Nick Veasey is not superman, but he has one of his superpowers: X-Ray vision. Veasey spends his time taking stunning X-ray photographs, including this Boeing 777 and its twin GE90-115B turbofan engines, which took three months and 500 separate x-rays.
TED just posted this talk by Veasey, in which he explains how he does his stunning images:
Basically, a lot of patience, talent, and too much radiation in his own bones. [Nick Veasy via TED]
If I had a backyard big enough for a home office, the MercuryHouseOne is what I'd be saving all my pocket money up for. It's a mobile solar-powered lounge, hard and space-age on the outside but warm and soft inside.
It was shown off recently at the Venice Biennale art exhibition by the Architecture and Vision design firm, and while it's not on sale I hope Ikea or another retailer can rip it off, err I mean, take inspiration from it. It's made from Italian Carrara marble, and the outer top half is covered with solar panels for powering up the inside. Check out the gallery below for more pics of this awesome space age playroom. [Architecture and Vision via Inhabitat]
Owle Bubo isn't an obscure Star Wars bounty hunter. It's a $130 billet aluminum iPhone case, complete with swappable 37mm macro lens. It's well-made, attractive, and makes iPhone video easy. But you probably don't want this one.
Products like the Bubo confuse my little retail suggestion brain. For some of you, $130 is a pittance to get a sturdy case with four female tripod mounts, a cold shoe for lights and microphones, and two comfortable handles that steady up your iPhone videography.
For others, $130 is nearly the price you paid for the phone itself—or the price of a decent Kodak or Flip video camera.
Let's start with what Owle gets right: The design—from packaging, to the physical feel of the Bubo in your hands, to the friendly instruction manual complete with jokes about Perez Hilton)—is excellent, especially considering it's Owle's first product.
The cool metal feels wonderful in your hands. The mounting points allow for nearly any combination of accessories, a quality I'd love to see emulated by other cameras and rail systems. (Consider that even most pro video cameras have a single tripod mount and a single hotshoe.)
Video quality is improved over the iPhone 3GS's default, simply by dint of the large glass lens that rests over the iPhone's sensor. It adds a slight fisheye effect, but one that is generally welcome, alleviating the typical claustrophobic feel of iPhone video.
But is it over a hundred dollars worth of improvement? Depends. Below I've embedded Owle's video they shot during CES that shows a side-by-side comparison of video with and without the Bubo.
Pretty good, right? Well, below are two videos I shot within seconds of each other of a mossy rock and then uploaded straight to Vimeo. Frankly, besides the wider lens and slight difference in sharpness, I'm hard pressed to see anything profoundly different.
So fine. It's better with Bubo, for sure, but not much. You can't judge the Owle Bubo without remembering that the power of its camera isn't that it's particularly high-quality, but that it's wedded to a phone with hundreds and hundreds of useful, fascinating apps that extend its capabilities to a fantastic degree. (It's hilariously true to say the iPhone is the most powerful camera in the world—if you discount image quality.)
But a couple of things about the Bubo make me wary to recommend it quite yet.
It's heavy. Heavier than the iPhone on its own, certainly. Heavier than many "real" camcorders I've used. According to the box it shipped in—there's no weight information on Owle's website—it's just under two pounds before you put the iPhone in or mount any lights or microphones. On my light Manfrotto tripod, it kind of made it want to lean a little, although if everything was tightened properly it seemed to be fine. No big deal, but for handheld shots I could see it getting tiring. (Then again, all cameras are tiring after a while.)
The system for holding the iPhone in place scares me, too. You're forced to put your iPhone in a rubberized case. (One was included with my test sample, but several others from major case manufacturers are supported.) Then you jam that case into the back of the Bubo where it is held in place by tension alone. I never once had an issue where my iPhone started to slip out, but still...it's a bit scary. A simple flip-down tab would go a long way toward appeasing my fear of seeing the heart of my camera system go clattering to the concrete.
Finally: price. It's not too expensive for its level of quality—solid hunks of aluminum aren't cheap—but it does take it out of impulse purchase territory for most, which is a pity. A planned composite (read: plastic) version is in the works which Owle expects to sell for around $70. Considering the optics and tripod mounts will still be the same quality as the Bubo's, that seems like a fair price.
One final niggle I'd like to see improved in future versions: It would be nice to see a divot in the bottom tripod mounts for stabilizing pins, common on most tripods. That would help prevent the Bubo from potentially spinning itself out of the tripod screw during all-day use.
Appealing design that looks like it came from Night Owl's lab
Turns the iPhone into nearly any sort of recording rig you can dream up
Improves video and imaging quality, if even slightly
Expensive
Heavy
iPhone mounting system seems iffy
You know, I have this friend of a friend who actually said "I need whatever it is right now" and "I'm hard. I'm ready now" while referring to the magic Apple tablet. A friend of a friend, ok? [Penny Arcade]
From the Editor:
I'm off to Austin this weekend for a Right Bloggers conference. It will be a special event, with a very special guest. The top Right Bloggers from around the country will be in attendance. I hope to provide you all with photos and maybe even some coverage Saturday or Sunday.
