I recently re-installed BOINC in order to rejoin Seti@Home (there’s now an esotechnica team if you want to join it), and the inspiration came from this article…

On August 15, 1977, at 11:16pm (Eastern Daylight Savings Time), the “Big Ear” radio telescope at Ohio State University detected a narrowband signal that was could be a transmission of some form.  The codes used in their printout reflected the intensity by using numbers and letters.  Sprinkled among their 1s, spaces and occasional 6s was the 6-letter string 6EQUJ5, representing 72 seconds that just might be a transmission from an alien intelligence.

The article I linked above is very technical (I must confess to not understanding quite a bit of it), but it’s still fascinating.  If you don’t want to read the technical and scientific information, the key questions are:

• Was it a message of some kind?
  The short answer is - we don’t know, and there’s no way to tell.  The way in which it was recorded detects only its presence and how long it lasted for; it doesn’t tell us whether there was any meaningful signal there.
  Basically, the computer was looking for the presence of a signal and not its content - imagine it like the signal strength bars on a mobile phone.  The signal bars tell you how strong your connection is - not who’s calling, or whether your phone has any credit.
• Why didn’t we see it before?
  The signal could have been broadcast for hundreds - or perhaps thousands - of years before being detected.  However the previous detection was wideband because they were looking for different types of cosmic events.
• I’m confused by this “wideband” and “narrowband” stuff - why wouldn’t the signal be detected in “wideband”?
  Basically, wideband means you’re scanning a larger part of the radio spectrum.  This is what you’d use to scan for “cosmic events” - supernovae, pulsars and so on.  Because it scans so wide an area, even a strong signal (such as a TV or radio station) would be a drop in the bucket compared to the surrounding interference - like trying to receive every radio station being broadcast in the world at once.
  The switch to narrowband - which they undertook in 1973 - was done as a means of keeping the telescope in use for something, but in a less human-resources intensive way, as due to budget cutbacks whatever they used the telescope for was essentially going to be “hobbyist”: by which I mean that nobody was getting paid for it!
• How do we know it’s not a hoax?
  You’d need to be a competent radio engineer, own a large battery and then have no idea whether the signal would actually look right at the other end.  Dr Jerry Ehman, who discovered the signal, doesn’t address this, but I believe that it would be so hard to do the probability of the signal being a hoax is so small as to be below consideration.
• So where did it come from?
  Roughly speaking, the signal was detected coming from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.  Professional astronomers can find more information on the article above.
• Will we ever see it again?
  The same part of the sky has been scanned since, at the same frequency, and it hasn’t been detected again, but that’s not to say that it won’t be in the future.

Well, please read the original article - it’s fascinating.  The Wikipedia article on the Wow! signal is quite a good introduction as well.

What is this site here for?  It’s a question I’ve been asking myself a bit lately.  I’ve played with the theme (based on the classic Wordpress Kubrick), added Google Ads in the no doubt false hope that it will make me rich (it might pay for my hosting if I’m really really lucky), and added Google Analytics (never used it before but I will report back on what I think of it.)

But what is it for?  Content?  Well, I’ve added my page of Ernest Pike music online, and I’ve added that to the menu bar up there.  I’ve also got one or two other projects that I plan on hosting at some point that will get added to that menu bar as well.

But primarily, I suppose, this site is for playing.  I like to play with technology.  I like to learn new (or old) programming languages, try them out, see what I can make them do.  I like to write programs, play games, get old operating systems working (I still have a virtual machine running OS/2 and I am beginning to think that the old pedestal in the garage may have to be pressed into service as a dual-boot OS/2 and BeOS machine…  for testing my web development projects, of course…)

I collect things - file types, databases, operating systems - they’ll all crop up here sooner or later.

But I suppose - in a way - this place will replace my Firefox bookmarks menu.  Or at least, the “emulation/computing/programming/web” part of it, anyway.

Stay tuned, esotechnicians.  There’s a long road ahead of us all, and I intend to be standing at the side of it, waving shiny things at you and saying “come and play with these interesting toys”.  Believe…

5. Daddy’s Song
Davy Jones and the Monkees at their finest.  Watch the syncing of the video as well, and remember this is Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson before they had a clue what they were doing…  “years ago I knew a ma-ah-an…”  Beautiful…  Watch at the end for Frank Zappa doing an impression of Marilyn Whirlwind.

4. Winnie Loves Satan
Not Churchill.  Obviously.  But strangely, weirdly - hideously, in a ghastly way - funny.  Remember to clean your mind after watching this, folks.

3. OK Go - Here It Goes Again
If you’re feeling guilty about watching Winnie The Pooh The Satanist, what better but a bit of OK Go?  This video is so good a pharmaceuticals company recently made an advert that is an homage to it…  In fact, it’s so good my brain hurts.

2. Krazy And Ignatz At The Circus
It may have first seen light of day in 1917, but it’s the only one of the Krazy Kat cartoons from that year that still works.  And if you’re a true Krazionista, like me and that Michael Stipe fella out of REM, then you’ll like this sort of thing.  And if you’re not, you won’t.  But it made me cry.

1. Lord Of The Rings, 1940 Vintage
You just have to pause this every so often just to look at it, especially when the credits are on (read VERY carefully at that point).  But this is so wonderful it needs no more hyperbolae - just enjoy!

PS: for those that have made Herbert Payne my top search result, just enjoy the man himself, on the new-fangled YouTube box of visual delights …