Sending Ryan Davis into space...

God I miss Ryan, and I am heartbroken by his loss. I can't imagine how devastated Ryan's friends and family are right now.

I met Ryan only once, at the Brattle on Rock Band Night just before PAX East 2012. He was running around, and I wanted a chance to say "hi" and "thank you", so I offered to buy him a drink. "Not now, buddy. Later." he said kindly, and patted me on the shoulder as he ran off, presumably to go do something funny or cool.

I got WAY too drunk in anticipation of being the first "band" up of the night. We performed our song, "opening band", and the judges (ie the Bomb crew) brutalized us. We were bad, and not "good bad", and deserved it. Unfortunately I got WAAAAY too drunk before I had a chance to buy Ryan that drink, and my fiancee and I stumbled back to the hotel, narrowly avoiding a gut stabbing (but that's another story).

I saw Ryan again at the panel. By this time I no longer had any liquid courage, and saw he was busy enough. I let him be. I never did get to buy him that drink, I didn't make the trip to PAX East 2013, I always thought there would be next year.

Like a lot of you, I've been listening to the Bombcast since the Arrow Pointing Down days. By now, many of you have talked about how close you felt to him, by just listening to the Bombcast and how personal and candid it is, and Ryan was. I feel the same way, Ryan was a big part of my life. I listened to the Bombcast virtually every night, and to that end, I tried to figure out a suitable tribute in his honour.

I'm not a talented artist, or musician. I'm a television news producer, and of all the things that affords me the ability to do, one thing, I think, would be kind of cool. I have access to broadcast television satellite transmitters from the CBC in Toronto. We have a long term lease on certain satellites, and we often don't use them very late at night. So: tonight, I'm going to broadcast the very last episode of Time Trotters to one of our satellites. If you happen to have a professional, tunable, steerable, satellite dish you should be able to see it around 11pm eastern time on the following coordinates:

Anik F1R T.24

(107.3 degrees)

SR: 5.8594 MS/s

FEC: 3 / 4 Mod: QPSK

Frequencies: D/L 11933.25 H

DVBS, Standard Definition

Like most broadcasts, it will leave the earth and hit the satellite in space, and then bounce back down to earth; so, for that short time Ryan's video image, voice, etc, will be in space. I think he would get a kick out of that. When I start transmitting I'll try to upload a picture from my control station of the signal going out.

Till then Duders.

Thats awesome, really cool idea, wish i had a dish to tune in.

@D_Mac A brilliant idea and a fantastic homage. This is such a wonderful idea :) Thank you < >

This is an awesome idea.

That's great man, good on you. If I had the equipment I would tune in for sure.

lol I was listening to the Space Pizza conversation when I saw this thread

That's really cool, man! Thanks for sharing all that and I wish you the best.

Now, about that almost stabbing...

Man that is an awesome idea. I only wish I had a dish to partake in that.

Call me morbid, but when i read the title i was picturing something out of kerbals space program....

Goddamn perfect, duder. What would be even better is if THAT was the thing that the aliens picked up and saw.

This is amazing. Great tribute duder.

That's really cool, man.

Yeah that's way too cool. Kudos.

That's an awesome tribute, I'm sure Ryan would have loved the idea.

This is so fucking cool.

Amazing!

We have a few dishes at work! Going to see if some broadcast tech duders want to stay late in the office and have a TT viewing party

This is probably wildly illegal due to FCC regulations, but someone with a ham radio license (or access to one) should do the following:

1. Take an episode of the podcast or the video file for Time Trotters or something.
2. Convert the file data to binary or hexadecimal or something (however that would be done)
3. NUMBERS STATION!

Or Star Trek.

RIP my friend.

Awesome idea! Someone that has the technology to do such a thing should stream it on a twitch channel or something so those without a satellite dish can experience it as well.

AWESOME tribute duder. :D

Man it's funny I was just thinking of my old tunable Satellite today. Wish I still had it! Awesome idea man!

I can't stop picturing Ryan flying through space in a pane of glass, General Zod style.

this reminds of the a question an emailer once sent about being a space ghost or time ghost i guess Ryan will end up being both

also this might stop the aliens from invading us after hearing Ryan's affable voice they'll cancel their plans of invasion

Hey Space Duders!

I may have to send this out at 1030et, I know it's short notice, but that's how TV news is. I'll post a pic of it going out on my monitor from my station. In the mean time, here is Time Trotters on my Sony XDS PD-1000.

This is super rad, wish I had a way to catch it. Cool idea :)

I hope you don't get sued by CBS.

I'm sure Ryan would approve of this, as well. Might be a little harder to make the arrangements, though.

Currently rolling out.

All conquering aliens flee with terror!

Gallery

"They can't kill you, if you're a cartoon."

This is nuts. I like it.

That is amazing, you're doing great things.

Thats amazing, I love the GB community

@D_Mac That is really awesome.

That is fucking nuts. I wish I had a satellite to try to check it out.

Somewhere 20 years from now, someone's gonna post on a forum asking about an old cartoon about time travelling gamers they saw randomly one night on TV as a kid.

Title of the thread made me think of To The Moon. Now I am doubly sad. Also, that it totally rad, dude.

This is great. Great idea and glad to see another Torontonian.

Such a cool idea, good on you!

@theht: Oh god, that concept amuses me to no end. I think Ryan would really enjoy that

awesome!

Such a great idea. Ryan would have loved it.

I told my wife what you are doing.. she isn't a Giant Bomb member, but knows what I'm going through. She thought your idea was cool. Then she went on to ask me what kind of space stuff Ryan liked... the feels.

I wish I had something cool to do for Ryan, I'm not that artistic. I am a mathematics major and I actually tried to think if there was something I could do in tribute mathematically. Maybe there is something, but I haven't gotten to that part in my education yet. This is a really cool idea though.

That's awesome, dude.

Thats awesome. Good job man!

@d_mac: x

This is boss! I think Ryan would of liked his voice flying through space!

This is awesome @d_mac, wish I could have tuned in...