Our inbox is full with articles from our contributing writers and hot libertarian Republican news to report. They'll be posted sporadically over the weekend. But we hope to catch up by Sunday night.
As always thanks for your regular patronage and readership of this blog. We've been solid 900 to 1,000 unique visitors a day since early January. That's very encouraging.
It’s been little over a week since the beginning of the spat between Google and China over censorship and hacking attacks. But that was more than enough time for the fracas to escalate into international political tensions and name-calling.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined in today. In a wide-ranging speech in Washington, Mrs Clinton said the internet had been a “source of tremendous progress” in China but that any country which restricted free access to information risked “walling themselves off from the progress of the next century” [BBC News]. In taking a foreign policy stand on information freedom, she also singled out other countries that she says harass bloggers or promote censorship and called on other companies to follow Google’s lead in taking a stand against restrictive governments.
“A new information curtain is descending across much of the world,” she said, calling growing Internet curbs the modern equivalent of the Berlin Wall [Reuters].
China, unamused at being called out, shot back. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu this morning warned, “The U.S. side had criticized China’s policies on Internet administration, alluding that China restricts Internet freedom. We firmly oppose such words and deeds, which were against the facts and would harm the China-U.S. relations” [ABC News]. The Chinese government referred to Clinton’s foreign policy stand as “information imperialism,” and called her allegations groundless.
The public strife started last week when Google threatened to pull out of China if the country didn’t change its censorship policies or do something about the China-based attacks against Google and other American tech companies. That was an about-face from 2006, when Google agreed to censorship demands to enter the Chinese market. But Google may not have realized then that the Chinese government would alter the bargain by demanding stricter censorship or blocking other Google services — or that Chinese hackers would launch a widespread, well-orchestrated series of attacks on its computers [Washington Post].
For some observers, Sec. Clinton telling China to tear down this firewall is a struggle that will go far beyond the two nations. This fight is about much more than China vs. the U.S, or even China vs. Google. It is about a future of nation-states, corporations and other nonstate actors struggling to define liberty on the Internet [Forbes].
Related Content:
80beats: Google to China: No More Internet Censorship, Or We Leave
80beats: Is Google the Guardian Angel of Rainforests?
80beats: Googlefest Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: 3 New Ways Google Will Take Over Your Life
80beats: China Bans Electroshock Therapy for “Internet Addiction”
80beats: China’s Internet Users Force Government to Back Down on Censorship
Image: Wikimedia Commons / M. Weitzel
This is the life of an Apple Genius: Computers caked in toxic waste, screaming customers, dead cats, raging homophobes, and oh yeah—getting punched in the face.
We're protecting the identity of the Geniuses who relayed these tales of total cockbaggage with pseudonyms, since some of them might still work for Apple. If you want to see all of the stories on one page, just click here.
Now tell us, which Genius deserves some free pizza to ease their suffering, like we did for abused Genius Bar customers? (Sorry we can't send you guys a medal, sheesh.)
Which horrific story most deserves free pizza?(survey software)
Gadgets don't get any more simplerer and usefuler than the GeoSkeeper, a wrist cellphone that only has GSM/GPRS, a speakerphone, GPS, and six buttons, so the "elderly, chronically ill, children or lone workers" can instantly communicate in case of emergency.
That's all it does. The user calls pre-programmed numbers using the buttons, turns on the emergency alarm if necessary, and gets tracked using the GPS, even alerting when the user gets out of a certain area to whoever has the control. Available in[Aerotel via Engadget]
what is the speed of sound in milk
I am very, very pleased to write about two wins for the military and skepticism today:
Story the first:
Remember the company that made millions by selling totally worthless bomb-sniffing magic wands to the military, detectors that were used at checkpoints in Iraq to search cars, and which failed to detect the terrorist bombs used to kill 155 people in October and 120 more in December last year?
Yeah, well, Jim McCormick, the head of the company that sold those useless dowsing rods, just got arrested for — oh, let me savor typing these words — "suspicion of fraud".
Wait, wait. That felt so good to write, let me do it again: Jim McCormick, who sold provably worthless dowsing rods to the military, has been arrested for suspicion of fraud.
Ahhhhh. That was just as good to type the second time.
This has been reported in The Register as well as The Times Online, which mentions Randi for an added bonus! The BBC has an in-depth analysis of this as well.
In the courts, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But in this case, we have scientific evidence that the kits sold by the company are 100% garbage, and I hope this guy gets everything he deserves.
And is McCormick penitent? Of course not! With apparently no sense of Teh Stoopid, he said:
We have been dealing with doubters for ten years. One of the problems we have is that the machine does look a little primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights.
Holy wow. Serously, dude? I mean, really? Here’s a clue, Mr. McCormick: it’s not that your dowsing rods lack doodads and flair and blinking lights. It’s that they don’t frakking work, and because the Iraqi military swallowed your story people have died.
I hope that’s clear now.
