My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizza Pies

NASA seems obsessed with Italian food. Their big old logo (and now new logo) is called the "Meatball logo". Now I just saw a cartoon teaching kids the planets with a goofy mnemonic song "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizza Pies" (sung to "Way Down Upon the Swanee River").

Their late 1970s-mid 1980s logo (the more modern logo) was called the "Earthworm logo." I probably would have been more popular if they had called it the "Spaghetti logo".

Now I can talk about it...

I had to keep quiet about the NASA and Internet Archive relationship until it was publicly announced. It was finally announced here. I hoped there would be a bigger fanfare, but maybe it's early.

So NASA HQ in Washington DC looks just like any other government building surrounding the Mall. Very nondescript except for the NASA logo (the classic one, not the "worm logo"). I don't know what I was expecting - maybe some Jetson-esque structure or something along the lines of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center. Something that would tell the world - "this place is important! It is where we plan to get our species off this clod of dirt and onto another..." However the actual style of this building could just as easily claim - "this is where you get your teeth cleaned and renew your car insurance".

Nonetheless, entering the building is very exciting. Getting a security badge and going through the metal detectors all make the visit seem so important (although going through a metal detector nowadays is so commonplace). Immediately, however, it is clear that HQ is truly just a big office building on the inside too. No flashy sci-fi, high tech stuff - only the occasional NASA space poster or informational flier about the Heimlich maneuvers. I remember going to Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, MD a couple of years ago and was struck by how much it looked like a community college campus - totally unremarkable. In my mind, NASA is a real no-frills type of organization - no need for the flash of sexy and futuristic, the standard issue office building will do...

While riding the elevator to the conference room, I saw a piece of bright pink chewed gum stuck on a rail near the back. I had to say something. "This is why I like NASA. All this high-tech stuff and here's some gum stuck on the elevator." Our good-natured NASA liaison quipped "That gum's probably been in space!" For some reason, I really liked seeing the gum. Here is an organization who is primarily known for their forward-thinking, extraterrestrial endeavors and yet their headquarters has all sorts of signs of how humans really are. Sure we can put a man on the moon, but can we keep chewing gum out of the nooks and crannies of our lives...? (Although, the recent discovery of 5000 year old chewed gum in Finland reminds me that chewing gum predates most aspects of Western civilization, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised of its pervasiveness).

So the building wasn't amazing, the people were your run of the mill folks, and yet, I'm still in awe of the achievements of this organization. This is why, in spite of all hurdles ahead, I'm so excited about this project.

Sound of the other shoe dropping...

Long time no post. (I'm reminded of Jeff Koyen's rant in his zine Crank against zine writers who would waste a page apologizing for not having published an issue in a while). I'm new to this and don't know the etiquette for being a slack blogger. So here it goes...

Haven't posted in a while because everything related to the giant project was mired in a giant glacier of legal and bureaucratic ice. After announcing to close friends, family and about two hundred folks at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences that was going to be working on this project - nothing really happened.

For those of you who don't know, here is the project. NASA Headquarters wants to unify all of their websites (of which there are a couple thousand) under one big umbrella site. They want all the imagery and video that is currently online all under that umbrella. Next, they want all of the imagery (stills, slides, etc.) that isn't currently online to be scanned and placed online. And finally, they want all of their film and video holdings to be digitized and placed online.

This last phase of the project is where I come in. NASA picked the Internet Archive to do this project. I have a great deal of respect for the Internet Archive and its founder Brewster Kahle. The Archive has also given me a great deal of work in the past which has helped me pay the bills. Over the years, I've digitized many video collections for the Archive - over a thousand of the Prelinger Archive, hundreds of episodes of the Computer Chronicles, Deep Dish TV, over 600 public domain feature films and a hundred or so films from my own A/V Geeks archive. Lots of work but ultimately very rewarding - since this material is now freely available worldwide without advertising. So as the primary video/film digitizer for the Internet Archive, I've been tapped to help with this NASA project.

I was approached about the project almost three years ago - only a little bit before the first post in this blog - and got very excited. Everyone I talked to shared in my enthusiasm - although I could read a hint of disbelief in their eyes. Hell, I couldn't believe it. So, after the big announcement, I heard nothing and any inquiry from friends and family about NASA just added to the disbelief. I began to doubt that it was ever going to happen. Then the other shoe dropped. I got an email saying that the contract was signed and that there was going to be a meeting at NASA HQ in DC...