Debra Paget in "Das indische Grabmal"

Ray found this and said "This was pretty hot stuff for 1959." I say, hey it's pretty hot stuff for today! Like Pinoccio, no strings on her.
And how fit she is, wow. Not so common then. She's a pure "ten".



Alex found another dance scene from this movie.

Massiveearius

The ArseStore - That Mitchell & Webb Look

I like that BBC has taken the should-have-been obvious hint and forestalled the inevitable pirating of sketch shows to YouTube by immediately doing it themselves and harvesting all the excellent promotion this creates!

---

By the way, some of the new Apple Stores are amazing. Beautiful, bona fide landmarks. I can't see HP or Microsoft doing anything like that.

The World's Best Lens

The World's Best Lens, article.

I think my regular readers will recognize why I'm quoting this:

"We've been on a Leica kick around here lately, and people are starting to complain. Hey, look at it this way: if I weren't a little obsessive-compulsive, I could never, ever keep this blog going day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, could I? Everything's good for something."

Well said, Mr. Johnston. Replace Leica with "Apple" or "ebook readers", and it could have been my own statement.       :-)

LED backlit

Has anybody tried these newfangled LED-backlit displays (any maker)? Is there all that much difference in practice?

Rosenthal wood sculptures (updated)

... No way!
Way.

"All Work Hand Carved From One Block Of Wood And Hand Painted"

How the heck does he do that?

It gets more ridiculous yet, look at this. How can he carve and paint that?

Update: Philocalist points to this, which I just refuse to believe was made by human hands. 

Philco PC

I think this is beautiful. I'd get it if it ran Mac OS. Well, and if I had more space.
I wonder if the dial adjusts sound volume? 



Sometimes I wish I had more space. But I suspect I would fill it up with tons of stuff I really don't need (like, um, this beautiful thingamabob). I dunno.

Well, sadly it does not even exist yet. 

A top car for gamers

Beautiful car.  But no wheel, no pedals, only a joystick. I'd think it was a joke, only it's too well made.
I know I couldn't drive it. But I know some who could!
Update:
Pete points to this.

[Thanks to Kirk]

CGI bubbles

Manipulate the bubbles with your cursor.
I don't know what tech is loading it.

Monkey drunks

Mighty Bright light

Another funny koinkidink: Ray just mentioned, under the desk post, that a light for the keyboard might be nice. And a reviewer of my new Mighty Bright lamps said that's one thing he's using it for. I don't need it, but his keyboard is on a keyboard shelf and badly lit in the evenings.

They are originally made for (and for some reason still only promoted for) use by musicians for their sheet music, but they have many uses. They are very small and very light (they hardly add weight to a Kindle or a paper book), they have a neutral light color, and since it's an LED lamp, it uses very little battery. You can twist it to any position you like, nice construction.

They won't, you know, compete with the sun, but I think they can be handy in a blackout, so I have bought three, and I keep one on my desk for the odd occasion when I have to sign a check in the evening or summin'.

The grip on the naked Kindle is not so dang secure, which is why I put soft tape around it. Didn't help much, but a little strip of velcro did. (I went looking for actual rubber tape, which surely must exist somewhere, but people went blank when I asked for it.)

I think it has just sufficient light to help with a book in a typical room, and to give the little extra. The one I link to above is not available in the UK, but it has two "super" LEDs, so perhaps it has more light. [Update: my mistake, they are on A-UK.]

Shooting to a Theme

Shooting to a Theme, tOP article.

I think he's right, selecting a theme does get you going.
And what's more, I think it'll surely work well in many other media too, painting, writing, music, whatnot.

Ray's clouds (updated/expanded)

Ray has sent me some nice cloud photos he took yesterday, and allowed me to post them here.

Vancouver Bay

Update: by funny coincidence, my friend Zeppelina just now sent this evening's sunset in Glasgow, very impressive:

They look great on my screens.