Story the second:
Our second news item is also quite satisfying, and also has a bit of the cluelessness from a company that sells things to the military. Trijicon, the company that inscribed references to Bible quotations on rifle scopes sold to the military, has announced that they will no longer inscribe them, and will provide kits to the military to remove the references in existing scopes.
Very cool. The military has rules forbidding proselytizing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rifle scopes were in clear violation of this. Of course, the company did this because of their concern over our troops and for the appearance of the military overseas, right? About that, the President of Trijicon, Stephen Bindon, said this:
Trijicon has proudly served the U.S. military for more than two decades, and our decision to offer to voluntarily remove these references is both prudent and appropriate.
As I read that, it translated in my head as, "We did this because we were suddenly getting tons of bad press, and had to do something about this PR disaster, so we can can make it look like we’re being all altruistic and everything." Here’s another free hint to the head of a company selling stuff to the military: don’t thump your own chest and say how cool you are when we all know better. Simply admit your mistake, and let people know you’re honestly sorry. Telling everyone what a great move this was on your part is maybe just a wee bit oily.
So I’m really thrilled that rational and critical thinking has had two victories today. The fight continues, because the forces of irrationality are always, always on the march. So, for those of us fighting for reality:
 |
"The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years." -- Barack H. Obama, interview with ABC News, Jan. 21
by Ron Hart
The most recent bright spot for the USA occurred in Massachusetts, when Republican Scott Brown won his (formerly) Democratic Senate seat in the bluest of blue states. He is being tested for steroids, but it looks like the win will stand.
The voters’ message is loud and clear, but will Obama’s hubris prevent him from hearing it? Political scientists have yet to cure arrogance.
Obama will rationalize the loss in Massachusetts like he always does. He will take a hard look at the situation and then blame it on Bush and bonuses paid to CEOs. In light of his agenda of growing government, his campaign slogan should have been “Chains we can believe in.”
I hope that the Senate election in Massachusetts will at least slow the corrupt, back room deals being cut by Democrats who buy votes (from their own party, no less) with our money.
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. We must heed the words of Thomas Jefferson: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.” Maybe folks are finally getting the message. Contrary to what the Democratic core has been conditioned to believe, nobody owes you anything.
Sidenote: It was good to see former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney campaigning for Brown. At times he even loosened his necktie, which is a big deal for Romney. He used to have a job moonlighting as a model for those pictures that come in the picture frames you buy. Not that Romney doesn’t have a wild side; I heard he experimented with domestic wines back in the 70’s.
Editor's Note - Ron Hart's column published Wed. Jan. 20, one full day before Obama remarks above. (See the video at YouTube of Obama remarks relating to Scott Brown)
A syndicated libertarian op-ed humorist, Hart’s columns appear in 40 papers nationwide. His book, No Such Thing as a Pretty Good Alligator Wrestler, is available at RonaldHart.com.
Hi.
I´m pumping monomer using centrifugal pumps with double cartridge mechanical seal. The problem is that seals failure frecuency has increased from 1 failure in 9 months to 3-4 failures per year.
The process conditions are
Pump flow= 2000 gpm
viscosity = 1 cp
Well, let's hope the bad guys weren't watching German television last week. A demonstration of one of those highfalutin—and highly invasive—full-body airport scanners caught a Swiss Army Knife and a cellphone, but none of the, uh, bomb components.
The big reveal comes at around 2:07, and is moderately to extremely terrifying. As Schneier on Security points out, the subject didn't get scanned from the side. That's reassuring until you see that there were still a few front-facing explosive bits that got through, and he didn't even have to hide anything in a body cavity.
So, to sum up: full-body scanners are equal parts creepy and ineffective, the end. [Schneier on Security via Boing Boing]
We found the original Philips LivingColors lamp to be pretty astounding with its multi-million-color glow. Now the lamp gets an impressive v2 makeover.
The latest LivingColors lamp produces 16 million colors through a combination of 7 LEDs—an overall quality of light that's 50% brighter than version one.
And while the intuitive remote and bulbous shape remain mostly unchanged, you'll now have the option to purchase an opaque version (which we're guessing produces a more directional light flow) along with a more typical metal base stand. Look for the update in Europe soon, with models ranging from about $230-$350. [geekandhype via Unplggd]
Hi everyone,
I sent a post a wee whiley ago about my current design project of a personal attack alarm for vulnerable females. I'm a final year design student in Scotland. My initial concept was to integrate a GPS in a device like a wristband and to be able to communicate with the emergency
I thought this Ballmer's autograph on a Macbook Pro was fake, but according to this video of the big man scribbling it, it's not. Somewhere in a dark place, Jon Ive is bracing himself and sobbing. With a British accent.
On this day in engineering history, the River Slope Mine collapsed after the Knox Coal Company tunneled too closely to the mighty Susquehanna River.
The River Slope Mine
Located near Pittston and Port Griffith in Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley, the River Slope Mine was floo
Corporations can now spend freely in federal elections. Given the US government is supposed to represent its constituents, I fear we’ve just taken an disastrous great leap in the other direction.
My Bike stops when i slow down the speed
My Bike silencer makes a noise whenever i give an accelaration
what to do
