A clever idea

"Check this out," one scientist said to his partner. "It's a new device I have invented."

"What does it do?" asked the other.

The first answered, "It's a device that allows you to steal someone else's ideas and then permanently delete them from that person's memory."

"That's so clever!" said the second. "Now why didn't I think of that?"

from hahafunnies [at] juno.com

Literature prediction

Here's a prediction in "fine literature": zombies are the new vampires.

The iPhone SLR Mount

It's an iPhone SLR lens adapter. It is not a joke. (At $190, it better not be! :-)
It works for Nikon or Canon lenses.

Coinseedense

From Amazon statement:

Credit Card [ending with 0253]: $2.53

Is the Internet Re-wiring Our Brains?

[Thanks to TTL]

Many people, including myself, seem to get shorter attention spans these days.
Is the web to blame, or does it go deeper? Me, I guess the Net has part responsibility, but couldn't have such a profound effect alone, there must be more to it. Is time speeding up?



I better say it, to get it out of the way: I'd like to think about this, but I couldn't get through the 3-minute video...

Update:
Laurie said:

I recently talked to an 17 year old girl, president of her class, very bright. She was texting someone as she was conversing with me. She was telling me that kids of her generation feel real anxiety about simply looking someone in the face and talking with them, without also being on an iPhone, or texting at the same time. She said it makes kids feel nervous to actually do stuff "in person," rather than through a screen. As she spoke to me she I had to kind of screw up my eyes and really concentrate, she was talking so fast, and she wasn't at all physically present. I actually commented on this to her, and she said, "yeah, that's what I mean. I can't just talk to you and do nothing else."

I was weird at that age, even for my age. I spent two years in a silent Zen monastery, I couldn't do two things at the same time. These days I would be considered retarded, or slow, and this makes sense. Now you see why I need lots of space :)

The brain IS being re-wired to suit the unfolding needs of human consciousness, why not? 
-

Money and happiness

Some say money is very important, some say it ain't at all.
Some hold it'll get you most of the happiness you need, others say it won't.

Myself, I find it makes less of a change on the deeper levels than one might think.   Although it's certainly very practical to have in many situations. It's mainly one's attitude to it. You will see some people making $200,000 per year being at least as anxious about it as some people who earn $200.

I'd like to hear from people who have gone from being affluent to not being, or the other way around. How has this affected your life, and enjoyment of it?


TCGirl said:
I'd be curious to hear from anyone who has lost EVERYTHING - home, possessions, and job - like MANY have already done, in the US, and MANY STILL continue to do, in the current climate. It would be nice to hear if there was a ray of hope in any of it. 

American/European phone companies

Normally we Europeans feel we are being price-gouged rather more than Americans. But at least in one area it seems to be reversed: telephone companies.
When I phone American, it's normally me calling, because of this difference. So I was called by a friend who asked me to call back. Because of some confusion, we then called each other at the same time, and both picked up without the phone having rung, very confusing. Against my better judgment, I decided it had been me calling her, very normal, so we chatted on, for over an hour.

But now it turns out it was actually her calling me, and here comes the biter: instead of the less than five dollars that normally costs me, she was charged for $215! (We probably have no grounds for challenging it, so I'll pay it, since I was supposed to make sure I was the one calling.)

"Be careful what you wish for"

A dear old friend of mine wished (even publicly) for rain to come.
Then she thought with anger of an old ex, and thought she'd like to be rid of some old videos of him she had in the basement.

... Then the gates of the heavens opened, and torrential rain came... and flooded her basement.

True, and recent, story!

David Bowie - Queen Bitch

"... has turned himself into a bizarre, self-constructive freak!" 
Haha! We wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't keep up the generation wars, the class wars, the culture wars...




By the way, I wonder how he's spending his time these days, I had the impression he's a workaholic, certainly hyper-active, but he's not put out an album since Reality in 2003. (By the way, pretty much the first Bowie album ever where I liked the album art. It seems almost like he's taken a pride in ugly covers.)

... I see he had a heart operation in 2004. That might take some of the air out of from under the wings of anybody, I guess. 

Update: A friend called my attention to this amazing koinkidink, this just came out today: 

Panasonic GF3 (?)

