An Interactive Map of some of history's greatest journeys
From Lewis and Clark, to Chuck Lindbergh to the Old Silk Road, courtesy of Good Magazine.
Sep 12, 2008
Dean Kamen on his 'bionic' arm..
Fascinating stuff, this guy is the
true renaissance man. This is the kind
of stuff that I want to have my kids watch
and see just how cool science and engineering
can be.
Three Parts
Segway aside; (although I think the way
he figured that one out is very cool too!...
go look at the patent sometime and the
mathematics behind the control system)
This guy has truly come up with creations
that are making a difference in the world
around him.
Sep 11, 2008
Hotel California.. let me count the ways!?
One of the better house remixes by Orb(mp3)from the Jam On The Mutha EP
The Eagles wrote Hotel California after touring with Jethro Tull. If you listen to the Jethro Tull song "We used to know" from the album "Stand Up", you'll find that Hotel California is a blatant knock off. (see for yourself)!
In Norway there's a musician/comedian called Egil, knowns as "bare Egil band" (just Egil band) who tours the nation with his very own "festival" of his various cleverly named band projects.
One of the projects is called "Bare Eagles Band" (just eagles band) and consist of Egil and his bandmates starting out playing various cover songs only to have them all turn into Hotel California at some point. Egil claims that all songs really are Hotel California in disguise, I think he might be right.
Now for some instructional video:
Tupac VS Biggie:
From the Moog Cookbook (remember the 70's song 'Popcorn'?):
This one is just a bit creepy:
Who could forget Willam Hung?:
Everybody Reggae with Majek Fashek!:
Sep 10, 2008
Microsoft Windows Vista (post mortem) 'What went wrong?'
MaximumPC sat down with Microsoft to hear the company’s side of the Vista story. What lessons have been learned following the worst
Windows launch in the company’s history? Is Microsoft doing enough to regain PC users’ faith?
Way back in January 2007, after years of hype and anticipation, Microsoft unveiled Windows Vista to a decidedly lukewarm reception by the PC community, IT pros, and tech journalists alike. Instead of a revolutionary next-generation OS that was chock-full of new features, the Windows community got an underwhelming rehash with very little going for it. Oh, and Vista was plagued with performance and incompatibility problems to boot.
Since then, the PC community has taken the idea that Vista is underwhelming and turned it into a mantra. We’ve all heard about Vista’s poor network transfer speeds, low frame rates in games, and driver issues—shoot, we’ve experienced the problems ourselves. But over the last 18 months, Vista has undergone myriad changes, including the release of Service Pack 1, making the OS worth a second look. It’s time we determine once and for all whether we should stick with XP for the next 18 months while we wait for Windows 7. But before we answer that question, let’s review exactly what’s wrong with Windows Vista.
Mythbuster Adam Savage having fun with Gas!
NOTE:
Physiological effects and precautions
Another effect is the gas's ability to alter vocal sound waves. The gas can be inhaled in a small, safe amount and cause the breather's voice to sound very deep. This, too, is due to the gas density. Unlike helium, which is much less dense than air, SF6 is approximately 5 times more dense than air, and the velocity of sound through the gas is 0.44 times the speed of sound in air. Unlike a gas such as helium, the speed of sound in which is greater than the speed of sound in air, the result of inhaling SF6 is the opposite of inhaling helium, a lowering of the frequency of the formants of the vocal tract.[4][5]
This was demonstrated (Sept. 3, 2008) on the Mythbusters television program (along with an inhalation of helium, to show higher pitched sound).[6]
Although inhaling SF6 can be a novel amusement, the practice can be dangerous because, like other inert gases, it displaces not only the oxygen needed for life, but also the CO2 that is the primary trigger of the breathing reflex. In general, dense, odourless gases in confined areas present the hazard of suffocation. A myth exists that SF6 is too heavy for the lungs to expel unassisted, and that after inhaling SF6, it is necessary to bend over completely at the waist to allow the excess gas to "spill" out of the body. In fact, the lungs mix gases very effectively and rapidly, such that SF6 would be purged from the lungs within a breath or two.[7]
Sep 8, 2008
A great article at wired.com on a new
HD Movie camera being developed by the
former founder/owner of Oakley.
