Volt Xoccula

December 14, 2012 7:02 AM

Looking for a double-helix transistor to magnify your oblidisk? Want to discuss balooning algorithms or Dormison's Paradox? Ever wondered about Swedish teutonic logic commands, the Hans-Rodenheim Law of Vectoral Momentum, Fankel readings, Mornington axions, the Armistan Codex, Envels, or the newest breakthroughs in ion insulate plate technology? Come here for all your VX needs, whether it be tech updates, fixes, or conventions!

With a gracious grant from the Technology for Students Foundation, the Greenville College Information Technology department was able to purchase a slightly used VX6 module from the United States Government “old tech” auction. With this new piece of technical equipment, the IT department will be able to increase the computational limits on all campus computers as well as process work orders up to 3 times as fast.

posted by jenkinsEar (31 comments total)

OMG, finally!! The times when I've so desperately needed an answer to fixing my therebex angeter and had only my wits and charm to go on . . . but no longer!! Thanks for posting!
posted by Phyllis Harmonic at 7:10 AM on December 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

Oh shit Anton Torbachev died? Man that's a huge loss to the VX world.

.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:17 AM on December 14, 2012

If you're having trouble understanding what the fuss is about, start with the wiki entry.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:26 AM on December 14, 2012

I'm a Certified Turboencabulator Design Professional (CTDP) and what is this?
posted by jquinby at 7:37 AM on December 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Basically everything I do these days involves hacking either VX6 modules or turbo encabulators. It's getting so that I can't spend any time reading Epic Legends of the Hierarchs or Daring Do Adventures, or arguing about the 50 greatest video game characters of all time. (Old MeFi thread about that last thing.)
posted by JHarris at 7:39 AM on December 14, 2012

Looking for a double-helix transistor to magnify your oblidisk?

Nope!

... well, not as far as I am aware.
posted by Flunkie at 7:47 AM on December 14, 2012

Ever wondered about Swedish teutonic logic commands, the Hans-Rodenheim Law of Vectoral Momentum, Fankel readings, Mornington axions, the Armistan Codex, Envels, or the newest breakthroughs in ion insulate plate technology? Come here for all your VX needs, whether it be tech updates, fixes, or conventions!

Thanks, ants.

Thants.
posted by DU at 7:49 AM on December 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

There's something very strange about the way this VX community seems to exist in its own bubble without sharing any vocabulary, publications, or even just social contacts with other scientific fields I would expect to be closely related, like CS, EE, ME, physics, and math. Is this some sort of joke?
posted by d. z. wang at 8:05 AM on December 14, 2012

If you can't be bothered to run dynamic harmonized oscillation benchmarks at least once every 50 kcycles to calibrate to a proper, ϑ-limiting B‑SOL constant, you should just go back to micro-6. Sticking with 0.08 mk will give you really screwy power factors on units with primary resonance larger than 2 C, and – unless you have a very cushy deal with the local electric utility – that's just throwing money away. The only way to compensate is by selling at least 50 kWh/cycle (Noʂel metric) of binary cascading regeneration, which is a far bigger PITA than calibrating your B‑SOL constant properly in the first place.
posted by scose at 8:17 AM on December 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

So this seems like some sort of in-joke using a whole bunch of Star Trek-like technobabble. But not being in on the joke I'm unable to parse anything other than that it sounds like some sort of unobtanium type computer. I'd like to like this, but it needs more fleshing out for me.
posted by anansi at 8:25 AM on December 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

So this community involves making up nonsensical but legitimate sounding terms?
Sounds like loads of fun, guys.
posted by rocket88 at 8:28 AM on December 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

I used to work on all the machines pictured in the Greenville VX6 picture.
If they need me, I'm ready to go.
posted by MtDewd at 8:38 AM on December 14, 2012

I can't figure out if this is made-up or not. It sounds a lot like the technobabble that Geordie and Data were always spewing on Star Trek.
posted by Afroblanco at 8:48 AM on December 14, 2012

IT'S A JOKE YOU GUYS. GOD.
posted by blue t-shirt at 9:06 AM on December 14, 2012 [4 favorites]

Well, it's easy to see it's a fabrication, but "joke" implies funny, at least around here. This might be funny to someone, but it's not clear to whom or why.
posted by kjs3 at 9:09 AM on December 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

HINT: It's a reddit.
posted by ceribus peribus at 9:27 AM on December 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Retrodisinverting efferent quantum magnitudes...

That joke isn't funny anymore.
posted by elmono at 9:33 AM on December 14, 2012

Afroblanco: “I can't figure out if this is made-up or not. It sounds a lot like the technobabble that Geordie and Data were always spewing on Star Trek.”

If you can't figure out if it's made-up or not, then it's nothing like the technobabble that Geordie and Data were always spewing.
posted by koeselitz at 9:35 AM on December 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh man. VX in my MetaFilter? I suppose it was inevitable.

No, this is all real. VX-mode cross-biased encabulators have been secretly driving technology forwards for 60-70 years. The first Bell Labs transistor was doped and calibrated using the entirely improbable combination of a set of Philco transaxial biasing coils and the ion turbopump from a Hollerith-CTR granular synthesis injection controller.

While attending an industry and science museum field trip when I was eight I wandered off from my class group to explore behind the scenes and I accidentally witnessed a wizard hand-tuning the bias coils of the grandfather of the VX6 - a bespoke model known simply as the "Automatic Electrical Rotovator Model 1" that existed long before Volt Xoccula was a company.

