The Zombie Walk is today! Be (un)dead or be square!
Author: David Cantatore
Beyond infinity immersive installation
art, cool
‘beyond infinity’, a multisensory installation by french artist and theorist serge salat, interweaves mirrors, light, music,
and fractal art in an architecture that conflates visitors’ perceptions of space. sponsored by buick cars and usable during the events
as a vehicle showroom, the work is installed at shanghai’s westgate mall from september 16th through 18th, 2011.
What scientists mean and what the public understands
insightful, links
There’s a lot to ponder in this table. It strikes me as an important document – a compilation of one of humanity’s most tragic miscommunications.
Read it, share it, frame it!
Lytro Launches its Amazing Focus-Free Camera for $399
cool, hardware, links, tech
I can’t wait to put my hands on one of these, despite the limitations, this is quite a revolution in the world of photography! I wonder what Nikon, Canon, etc. are thinking, while Lytro’s investors are probably wetting themselves at the mere thought of all the licensing opportunities ahead of them.
I’d love to see Lytro’s technology applied to some SLR with a choice of lenses, which would be devoid of focusing elements. This could lead to seriously awesome lenses, a lot smaller in size and much better optical quality and wider apertures. The possibilities are endless.
Remember Lytro, the camera that could care less about focus? The one that captures all the information in its light field, so you can play with the focus after the fact?
Well, it’s no longer just a nice idea. Lytro (the company) just started taking pre-orders for Lytro (the camera) on its website. You won’t be able to get one until early 2012, but you can order one now for $399 (and $499 for a more advanced version).
via Mashable: Lytro Launches: Amazing Focus-Free Camera Will Cost $399.
Billion Tonne Comet May Have Missed Earth By A Few Hundred Kilometres in 1883 [updated]
links, science, this can't end wellIf the data is correct, we got very, very close (between 600 and 8000km) to a mass extinction event just over a hundred years ago.
On 12th and 13th August 1883, an astronomer at a small observatory in Zacatecas in Mexico made an extraordinary observation. José Bonilla counted some 450 objects, each surrounded by a kind of mist, passing across the face of the Sun.
…
Each fragment was at least as big as the one thought to have hit Tunguska. Manterola and co end with this: “So if they had collided with Earth we would have had 3275 Tunguska events in two days, probably an extinction event.”
A sobering thought
via Billion Tonne Comet May Have Missed Earth By A Few Hundred Kilometres in 1883 – Technology Review.
[UPDATE]
Phil Plait, the badass astronomer behind the awesome Bad Astronomy blog has an insightful analysis here: Did a fragmenting comet nearly hit the Earth in 1883? Color me very skeptical
Mind you, Bonilla claimed to have seen these objects over the course of two days. That means they would’ve been stretched out along a path that was a million km long at least, yet so narrow that only one observatory on Earth saw them transit the Sun. That is highly unlikely.
Definitely worth reading and Phil Plait is doing a fantastic job to express something as complex as astronomy and physics in terms a math dropout like me can understand.
Finally a watchable version of Dora the Explorer
cool, links, videoHow To Share Google Reader Stories to Google Plus
cool, links, techFinally a clean solution (read: no browser extension) to easily share RSS stories from Google Reader to Google+.
In short, create a custom link in Reader’s preferences with the following parameters:
Name: Google+
URL: https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/confirm?hl=en&url=${url}
Icon URL: https://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/favicon.ico
ReadWriteWeb’s article has a nice howto with all the screenshot you need: How To Share Google Reader Stories to Google Plus.
Uncovering the hidden lake buried two miles beneath Antarctica
links, this can't end wellThere are hundreds of subglacial lakes buried deep beneath the Antarctic ice, each one completely isolated from the rest of the world for hundreds of thousands of years. And now, scientists are preparing to find out just what’s down there.
via io9 Uncovering the hidden lake buried two miles beneath Antarctica.
Link: How the iPhone changed my photography
insightful, linksArticle: How the iPhone changed my photography: Digital Photography Review.
Dpreview’s Barnaby Britton takes look back at how the iPhone has transformed his photography. And, with the iPhone now the most popular camera on photo-sharing site Flickr, and a multitude of photography apps available, how the device has transformed cellphone photography as a whole.
Interesting read, especially since I find myself shooting mostly with my iPhone and processing on the fly for immediate publishing online. You can’t beat the convenience of having your camera with you at all times.
I mostly use Camera+ and Fotoforge2 as my processing apps on my trusty old iPhone 3GS. I wish it had a better camera (à la iPhone 4/4S) but it’s still pretty decent despite its limitations.
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