A new road for solar power?

Bert found this, and I agree with him, it could be very, very important indeed.
Elon Musk intoduces new batteries which will pave the way globally for free solar power (after the initial investment, of course).
If we don't go this road, we will choke our planet and continue to have wars over oil, and we will be laughing stock for all the animals and all the other sentient races in the Galaxy.

Amazingly, the pre-order system is not USA-only, but for many countries. Unfortunately I live in an apartment where we are not allowed to put anything on the outside of the building, so I can't get solar panels. They say the battery can save you money anyway because energy providers charge different fees at different times of night and day, but I don't think that alone will be enough for me to do it. Otherwise I'd do this immediately. It would be so damn cool to live in a house independently powered by free solar energy.

Swedish SF paintings

I've rarely been very interested in very realistic paintings. And I think the main reason is that 98% of those exhibit very little imagination. The artist rarely puts very much of himself into them.

A stellar exception is Simon Stålenhag's paintings. Wonderful realism with great SF.

A lot of art is very very loud, but has little life in it. This is the opposite. 

I also really like that this book has not only the paintings, but text also, which tells some kind of story together with the paintings. I have never understood why combining text and pictures is so rare, except in comix, which almost nobody considers Art. 

Perhaps it is simply that painting and writing separately are very complex endeavors, hard to learn to do well and effectively. And so, making them work well together is like singing opera while racing a motorcycle. 

Salt flats reflecting

To my taste, this gets more interesting as it progresses. E


Reflections from Uyuni from Enrique Pacheco 

Tiny Tripod for iPhone, "Stance" from Kenu

[Thanks to TCGirl]

And if you're not interested, just enjoy the beautiful presenter.
(Man, after seventeen years of running a girlie site it is hard to stop working at keeping up your reputation as a Dirty Old Man. :-)





It looks like a good product. Looks well produced, and it's amazingly small and light.
Downsides: does not work in landscape format. And will not work with certain cases (But this is true of virtually anything which connects to a phone).

(Hmm, kenu.com... either they got their mits on that back in the nineties, or they paid well for it. It's virtually impossible to find a pronounceable or even memorable domain of five or less characters now.)