Mastodawn

an acre of kelp 2d ago

I like the series of illustrations of anime girls doing electronics with components bigger than the girls. Today I discovered that my favourite electronics textbook had a series of similar illustrations made by artists Nikolai Frolov and Zoya Florinskaya. The illustrations were originally created for a 1979 edition, but the publisher didn't allow them to go to print. The first edition that got the illustrations was one from 2000, and it had a bunch of new illustrations including Human Scale Microelectronics.

Nina Kalinina 3d ago

Apparently this Zoya Florinskaya is still the lead designer of "Science and Life" magazine, though I'm not quite sure since what year. Coolio

girl of no persistent affiliation 3d ago

@nina_kali_nina oh god oh fuck i forgot that magazine EXISTED

Nina Kalinina 3d ago

@cyanidesunrise they're responsible, to a large extent, for me becoming interested in computers, thanks to their series on programmable calculators and computers

girl of no persistent affiliation 3d ago

@nina_kali_nina was that an early era thing? someone in my immediate family used to subscribe to its physical edition in the 2010s and i do not recall much stuff relating to computers at all

Nina Kalinina 3d ago

@cyanidesunrise mine were late 80s and early 90s, the last issue probably was either 1991 or 92.

girl of no persistent affiliation 3d ago

@nina_kali_nina i mean, there probably was stuff conceptually related to computers, but nothing that could catch the mind to the point of forming an interest on computers themselves. nothing on PL design and whatnot

@nina_kali_nina you talking about ones like the one with them hiding behind sandbags and poking a power supply with a pole, with a capacitor wired in reverse polarity?

Nina Kalinina 3d ago

@wyatt yep, those!

Kirtai 🏳️‍⚧️3d ago

@nina_kali_nina @wyatt
I love that series so much

@wyatt @nina_kali_nina the one by shapoco (here on fedi)?

Nina Kalinina 3d ago

@robot @wyatt @shapoco 😍

🎆 ٩(˘◡˘)۶ 3d ago

@nina_kali_nina Can I see the Athlon XP pile next to the Pentium Pro pile? What about the Core i7-14700K pile? I'd like to compare it to the Threadripper Pro 9995WX pile. What do you mean there aren't enough hats with legs in this world? Well, draw them!

Nina Kalinina 3d ago

@steeph 100 billion transistor devices make me sad

it's like, one device is enough transistors to give everyone a handful for most of their needs

🎆 ٩(˘◡˘)۶ 3d ago

@nina_kali_nina I could look up how many first-gen Core i3s 100 billion transistors are. Or how much RAM could have been made instead. Anyway, it's not a practical comparison. Those other chips wouldn't have been made if the big ones wouldn't have been made and if they would have been made instead then only to do the jobs the big ones are doing now. Ah, let's just not think about it.

David JONES 3d ago

@nina_kali_nina this is ... Dope

Richard Turner 3d ago

@nina_kali_nina Ah, this reminds me of [How Your Body Works](https://www.scribd.com/document/767115318/Judy-Hindley-How-Your-Body-Works-1975-Usborne-libgen-li) and other Usborne books. The programming ones had robots: https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books

Judy Hindley - How Your Body Works (1975, Usborne) - Libgen - Li | PDF

Scribd is the source for 300M+ user uploaded documents and specialty resources.

Scribd

Nina Kalinina 3d ago

@zygous these are neat! Soviet kids used to have something similar, "Professor Fortran's encyclopedia" - there are many copies floating online e.g. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByVDG0ehBl6VVFo4QjVLSzhqdzg/edit?resourcekey=0-eda7B1eC053WAW3BxsqYcA

Энциклопедия профессора Фортрана.pdf

Google Docs

@nina_kali_nina @zygous that's interesting, European people born in the 90s are likely familiar with "Once Upon a Time... Life" (or "Il était une fois... La vie" in original language). Pretty sure my sister still has a stash of VHS cassettes labeled with Polish title of this series ("Było sobie życie").

Kinda wonder if they took inspiration from that book

@elly
Oh I'm very familiar, somewhere at mom's will definitely be a stack of Byl jednou jeden život on DVDs.
@nina_kali_nina @zygous

Nina Kalinina 3d ago

@ozzelot @elly @zygous this book was published only in 1991, so I think it's likely the other way around.

Richard Gráčik - Morc 3d ago

@ozzelot @elly @nina_kali_nina @zygous Oh... Yeahhhh! "Bol raz jeden život" as we had it translated here in SK. God I liked watching it even though I hated biology as a whole.

Chubbyemu before Chubbyemu was a thing or something 🙃

farhaven 🇪🇺3d ago

@nina_kali_nina Is the person next to the "Pentium Pro" transistor pile holding a little bug? Maybe FOOF or FDIV?

@nina_kali_nina sometimes I wish I was a tiny anime girl. Wait, no, that sounds ambiguously. Let me retry.
For some component placement jobs I would prefer to be a tiny soviet cartoon boi, and rather have them hard to lift than too easy to accidentally inhale.

Nina Kalinina 3d ago

@kauzerei 😅🤗