Items just strike me as novel and unique
A kick-butt perspective! Near the end all that was going through my mind was “Next up!”
This is almost creepier than anything you’d see on the Sci-Fi channel. You see the bird, distorted through the water / air layer for only an instant before he hits. How fast is he going?
Here is a case of a child that was recently born with 6 functioning fingers on each hand and 6 functioning toes on each foot.
Wow, imagine an era where we couldn’t “correct” such mutations. In an environment where we depended more on physical dexterity or tactile ability who knows if a population of folks with this ready-to-go alteration wouldn’t become the victors in the local Darwinian struggle.
Of course, in a not too recent era, all the religious folks would get together and burn this little one for being an aberration, a witch or for just being different and hence, terrifying… My interpretation of part of the religious (s)creed: If it ain’t already known, it must be bad. 🙁
Wow! I mean… just… Wow! Passenger jets are pretty impressive machines all on their own. To see one being just picked up from UNDER the water like this is astonishing to me.
I checked out some youtube videos of the recovery operations but none seemed to quite capture the moment like these pictures.
Absolutely stunning. That the exposure would actually work without the photographic media being utterly destroyed by the conditions (it began it’s exposure in *December*!).
Still going strong with my love of altered time perception…
Back at the end of September, I splurged and picked up a Celestron SkyScout Personal Planetarium through Amazon.
This gadget is amazing! Once its GPS acquires your position it can either direct you to pretty much any celestial body you are interested in or you can point it at anything you see in the sky and it will tell you what it is and provide you with all manner of interesting info about it such as magnitude, composition, distance even lore concerning the object. For many items you can even listen to the description through the provided ear buds.
I had an initial issue where the unit simply would not acquire the satellites necessary to allow for a GPS fix. But updating the unit’s firmware (with the tool on the included CD) corrected this issue and allowed for rapid GPS position acquisition from then on.
At left is everything you get in the box.
Note that this is not a magnifying tool. The lens on it is strictly for directing you to an object (via little arrows around the circumference of the lens) or to allow you to center an object and then press the “Identify” button.
I’ve been using this lately with a pair of Canon 15×50 IS Binoculars that I picked up a few years ago and the two make a terrific team.
The light pollution in my area is such that even the major constellations always seem to be incomplete and I tend to have trouble identifying what should be relatively simple objects. I have used various PDA-based star charts and they’ve been moderately successful in guiding me. But personal planetarium is like having a seasoned astronomy veteran next to you pointing the way to the objects you’re interested in observing.
It even has a “tonight’s highlights” feature to help you get rolling.
I’m hoping to try my hand at a “Messier Marathon” in the next couple of weeks.
Yeah yeah, if you know me, you know I’m also a *big* sucker for Pachebel’s canon in almost any form.
This would be impressive enough if just one of them were performing alone. That they play so well together is astounding to me.
I don’t normally think of guitar when I think of this piece but I can change my mind…
VERY nice! While there is some slow motion in here (which I, of course, love), these edifices are so big that they often only appear as if they’re collapsing in slow motion. This is a glorious testament to the explosives experts out there who are competent in their trade. Well executed, a demolition can be almost a thing of beauty.
Many of these I haven’t seen before. All that planning and only seconds to implement. Then, of course, weeks to clean up afterward.
I so far have not been able to find this piece of music anywhere! It’s haunting and sounds like a very cool remake of a classic!
I can’t wait to get a copy for my iPod but so far no venues sell it..
Tag Galaxy is a very cool way of visualizing tags from the Flickr-verse.
It’s a tad non-intuitive at first (at least for me). Clicking on the planets around your current tag will add those to the tag selection. Clicking the current tag selection “star” will bring up some of the pictures associated with that selection. Dragging the resulting “picture Globe” allows you to see pictures from the other sides of it.
A rip-off of this YouTube video (Japanese, I think) with some captions added in, a Pink Floyd soundtrack dubbed over and the size of the asteroid stated as being 5 times larger, it is still *very* cool and very humbling to watch.
Given that they’ve taken such liberties with the original I can’t say that I trust the statements they make but it’s food for thought nonetheless.
It’s this kind of event that we hedge ourselves against when we finally manage to establish a presence off-world.
that I picked up a few years ago and the two make a terrific team.