The top photo is a little memento mori I found in the third floor women’s restroom in my dorm building. It’s a dead moth anchored to the wall in spider’s silk. Duke is covered in spiderwebs, but somehow I almost never see any spiders at work. This makes operating in daily life easier, but also somehow, much more disquieting. Where are all these spiders? Anyway, it reminded me of the computer bug story, and since there’s still myths going around about this one, I thought I’d post the real, myth-busted account. This article is from Computerworld, and the log it refers to is pictured above.
It’s an oft-repeated tale that the grand dame of military computing, computer scientist and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, coined the terms buganddebug after an incident involving Harvard University’s Mark II calculator.
The story goes like this:
On September 9, 1945, a Harvard technical team looked at Panel F and found something unusual between points in Relay 70. It was a moth, which they promptly removed and taped in the log book. Grace Hopper added the caption “First actual case of bug being found,” and that’s the first time anyone used the word bug to describe a computer glitch. Naturally, the term debugging followed.
Yes, it’s an oft-repeated tale, but it’s got more bugs in it than Relay 70 probably ever had.
For one thing, Harvard’s Mark II came online in summer of 1947, two years after the date attributed to this story. For another thing, you don’t use a line like “First actual case of bug being found” if the term bug isn’t already in common use. The comment doesn’t make sense in that context, except as an example of engineer humor. And although Grace Hopper often talked about the moth in the relay, she did not make the discovery or the log entry.
The core facts of the story are true – including the date of September 9 and time of 15:45 hours – but that’s not how this meaning of the word bug appeared in the dictionary. Inventors and engineers had been talking about bugs for more than a century before the moth in the relay incident. Even Thomas Edison used the word. Here’s an extract of a letter he wrote in 1878 to Theodore Puskas, as cited in The Yale Book of Quotations(2006):
‘Bugs’ – as such little faults and difficulties are called – show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached.
Word nerds trace the word bug to an old term for a monster – it’s a word that has survived in obscure terms like bugaboo and bugbear and in a mangled form in the word boogeyman. Like gremlins in machinery, system bugs are malicious. Anyone who spends time trying to get all the faults out of a system knows how it feels: After a few hours of debugging, any problems that remain are hellspawn, mocking attempts to get rid of them with a devilish glee.
And that’s the real origin of the term “bug.” But we think the tale of the moth in the relay is worth retelling anyway.
Idk I wanted to draw something during the live stream so I didn’t work as long on who’s as I would normally but it’s getting late enough that my quality is getting worse
Def: transfiguration a : a change in form or appearance: metamorphosis b : an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change
In response to the theme of ‘Alchemy’ Woolston presents an installation that places an image of her Orthodox Jewish immigrant great grandparents next to one of Latin Americas largest landfills, skeletal red stag jawbones next to an inter-generationally inherited collection of liqueurs. This is a space of allegory and memento mori, of waste piled high outside a favela and abundant flowers surrounding a cemetery.
‘Robyn Woolston’s work provides the personal linear narrative, but uses internationally significant histories to support it.’
Patrick Kirk-Smith / Art in Liverpool
In the spirit of ‘turning base metal into gold’ the work situates our rites of passage at the centre of a transfigurative narrative.
This story was first created between myself and a dear friend of mine. We wanted to write a fun fanfic story about a bunch of different metal bands. We created our own characters, picked a band name, and decided we wanted to try and write the wildest story we could following the characters. Ten years later it’s evolved into this thing that lives rent free in our hearts, mine especially. We got some 40 or 50 chapters in on the original draft and after complications of the site it was originally posted on crashing, which caused us to lose 5 chapters, plus getting caught up with life, it sat and collected dust for a while.
While it was shelved, we still constantly discussed ideas and characters and finally, about 5 years ago, we sat down and really plotted the story out, revised some things, and created a new character or two. We got so far into a re-write before life got in the way again. With permission of my lovely friend, I’ve taken the story over, because we didn’t put so much love into this for it to just sit and not have anything be done with it. That said, for the first 12 or so chapters, anything that’s written from River’s POV, I cannot take credit for.
