All you need

Salt and knife; all you need in life.

Kidneys

"Everybody has two kidleys." 


"Do you mean kidneys?" 


"I said kidneys, didl't I?"

Cold or warm post

New post on my "ghost" blog, about cold/warm persons.

Happy new year to you all. And thanks for everything.

----
Update: CM said:
If only there were an index so one could easily search and find certain posts - Eo, is there an app for that? yet?


There's only the search field in upper left.


Or google. Use the tag:


site:eolake.blogspot.com


(with no spaces.)


and the search words you wish. 

Quotes Fri 31 Dec

Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

           -- G. K. Chesterton

I hate women because they always know where things are.

           -- James Thurber

I am no more humble than my talents require.

           -- Oscar Levant

There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool.

           -- L. M. Boyd

A couple of iOS app I find interesting

Two iOS app I find interesting:
Spyglass (video). Interesting with compass overlaying map or camera.

Remote Conductor. (what it can do). Highly interesting as a control and trackpad. Only it seems to be clumsy with selecting multi-word text and dragging things, just like the Mac Trackpad is. Although I think their three-finger drag helps a little.

A few years ago these things could not be done, or would be much more expensive or something like that, as a friend said to me recently.       :-)

The same is true for Aiptek's 3D camcorder.

(Spyglass)

Ah, new iCandy (to coin a word) app: Living Earth. It can even show almost-real-time clouds. And you can tilt the globe and set it spinning in different speeds with a finger flick! Kewl. Or of course it can just show you a real time image of your location.

Oh, and here is another writer who finds smartphones mind-boggling. 

Prescient AT&T ads from early nineties

Voiced by Tom Selleck.

Snowflakes... even closer

[Thanks to dVice.]

Man, these pictures are nuts! Love 'em.
More pictures.
Categories.

[Update: Andreas found these, very nice.]

Sally from Peanuts claimed to see two snowflakes exactly alike... "There! Right there! Exactly alike! ... Oh, they've fallen now."

Slides are catching on in companies

No no, now!

Procrastination isn't the problem, it's the solution. So procrastinate now, don't put it off.
-- Ellen DeGeneres


I'm reminded of a conversation during a walk with a good friend. She talked about how she really would love to have more patience. I said: "it'll come as you get older."
She replied: "No, I want patience now!"

It was clear from her face she was aware of the beautiful irony of that statement.

Nothing is objective

Our reader Karrde wrote:
"I am also the kind of news-reader who likes to pick apart the facts in the news, and ignore or dispute commentary that is disguised as news-reporting."

Indeed. I realized a few years ago that the newspapers' biggest conceit and deceit is that they do objective reporting. They can't, because there is simply no such thing as an objective viewpoint.

I'm Afraid of Americans - David Bowie

An interviewer asked Bowie what he was telling us about Americans with this song. Bowie said words to the effect of "relax, it's just a sardonic joke".

Cool version here!

Elvis Costello - Watching The Detectives

Another old top fave.
I never found out who those detectives were though!

(I searched for The Long Honeymoon, but couldn't find it.)



Found my third old Costello fave though!

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. CGI movie.

I guess it's a kid's story. A kid would love a town covered in ice cream, and ice cream snowball fights. I'm sitting there, an over-thinking too-adult, and I see the insane mess when it melts...

But: it's spectacularly lavishly produced. Scary so much manpower and computing power it must have taken. But beautiful visually.
And, it is quite funny. Actually, when you get into the abstract tone of the thing, it's darn funny. And there's some stuff for advanced audience like the line: "come on, we got some carpe to diem!"

Controversial issues and the finger

A writer on American Dad made an interesting observation: the big problem in the show is not the political issues, like a whole show drastically making fun of gays (seemingly), but, get this, whether a character is allowed to wave his nose at somebody! Or much worse, to give somebody the finger. (Though they are four-fingered.)

This is interesting to me: you just can't show a middle raised finger on US TV. Why is this gesture so incredibly offensive? The guy being interviewed did not even make the gesture, I guess he knew it couldn't be shown, he just waved his hand a bit up, and we all immediately knew which gesture he was referring to.

You can feel it too: I don't think you can give anybody in the Western World the finger and not immediately grossly offend them.
I am realizing I have no idea if it has the same meaning in the Eastern World, anybody know?

Update:
Even bigger "fingers".

