Here’s a well presented explanation of a custom built mechanical integrator with a discussion of real world applications at the end.
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The perspective inconsistency hurts my brain.
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This is a clock.
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Looking deeper the slide rule was analog log tables, where the digital ones took up about an inch of the CRC handbook. At about 7yrs old (~1959), my father bought me a digital computer brand named “Brainiac” that all the data was hard-wired by the person assembling it literally connecting actual wires from one location to another. There was an analog one that I thought was much cooler that used voltage as the analog and when you twisted the dials so the voltage was zero, you could read the numbers on the dial and do multiplication and division.
Knowing slide rules, my father (a civil engineer) was much less impressed. Obviously, the digital computer was much more labor intensive, and even though it only did addition and subtraction was more complicated than my brain could handle at that point as I was still memorizing arithmetic.
Looking up videos of the newer analog computers I see that they do calculus so instead of two variables you can have 8 (more?) so more than a glorified slide rule, but the same basic rule.
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A 5 terapixel mosaic of mars, you can explore it in your browser. Astounding.
https://murray-lab.caltech.edu/CTX/V01/SceneView/MurrayLabCTXmosaic.html
All sorts of weird terrain. but the part that strikes me the most are the earth-like features. This could easily be an image of the American southwest.
EDIT: ok I think I’m underselling how crazy big 5 terapixels is. To put it into perspective the iPhone 13 shoots 13 megapixel photos. If you wanted to stitch a bunch of iPhone photos together to make a 5 terapixel mosaic it would take 385,000 photos! On top of that in order to stitch photos together they have to overlap by some amount. If we assume 10% overlap that brings us up to needing more like 425,000 photos!
That’s a lot of pictures of Mars.
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Wow…that link is definitely worth checking out. I never would have imagined that there was that much known about the surface of mars.
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The square cube law really bites pixel images. 5 TB drives are not that uncommon now but an entire drive for just one minor image? 
(and they said 640k ram was plenty big)
( the Magic Canvas images are 262K)
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So many tiny parts!
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A special package is on the way here… from Bambu labs…
Eeek!
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I’m envious. I’m looking hard at one of those as my next 3D printer.
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Something about this just pleases me greatly:
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Me, too. Endearing…and the artist’s message is uplifting. Really cute.
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Lava tornado
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We’re going to be there next month… I both do, and do not, hope that happens again when we’re there to see it live!
We were there in 2020 when it went as well.
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Can we say that is cool when talking about lava?
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Wow! That is fascinating, and scary. I would think the most horrifying thing about island volcanoes is the lack of space to actually run to to get away from any lava. Yes, I understand the lava doesn’t cover the whole island, but that is how the islands were formed after all, right? At least with places like Mt. St. Helens, there’s a whole country one can flee to to get away.
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Volcano defeats American military base?
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True. There was also Krakatoa. We watched it on PBS and I bought the video.
I’ve never been in a tornado, hurricane, or volcanic eruption, but I have been in many earthquakes living in Calif, the worst one being the one centered in Morgan Hill when we were in bible college in Scotts Valley near Santa Cruz. I was working at the library and had gone to use the restroom in the dorm across the street (the library didn’t have one) and the shaking threw me across the hall. When I got back to the library, every single book had been knocked off the shelves. After my husband graduated, we moved to Nevada hardly a month before the 1987 earthquake that collapsed the Nimitz Freeway (which we traveled on quite a bit) and was centered in Santa Cruz. We also went through the massive flood of '82 wherein a whole area called Love Mountain slid down and buried 14 homes, many with people in them, plus tons of damage all around. Giant redwoods are not a fun place to be when there’s that kind of activity. They closed campus for two weeks due to lack of electricity and some property damage. Plus two teens got caught in a flash flood on campus and died. At that time we lived in San Jose and traveled across the mountain to get to school, and the highway was frequently closed due to mud slides. I was 9 months pregnant, my doc was in Santa Cruz, all the nurses were on strike in San Jose, with the road closing all the time, it was pretty traumatic for me.
But I’m grateful never to have been in a tornado or hurricane or in fire danger. My heart goes out to all who do.
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