Everything from about that point on will be written by me, though it was planned in great detail by myself and my friend.
As I said this is a fanfic, featuring more than a few of our favorite bands. We’ve taken some liberties with this, of course, and therefore I feel a need to ADAMENTLY state that nothing in this piece of writing has ever happened and that everything is entirely a work of fiction. This piece is meant to be a love letter to heavy metal, to these bands, and to the art of storytelling. Maybe one day I’ll take the time to sit down and reimagine this little world that my friend and I have created and turn it into something completely original, but it is definitely not this day.
All that said, I do hope whoever picks this up enjoys it.
Content Warning: this has a little bit of language. It’s just a bit of an intro.
Word count: 695
River
Stockholm, Sweden
The lights dimmed in such a way that made the energy peak in a matter of heartbeats. The crowd’s voice rose as one, a mighty roar with a chant echoing behind it:
“Memento Mori!”
A mantra repeated again and again.
Remember that you will die.
Harsh, but undeniably true. We all succumbed to the harsh realities of life with the only certainty being that everyone would, in fact, die in the end.
But though that was the only certainty of the future at this point, I chose to divert my eyes to the present, to the sliver between the curtains where thousands of emotional faces conjoined with their chanting. Bodies of all ages and sizes and backgrounds here to marvel at our gift.
Scott handed me one of my guitars, a Kirk Hammett signature ESP (fitting for the song about to be played), customized only to feature my signature camo paint job. I looped the leather strap over my neck, letters scrawled “RY”. River Young. The joke was that the initials were my name so the crew found it appropriate to identify me as Ry. But the strap was my first, worn and scathed from years of travel, given to me by a man I owed my life to. “Good luck,” Scott said and we clasped hands in a second of comradery, guitarist and the tech who kept her life organized.
Low thrumming came from Oblivion’s bass guitar and I forced myself back to the present again, the screaming of the crowd demanding my attention. The first of our brigade had snuck up on stage without their detection. I made my way up the ramp to the back of the stage, Tygo—our fearless and indescribably patient manager—slapping my hand in a low-five as I went by. The drums, a steady beat of snare and symbols, joined the thrumming, the pulsing, my own heart rate picking up to match the tempo.
Before I was even fully on the stage, I began strumming out the solid riff of Metallica’s iconic Orion. Jess’ guitar doubled mine as we both strutted onto the stage, the lights coming up in a blinding wave. The screaming intensified.
“Are you motherfuckers ready to party?” Jess called into her microphone as I took a stand to her right. The crowd’s volume rose. In a Children of Bodom tank topped with a leather jacket, black tendrils falling down her back, she looked like a well-entitled member of metal royalty. “I can’t hear you!” More clamoring for recognition.
I begin to strum out the chords, fingers dancing down the neck of the guitar, letting the strings sing. Oblivion hammered on his bass across the stage from me, the humanized representation of his instrument. Broad shoulders, long thick pitch black hair, chiseled facial structure. This song was one of his favorites; you could see it by the intensity in his expression, tightness in his shoulders.
His twin brother, Avaalon, matched the pace with his drums, crimson hair whipping around his head as he jammed out from the back of the stage, our insignia proudly displayed on the bass drum. A grinning grim reaper, Memento Mori painted in blood red across it.
Kristian had appeared last, tapping out the notes for his own keyboard arrangement, making the whole song sound a bit more on our end of the genre. Symphonic metal with the traces of death metal that Jessii thrived on. Kris, the only one with short hair—almond colored—already grinning like it was Christmas morning as his fingers charged away across the white surface of his keyboard.
As my own hands continued their job, I marveled at these individuals as if it were our first time performing together. All so different, all so very wounded and beat up from life. We were a little fucked up and alone to start with, but what brought us together is also what helped us heal. And that’s what came from the guitars, Oblivion’s bass, Kristian’s keys, Avaalon’s drums, and Jessii’s voice; the music we had been making together for the last four years. I was not looking at band mates or even friends. They were my family.