This Model 1 was simply driving the injection port of a Dickson charge pump on a very large Marx generator to create a more reliable museum display, but I'll never forget how the technician biased the coils with nothing more than cat whiskers as take-off points and a curious knack for sensing the static fields of the coils with the whiskers of his own rather singed beard.

I vowed to learn and master this dark art and become the best VX-biaser that ever lived.

And I did. Maxwell's equations became mere playthings to me. I learned to calculate extradimensional n-field plots in my mind. Lorenz loops invaded my dreams and every breath. I grew a magnificent beard of my own and discovered that Tesla was indeed simply insane, and that much of his work came from the result of an unfortunate temporal accident involving a VX3 manual and user documentation pages.

And then one day at the peak of my career I was absentmindedly but routinely micro-cycling the primary coils of a venerable VX6 module in preparation for biasing them to the secondary coils for a customer when it happened.

First there was this terrible noise like space-time was held together by Velcro and someone was tearing it apart, like a great, rude cosmic fart. Then the smell hit me. It was a smell like living roadkill on fire. I remember the spectrum of visible light shifting well past ultraviolet into x-rays, and I even today I still see in ultraviolet and can't stand being in the sun or near blacklights.

When my eyes adjusted to the new darkness I saw the rift appearing in thin air over the VX6 I was tuning, and through the rift I saw a multitude throng, but it wasn't a throng, it was just one pulsating thing of raw meat and bones and teeth, slick with a dark wet sheen like motor oil and the stench of, for a lack of better words, hellfire and brimstone.

I don't even remember thinking before smashing the delicate, fully energized coils of that poor old VX6 with my bare fists, shattering the delicate glass core, the thousands of miles of hairline-fine gold windings suddenly released from electrostatic tension to coil up around my fists like the wild hair of an angry redheaded banshee, the wailing of thousands of gigajoules of electricity set free. I still have the tell-tale Lichtenberg figure scars up both arms.

Using my smoking hands I smashed everything in my lab to pieces, burned my notes, melted all my tools to slag and I never biased another VX module coil again. And despite numerous substantial offers - I never will.

The knowledge I amassed dies with me. It's not and was never meant to be.
posted by loquacious at 9:35 AM on December 14, 2012 [15 favorites]

@loquacious: So...it's wankery. Thanks for clearing that up.
posted by kjs3 at 9:51 AM on December 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yuk it up, chuckleheads. We'll see who has the best audiophile rig by the end of this.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:58 AM on December 14, 2012 [6 favorites]

kjs3: Well, it's easy to see it's a fabrication, but "joke" implies funny, at least around here. This might be funny to someone, but it's not clear to whom or why.

If there's a joke people are enjoying, and you can't see or hear the punch line... I have an unpleasant hypothesis for you to consider.
posted by IAmBroom at 10:46 AM on December 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

Just to be clear quantum physics is a joke too right?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:53 AM on December 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

I keep expecting a laugh track...
posted by Devonian at 11:04 AM on December 14, 2012

@IAmBroom

would that be the "NoSoRa" hypothesis, because we had to ditch that back in 2009 when glycerin started becoming less expensive than the relevant diodes
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 11:18 AM on December 14, 2012

@loquacious: So...it's wankery. Thanks for clearing that up

I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the magnificent beard.
posted by loquacious at 11:32 AM on December 14, 2012

Having spent all evening playing Spaceteam, this post made complete sense to me.
posted by xiw at 11:43 AM on December 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

The Volt Xoccula Company isn't a joke. I suspect people think that it is largely because they're unaware of the more popular manifestations of the company's fortune. Its origins in the lab of an obscure but wealthy landowning count in Romania who lent his name to the enterprise were generally forgotten by the time he gave up his experimentation decades later and turned instead to the more lucrative production of breakfast cereals for children. A slightly witty play on words based on a bad English transliteration of the Count's last name was a marketing boon for the Company, and they ended up seeing far more success than they'd ever seen in electronics.
posted by koeselitz at 11:51 AM on December 14, 2012 [3 favorites]

Great here come the conspiracy theories. All that talk about VX syncing vibrations with the core of the earth is a bunch of ridiculous nonsense.

The company is c͟o͏m̕pl͡͡͞e͘ţ͝ę̸̕l͙̋y͚͈̱̰ͣ̐ͅ b̥̝e̩̮n͉̱̝̤̠͇͕i͚̮͙̿ͬͬͨ̓ͥ̈́̂̑ĝ̫͙͉̟͇̭̻̮̊̄́n̥͎͉̞̠͙͆̎̊
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:38 PM on December 14, 2012 [2 favorites]

That VX6 is a crude reworking of my grandfather's Oscillation Overthruster. The government claimed it was being looked after by top men, but I suspect otherwise.
posted by lumpenprole at 1:53 PM on December 14, 2012

I can't figure out if this is made-up or not. It sounds a lot like the technobabble that Geordie and Data were always spewing on Star Trek.

It's sounds more like video game technobabble to me:

Soldier, you need to infiltrate the alien ship to steal a MacGuffin VX-6 module, so Professor Schoenberg can complete the hydro-resonating delta-emitter beacon, which is our only chance to disable the enemy's shields!

Why do we need it, since obviously we can penetrate their shields if I'm to go into their ship to steal one? And, didn't these guys land, like, yesterday? How the hell does the professor even know what to steal from them? And, finally, what about integration testing?

Integration testing, Soldier? You have your orders! GO!
posted by cosmic.osmo at 3:09 PM on December 14, 2012