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Closet space, the final frontier

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The last event of C4 was a visit to Chicago's Adler Planetarium, with a special behind the scenes (and beneath the stairs) tour of the computer room that runs the video conferencing room and the CyberSpace classroom.  Well, "room" is charitable.  "Closet" would be better.  "Crawlspace", "pit" or "graduate student living arrangement" would also work.

Contrary to the skeptical whisperings of some of the Planetarium staff ("Why are you showing them closets?"), the highlight was easily the rack of more than two dozen G4 cubes wired up as the brains of the classroom workstations.

I find great irony in the fact that a machine which was originally designed more as an objet d'art than a computer turns out to be a very useful computer for a museum, and a group of programmers come to appreciate the techno-beauty of the installation, even if it is in a closet.

I'll leave you with a few classic quotes from C4, as best I can remember them.  It's been great being your weekend guest-blogger.  Thanks for reading.

   - Olof

"It was like an unwritten rule, except that it was written."

   - John Gruber on the Human Interface Guidelines

"Who'd have thought I'd be up here saying how wonderful NavServices is?"

   - Brent Simmons

 

"It was like making apples from applesauce."

   - Brian Fitzpatrick on writing cvs2svn

"Before MySpace, we had friendships.

  Before NBA Live, we had basketball.

  Before Second Life, we had life.

  Before Delicious Library, we had shelves." 

   - Aaron Hillegass on the importance of solving real problems

"Subversion is not a big truck."

   - Brian Fitzpatrick

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 23, 2006
    If I ever end up at a room with two dozen G4 Cubes, I'm darn well going to take pictures of it.

  • Anonymous
    October 23, 2006
    Here's a link to a picture of the Adler planetarium setup from a two years ago.  Apparently they had 55 cubes then. http://www.cubeowner.com/forums/index.php?s=4c1977dfda7055df91e9c1134c0027e5&showtopic=8126&pid=48160&st=0&#entry48160 From what I saw, a number of the cubes have been replaced by mac minis.

  • Anonymous
    October 23, 2006
    Cool, thanks much. I sold my Cube a  while back, and I do like my iMac G5, but there's something special about a Cube...

  • Anonymous
    October 23, 2006
    Hey Olof, Thanks for the perspective on AppleScript that you let me in on at Adler, it was pretty different and refreshing. Chris

  • Anonymous
    November 21, 2006
    what do i do if have lost my office disk but still have my serial number