Kitty hold-up

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex

"Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1.5 TB USB 3.0 Ultra-Portable External Hard Drive"

"FreeAgent GoFlex"... are you kidding me? :-)

But what a sexy drive. 1.5TB portable too!?

(And you can get it down to 150 bucks, cheap if you ask me.)

(Thanks to Joe Kissell, tech writer, TidBITS.com.)

Oliver Onions - Santa Maria

Here's another oldie.
I remember when I played it a few times back as a teen, a friend of mine was visiting, he heard those falsetto vocal and he burst out laughing, and asked "what the h*ll is that? Is it a parody!??"
But you know, I just really like it. Sure, overt pop, but good pop in my view. Love the melody.



(Thanks to Carter for helping me stumble over the song again after the millennium.)

Santa Baby

That is an amazingly brilliant song.  (Sorry xmas is past.)
I don't even know this minute which version I like better, Eartha Kitt's or Kylie's, they're both top notch. How sexy can you sound?
(I remembered this one cuz reader Ray mentioned Kylie's new controversial video All The Lovers. Not bad song.)





I remember the first time I heard Kitt's version on the radio. It just pulled me in... what is that!?...

Amazing: thanks to TCGirl for  finding the video. I've never seen this before. Golddurn.
Like she says: a very funny song. ("think of all the fellas I haven't kissed...") And a risque outfit for the time!

Cibo Matto - Sugar Water (Video)

Cibo Matto - Sugar Water (Video)

I just had to post this one again, I just love that song and I have for a decade.

Stan Smith salute

I'm re-watching American Dad from scratch. That show is really surprisingly, extraordinarily good.
Just for one thing, apart from the excellent satire, they can pack three jokes and a whole sub-plot into ten seconds of show, and I don't think that's   even exaggerating, it's astounding.

Good qoutes this Tuesday

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

           -- Konrad Lorenz

There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.

           -- Doctor Who

We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.

           -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

           -- George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) vol. 1, Introduction

Why I don't like Twitter?

... I just realized why I don't like Twitter: I don't have the attention span to get through 140 characters.

Hitch a Christmas ride

It was the day after Christmas at a church in San Francisco. The pastor of the church was walking by the nativity display when he noticed the baby Jesus was missing from the cradle.


Immediately, he turned and went outside. Off in the distance, he saw a little boy pulling a red wagon with what looked to be the missing baby Jesus inside.


Walking closer, he saw it was the missing infant, so he approached the boy. "Well, where did you get Him, my fine friend?" he asked.


The little boy replied, "I got Him from the church."


"And why did you take Him?" the priest asked.


The boy said, "Well, about a week before Christmas, I prayed to the little Lord Jesus that if He would bring me a new red wagon for Christmas, I would give Him a ride around the block in it."

Carmen Electra is funny too

Stick it out, it changes tack!

Natalie Portman to wed

Natalie Portman to wed..., article.
... and pregnant too.

She is not only beautiful, she's an outstanding actress (which the Star Wars movies sadly did not show). I've been a fan of her since her first movie Leon (The Professional). (Brilliant movie too, albeit violent.)

White Christmases defined

Ray found on Wikipedia.....
White Christmases defined

The view of what constitutes a white Christmas varies from country to country. In most countries, it simply means that the ground is covered by snow at Christmas, but some countries have more strict definitions. In the United States, the official definition of a white Christmas is that there has to be a snow depth of at least 1 inch (2.5 cm) on Christmas morning,[1] and in Canada the official definition is that there has to be more than 2 cm (0.79 in) on the ground on Christmas Day. [2] In the United Kingdom, although for many a white Christmas simply means a complete covering of snow on Christmas Day, the official definition by the British Met Office and British bookmakers is for snow to be observed falling, however little even even if it melts before it reaches the ground, in the 24 hours of 25 December.[3][4] Consequently, according to the Met Office and British bookmakers, even 3 ft (91 cm) of snow on the ground at Christmas, because of a heavy snow fall a few days before, will not constitute a white Christmas, but a few snow flakes mixed with rain will, even if they never reach the ground.

You need official, technical definitions of "white christmas"? How crazy are humans?

Update:
Alex said:
In Britain you can legally bet on any legal activity or natural phenomenon. The book maker and the better need to agree on terms. A legal definition for a popular bet, like white Christmas, will save a lot of aggravation down the road, and may have been settled in a court of law, with Met Office input.
For recording history, again a subjective term like White Christmas has no true meaning.

