[Index]

LL :: Volume 13 :: LR
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  Learn Sixteen Tongues, and What D'Ya Get
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*   Stellar Memorial Schedule
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  • Rigel: 12:57
  • Sirius: 1:12
  • Polaris: 1:19
  • Procyon: 1:38
  • Regulus: 2:01
  • Uranus: 3:14 [see footnote]
  • Vega: 3:50

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*   In the Home
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  Comfort Candles -- they don't smell sweet, but they do smell like home. Scents include Big Wet Dog; Damp Wool; Faded Mothballs; Antique Sofa Leather; and (most popular of the bunch) Musty Old Books.

Air Motion -- dead air is, well, not a physiological hazard, but at least a tiny psychological strain for many people. If you are such, place these two-inch white cubes on shelves or in corners around your house. The tools' fields are large-scale diffuse fans, which induce gentle air currents on a slow-shifting random schedule. As a bonus, you can mark particular rooms as "smells good" or "smells bad" -- the logic will circulate that air throughout the space or keep it somewhat localized, as you like. The fields are rated gas-only standard and bottom-tier precedence, so no hassle or interference.

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*   Fads of the City
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  A few private beaches on the City's seacoast have been "polished" -- their sand has been entirely replaced with uniform glass spheres of a sand-grain's diameter. The result looks superficially like white sand, but it exhibits retroreflec effects. Your shadow, should you turn and look at it, is haloed in spectral light.

The process is certainly expensive, and it is not clear how long the spheres can last before abrasion turns them back into simple white sand. Nonetheless, the stream of property-owners willing to drop money into the effect has not slackened.

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*   Spatial Etiquette
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  The Applications Exhibitors' Showcase at the City North Convention Hall is trying a new approach dividing up the show floor this year. Instead of translucent field curtains or illuminated grid lines, the show organizers are using laser light. Tall poles are mounted vertically at each corner of each exhibitor's area; a diagonal grid of coherent light shines between adjacent poles.

Naturally, the beams themselves are invisible. They illuminate the poles, dimly (the emitters are baffled). Their most striking effect: whenever a person walks into or out of an area, he is briefly a silhouette of brilliant flowing dots of light.

The laser light gives a pleasingly antique, grainy atmosphere to the showroom floor. But the spatial connotations are interesting as well. The boundaries become secondary; one sees people, passing from one space to another, and the boundaries are mere consequences of that passage. The flow of movement is more visible than what is moving. You can spot areas of interest, gatherings and dispersings, from anywhere in the hall. An exhibitor's attention is drawn immediately to a new entry to his area. (The laser colors vary randomly, in blues, greens, and violets, from place to place around the showroom. If you stand in one spot, you quickly learn the local colors.)

Or, you can simply appreciate the quaint visual overload of the light show.

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*   Life of the Mind
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  But it quite that's not satisfying even to the inted -- the first inside, and put of times had System -- is line in clear the consider state of "open saying you can they will of a Salvators. I like a count of closing to walking" reflect one designers added because of the Myst.

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