... Maybe the photographer should have used this $200,000, 100x zoom TV lens!
Saturday, June 08, 2013
But; what *is* a safe distance??
... Maybe the photographer should have used this $200,000, 100x zoom TV lens!
Friday, June 07, 2013
U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program
U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program, Washington Post article.
The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.
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The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.
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Thursday, June 06, 2013
Dubious music videos
Do you know any really bad music videos?
Admittedly it'll be hard to beat this one, but you don't have to.
No takers? OK, here's a couple more.
Admittedly it'll be hard to beat this one, but you don't have to.
No takers? OK, here's a couple more.
Just google for it
"The address Google.com does not exist. Try googling for it."
Hahaha.
In the old days I thought it was funny, tragic, and lame that the computer could not tell the difference between a nonexisting address and a nonexisting Net connection. Then for some years it could. Now it seems we're back again to this ridiculous state.
By the way, I wonder if Google is going to sue Apple for making the Google name a generic verb?
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
Alison Brie a la carte
I guess this is funnier if you have seen Community and know how wonderfully innocent and naîve Alison Brie's character Annie is.
... Unfortunately I couldn't find the whole clip of the xmas-costume dance from which there's a couple of seconds at the end here, for it's one of the sexiest things I've seen, prob the hottest xmas song since Eartha Kitt.
I don't know where this is from, but she's very funny like usual:
She really is beautiful. Watch Craig Furguson here, he's so overwhelmed he has to scoot away from her!
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Quote from the show:
"There will always be a reason not to follow your dreams."
That's great. And it's useful for going either way!
... Unfortunately I couldn't find the whole clip of the xmas-costume dance from which there's a couple of seconds at the end here, for it's one of the sexiest things I've seen, prob the hottest xmas song since Eartha Kitt.
I don't know where this is from, but she's very funny like usual:
She really is beautiful. Watch Craig Furguson here, he's so overwhelmed he has to scoot away from her!
====
Quote from the show:
"There will always be a reason not to follow your dreams."
That's great. And it's useful for going either way!
Monday, June 03, 2013
"The Facebook experiment has failed. Let’s go back"
The Facebook experiment has failed. Let’s go back, article.
Since everybody is on Facebook, one can expect that it will in some way mirror the behavior of society in general. In the real world however, people’s opinions only have a limited reach.
Facebook is godsent for people who love to talk, but have nothing to say. Here is a network that doesn’t care about originality or the quality of content. In the time it takes to create something original, they could share dozens of things.
Just like its features, Facebook algorithms are equally stupid. Share more, get noticed more. Originality be damned.
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Since everybody is on Facebook, one can expect that it will in some way mirror the behavior of society in general. In the real world however, people’s opinions only have a limited reach.
Facebook is godsent for people who love to talk, but have nothing to say. Here is a network that doesn’t care about originality or the quality of content. In the time it takes to create something original, they could share dozens of things.
Just like its features, Facebook algorithms are equally stupid. Share more, get noticed more. Originality be damned.
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Sunday, June 02, 2013
Scansnap as art scanner
I've mentioned the Fujitso Scansnap before. (In the meantime I got a Mac model.) It's a wonderful, fully automatic document scanner. It rights up documents after scanning*. Does automatic OCR if you want (Optical Character Recognition, reads text off a scan and imbeds it in the file, so you can search for text later). It scans both sides at once! It really great for scanning in your paperwork and such.
It is not a flatbed scanner, and it's not expensive, so it's not meant to be an art scanner. (Art in the wider sense, meaning images.) (One weakness is that the art may shift as it passes through the scanner; and of course it only takes thin objects.) But on a whim, I tested it as such, and I'm impressed.
The durn thing automatically detects if a document should be scanned and treated as color, or greyscale, or B/W. And this quick, one-take scan of a brochure is as perfect as I could have expected in every way.
The font in the brochure is very small and thin, but it's fully readable in the scan. And the color pictures are perfect, the colors are spot on, and I can see at least as much detail in shadow and highlights as I can on the original. (It seems it also adjusts contrast automatically.)
Here's a link to the PDF which the scanner made.
*Though not successfully in this case, probably because the brochure is cut around the images, no straight edges. BTW, I like the medium grey it fills in the background, much better than black or white.
It is not a flatbed scanner, and it's not expensive, so it's not meant to be an art scanner. (Art in the wider sense, meaning images.) (One weakness is that the art may shift as it passes through the scanner; and of course it only takes thin objects.) But on a whim, I tested it as such, and I'm impressed.
The durn thing automatically detects if a document should be scanned and treated as color, or greyscale, or B/W. And this quick, one-take scan of a brochure is as perfect as I could have expected in every way.
The font in the brochure is very small and thin, but it's fully readable in the scan. And the color pictures are perfect, the colors are spot on, and I can see at least as much detail in shadow and highlights as I can on the original. (It seems it also adjusts contrast automatically.)
*Though not successfully in this case, probably because the brochure is cut around the images, no straight edges. BTW, I like the medium grey it fills in the background, much better than black or white.