So Far From Home

-



I listened to a beautiful piece of radio this afternoon [on BBC Radio Four], about the Voyager missions, which I found moving, humbling and to be frank, very Zen in placing us all collectively and me personally very firmly in context within the vastness of the Universe and of time itself. One of my all-time heroes, the astronomer and frankly, a great philosopher in his own right, Carl Sagan, who was deeply involved in the Voyager programme; had the prescience, vision, insight; call it what you will, to ask that Voyager I be turned around to face home, six billion kilometres away, and just before being flung out into deep space, so that it could photograph the Earth before it left, finally blinded, as our ambassador to the stars and an unknown future, in 1990: the year before my son was born. The presenter of the programme herself was only born the year the mission was launched. The resulting image: The Pale Blue Dot. Beautiful, humbling and terrifying in equal measure. Pure Zen.

BTW - I've finally worked out - though I haven't really tried that hard in the past ;0) - how to put up a 'Follow' button. Feel free if you want to avail yourself! Nos Da!


Comments

  1. Anonymous30 April 2024 at 08:21

    I have you bookmarked and like to watch bits of code have "exceptions" vis eBay's crap for adding to my Watch List didn't work for a week! I just click on it after I've read my gmail accounts.
    Oh where is it and what does it look like?
    ATB
    Joe

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [
Read more