technology

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As announced a few weeks ago, The Knight Shift is undergoing some major renovation/rejuvenation/regeneration. If this site (and that IS what this is now, a full-bore website with real hosting) looks a bit wonky at times fret not! It is just I, your friend and humble narrator, tinkering on the other side of your screen. It seems that my basic HTML skills are as sharp as ever, I have lost nothing at all in the three decades since I first learned how to make web pages. But I’ve never used WordPress until now and there’s something of a learning curve. I wound up asking ChatGPT for themes appropriate for a personal blog, and it listed a few possibilities. This theme you’re currently looking at is MorningTime and it’s being a real pleasure to build with it.

And just for old time’s sake, here is the “weird spinning head of ...

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Margaret Hamilton inside an Apollo command module simulator

Margaret Hamilton, the brilliant mathematician behind the then-nascent field of software engineering and the lead programmer of the Apollo effort that put humanity on the moon, has passed away at the age of ninety.

But what a life Hamilton had!  Early on she demonstrated a prowess for mathematics.  She followed that into higher education and wound up at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  There she was brought aboard NASA to work on the computer systems for the Apollo spacecraft.  It was during this phase of her career that Hamilton developed error-correction code that in the case of Apollo 11 kept the vessel from disaster during landing.

Here are the famous photos of Margaret Hamilton with the enormous pile of computer code that she and her team developed for Apollo 11:

After the Apollo program ended, Hamilton started her own company ...

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Meet “Sally”.  She costs $57,000: less than the yearly pay of the average teacher in New York State.  She is an automaton.  A robot teacher.  And she is coming online in a school district this coming fall semester.

Here is another picture of Sally courtesy of Realbotix, the company that created her:

 

“Welllll long tall Sally, she’s built for speed, she got

Everything that Uncle John need

Oh bay-bee, yeaaaah bay-bee, WHOO-OOOH, HOO-OO bay-beee

Havin’ me some fun tonight, yeah! “

(I just couldn’t resist that, folks.)

I think that Sally is a glorified Teddy Ruxpin.  Remember him? The animatronic teddy bear that toy company Worlds of Wonder came out with in 1985.  Sally probably has a cassette tape hatch in her back that contains her programming, lets her move her arms and head (she has legs but she’s unable to walk).

The school admins swear that ...

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It is official: Fallout 5 is in development.  Bethesda mastermind Todd Howard confirmed it yesterday.  Right now it’s being called “in pre-production”, which could mean a lot of things.  Depending on how far things are it could mean that concept art is being created.  It could also mean that the staff are still trying to determine where this new Fallout game takes place.  Previous games have been set in the California desert, the ruins of Washington D.C., the Boston region, and the landscape surrounding Las Vegas.  Where will the next Fallout take us?

Speaking of Las Vegas, Howard also said that remasters of Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3 are coming.  Which will become an enormous time sink for me.  Fallout 3 sucked me in so hard that I spent over 130 hours playing it.  I got sooo obsessed with finding every secret, talking to every character that I ...

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This is… I mean, just… HOLY CRAP!  This is NOT a good thing.

And it even looks like a Cylon, too.

 

That’s “Gabi”.  He… I mean, IT… is in Seoul, South Korea.  It just took vows to be a Buddhist monk at a special ordination ceremony.

Here’s the story from UPI about the Cylon Buddhist monk.

And here is video of Gabi going through the paces of being a holy droid:

 

As good friend of this blog Geoff Gentry pointed out, at least the Cylons from the 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica  were monotheistic.  That is true.  But for such a construct it’s only going to be a matter of time before the leap is taken from programmed zen to actively believing in a singular God.  And when the things start assuming through their AI superiority that THEY are closer to God than frail and fallen humanity ...

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I’ll be the first to admit: I have no idea if this is going to actually go anywhere.  But for the past few years I’ve had an idea and it’s always seemed like a fun one.  And it would definitely be a challenge to pull off.  But things have changed since my forays into programming (with the C language, in 1995) and I’m thinking that this might really be possible so, we’re going to find out.

A while back a crazy notion hit me: to play Zork on my iPhone and iPad.  Yes that Zork: the 1977 text-only role-playing game.  A game that kept countless insomniacs awake long into the night as they explored the Great Underground Empire in all its riches, its horror, and occasional hilarity.  There were no graphics at all involved with Zork: like most any good story it played out primarily in ...

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Godspeed Artemis II.

Or as Walter Cronkite would have said:

“Go Baby, GO!!!”

Watching Artemis II launch, I felt like a seven-year-old kid all over again.  It was 45 years ago this month that the Columbia launched on the very first mission for the space shuttle system.  I had wanted to finally watch real astronauts go up into space.  The mission had been delayed a few times already and I didn’t want to miss it.  Finally, about ten minutes before time to head out to school at 8:30 in the morning, Columbia ignited and began its ascent.  I couldn’t tear my eyes off the screen but Dad said “Okay, it’s up.  NOW can we go?!”

I truly hope this will be a successful mission.  I’ve harbored a lot of concerns about Artemis II.  It would be such a shot in the arm for national morale… and the feelings ...

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Dear NASA administrators:

I have a member of my family who was part of the team at Kennedy Space Center in 1986.  On January 27th he begged the higher-ups not to launch Challenger.  The space shuttle was clearly not rated for launch in such below-freezing temperatures.
My relative’s pleas were ignored.  We know what happened.
I confess that my own mind is not of the caliber of those who are engaged in America’s space effort.  My formal training is in history, not aeronautics and engineering.  But I’m still begging you: do not launch the Artemis II mission tomorrow.  In fact, don’t launch it at all.
The vehicle has too many issues that are being ignored, just as Challenger‘s were ignored for sake of the chance to have a successful mission.  The materials – especially the heat shield – are definitely not as sound as the ones that the
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As someone who works often in artificial intelligence, I will be the first to state that there are some things that the technology will never ever improve upon.

Charlie Brown and the gang is one of those.
For whatever reason – maybe the idea for this was hatched late one night by a first-year community college kid wishing he was old enough to get drunk – somebody fed a classic 1978 Peanuts comic strip into an AI.  Maybe they were trying to make it even funnier than what it already is.  Who knows?  The result however is downright lopsided and more than a little disturbing.
Here is the original strip.  Click to enlarge:

And here is the, ahem, “AI enhanced” edition:

That final word balloon is cracking me up!  What was the AI trying to render?!  Also, when Marcie first speaks it comes out like the Swedish Chef.
I’m actually
...
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My best friend since third grade Chad has encouraged me many times over the years to start running.  Chad knows something about that, being an active runner and also the veteran of numerous full marathons and countless shorter races.  Running is how he and his wife first met, during a running ministry at their church.  So maybe it’s something I should have looked into a long time ago already.
Now, I can run very fast over short distances.  Maybe even faster than a lot of seasoned pros.  It’s just the way I’m built and it came in handy a few times when I was at the state department of mental health.  But perhaps running a mile or so a day, if that much?  Nah, that just hasn’t seemed feasible.  I have harbored doubts all this time and it didn’t seem that anything could dispel them.
But then I saw this
...
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