Rocky Mountain N.P. in VR

NPR has published a _virtual reality_ presentation on the geology of Rocky Mountain National Park:
<https://apps.npr.org/rockymountain-vr/>.

I have just watched it on my computer, but in a few minutes I am going to see if my new twin-lens VR goggles can view it on my celephone screen.

Note that for either method, headphones improve the experience (as they do with nearly every possible sound presentation).

Also: Various places on the Internet host similar presentations on subjects like this one and others. More are linked at the end of this one. (Or perhaps not; for me, clicking does nothing.)

Anyway, it has made me want to go back to the Rockies and spend more time than I have.

Mark_

Weird Thorens music box

I saw this little Thorens music box in an antiques store a few days ago. I had to spend a few minutes examining it (trapped as I was _outside_ the locked display case) to work out what it was: A music box that used swappable disks as the "programs" for the music, played by a mechanism otherwise familiar.

• <https://goo.gl/photos/MUheQHyzNSbH6Xsk8>
• <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorens>
• <http://www.thorens.com>
• A guy's history & collection with images: <http://keithwright.ca/Thorens/Thorenspage.html>

Thorens made some really amazing and wonderfully weird high-end turntables--including some changers that used machinery different from what most of us had during college: Thorens TD 224. Consult your Google image search for pictorial evidence: Antique Thorens, for example.

Aside: There was at least one changer mechanism that automatically flipped records and played their "B" sides: 1938 Garrard RC-100 Turn-over Record Changer.

And who wouldn't want to play the black vinyl (lacquer, actually) on something that looked like this?: 1921 Kurtzmann Glass Phonograph. Look at the thickness of the record being played.


Mark_
26 February 2017