An empty desk

I'm honestly not really sure about what to say about Einstein's thought here. (Except that it's a nicely witty retort.) But two thoughts occurred to me about the photo: if the purpose was to show a neat and pretty computer desk, a bluetooth keyboard would have been even better. (I try to avoid bluetooth, it seems so buggy to me.) Which is probably why Apple is pushing bluetooth so much, it looks neater.
And secondly: I think I rapidly would become tired of the lamp reflecting in the glass table top. Like, within 90 seconds.

(I would also have used a different desktop image than Apple's over-used starfield, but hey well.)

I'm fanatical about keeping my virtual desktop totally clean, to enjoy the images I have there better. But funny enough, I'm less so about my real desktop. I'm working after all, and if I put for example my pens and my reading glasses in a drawer, that's so many more times I'll have to open and close drawers. 
But actually, I guess there is only on it what needs to be. Except for a camera or two for decoration and inspiration. But once you have the non-matching but high-performance keyboard and trackballs and their cables, and the books under the screens to elevate them, making it look totally neat is pretty much a lost cause anyway.  

[Thanks to Naeem]

Wide Angle Camera Phone Lenses

Dippence tipped me off on (or perhaps just promoted) these cool attachment lenses for practically any camera-phone (they attach magnetically). There's a fish-eye, and a combined wide/macro.

They look very cute/fun and even high quality, and for a surprisingly low price. Almost too low to be as good quality as they seem, but heck, fun is fun.

One should note that such lenses of course does not replace the phone's existing lens, it modifies it. This means that the end result can't be quite as high quality optically as the lens on its own, but then with today's optics it does not need to be very much lower either.

The reason is that lenses are very precise and complex, and if you add something to a lens, it has to be painstakingly attuned to and produced for exactly that lens to not reduce the quality. Nikon for example has a zoom lens and tele lens with dedicated teleconverters which deliver virtually the same quality as the naked lenses, but this is an unusual achievement. 

Pros and cons of working from home

Pros and cons of working from home.

Russia in color, a century ago

[Thanks to Ian P]

Russia in color, a century ago, picture article.

Wow, talk about a time when color photography was rare! There was not even any color film a century ago. This was insanely tricky work.

I really like the Boston Globe's work in reversing the idea that news photos on the web must be really tiny, for the lowest common denominator. Their feature The Big Picture is very popular. (Odd I haven't heard of any imitators.)

Business and loved ones

This was something that occurred to me, and I'm surprised that I can't remember ever reading/hearing any philosophy about it:

I wonder if it isn't generally a bad idea to go into business with somebody you have a close relationship with (family, lover, friend)?
It just seems to me that sooner or later there's almost bound to be a decision where what's good for business will hurt the relationship, and vice versa. And there's just no easy way out of that.

I'm sure there are many examples of it working for many years, but I think that the percentage where it has had no detrimental effect at all on either the business or the relationship is pretty small.

"iMercedes"

We don't have an iPorsche yet, but how about an iMercedes? (Actually called iBusiness.)

A dinosaur

From the Barnes and Noble debacle (they can't sell ebooks to overseas), it's becoming clear to me that the book publishing industry is letting old ideas of national markets strangle the ebook market for themselves. Which is one of the best indicators I've seen that it's not going to be these guys who will be the big players in the e-publishing market in this century.

Seth Godin said something similar: new things will be the new publishing. And it will not be done by the same people.

Indeed. It would be like a 40-year-old boxing champion trying to take up bicycle racing. To old, too slow, much too different a game.

Oh durn dammit whuzzat?

[Thanks to Kirk]

I can't believe these guys. I think they are really Peter Parker and Matt Murdock.

Not the least the jumps from 1:09 to 1:14. Man, even at fifteen I would have killed myself just thinking about it. How the hell does he land so precisely?
And how do they not break all their bones learning how to do this?

Update:
Philocalist rightly point out that, as often, by clicking on the youtube logo you can see it in HD if your machine and connection can handle it.

"In Defense of Books"

In Defense of Books, outstanding article.

The author, Michael Hyatt, is talking about books in any form, paper, audio, or ebooks.
The argument is that "sustained arguments" or long stories, "books" are a linchpin in civilization, and perhaps even something without which civilization may fail, or fail sooner.
I agree very much.

