Thursday, September 22, 2011

Hawks and paragliders

[Thanks to Henry]

Hawks and paragliders, nice video. (Goes up to real HD.)


Sarah Mensinga

Sarah Mensinga, Extraordinary, an illustrated story.
I don't know that she's a great writer, but she could really be something as an illustrator. (Some color would be nice though.)


"One-Eyed Doll"

[Thanks to Jes]

Hot stuff.



Aha, it seems Kimberly Freeman and her "band" is getting a lot of recognition, goody.
It's amazing they can get such a full sound with just two people.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Beers, Steers, and Queers

By the Revolting Cocks. (I'm pretty sure it means the rebelling roosters.)

 

"Squeal! Squeal like a pig, boy. City slicker."
... Well, for some reason that famous sampling from Deliverance is missing in the the good sounding version above. Quelle domage. Well, it's here:


(I include this live vid because it also include Attack Ships On Fire (surely a Bladerunner quote) which I like in the orig.)

It seems "RevCo" is touring again.

from wiki:
The band got their name after a fight in a Chicago bar in 1983. Jourgensen, Richard 23 and Luc Van Acker celebrated the formation of their new band with a few drinks. The evening ended in a brawl, with bar stools thrown through the windows. As he ejected the trio, the owner, a man Jourgensen recalls was named Dess,[7] shouted, "I'm calling the police! You guys are a bunch of revolting cocks![7]" The trio decided to use the name for their band.
[...]
Despite Jourgensen's previous insistence that Ministry would never return, a reunion was announced on August 7, 2011. The band will play their first show in 4 years at Germany's Wacken Open Air festival in August 2012.[6] A new album, entitled Relapse, is also in the works.

 The vid below show why I don't go to rock concerts. Some goings-on!


There's some rock, even crazy-hard rock, which I really like. But I don't care a bit for the seemingly required drunkenness, drug culture, and general air of violence and criminality and hate [update: just an air of it] which seems to go with most of it, once you look outside of the actual studio-recorded music. It's just juvenile. Nay, infantile.

Help! I’m on the IRS hit list

Help! I’m on the IRS hit list, article.
The Americans have an unusual view of citizenship. Once an American, always an American, even if you left the U.S. the day you were born. The U.S. is the only country that requires its citizens to file a tax return and report their worldwide income, no matter where they live and what other citizenship they hold. 
-

Nikon goes mirrorless

Mighty Nikon Joins Mirrorless Revolution, tOP article.
I haven't even had time to read the article yet, but I am sure that One: this camera is interesting, and Two: Mike will give it a good intro like he always does.


We've been waiting for years for Nikon or Canon to finally make a camera system like the one which has been so successful for others: a compact camera without mirror, but with exchangeable lenses. Now Nikon has it. Here is Nikon's page about it.
How about that moniker, huh? "Nikon 1". I feel they want to make us think this is a big development.

Update: Aw, durnit, it's not a big development! They've made the damn thing with a sensor which is smaller than the M4/3 sensor! And I agree with Mike that M4/3's sensor size is pretty perfect for a compact system camera, a good compromise. Any smaller just doesn't deliver real professional results, at least not at this point in time (well, depending). And the introductory lenses seem pedestrian. It's clearly a snapshooter camera rather than an enthusiast camera.

Luna fighting sleep

I feel that way sometimes.


Shatner: 'Star Trek' is way better than 'Star Wars'

[Thanks to Kirk]



Tuesday, September 20, 2011

xkcd




John Sculley interview

John Sculley interview.
Really good managers want to turn one-off projects into as much of a routine process as they can. I am a project-centric leader. I like to work on projects and solve tough problems. Whereas a really good manager will say, "How do we replicate the processes so that when a problem comes up like this again we can routinely solve it?"

Monday, September 19, 2011

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Bitter rant of today

I suddenly understand the popularity of Twitter: the 140-character limit makes sure anything and everything said there is completely content-free, just like the popular bottle-feed culture demands.
"Let's have a debate."
"Great! But we must stick to 140 characters per statement. This makes sure nothing is ever said which requires thinking for me."

Stephen Wilkes photography

[Thanks to TCGirl]
Stephen Wilkes photography.

Unfortunately it's one of those accursed Flash site which prohibits giving direct links to anything, but these are from Fine Art/ nudes and /day to night.



Follow-up on Google

I’m Not Liking Google Much These Days, article.
Google+ has not merely positioned itself as a more secure version of Facebook. We found that out when Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, over the weekend, revealed that Google+ is fundamentally designed as a national identity service