Altair 8800 kit computer running at the SEVCF 2014. This computer is mentioned in Buchanan’s article.
In the November 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact magazine, Martin Buchanan published a feature article on personal computers titled, “Home Computers Now!” In it, he opens with a scenario about how PCs can automate family life and then goes into the nuts and bolts of how computers work, what to look for in a kit, and what the future of computing looks like. It was at the end of the article that this passage stood out to me:
"With cheap processors, cheap memory, and cheap communications, what can't we do? The effects on individuals and society will be major and unpredictable. Today's personal computer is just a beginning" (Buchanan 74).
Buchanan, Martin. “Home Computers Now!” Analog, Nov. 1977, pp. 61-74.
I added a whole new section on the Hard SF writer Joan Slonczewski (they/them/theirs) to the Feminist SF chapter of the OER Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT). It gives students an overview of their background as a scientist, writer, and Quaker, and it discusses three representative novels from their oeuvre: A Door Into Ocean (1986), Brain Plague (2000), and The Highest Frontier (2011). Like the Afrofuturism chapter, I brought in more cited, critical analysis of Slonczewski’s writing, which is parenthetically cited with a full citation instead of using a works cited list or footnotes.
Slonczewski’s A Door Into Ocean was the inspiration for the image above that I created using Stable Diffusion. It took the better part of a day to create the basic structure of the image, then there was inpainting of specific details such as the woman’s footprints in the sand, and finally, feeding the inpainted image back into SD’s controlnet to produce the final image.
Despite being woefully behind on the Star Wars transmedia juggernaut, I decided to watch the live-action Ahsoka series this week. While I haven’t seen the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars or Star Wars Rebels, which provide the major narrative threads for Ahsoka, I’ve kept up enough with the plot points tangentially (sometimes via LEGO) to respect the characterological mining and intertextual connections that make Ahsoka an interesting story that also does a lot of fan service.
And, I don’t mean fan service in a negative way. The animated stories that provide the foundation for this new live-action series are what kept the Star Wars universe alive for a lot of fans and introduced that universe to a new set of fans. Star Wars might not have have needed an animated lifeline in the same way that Star Trek did in the 1970s, but the animated stories and the fact that it was created forthrightly as canon shows how live-action and animation can both do the heavy lifting of transmedia storytelling of such an important cultural franchise as is Star Wars.
When I was walking past this mausoleum in Green-Wood Cemetery last month–a mausoleum that I had passed many times over the past two years–I did a double take, because I thought there was a sculpture in the gable vent that I hadn’t noticed before. What I thought was a stone carving was instead a cute creature–a rascally raccoon enjoying the sun on a mild day from the safety of his hidey-hole in a stone structure, lacking context, is akin to a wee mammal’s mansion. Or, repurposing William Gibson’s aphorism, the raccoon “finds its own use for things.”
I have two big problems. One is a Kenner 1979 Millennium Falcon, which is 22″ long and a little over three pounds. The other is the much larger Hasbro 2008 Legacy Collection Millennium, which is 32″ long and weighs 15 pounds. Living with these hunks of junk in a small Brooklyn apartment presents a problem–where to put them?
For awhile, I’ve had two 4′ desks in an L-shape configuration. One is my ancient IKEA 47″ x 24″ artificial wood with metal legs desk, which had been holding the Falcons. The other is a Costco 48″ folding plastic desk, which I had setup to use my computer and laptop on. I wanted to put the Costco desk away to free up some living room floor space, so I thought about adding a shelf to the Ikea desk would be the solution.
I used to have a series of lightweight shelves on my Ikea desk to display LEGO sets, which I wrote about here. I discarded those when we moved from Carroll Gardens to Park Slope, which is fine as they were not wide enough or strong enough to support the two Falcons.
I already had screws, brackets, and support plates. I also had a 4″ x 12″ x 1″ board that I had used to extend the IKEA desk’s table top for lightweight objects. I took this board off the IKEA desk and intended to use it as my new shelf.
What remained needing were two supports for the shelf. Yesterday, I walked to the Brooklyn Lowes to buy two 2″ x 4″ x 2′ studs (total $4) for the shelf supports.
The corners of the IKEA desk are more substantial to support the installation of its four legs. Therefore, I wanted to mount the shelf’s two supports through that particle board instead of the weaker honeycomb core of the desk top. I drilled pilot holes 3/4″ from either side of the desk top at 1″ and 2 1/2″ from the back of the desk top to correspond with the pilot holes I centered on the 2″ x 4″ supports at the same measurements. I drove 3″ deck screws from the bottom of the desk top into the bottom of the 2″ x 4″ shelf supports.
I provided extra support with a flat metal plate on the back and an L-shaped bracket on the front.
Taking the shelf, I measured and drilled pilot holes on its back end at 1 1/4″ from either side at 1″ and 2 1/2″. The shelf is 48″ long but the desk is only 47″ long, so the shelf hangs over its supports by 1/2″ on either side. To secure the shelf to the supports, I drove 1 7/8″ deck screws through the shelf into the support from the top.
I reinforced the shelf with a metal bracket on the back of each support and an L-shaped support on the inside under the shelf.
I had to slide Y’s electric piano over an inch to give my shelf about 1/2″ clearance from my Ray “Bones” Rodriguez Powell-Peralta skateboard hanging on the wall.
Looking at the “BIG” 2008 Millennium Falcon on the shelf, you can see that the landing gear comfortably fit on the 12″ (11 1/4″ actual) shelf when positioned longways. As you can see in the first photo on this post, the smaller 1979 Falcon can fit in any orientation and currently facing toward the front of the desk.
I’ll keep an eye on the shelf to see if it needs any additional support on the front with heavy duty shelf brackets. It was already warped as shown above. I positioned the warp side up, so it might not need any further work.
If you decide to build a similar back-mounted shelf on a lightweight desk like my IKEA one, be aware that the desk’s weight might not be enough to counterbalance the weight of objects that you put on the shelf, leading it to fall over backwards (if it isn’t positioned against a wall to halt it’s movement).
In NYC, I suppose desks and shelves are like buildings–if you want more space, you gotta go up!