Interesting, thank you. Having never gambled, I didn't see that angle.

Snow Sunset by Joe

Reader Joe took this beautiful photo of late day over snow.
I experimented with upping the contrast, but ended up deciding, against my early training, that Joe's own version is best, it has a certain soft atmosphere, some je ne sais quoi.

(Click for big pic.)

In the old days in the photo club, many of them were much into Ansel Adams' Zone System, and it was sacrilege to make a photo which did not go nicely all the way from pure white to pure black (or had any white or black areas without detail).
As Mike Johnston has pointed out though, Adams made the Zone System for teaching purposes, not as directions for art. Important point there.

Temperature oddity (updated)

Does anybody else have the experience that even when the room temperature is the same, you still feel colder when it's frost outside?
Physically, I mean. Very odd, I think.

Update:
I think I got it!
TCGirl found this...
"Believe it or not, your body and all other objects are always giving off or absorbing heat by radiation. Heat transfer by radiation goes from a hotter object to a cooler object - like from the sun to earth, or from hot coals to you, or from your body to the cold walls of a lonely castle on a dark and stormy night."

Doesn't quite explain it, but I realized: the thermometers, unlike a body, are probably only reading the air temperature.
The other source of heat which we normally don't think about is radiation heat. From the walls! In warm weather, it's considerable, in frost it goes away, and this might well make it a lot harder to keep a good body temperature.

Which says to me that a building in a cold climate really should be very well insulated all around, otherwise you might never be really comfortable. I don't think higher air temperature is a good substitution for all that radiation, it warms the body in a very different way. (Not sure how, yet.)

Ray said:
One trick I use is to have a fan circulating the air, just to make sure that the heat is distributed evenly. Sometimes, that can make a difference, because without that, the heat may be going up the walls toward the ceiling without warming central parts of the rooms. Seems to work for me.

Update:
A said:
There is a scale called the Bedford Comfort index which takes account of air temperature, humidity, radiant temperature of surrounding etc to come up with an index. I was able to demonstrate to a class of students that their subjective estimate of comfort within a classroom matched pretty well with values using this scale from appropriate measurements.


Well, there you are then, thank you. Interesting.

Photo mags and libraries

I've been addicted to photo magazines since I was fourteen. Especially some Swedish ones which were big and outstanding quality (I guess I can read Swedish because my mother was Swedish. It's a bit similar to Danish, but there are many, many words which are very different, enough so many people just switch to English between the countries). (I can't speak it though. I ought to be able to, but I seem to have a block there. There's something about the cadence which is really different from Danish.)

I was reminded of a funny little story: in the nineties I lived close to an excellent library, and *man* did I get some use out of that. I devoured tons of books, magazines, CDs, comics.
One of the things I enjoyed was archived hardbound collections of photo magazines. (When they had a full year they bound them and archived them.) I got all of those that I could, usually needed help because they had to get them in from elsewhere.
I actually wonder now if anybody else where ever reading those, except in the very rare case that there was something very specific in an old mag they had to look up? Considering this, it's an excellent service and practice by the libraries, I think.

One day I was talking to a librarian about yet another one of those hardbound collections to be retrieved, and two other librarians where standing close, and they laughed good-naturedly. The first librarian looked at them, and one of them explained: “you’re the only one here so far this guy had not yet gotten hold of to get these things.”

The Internet age's story of nativity

This is apparently some kind of ad, but I don't care, it's just too brilliant.
(Oh, you can turn down the sound low, it's just Jinglebells all the way through the video, a bit much.)

New semi-pro video camera

Sony has made one of the first compact-ish video cameras with a large sensor and exchangeable lenses, the NEX-VG10. Here is a (video) test report on it. Sounds like it's excellent. Although sadly the reviews on Amazon are very mixed (at least so far, but there are only six of them today).

Anyway, good trend for sure. Especially since the price, around $2000 including a long zoom, is very reasonable, I had a-feared that when they started making real video cameras (not DSLRs) with large sensors, the prices would be crazy, like they were for many years with semi-pro and pro (non-HD) digital video cameras.

Post-Eclipse Report

Post-Eclipse Report, article and photos.
Ctein reports on his experience in photographing last week's lunar eclipse. Quite successful, this is one of his photos.

