Heroes (live) and iPad background trick

"Heroes" always worked well live.




I found this while trying an iPad trick (found on iPad Today): It's not just the iPod app which can play sound in the background on an iPad (or I guess, iPhone). If you're playing a video and want to just hear the audio, the audio goes away if you switch directly to another app. But if you go to the Home page, and then double-click to get the task-strip, swipe left to get the audio-interface, you can see the last app (browser or youtube app) is associated with it, and you click play, and the audio of the video then plays while you play Angry Avians or work on the The Great American Novel (or Albanian or Swedish or whatever).

The Wingstand

The Wingstand may be the most elegant and portable tablet stand I've seen yet, and I've looked at many. It works with or without a keyboard, in any orientation, and apparently with any tablet or smartphone on the market. And it fits in any pocket.

Thanks for the dream, Alyson

Do you ever have a dream so nice that it leaves you feeling good long after awakening? I had one this morning, involving me, Alyson Hannigan and a friend of hers (at least they seemed very friendly). A gentleman doesn't tell, so I'll keep mum, but oh, that was a nice dream.

Why Netflix Raised Its Prices

Why Netflix Raised Its Prices, Pogue article.

Not surprisingly, many people are very p*ssed off at a sudden 60% price increase. But really, I've wondering all this time how the hell they did it, who at this time can make a profit at a virtual streaming all-you-can-eat buffet of movies for only ten bucks a month (Though it doesn't included new hit movies)?

Maybe it was just a bait-and-switch operation, done clumsily. Maybe they never had planned to stay at the ridiculous $10 price for long. Or maybe they had not, somehow, seen that it would be much more popular than the DVDs and not profitable in the long run.

In any case, this is (was) just the kind of pricing which makes us Europeans look with envy at the US sometimes.
(Then sometimes not, as in mobile service pricing.)

Why women live longer

SF city-scapes

I'm a sucker for SF city-scapes.
Have you seen the animé film Metropolis? I hope it will come in Blu-ray soon, for that one has the most amazing drawn citiscapes you ever saw. (The pic below is not from it, I couldn't find any good grabs of it.)

(Click for big pic.)

Comic "reset button"

As you may be aware, DC Comics will restart a great bunch of a their most popular comics from #1, with new costumes, new origines, etc.

The Tsunami of Crap

The Tsunami of Crap, article.

So readers aren't the ones perpetuating this stupid myth that the crap will destroy the world. It's the writers--specifically the legacy writers--who keep trotting this one out.
The reason for it is disappointingly obvious. Legacy writers no longer feel special, because now anyone with a book can sell it. Even worse, they can sell it for cheap, and get higher royalty rates, meaning these pretenders to the throne can actually make more than those who "earned" their spots in the pecking order by kissing legacy butt and waving around their rejections as badges of honor.

"Video" on a Kindle

Here's a sort of interesting technology which can automatically make a photo-comic from a video with captions. For showing a video on a non-video screen like e-ink, or I guess in a low-bandwidth environment.

3D printing

There's a lot more to it, but this is a quick and sweet introduction to 3D printing.

That dark side...

Multi-point focusing in SynthCam

[Thanks to TMO]

This is a highly interesting photographic app, SynthCam, (I don't find very many of them all that interesting, normally). It'll be interesting to see these kinds of technology to move up to really good cameras. (Funny, normally technology trickles down, not up.)
This app can also apparently be used as a virtual tripod in low light.

Elastica - Waking Up (live)

I've liked Elastica and this song for a long time (I posted a better-sounding version before), but I started noticing the lyrics too, so here they are. "If I can't be a star I won't get out of bed", love that. Isn't it the problem of so many of us? We'd love to be rock stars and multi-millionaires and jet-setters, but everything is just so f***ing much work, who can be arsed, really?





I'd work very hard but I'm lazy 
I can't take the pressure and it's starting to show 
In my heart you know that it pains me 
A life of leisure is no life you know 

Waking up and getting up has never been easy, 
Oh oh, I think you should know. 
Waking up and getting up has never been easy, 
Oh, oh, I think you should know. 
Oh, oh, I think you should go. 
Make a cup of tea, and put a record on. 

I'd work very hard but I'm lazy 
I've got a lot of songs but they're all in my head. 
I'll get a guitar and a lover who pays me 
If I can't be a star I won't get out of bed. 

5 Axis Robot Carves Metal Like Butter

5 Axis Robot Carves Metal Like Butter, article.
In a world with 3D printers that can work in metal, taking a huge block of aluminum and cutting it down may seem practically medieval. Milling, however, is still the best way to produce high-grade metal objects suitable for use in other machines. You can’t build a working diesel engine out of a 3D printer…yet.