Planet gazing
[Posted Saturday, May 30, 2026 5/30/26 9:38 pm]
Here in the North Hollywood suburb of Los Angeles, because of light pollution you can't see many stars at night, but sometimes some things are visible.
This is a picture I just took of the evening sky facing west. The lower point of light is the planet Venus, and above it and to the left is the planet Jupiter.
I use a great android app called Sky Map which you can point at the sky and it tells you what you're looking at.
 | | Screen capture from Sky Map |
I think the fact that you can see something like a planet that is so far away with just the naked eye or a cell phone camera is really cool. And it makes you feel just a little less alone in the universe.
Hanging by a wire
[Posted Wednesday, May 20, 2026 5/20/26 3:32 pm]
And speaking of vintage telephones...
The best VoIP service
[Posted Wednesday, May 20, 2026 5/20/26 1:20 pm]
To actually use my vintage phones, I use VoIP service from a great company in Canada called VoIP.ms to provide my landline.
A small unit called an ATA (which stands for Analog Telephone Adapter) connects to the Internet and makes dial tone and ringing for my landline phone.
These little boxes are helping keep the telephones of the past alive!
My vintage landline phone
[Posted Wednesday, May 20, 2026 5/20/26 10:16 am]
I love vintage electronics from the 60s and 70s, especially telephones.
This is the phone currently connected to my working landline, a pristine 1964 Western Electric 500 set. These phones were built to last! In the 60s, everyone had a phone just like this in their house.
I found this on eBay, they have tons of great old telephone stuff!
More of my vintage phones in future posts.
Marty! Where's my cell phone?
[Posted Tuesday, January 27, 2026 1/27/26 8:35 am]
This artifact, a clay tablet claimed to be dated to the 13th Century, was found in the Fuschl am See archaeological dig in Salzburg, Austria:
The artifact is curious for several reasons, first of which is that it so closely resembles a cell phone from 1998:
But the weirdness does not end there, because the symbols on the "buttons" of the "cell phone" are in the Sumerian writing style known as Cuneiform. Finding artifacts with Cuneiform writing on them are common in areas like Iran, but they are rare in Austria.
So, why was this artifact with Cuneiform found out of place in Austria? Does the uncovering of this strange artifact prove that people from our time have Time Travelled to the past? Or that ancient aliens visited our world long ago with similar technology?
Nokia could not be reached for comment, but we suspect that the Sumerian cell phone would no longer have active service.
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Adam Forrest: 