"Red" (Has Analog met its match?)
It's more than that: His team of engineers and scientists have created the first digital movie camera that matches the detail and richness of analog film. The Red One records motion in a whopping 4,096 lines of horizontal resolution—"4K" in filmmaker lingo—and 2,304 of vertical. For comparison, hi-def digital movies like Sin City and the Star Wars prequels top out at 1,920 by 1,080, just like your HDTV. (There's also a slightly higher-resolution option called 2K that reaches 2,048 lines by 1,080.) Film doesn't have pixels, but the industry-standard 35-millimeter stock has a visual resolution roughly equivalent to 4K. And that's what makes the Red so exciting: It delivers all the dazzle of analog, but it's easier to use and cheaper—by orders of magnitude—than a film camera. In other words, Jannard's creation threatens to make 35-mm movie film obsolete.
Two years ago, Jannard brought a spec sheet and a mock-up of a camera—not much more than an aluminum box about the size of a loaf of bread—to NAB 2006. Even though it wasn't a working product, more than 500 people plunked down a $1,000 deposit to get their names on a waiting list. For months, industry watchers wondered if the company was for real. Today, there's no question. The Red One is being used on at least 40 features. Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director, borrowed two prototypes to shoot his Che Guevara biopics, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and later purchased three for his film The Informant. Peter Jackson, the Lord of the Rings himself, bought four. Director Doug Liman used a Red on Jumper. Peter Hyams used one on his upcoming Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Digital cinema that's all but indistinguishable from film is finally coming to a theater near you.
Jim Jannard, 59, is the billionaire founder of Red. In 1975 he spent $300 to make a batch of custom motocross handlebar grips, which he sold from the back of a van. He named his company Oakley, after his English setter, and eventually expanded into sci-fi-style sunglasses, bags, and shoes. In November of last year he sold the business to Luxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban, for a reported $2.1 billion.
skate - shot on red - 120 fps from opus magnum prod. on Vimeo.
Watch the embedded clip in HD
In 2004, Jannard bought a Sony HDR-FX1—the first hi-def videocam for consumers. When he found he couldn't use the files it produced without translation software from a company called Lumiere, he telephoned Lumiere's owner, filmmaker Frederic Haubrich. "I told Frederic that I couldn't even view my footage on a Mac and that this had pissed me off enough that I wanted to build my own camera. And he said, 'Jim, I know guys in the industry who can help.'" Haubrich introduced Jannard to interface designer Ted Schilowitz.
Schilowitz, Haubrich, and Jannard spent a year trying to design that dream camera, one that would combine the practical advantages of digital moviemaking with the image quality of analog film. They recruited mathematicians, programmers, digital imaging experts, hardware engineers, and physicists. "We needed a bunch of guys who were inventors to come up with entirely new ways of getting to the finish line," Jannard says. He kept the project quiet until his team could determine whether building the device was even feasible, but rumors swirled through Hollywood about some kind of mysterious supercamera in the works. "I didn't know who Jim was," Soderbergh says. "But I heard about Red because they were canvassing filmmakers and cinematographers, asking, 'If you could wave a magic wand, what camera would you design?'"
Most of the work took place in what employees call Jim's garage, a 20,000-square-foot warehouse across the street from Red's massive headquarters. The team quickly concluded that existing technology was inadequate. The guts of the camera—the image sensor and all the accompanying circuitry—would have to be created from scratch. It was a daunting challenge, but the fact that Jannard's management style falls somewhere between Mr. T and Steve Jobs on the autocracy scale helped. "What separates us from other camera companies is that the vision guy is the decisionmaker," he says. "That was one of my biggest advantages at Oakley, and it's the same at Red—I'm in the trenches, in the product development, and I make the final call. Red is a benevolent dictatorship."
The tune used in the embedded
video is here:
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