"Steam Noir", a café

Shis showcases both the wonderful detail of HD video (cartoons), and the same of the iPad 3's screen (as well as some other new tablets). Screenshots get much larger when seen on normal monitors, because of the tiny pixels on the 'pad.

The full sized version is here. (Blogger only goes to 1600 pixels.)

In screenshots from video the high-rez iPad, in other words, I have found a new source of wallpaper pictures. That's great for somebody like me, who has a wild appetite for new visual stuff.

I could note that live-action video, even in HD, generally is not as sharp and detailed as animation (flat or CGI), because it deals with cameras and movements and light and depth of field, whereas cartoons are made in a fully digital process. See, hereunder is a shot from Arrested Development in HD. And I looked for the best frame I could find, with the least motion blur and blown highlights and such. (It really is a science to make really good film/video.) (Full size.)

... Of course this does not mean that live-action HD is *bad*, it rather means that animation HD is astounding.

West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band II

Amazing they are still known. I found this record in the early eighties. I got it given by a friend who got it from a friend who'd been to the states and gave her two different LPs. To her it was the same odd stuff. To me, one was total crap, and the other was this. Very unique.
They were amazingly obscure. And still are, while at the same time being very influential, and has been called the "number one cult band".


Beware beautiful goddess
You are tomorrow's temptation
Be sweet, and gentle and thin
Stay away from all dirty old men.

Here's a long interview about the band:

Student's thigh doodles lead to internet fame

Student's thigh doodles lead to internet fame, article.
(Warning, some of her art is pretty gruesome.)

I've found there's one type of art which always gets press: that which directly involves the body of a pretty young woman. Bless 'em.

(Oo-la-la. I find women artists are often beautiful, and I can't stand it, too much.)

Strange phenomena on Twitter

Here is one of those little straaaaange things I meet sometimes on the Net.
I have one tweet which by far is the one which gets "favorited" by others. I have no idea why, because it's the least likely to be so. It does not even make sense on its own:

... It only makes sense if one has read the preceding couple of tweets from me, about a long series (16?) of VERY, VERY LOUD explosions which happened one night at 4am a couple months ago, 200 meters from where I sleep.
The strangest thing was that apart from like 8 people discussing it on a discussion web site, it got NO ATTENTION AT ALL! ... a couple of days the newspaper had a small mention about "a fire on parked trucks", but no mention of any explosions. And I was not kidding they were loud. They woke up people living more than 2 miles away.

I went down there as it happened (well, the explosions had ended after a minute or two) (with the trusty RX100 with low-light power), and the day after:

Look at the "new iPhone"

I've been pining for a bigger iPhone (say 5-inch), which Apple, in typical stubborn style, so far refuses to give us. But an 8-inch iPhone, in the guise of an iPad Mini, may be a step too far.
Nevertheless, Kimmel is able to convince many of these poor interview subjects that an iPad Mini is the new iPhone.
It's amazing, I knew there's a difference between us geek-wanna-bes and normal folk, but not being able to tell an iPad from an iPhone, that's just...



Funny stuff. Just see the young lady trying out the "new click-and-lick" technology! "Wait, I can tast it!"

Irv Gordon's 1966 Volvo P1800 nears 3 million miles

[Thanks to Russ]

Irv Gordon's 1966 Volvo P1800 nears 3 million miles, article.

I didn't know Volvo once made such hot looking cars.

Driving the same car for 53 years

I'm sure many company heads start hyperventilating when considering products that last 50 years. What will they sell after everybody has one as is satisfied?
It sounds like a stupid problem, that quality might ruin the economy, but I'm sure we must be looking wrongly at it somehow.
For example, if things last, you need buy much less, that's good for the individual's economy. And if that then is bad for companies' or countries' economy, they have based their income on false idols.