Month: December 2017

Video shot by Joshua Ballinger, edited and produced by Jing Niu and David Minick. Click here for transcript. (video link)

The EECOM console—that is, the mission control console responsible for the electrical, environmental, and (initially) communications of the Apollo command and service module—wound up being home to an outsized number of famous names. Perhaps most famous is John Aaron, the "super EECOM" responsible for, among other things, the "SCE to aux" call that likely saved Apollo 12 from a mission-terminating launch abort. But equally skilled among EECOMs is T. Rodney ("Rod") Loe, who was kind enough to offer us an hour of his time to talk about his Apollo memories.

Loe would have been the EECOM sitting on the console during the Apollo 1 fire, if not for a simple coincidence: his wedding anniversary falls on January 27, the day of the fire, and on that day in 1967 Loe had swapped shifts with John Aaron so that he could celebrate with his wife Tina (she had arranged a celebratory poker game at their home for some friends).

(credit: Getty Images)

One feature of Amazon Music allows users to upload their own MP3 files from other sources, but that service is shutting down over the next year or so. According to a help page on Amazon's website, the company will end its Amazon Music Storage subscription service in January 2019. An official date hasn't been released, but once the storage service ends, users won't be able to play or download MP3s they previously uploaded.

Amazon already removed the ability to upload personal MP3s to Amazon Music through its PC and Mac apps earlier this week. The company's dedicated music importer software shuttered even earlier, back in 2015.

Both free and paid customers of Amazon Music Storage will be affected by this recent decision: free users, who were able to upload up to 250 files, can play and download any of that music until January 2019. Free users should download their previously uploaded tracks before January 2019, because those will become inaccessible through Amazon Music at that time.

Richard Garriott: game designer, astronaut, master haunted house maintainer. In the '80s and especially the early '90s, Garriott was part of the first “rock star” cadre of game developers (along with other huge names like John Carmack, John Romero, and, of course, Chris Roberts, who worked for Garriott at a little company classic PC gamers might be familiar with) that transformed PC gaming from beeps and line art to full interactive experiences. And, after that, he flew to the International Space Station just because he could.

So when we were looking for a good interview to start off a new video series on developers who faced down interesting technical challenges, it was hard to come up with a more suitable candidate than Lord British himself.

Fortunately, Garriott was reasonably familiar with Ars and was happy to invite us to his New York home—because for Lord British, telling war stories involves talking about Ultima, and talking about Ultima is a lot easier if you actually have all the Ultima games at hand. On their original platforms. In Richard Garriott’s freaking house.