Site about Fujifilm X100

There is a new and I think beautifully made site for the upcoming Leica-like digicam Fujifilm X100.

tOP sniffed out an otherwise yet unpublished page about the new and unique viewfinder.

It is clear that Fuji has done everything they could to make this the highest quality camera they could make in a compact form. It will be interesting to see how it lives up to this intention when it's released (I think early in 2011).
(Oooh, it seems it has no image stabilization? That's an unfortunate omission.)

Mike J has a good comment.
"...what do you suppose the chances are that the Fuji X100 will get here and not have some big glaring distressing dismaying stupid flaw in it that ruins the whole thing?"

Gawd yeah. I know!

Note on Spot Healing Brush

A seemingly excellent innovation in Photoshop which appeared a couple of versions ago is the Spot Healing Brush. It means that unlike the normal Healing Brush, you don't have to find and select a section for the brush to use as a texture to cover the flaws you want removed. Instead it just compares to the immediate surroundings and removes the spot. Saves time.

Or it should. I just find that it is really poor. If a spot (say, a pimple) is close to an edge in the picture, that edge will usually get a ghost in the area you have Healed. And often, sometimes the brush simply removes all texture in the area, which just doesn't work, it looks like a clumsily airbrushed area.

I find it remarkable that such a central tool continues to work so poorly through several upgrades of Photoshop. When you think of the prices Adobe commands for their apps, they just mess up a little too often.

A Visit To Revision3 - GeekBeat.TV

I think it's kewl that a web TV company is so darned big. The web's (video) position as underdog for "real" TV won't last long. And there's nothing amateurish about this either.

This episode is funny too. Well, hit and miss, but pretty funny. :-)

Little Uzu

I don't have any games on my iPhone or iPad, but I do have a few different kinds of "screen candy", like clocks, landscape time lapse videos, etc. And now Uzu, which can run auto, or which you can play with. It's amazing.

Now there is also Little Uzu for iPhone.

By the way, two of my favorite iPad screen candy apps are Magic Window and Magic Picture HD.

Tiny snow panic

Here in the North West UK, we had a couple inches of snow last week, nothing since. I can go out without boots, just normal shoes. Everybody is getting around like normal. It is frost, but not windy, actually sunny much of the time. And yet, get this, garbage collecting is cancelled this week due to "severe weather"...

The Great Wall of Kitties

[Thanks to Maurice]

(Fair notice: the videos show plaster casts of vulvas, and the second one even show glimpses of the real thing. Do not watch if this offends.)

A melly melly xmas

A customer mailed me today, Dec 24, and said he'd lost some data, could I recover them for him please.

And then he added: "PS.. please don’t worry about this until after you have had time for a Happy relaxing Christmas."

Isn't that sweet?

Merry Christmas and a great new year to you all.

How The Average U.S. Consumer Spends Their Paycheck

How The Average U.S. Consumer Spends Their Paycheck, article.
Reading: 0.2%. Tobacco: 0.7%.

And about 17.6% on transportation!
That's a nice savings on working from home. Add to this the time you spend sitting in traffic. For many people that is hundreds of hours every year which could be productive in some other way.
Of course many places in the US it is just not practical or even possible to live without a car, unlike Europe which is much more compact. In my native Denmark, the country is so small  and developed that you can go virtually anywhere with public transportation, comfortably.

John A winter-pictures

These are new from my local friend John A. I think are real dang lovely.

(Slight Photoshop polishing done by me.)

By the way, John works mainly with a pocket-sized camera, and again this proves you can do excellent works with those. I have seen these images on a 30-inch screen, and there is nothing obvious which separates them in quality from photos coming from a honkering professional camera. In fact you have to be experienced to even notice the differences, and even so only on a few of them, mostly when light was low.

United States of Tara

This is one of the excellent new kind of TV series we've been seeing in the past decade: basically a drama, but with a very strong overtone (undertone?) of comedy.
This one can't have been easy to write or act, to make multiple personalities not be too sad or scary or serious, and yet not go over the top with the comedy.
Recommended.

United States of Tara: Season One

Mini airports

Mini-airports with small planes for localized traffic. Sounds cool, but I doubt it'll take off. (Pun not intended.)
At least it would be cool if they can keep the noise limited like they say. We don't need more traffic noise.