I was surprised when I heard that there's now a Panasonic Lumix GF3. Heck, it's less than half a years since the GF2 came out!
It turns out it is not, despite the name, really a "GF3". It has nothing to do with the predecessors, it's a beginner's camera, not an enthusiast camera. I think Panasonic is really shooting themselves in the foot by confusing their customers like this. (How hard can it be to maintain logical naming conventions, yet nobody ever does it!)

Look at this disconnect, even just visually:

GF1:

GF2:

"GF3":

First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy

Found via a Seth Godin article.

Winner of Miss Pole Dance Australia 2006 Felix Cane

Ray found this non-nude pole dance contest winner. Good work.

Restoring a Photograph from the 1870s

Restoring a Photograph from the 1870s, article, photos. Pretty impressive.

Olympus Debuts Dazzling New Micro 4/3 Gear

Olympus Debuts Dazzling New Micro 4/3 Gear, article.

I must admit I didn't have high hopes for Olympus introducing anything exciting in the Micro-Four-Thirds arena, since they've been so... middle-of-the-road for so long now. But these new releases really peak my interest. A few highlights:

• Markedly faster focusing
• A new super-compact model
• A real, fast, portrait lens

... all things I have been verbal about the want of, in these pages.

Maybe I'll finally get to take advantage of one of the purported advantages of the 4/3 (and Micro Four Thirds) system: cross-vendor compatibility. Olympus lenses should work on my Panasonic cameras. Well, except sadly without image stabilization since Olympus has it in the body and Pana has it in the lenses (when they do). Ah well, there are many combination possibilities.

Adult Simpsons

It's funny how The Simpsons manages to stay on air and yet be sometimes distinctly not for children. For example school handy man, redheaded scotsman Willy is leaving in a huff, and saying to Principal Skinner: "now you won't have your Willy to slap around anymore".
And Skinner has been effectively imprisoned by rebellious school kids, they have put him into the sack which normally holds the dodge balls, only his head sticking out. Skinner tries to escape by telling the lab hamster: "chew through my ball sack". Oddly, the hamster sees nothing appealing about it and scurries away.

TAG Heuer Introduces $6,750 Android Smartphone

TAG Heuer Introduces $6,750 Android Smartphone, article.

Gotta say it, I don't think it's pretty.
And while I can almost get the idea of an investment in a luxury watch, doing it with a smartphone... well, what about it two years when it's outdated? You'll buy a new one for another six thousand bucks?

Internet Archive movies

Did you know that the Internet Archive has a big movies section? Lotsa free movies, much of it not crap at all. Man, can they really pay for all that work and bandwidth just with donations?

Inside Google+ — How the Search Giant Plans to Go Social

Inside Google+ — How the Search Giant Plans to Go Social, article. "Google+" is a new social net working site Google is starting, and it's a huge betting, "orders of magnitude more investment, in terms of people, than any previous project". 

It almost beggars belief that the king of the search — the most successful internet business ever, with $30 billion in yearly revenue — would be running scared by the social networking trend led by Facebook, a company that barely rakes in a few billion. Nonetheless, people at Google feel that retooling to integrate the social element isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. As early as last August, I asked Gundotra whether he felt Emerald Sea was a bet-the-company project.
“I think so,” he replied. “I don’t know how you can look at it any other way.”

Personally, I think it's a mistake, a typical fear-driven mistake.
Say you make shoes. And there's a big fad for jackets. And you say: "oh no! We have to change the company to make jackets, or we're doomed!"
People will always need shoes, and if you keep making good shoes that people like, you'll continue doing fine. You may have to up- and down-scale a bit along the way as the waves go, but if you just run things by sound and conservative economic sense, you're a winner in the long run for sure.

The Laughing Gnome

1967, two years before Bowie's first real hit, this came out. It's not well known, and I think Bowie is not unhappy about that, but I think it's a fun little thing.

LetterMpress

This wood-type-press app seems kewl.

It would be even kewler though to play around with a real, big wood-letter press, make big art posters.

There must be a way of making art digitally, then getting it etched into wood or other material to make print shapes like these letters...

... But then I'm thinking, can you really make anything with screen printing that you can't make directly with digital print? Results-wise I mean, I'm sure the physical process is inspiring to many.