Since about seven I have been a voracious reader. One of the oddest views in the world to me (though one I'll have to get used to as ebooks advance) is a home without book shelves. To me it's like a home without a sink or a bed. Where do they keep their books?

The article makes the point that more successful people tend to read more. (Although work certainly is an important factor!) TV takes this place in other homes. The question is, do you merely wish for entertainment all the time, or do you have a craving for knew knowledge and new thoughts? To expand your mind and your skills?

Apple music event

I just watched Steve Jobs' "keynote" speech, streamed live today (impressively). As usual, I enjoyed it very much.

Funny, though, Steve really loved that they had made the iPod Shuffle, the Nano, and the Apple TV much smaller yet. But I feel none of these products needed to become smaller. Have you ever seen anybody lift up the coin-sized iPod Shuffle and say: "man, I really wish this thing was smaller and lighter"... ?

And the Apple TV is for a shelf. Not bad it's much smaller, but not really something I ever wished for either.
(Update: Tonya Engst: "I predict for Apple September 2011 iPods so small that you wear them as contact lenses. Of course, they'll come in different colors!")

And he just got past saying about the Shuffle that "people missed the buttons" on the last model, and then he proudly announces that they have removed the buttons from the Nano!

All right, it makes more sense on that one, because it has a touch screen now. But on an iPod, I really like having buttons, because (like Mr. Jobs actually pointed out) you can operate it without looking at it (in a pocket or on my bedside table for ebook reading). I use an iPod classic instead of the Touch for this reason.

... Which makes me worried, because he did not mention the Classic at all! Are they going to stop making it? What about those with big collections, and those who like the buttons?
Seems they are still selling it at least. Still the same capacity though. Not that I need any more, but I know there are people who have like ten iPods just for the space they need.

Gotta admit though that technically the new Touch is very impressive, and even more so considering that price. From $229. Dang.
Similarly the prices of the new Shuffle and the Apple TV are just insanely cheap. Apple is going all out in the consumer market.
(Ugh, I see now that the price for Apple TV is the same in Pounds Sterling as in dollars, however...) (See here. Yes, why do we never have deals like the free NetFlix streaming they get in the US? Seriously.)

FaceBook and parties

I get this allergic reaction whenever I visit FaceBook for some reason.
I guess it's the same reason I dislike parties: there's no content. There's no depth, no thought. There is just a big, noise time-sponge.

Blonnestijn card designs

Blonnestijn card designs.

I long had a weakness for artistic enterpretations of symbols. Flat designs.
I think these are very good (albeit pretty morbid many of them).

B&N follow-up (updated)

Following up on this, a kind friend allowed me to use her US credit card in the B&N ebook store. But check this: I filled out all data, and successfully bought an issue of WSJ for a buck to test it, and it all went fine, until the moment I tried to download it. Then I was told there was "an issue" with the payment.
Then a bit later I got an email from them which said that I had to be physically present in the US to buy their ebooks!

What the heck kind of law or rule requires such draconian measures?
(Like my friend says: "What if I were traveling overseas and wanted a book to read?")

And how come Amazon has no trouble selling me books, electronic or otherwise? Even with a UK or Danish credit card. (I bought my first Kindle ebook on October 21, 2009, well before they had a UK Kindle store.)

Update: 
B&N tells me in an email:
We must comply with copyright rules governing the sale and use of digital content. These rules currently require that all eBook purchases from our website be made within the United States and U.S. Territories (or Canada). Although we are investigating options that will help safeguard author and publisher rights while making eBooks available for purchase outside the above-named areas, only customers physically located in the U.S. and Canada are able to purchase eBooks on the Barnes & Noble website at this time.
Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

OK then.
I wonder why it would be different for Amazon though. Maybe they bar books on an individual basis, and B&N doesn't have the resources for that yet?

Further, I have never heard of a book store refusing to sell a book to a customer in another country before. Amazon surely never has, I have bought hundreds of books, CDs, and DVDs from their US store since the nineties.