Battle At F-Stop Ridge

Jetman Dubai

[As usual, to get a bigger image, click on the YouTube logo or the full screen icon to the right.]

Now that's the way to get to work.

The last half is more visually interesting, because they fly above Dubai city.

The Healing Code, quote

From an astonishing book called The Healing  Code:

"When I was about ten years old we had a special assembly one day in school. Unlike some of the other assemblies we had, it was mesmerizing, inspirational, and fabulous. A karate master shared secrets of life while he did all sorts of amazing feats like breaking boards, bricks, stones, huge chunks of ice, and fighting off many attackers at the same time.

He told us a true story that has stayed with me ever since. It was of a young boy in China about my age who was in the initial stages of learning a certain form of martial arts. The school he attended would periodically have an event for the families and friends of the students to celebrate their progress. Different students prepared far in advance to do their particular demonstration. The master told this one young boy that at the event he was to break a certain number of a certain type of brick. This task was a little bit unusual since the boy had never done it before and would not actually perform the action beforehand! Yes, he would practice like everyone else, but would only practice the technique, not the actual breaking.

When the young boy expressed concern to the master, the master simply smiled and said, “You will have no problem. You know everything you need to break the bricks.” The day of the event came and all the students performed brilliantly to the audience’s delight and appreciation. Finally, for the finale, the young boy came out, bowed to the crowd, bowed to his master, and attacked the bricks as he had practiced. To everyone’s amazement, the bricks broke easily under the boy’s hand.

 The master stepped forward, motioned for everyone to be silent, and explained that what the young boy had just done had never been done before in history. Not by himself, not by any of the great masters of the world. The master shared that the boy, while talented, had been able to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat not because of talent, but simply because he believed he could perform the feat with no doubts in his heart. The breaking of the bricks was simply the physical manifestation of the boy’s internal beliefs."

Cube in a cube in a cube

Here's a cool video of a Russian guy cutting a metal cube within a cube within a cube.
(Warning: turn down sound if you don't care for continuous heavy metal music.)

Olympus OMD E-M10

I notice that the Olympus E-M10 is currently only $499 (with kit lens) at Amazon US.

I think this is a fantastic deal. The E-M10 (review) is a slight simplification of the E-M5, which was the camera which brought the Micro Four Thirds camera system into the professional sphere. (I think the only significant differences is that the 10 is not weather sealed, and the Image Stabilization is slightly simpler.)
If you combine this for example with the outstanding, compact portrait- and all-round fast lens 45mm F:1.8, you will have a flexible and powerful system capable of professional results (sharp portraits with blurred backgrounds, and a general zoom) for under $1000. And it is even much lighter and more compact than DSLR cameras. And of course you have what is now one of the widest and best selection of lenses on the market, going from good, compact lenses, reasonably priced, to more expensive lenses which are amongst the best money can buy (no joking).

New Leica M Monochrom (sic), review/trial

Whether you can afford them or not (apparently quite a few people can, Leica is busy), you may have an interest in reading about high-quality cameras. If so, this article is num-num. This is about the second version of the Leica M Monochrom, "typ 246". (It seems that Leica is following the trends of Apple and Amazon, no easy distinction of generations, an iMac is an iMac is an iMac, and Kindle is a Kindle is a Kindle. Sigh.)

A Black-and-white-only camera is not only interesting because of the purity and abstractness of the medium, but also because it has no color filter. This means that each pixel gets at least three times as much light as when a color filter is fitted (as it is in virtually all cameras). Imagine what this does for low-light power.

As as the camera does not have little filters in three different colors, this means that it does not have to guess what the light would be in pixel position x if the filter there had been green and not red. How much exactly this improves sharpness and tone accuracy, I don't know if anybody has tried to measure, but my guess is a doubling or so.

So I don't doubt this photographer when he says that the quality he is getting from this B/W full-frame camera with top lenses is "like from a field camera". (A field camera has a negative of 4x5 inches or even 8x10 inches. Not many of the general public are familiar with photographs of such technical quality.)

Of course like all high-end equipment, it does have lacks which laymen don't understand: it does not have Image Stabilization (anti-shake), and it does not have autofocus! A different beast.

New Leica Monochrom, "The Black Ghost"? 

And being digital, it can be fitted with an Electronic ViewFinder (EVF), which does away with that old downside of non-reflex cameras, parallax (non-precise framing), and also now lets them use tele or zoom lenses, impossible with film Leicas.
(Gotta admit that as configured here, the machine is very handsome and "manly". :-)

Update: Mark reminds me about Visoflex, a flip-mirror adapter one could/can put between the Leica and special lenses, like specially made tele- or micro lenses. So "impossible" is not correct. Though surely it had some serious limitations, since Leica made the Leicaflex camera too.

The complexities of English

Blondie, Heart of Glass, with nuke message

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.)