Kafka's Koffee

Here's a really interesting little web comic. It's funny, it's surprising, and it even has a point.
(The ending is different than it seems at first, take a close look.)

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Astronomy Picture of the Day, for good reason a very popular page.

Bilingualism affects Alzheimer's onset

Bilingualism affects Alzheimer's onset


TORONTO (UPI) -- Canadian scientists say they've found evidence that people who speak two languages can escape the onset of Alzheimer's symptoms by as much as five years.


Researchers from Toronto's Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute examined the clinical records of more than 200 patients diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's disease and found that those who were bilingual and speaking two or more languages consistently over many years experienced a delay in the onset of their symptoms, an institute release said Monday.


While bilingual Alzheimer's sufferers still show deteriorating pathology, their ability with two languages seems to equip them with compensatory skills to hold back the tell-tale symptoms of Alzheimer's, such as memory loss, confusion, and difficulties with problem-solving and planning, researchers say.


"We are not claiming that bilingualism in any way prevents Alzheimer's or other dementias, but it may contribute to cognitive reserve in the brain which appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer's symptoms for quite some time," lead investigator Fergus Craik says.


The study adds to growing evidence that lifestyle factors such as regular cardiovascular exercise, a healthy diet, and speaking more than one language can play a central role in how the brain copes with age-related cognitive decline and diseases such as Alzheimer's, scientists say.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

Good or bad girl art?

[Thanks to Anthony B]

Here's when good and bad girl art gets confused...

"Nude snow sculpture in Rahway leads police to request 'snowlady' cover-up", article.

You just have to say: no, come on... really?...

M. Pipolo said:
You may or may not have seen this, from just this Friday in sunny Florida. This kind of stuff makes me ashamed to call myself a Christian.

 

Though I don't think anybody said it was a Christian thing. Also, I'm not even sure I can think of any religion which does not have a big faction at least who has problems with nudity.

Good Girl Art

From Wikipedia:
Good girl art (GGA) is found in drawings or paintings which feature a strong emphasis on attractive women no matter what the subject or situation. GGA was most commonly featured in comic books, pulp magazines and crime fiction. When cited as an art movement, it is usually capitalized as Good Girl Art.

Gotta love that.
(Maybe I'm stretching the definition a little here, but I think there's a clear connection.)

Photos by Đặng Thiện. I think his work is very fresh and somehow "youthful" without the usual earmarks of a young creator.  (Below, unknown.) 

And of course there's also Bad Girl Art. Which naturally is about attractive, but nasty or "naughty" girls.

Total Lunar Eclipse Monday Night

[Thanks to TCGirl]

Total Lunar Eclipse Monday Night.
(Monday 20 Dec 2010.)

(photos)

Cold shock (updated)

Holy friggin' frig, how cold it is this morning!
The real winter of much of the UK has now reached the North-West too, real snow, real frost.
The temperature fell so radically this night that I have elected to forego views of the pretty snow  and instead preserving warmth by leaving blinds and curtains shut and having the lights on.
My weather services continue to predict only barely frost locally, one may hope.

BTW, here's a tip: long underwear.
I'm sure many will say "duh!", but I've found that many are not aware of how big a help it is when it really gets cold. Many are even too vain to use it at all, which is dumb.

Update:
When I got up this morning, it felt like neither I nor my apartment would ever become warm enough. But like I knew would happen, after having eaten and later having taken a walk, when I came in again it was just too hot! And of course it was only a couple degrees warmer if that.

During the walk I nicked into Currys electronics and browsed a couple of minutes. Bought some batteries and a matte screen cover for my iPad. (It helps against both reflections and fingerprints.) I was helped by the Indian-heritage girl they have who is just immoderately beautiful. Oh-my-gaaawd. She's just got it all, she knows it, and she knows how to show it to best advantage (even in the boring dark blue shop uniform). It's a pity though how such beauties apparently sometimes feel they have to be somewhat cold. I guess if they are warm and pleasant, they'll just never get rid of every third man they talk to. ... On the other hand, some of them manage okay even though they are very sweet too, what do I know.
(Hey, this bit even fits into the cold/warm theme of this post.  :-)

Lord V photos

Thanks to Frank for pointing to Lord V's photos.

