Finally, a non-sissy dustbuster

Dustbuster? No mate, this is a Dyson! Hardest, toughest mofo hand-vacuumer in the wurhld.

Little red wagon

[Thanks to Kirk.]

Very kewl custom car.

Weezer offered $10m to split up

Weezer offered $10m to split up, Guardian article.

A group of frustrated music fans want Weezer to break up, and they're willing to pay them. Claiming the band has never improved on their 1996 album Pinkerton, the organisers of a new campaign hope to raise $10m to convince Weezer to pack it in and stop "disappointing" fans. "This is an abusive relationship," the project's creator said. "It needs to [end]."

Too flippin' funny.

Ganesha in Copenhagen

Our friend Ganesha Games is currently visiting Copenhagen.
He writes these observations:

• All Danish women are cute, long-legged blondes with a bicycle and a miniskirt. For some reason, they all dress in black.
• All Danish speak English, making learning the Danish language pointless. Today I was approached by a bum, told him "sorry I do not speak Danish" and he replied in English " Well sir, I was just asking you for some change to buy a bus ticket".
• There are more bicycles in Copenhagen than mysteries in Nature.

Ouch

Ever photograph a golf ball hit by a master, while it's still inches from your lens? Bet he got a black eye, there's speed in them things.

Unit automatically becomes portable when carried

[Thanks to Cap Kirk]

Splendid optical illusions

Splendid optical illusions.

(This was made in a 3D printer!)

These were made in metal. Somehow!

The B.A.T. mobile

The Alfa Romeo B.A.T. mobile.

Propeller jetpack

A "jetpack" with propellers instead of jets. I guess it's safer. More so, it should be commercially available one day.

I just hope I get one before my neighbors, for I'm sure they'll be noisy!

Panasonic GH2

I said a couple days ago: "(I can't believe they haven't updated the GF1 yet. I hope they'll do something great with it, unlike with the G2, which was a pretty trivial update.)"

 Well, how about that. No GF2 yet, but there's a GH2, and it has just what I was looking for: (at least claims of) super-fast handling and autofocus (they say it's faster than a good DSLR!), and much-improved high-ISO performance.
It would surprise me if these are not real, and if they don't also make it into the next-gen GF camera. Kewl.

Update: Yes, it is super-fast, but it depends on the lens. The 14-140mm lens is designed to be extra fast. The older 20mm lens is much slower in focusing.

Aging rock stars

Google goggles

Embryonic technology, but very promising.

Scratched Glasses Give Perfect Vision For Any Eyesight

Scratched Glasses Give Perfect Vision For Any Eyesight, Gizmodo article.

I'd like to try those, I'm tired of changing 'round between normal and reading glasses alda time.
Hmm, of course they may not help me, since I got astigmatism on both eyes too.

Rasterbrillen or pinhole glasses (see comments):

Neeraj says that the world through the pinhole glasses looks "Funny - maybe like looking through a bug's or fly's eye. As I have mentioned: You have to get used to integrate the superposition of all the single pictures of every hole, which needs some time and training."

Toshiba's glasses-less 3D TV

Toshiba's glasses-less 3D TV, article and sort-of video (well, they say one should get the gist of the video despite it being in Japanese, but I must say I didn't get a ghost of a gist). I don't get how each eye gets a different picture without necessarily being at a very precise spot in the room.

Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck

New Panasonic pancake

One of my mostest favorite lenses ever is the ultra-compact and yet fast and very sharp Panasonic 20mm F:1.7 lens for the Micro Four Thirds system. This is an equivalent of a 40mm normal lens. And now they are coming out with a 28mm-equivalent lens, a 14mm F:2.5 pancake lens (because it's so flat). If this one is even close to the quality of the 20mm one, I shall definitely have it. The Panasonic GF1 with a pancake lens fits in a jeans pocket, and yet is a fast and full quality camera in most respects. (The one limitation being that if light gets really low, you'll need a camera with a bigger sensor.)

It's harder to make good wideangle lenses, but this is a rather slower lens (one stop slower), so I think there's hope it can be about as good as the 20mm.

For sure the size is amazing: even smaller than the 20mm, and only 55 grams! That's ridiculous.

I think a good walk-around gear would be a Pentax K-x or K-r with the outstanding and very compact 70mm F:2.4, and the Panasonic GF1 with the 14mm lens, in a pocket. The Pentax won't fit in a pocket, but you can sling it onto your back when using the wide-angle camera.

Why not use a zoom? Hard to say. There's a bit of snobbery to it, perhaps, but you do get extra zing to the pictures with a good prime lens, and they are much more compact. And there's a peculiar pleasure in composing to a fixed focal length, even as there's also much convenience in the instant composing with a zoom.

(I can't believe they haven't updated the GF1 yet. I hope they'll do something great with it, unlike with the G2, which was a pretty trivial update.)

Saved the whale

[Thanks to Ron]

Saved the whale, nice story.

It's true we shouldn't anthropomophize everything will-nilly, but we also don't have any reason for saying that whales can feel gratitude or want to express it. They are warm-blooded creatures after all, and many sea mammals have exhibited very intelligent and aware behavior.

"On Spec"

"On Spec" is one of the paper-mag conterted-to-digital I am trying a subscription with. The ods of being blown away by the fiction are small, statistically, but I really like this cover, if nothing else.

---

[Dang, today and yesterday it takes aaaages to upload a simple picture to Blogger, wonder whaz hap.]

