Atlas of Beauty

Atlas of Beauty is a photo project just after my heart.
Project's home page.
Romanian photographer Noroc Mihaela is on a mission to photograph women from every single country on Earth in order to show that beauty is found everywhere.

Mihaela is doing this entirely self-funded, so I hope you will join me in donating what you can afford to her project.

Dubai hyper-lapse video (updated)

A "hyper-lapse" video is a time-lapse video which is done with a camera which is moving (beyond a few feet on a track). It's all the rage now, partly because Instagram has released an app to make them pretty easily (Microsoft has made software which evens out all the dramatic raggedness of camera "shake" which a first-person moving video tends to have. Pretty durn advanced software.)
Update: I have now tried Instagram's app, and I'm not impressed at all. It seems to simply make a speeded-up video, with no processing at all to enhance quality, unlike the Microsoft app's amazing stabilization, which uses bits of frames to expand other frames so as to avoid a severe cropping. The result I got from the Instagram app was extremely jerky and pretty useless.




It's certainly a strong effect, but will it be a lasting art form? I think it will be limited exactly because it easily becomes too strong, just like fish-eye pictures, or star-filters (which makes highlights into stars). But I think it will be a good way to illustrate a special trip like skiing, climbing, scuba-diving, and so on.

A pen review...

This review of a very ordinary ballpoint pen on Amazon has a wonderful understated, creative humor, and so does many of the comments under it. (The link goes to the comments, scroll up a little to read the review first.)

It's uplifting how many people display inventive and subtle humor in such ways. And yet sad that I have trouble finding much humor amongst the many, many novels published each year.

Update:
Russ pointed us to technology to make BiCs multitask.

"Everything Glows"

Music by Les Barker, sung by Genevieve Tudor.

The Uberpreneur: How An Uber Driver Makes $252,000 A Year

The Uberpreneur: How An Uber Driver Makes $252,000 A Year, article.

Lars Andersen: a new level of archery

This is one guy I'm proud to call my countryman. He can not only split an arrow with his own arrow, but do it to an arrow flying towards him!!
And this is very far from his only remarkable skill, watch this.

Majestic - Wax Fang - American Dad

To me this song (which I like) sounds like it was made as an homage (or rip-off?) of Pink Floyd, particularly The Wall. I found a bit of agreement on the web, but not as much as I'd anticipated. What do you think?

Almost no one

Almost no one
There's a huge difference between "no one" and "almost no one". Almost no one is going to hire you. Almost no one is going to become a true fan. Almost no one is going to tell someone else about your work. Almost no one is going to push you to make your work ever better. If only 1% of the US population steps up, that's 3,000,000 people in the category of "almost no one." If only one out of 10,000 internet users engages with you, that's still hundreds of thousands of people. The chances that everyone is going to applaud you, never mind even become aware you exist, are virtually nil. Most brands and organizations and individuals that fail fall into the chasm of trying to be all things in order to please everyone, and end up reaching no one. That's the wrong thing to focus on. Better to focus on and delight almost no one.

Posted by Seth Godin feb 1, 2015

Eolake illness? and a new tea-warmer

I saw by accident that some people (enough to make it show high in suggested search terms) are searching on google with the words:
Eolake Stobblehouse illness
... showing me there's a vacuum of information there.
Yes, I have told things here and there, but I've been shy about it, because the situation is in itself complex, and because I was and am always hoping it will get much better Any Day Now.

Like many know, since 2013 I no longer own or run the nude-art site Domai. The main reason had to sell it was that I was not in a condition to work.
The doctors are not in agreement about what it is. But the current favorite is Chronic Fatique Syndrome.
Anyway, it involves debilitating pain, anxiety, and crippling chronic exhaustion.
I even stopped going out photographing, my dearest passtime.
As you may imagine, there are more fun times to be had than this, if you have a choice!
It is hard to pinpoint the start of it, but it got worse and worse until at least 2013. From 2014 there are signs of betterment sometimes, although it is still pretty uncertain. Some days I'm very low and pessimistic, others I can accomplish a little, and have some optimism (for example I've bought the domain stob.me as a memorable place to buy my art, but the site is not up yet.)

Here's to hope. Yours kindly, Eolake Stobblehouse


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I got a couple of fine hot-drink flasks (the brand Contigo ones turned out to be much much better than the more famous Thermos brand, for me), when I lost my last tea-light tea warmer. It didn't seem I could find a replacement for that. But now I did, though I had to import it from the states. Bought it at a site called Notting Hall (not Notting Hill).
I think it looks great, modern, and it's stable, and will service cups or tea pots of any size (the hole is smaller than the bottom of any cup I know of). (Though I think I'm one of few who use such for cups.)

This is my exemplar. I love how with modern cameras, you don't need tripod and special lights to shoot something like this indoors, you just point and shoot. With a decent camera, and especially with a fast (sensitive, apertures 1.0 to 2.8) lens, you will probably get a good picture easily. (The big aperture also gives it a taste of "pro" with the softened background, which also softens any distractions which might have been there.) 

You put one of those little fat tea light candles (in a small aluminium pot) in the bottom. The lid does not get hot (at least in the short time I've used it), but the heat up through the hole is very effective. 

Biggest variable is the material and thickness of the bottom of your cup/pot. 

Funny, writing this, I think I can smell my last cup of Lady Grey, though I used to buy the popular brand Typhoo.

The cause of addiction? (holy macaroni!)

The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think, article.
If you get run over today and you break your hip, you will probably be given diamorphine, the medical name for heroin. In the hospital around you, there will be plenty of people also given heroin for long periods, for pain relief. The heroin you will get from the doctor will have a much higher purity and potency than the heroin being used by street-addicts, who have to buy from criminals who adulterate it. So if the old theory of addiction is right -- it's the drugs that cause it; they make your body need them -- then it's obvious what should happen. Loads of people should leave the hospital and try to score smack on the streets to meet their habit.

The funny thing is that this is right in front of our nose, and yet most of us still believe that addiction comes from the drug.

Nearly fifteen years ago, Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe, with 1 percent of the population addicted to heroin. They had tried a drug war, and the problem just kept getting worse. So they decided to do something radically different. They resolved to decriminalize all drugs, and transfer all the money they used to spend on arresting and jailing drug addicts, and spend it instead on reconnecting them -- to their own feelings, and to the wider society. The most crucial step is to get them secure housing, and subsidized jobs so they have a purpose in life, and something to get out of bed for. I watched as they are helped, in warm and welcoming clinics, to learn how to reconnect with their feelings, after years of trauma and stunning them into silence with drugs.
[...] since total decriminalization, addiction has fallen, and injecting drug use is down by 50 percent.
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North and South

There seems to be some kind of universal "rule" that the expensive neighborhoods are north of a city, and the cheaper ones are South of it. (Anybody know any significant exceptions?)
Why should it be like that, that seems so weird to me, like 500 coin tosses all coming out heads. One should think that desirability of location would be by landscape features, not the Earth's magnetic field!
(Is it the same in the Southern hemisphere, or reversed?)

Dances with powder

Dances with powder.
(No, not that kind of white powder. At least I hope so, for his budget and for the dancer's health.)

There is also a video.