Pro Track 1.0 iPhone (updated twice)

Pro Track 1.0 iPhone is out. It tracks the movements of an iPhone it is installed on (So one needs physical access to a phone before it can be tracked). From the press release: 

"Pro Track can be used to shadow anyone who carries an iPhone. It could be the user's 12-year-old daughter or aged father. It could also be the user's spouse, business associate, or girlfriend. Or it could easily be a courier service or other business, keeping track of their employees. The technology itself is neutral; only in specific cases might ethical questions arise. Clearly, creative technocrats will find unthought-of uses for a veritably tamper-proof, minute-accurate log of where someone has been and how they got there.

... The app manual refers to the person being tracked as "the target", and recommends that the user weigh battery life versus required tracking accuracy when doing the initial setup."

A bit creepy. I guess it's only a matter of time before the app can record sound and use the camera without the user knowing. And send the data wirelessly instead of the installer needing to get hands on the phone again. If and when it gets to that point (but even now), it raises all kinds of security and privacy issues about just owning an iPhone ("never let it out of your sight").  

Remarkable that they say "The technology itself is neutral", but then proudly proclaim that the app "refers to the person being tracked as "the target".

Update:
BaronessBlack said:
A colleague of my husband had her iPad taken from her bag while she was in the library. She was able to narrow it's location down to two houses in a terraced row of houses. She took the information to the police, and when they went to check it out they found all sorts of stolen equipment there. So there are some less sinister aspects to knowing where your i-stuff is!

Thanks, absolutely. Although this was installed just for that purpose, not to spy on anybody.
But it's true that anything in the world can be used constructively or destructively.

Bruce said:
Google Latitude can do that. It's available for the iPhone or iPad now as well, and it's free.
Yes, it is a bit creepy.

Thank you.
I have downloaded that app, and it seems you have to have it installed and give others permission to track your position for it to work, so that's OK by me, could even be practical, save a lot of "where are you" calls.

Round things

Apropos moons, I'm watching the movie Moon, and I recommend it. That is, if you like slow, intellectual science fiction. You know, the kind which doesn't have Arnold Schwarzenegger being kung-fued by Sharon Stone in spandex.

I don't know who made the photo below, it's an orphan. But it's very kewl. And btw, it reminds me of one of the quite few silly distractions I like on the iPad, Uzu. It makes really amazing effects around your fingertips.

Update:
Andreas points to TinEye for a tool for finding an author. Thanks. The bubble was photographed by Richard Heeks. More of the bubble set.

Mo' moon

From MSNBC's Week in Pictures.

TC[Girl] said::
Speaking 'bout da moon...there's going to be a total lunar eclipse Dec. 20 and Dec. 21st. Hoping for clear skies! :-D

New blacker paint

A Google thanks

Google has very cleverly made a humorous video, which becomes individualized to each advertiser they have. I'm guessing that's quite a bit of computing power there.
Mine is here.

(It seems they are resisting anybody saving the video, though. The usual tools like keepvid.com and savetube.com fail.)

SnapSort

A relatively new, but seemingly very user-friendly site is SnapSort, which aims to help you find out what's what when you're looking for a new camera.

For example their "Just Tell Me" feature is neat. You just write in your price ceiling, and the site will show you their highest rated cameras within different types (super-zoom, underwater, ultracompact, etc). If you don't want to spend hours reading reviews, I suspect this is a pretty safe way to do it. Certainly better than go to a shop and ask, because the guys behind the desk don't have time to do camera testing or even read many reviews.
I played around a bit with this feature, and it seems the recommendations are very solid indeed.

Update:
EmptySpaces said:
That's a nice site, and the recommendations are good, too. I also like their explanations of photo terms and specs. Try out their companion site LensHero, too, it's also nice.

Applegirl: Poker Face

The unbearable cuteness of singing...





Kim Yeo-hee got famous for this on YouTube, and now has a record deal and a pro video. (Not that this is definite progress.)



But I suspect she is one of those rare talents who can basically do whatever takes her fancy, and well.

Signs of the Zodiac

Here are some nicely abstract Zodiac signs.

----
Sorry, Blogger sometimes posts a post more than once. And it doesn't show up right away.

23 devices my iPhone has replaced

[Fair warning: gear fanboy post]

23 devices my iPhone has replaced, article.

Somebody said to me: "I guess you take your iPhone with you whenever you go out?" 