More quotes, thought-provoking

It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.
           -- D. H. Lawrence

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
           -- Socrates

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
           -- Dr. Robert Schuller

A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.
           -- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954

Think twice before you speak, and then you may be able to say something more insulting than if you spoke right out at once.
           -- Evan Esar, Esar's Comic Dictionary

I hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.'
           -- Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

Magazine subs and "Zinio"

It seems fortunately that unlike with books, digital editions of magazines are priced very reasonably. I just found out that one of my old faves, Britain's biggest photography weekly magazine, Amateur Photographer, is sold via Zinio. One issue is a bit over 2 Pounds Sterling like the paper version, not very impressive. But then fifty issues, a full year, is only 25 pounds. That's more like it!

Zinio seems like a good service. Buying was quick and simple, like the best online shops I have tried. Second time I bought I didn't have to type in card data and such, only my password.
And delightfully, the digital magazines are not scans, not even very good scans, they are full PDF files (or PDF-like), meaning when you zoom in on the text, it's dead sharp. That's lovely for readability.

And it gets better, you can even click a little "text" button to see only the text in one wide column, a choice of two text sizes, so you don't have to scoot the page around on the iPad to follow the meanderings of the columns between the pictures and ads. This goes above and beyond the call of duty, I give them an A for this. 

... All right, perhaps A-minus. Sometimes it's tricky to coordinate where you are on the text pages compared to the graphic pages (the "text" button sometimes isn't there). And it would be nice with more choices for text size and fonts. And if they were to really perfect it, they might put in the pictures on lines by themselves in the text view, like Instapaper does it. Best of both worlds. 

Same page, different mode:

The first divorce

[Thanks to Ron and Ray]

Good fun. But touches on one of those things I don't get. A friend of a friend fell in love with a Russian girl. The second she was in England and they got married, she got her boyfriend out of Russia, divorced him, and got half his money.
Say wha...? They'd been married for two days! How can she possibly have earned half of everything, in any way, shape, or form? How do the courts justify this kind of thing?

Ray strikes again

Awesome shot, dude.

Time Likely To End Within Earth's Lifespan, Say Physicists

Time Likely To End Within Earth's Lifespan, Say Physicists, article.

"There is a 50 per cent chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years, according to a new model of the universe"

Think twice before making any long-term plans.

A matter of cost

An Old Jewish man is walking down the street one afternoon when he sees a woman with perfect breasts.                                

He says to her, "Hey miss, would  you let me BITE your breasts for $100?"

"Are you nuts?!" she replies, and keeps walking away.  

He turns around, runs around the block and gets to the corner before she does.

"Would you let me bite your breasts for $1,000?" he asks again.

"Listen you; I'm not that kind of woman! Got it?"
 
So the little old Jewish  man runs around the next block and faces her again.

"Would you let me bite your breasts -  just once - for  $10,000?!"

She thinks about it for a while and says, "Hmmmmm, $10,000... Ok, just once, but not here. Let's go to that dark alley over there."
 
So they go into the alley, where she takes off her blouse to reveal the most perfect breasts in the world. As soon as he sees them, he grabs them and starts caressing them, fondling them slowly, kissing them, licking them, burying his face in them - but not biting them.

The woman finally gets annoyed and asks, 'Well? Are you gonna bite them or not?'

"Nah," says the little old Jewish man... "Costs too much!"

My office corner

Here is a small example of my current home-improvement efforts. 
I have this small office, fit for a world-wide monopoly of post-porn cheesecake art.
The back wall and  corner had gotten very messy with three printers, old computers and keyboards stacked up, and various cables thrown and snaking everywhere whether used or not. (Almost wish I had a before-picture, it was ridiculous.)
So I got use of all the stuff I was actually not using which freed up the floor and a tabletop. Under it is my laser printer, and under that again is a cupboard with printing paper and such.
So I put up some of my home decor and my new Zeppelina watercolors, and I'm very happy every time I walk into the room, there's more space and it looks way prettier. There are still two printers, but they have stepped way into the background.

First human-powered ornithopter

or·ni·thop·ter   
[awr-nuh-thop-ter]  –noun
a heavier-than-air craft designed to be propelled through the air by flapping wings.

See full-screen video of flight.

"Built from carbon fiber, foam, and balsa wood, the Snowbird weighs just 94 lbs. and has a wingspan of 105 feet, which is comparable to that of a Boeing 737–amazingly, the Snowbird weighs less than all of the pillows on board."

article. 

Ornithopter.net

Another Ray sky

Ray took this nice picture, nice for wallpaper.
The second version I have adjusted to my taste for contrast, color, and noise-suppression.

Gittin' Pentax K-r

I've decided to git the Pentax K-r.

The K-x is my current go-to favorite. It is a tremendous camera for the size and price. And the K-r has all the K-x has, but souped up. A bit higher ISO settings, a bit stronger, a bit faster. In short, a bit more professional.

I admit I rarely need the pretty astounding 6 frames per second this one takes (the Canon 5D Mark II only does 3), but I think that speed is indicative of ruggedness and also of responsiveness, and when I have used a speedy camera (like the Nikon D200), I like it. It feels more trustworthy and at the same time feels more like a living thing working with you.

If you have a K-x, stick with it, but if you're considering a Pentax camera, I think the K-r or the fully pro K-5 are excellent options. Compared to Canon and Nikon, they have in-body stabilization which works with any lenses, including the many outstanding compact prime (non-zoom) lenses Pentax has (which is a weakness for the otherwise strong Nikon and Canon systems).

If you prefer working with a standard zoom, they now have built-in stabilization, and then Canon or Nikon will do you fine. They are all very good these days. (Note, Canon and Nikon also have some outstanding prime lenses, but they tend to be very big and heavy, and very expensive.)

Dancing at the Movies

[Thanks to Henry]

Waking up is hard to do