ones, namely a library and a gaming room with entry through a swinging bookcase.

The house is Victorian, built circa 1891, and located in Simsbury, Connecticut. Before the covid pandemic, Natcharian and her crew organized various book-themed events: author talks, writing classes, poetry slams, summer camps, book clubs, D&D game nights, tea or cocktail parties, live murder mysteries, even escape rooms.

The door into the gaming den opens when you pull a candle sconce attached to the bookcase:

The new secret room is papered with stone-block-look wallpaper and equipped with various furnishings that nod towards medieval castles: a round table with ornate wood chairs, a small suit of armor in the corner, and wall textiles, for example.

I’m flabbergasted that she was able to source so much of the furnishings second hand. I mean, who has a miniature suit of armor just lying around until you decide to sell it off on Craigslist?

Lisa Natcharian Secret Castle Room Decor

The results are well worth the effort, and surely will be enjoyed by all event visitors. For more images, visit her site, or, should you prefer to watch a video about the build process instead, you can see it on YouTube.

Images by Lisa Natcharian at The Storyteller’s Cottage

In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.