I said: "Of course. It's my phone. It's my camera. It has my current reading. It's an iPod. It's a video player. It's a podcast player, video or audio. It's a word processor if I bring a foldable keyboard."

And those are just the most obvious uses. There are many I only use occasionally, and many, many more I could use if I had the need or even knew about them.

This is not just about Apple, for all I care, you can include other brands of smartphones. But I just can't get around how astonishing these devices are. And what's more, most things they do well. Where not limited by screen size, they typically do things at least as well as the (typically expensive) device they replace.

Update:
Larose said:
Here's an example. Amazing !
"10 Terrific iPhone and iPad Musical Performances"

Thanks, good stuff. I really liked the first performance. And take note of the ocarina app in the second one. Some amazing features which could on happen in the Net age. 

The Flower People cometh

Several people have been sending me this over email.

Sketchup 3D tool

[Thanks to Ray]

Google has a free, and apparently simple, tool for 3D creation: Sketchup.



(More videos.)

Engineer Recreates Antikythera Mechanism with Legos

Engineer Recreates Antikythera Mechanism with Legos, article.


(Bigger video: click on the YouTube logo.)

About Wikileaks etc

Ron Paul speaks about Wikileaks, free speech, lies, and war.

---

There is a petition here. 

Towboat fantastica

It's too late to stop, but the bridge won't open! Panic! And hope for a miracle.
And heck, they do happen sometimes.

Alan Watts, music and life

Anger wins the day

But baby it's slippery out there

For the first time in as long as I reliably recall, I almost slipped and fell on the ice outside. Many places it's just pure ice on the sidewalks. That is, I did slip, and would have fallen if I hadn't been walking next to a fence I could grab.
This was actually the way my maternal grandfather died. After slipping on ice on a sidewalk.

Back in Denmark, all the sidewalks are shovelled and sanded, enforced by law. This seems not to be the case in the UK, which is a pity. There must surely be a big price to pay every winter in broken hips.

Update:
Anon points to "snow chains for boots". Not elegant, but then neither is a crutch.

Panasonic Lumix GF2 samples

The Panasonic GF2 is a bit smaller than the GF1, which is kewl enough. But I was wondering how the chip would be doing, since unfortunately above ISO 800 it was not so great on the first one, not really usable.

Well, I think it looks  promising. Here it is at 1600 ISO, and here at 3200 ISO, the latter very stressing for the size of sensor. I think 1600 is just great, and 3200 is very usable in many situations. It only gets bad at 6400, which should be reserved for needs-must situations.   Note though that the samples are scaled down quite a bit from full camera size, that's because they were reviewing a prototype and so they weren't allowed to post full-size samples. So it's possible that the final camera makes the photos slightly different (hopefully even better if they must change). This makes for a bit of wait for final judgment and comparison to GF1. I think it clear that it's better, but how dramatic it is, we don't know yet.

An apple face in Zero History

I'm still with joy reading Zero History, and came upon this amazing and funny description of a new character:

(Click for big pic.)

Frost in the UK part Trois, last one

I wish...

I heard of a psychoanalyst who is charging $500 per hour listening to nymphomaniacs tell about their lives.

I wish I had the patients for that.

Danish Newspaper Protest Apple App Store Censorship

Danish Newspaper Protest Apple App Store Censorship, article.

Ekstra BIadet, a newspaper in Denmark, has had it up to here with Apple’s App Store policies, and the publication has published a series of protest articles on the subject, including the political cartoon below. According to the newspaper, Apple rejected its iPhone and iPad apps because of a nude photo feature, even for the Danish-specific version of the App Store.

I find myself in the unusual position of supporting the Danish newspaper on this one. Because it's a terrible rag. How terrible? So terrible that when I as a young and poor man was offered the sale of a photograph to them, I said no, I refused to have anything to do with them.

But they do have one good thing going for them: for the past 25 years they have had a lovely nude girl on page nine, every day. And this of course is what Apple is against. Apple who I normally love and support. Oh, the irony! (Swoon.)

Born again bottles

[Thanks to Kirk]

This gives a whole new meaning to "I came from the bottom of a bottle to see the Light".
The Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple is about 400 miles northeast of
Bangkok in the city of Khun Han close to the Cambodian border. Most of it is built using recycled bottles.

Rex said:
Reminds me of the boat made of plastic bottles.