Really funny animation about texting and singles.
Tag "tech"
Consumption is netflixing the entire first season of Battlestar Galactica and converting it to ipod format for your morning commute. Regardless of what David Lynch says.
Consumption is buying a Slingbox so you can place-shift your favorite shows and watch them under your desk at work. When time-shifting isn’t enough.
Consumption is tivoing Mad Men, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Heroes, but having no time to watch any of them because you just rented Manhattan.
Consumption is knowing what the term broadcatching is.
Consumption is watching the Yankees this year while drinking whiskey.
Consumption is knowing exactly what 1 through 20 are on your Netflix queue.
Consumption is never watching a commercial.
Consumption is using PiP. For the 80′s crowd.
Consumption is having your podcasts stop updating because you are way behind on listening to them. Even the ones you like.
Consumption is going to White Castle.
Consumption is hyper-linking this entire post for your audience’s reading pleasure.
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I thought this was pretty neat. Some of you probably know what the Internet Archive is. It’s an incredible website that… archives the internet. They have a feature called the Wayback Machine that lets you go back to specific times in the past to see what websites looked like. Check out Yahoo! in ’96.
Well here’s Miabifilms back in the day. I started Miabifilms in 2002 but I guess it wasn’t being archived until August 2003. Due note that I was blogging before anyone knew what that meant. Total geek.
Read MoreWell folks. We’re still here. Today at around 3:30 am EST, in Switzerland, scientists switched on the world’s largest particle accelerator. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been the source of debate for backyard scientists and drunken circles for a while now.
It goes like this. The popular argument is that these scientists don’t know what they’re doing. When this thing fully powers up, the resulting experiments will be so potent that they might actually create a black hole right there in the Swiss Alps. A black hole that would then suck us all in, tearing the planet and the space around it apart.
Today they turned it on. For the first test, they successfully threw a single proton beam around the 17 mile long doughnut. Sometime in October, they’re going to throw another beam in the opposite direction and let the two collide. When that happens, they will look really really really closely and be able to confirm or disprove some of our most fantastic physics theories.
The LHC has been called the world’s largest science experiment. It has the potential to solve some of our universe’s great mysteries. Or at the very least dig up some new questions. There is no telling what will come of these experiments. Teflon was nice, but give me lightspeed. There’s also something very fascinating about the outcry. People are actually talking about creating a black hole on Earth. A fucking black hole! What would that be like?? This is pure science-fiction. I’m happy to be living in a time where experiments like these are going on.
I truly hope that the world does not end when they start doing full experiments in October. I’m also very hopeful that the lessons learned from smashing protons into one and other give us a better understanding of ourselves and the space around us.
Cheers for Awesomeday.
Read MoreThis has been around for a while now, but not too many people know about it. Just for fun, a London-based design firm named Troika designed a computer virus. Just for fun.
Dubbed the Newton Virus, their mission was to create an application that harkened back to the “good old days”. When computers viruses were designed by geeks showing off their programming skills. Instead of geeks with cheesy logos trying to be deviant malcontents. Yes, this is a rare MAC virus, but you won’t get it on the World Wide Wonderful. It comes on a thumb drive and makes use of the accelerometers in Apple laptops. I’m all for using accelerometers. It doesn’t matter what their used for! Anyway, check out the video to see how fun this thing is. It appears that Troika does not intend on releasing this into the wild. Bummer.
Check this shit out. The creator of Oakley Sunglasses sold the business to Ray-Ban for a few billion dollars. Now he’s founded a high-end video electronics company called Red Digital Cinema which seems to specialize in HD cameras. The gem of this progeny is the Red One. An HD camera that approaches the resolution and visceral quality of 35mm film.
There are lots of nifty charts and graphs in this article at Wired that detail how the Red One compares to film. But one quote kind of says it all in no uncertain geeky terms..
“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. Film doesn’t have pixels, but the industry-standard 35-millimeter stock has a visual resolution roughly equivalent to 4K.”
I imagine even armed with said visual aids, digifiles will still have their hands full with film-purists waxing poetic about the charms of celluloid.
Though I do consider myself a film-purist, I am not a pusher. Shoot on what you want. If you can do it with a tightened belt, then go for it. The Red One is considerably cheaper than a 35mm rig. (Talking studio budgets here.) It’s the story you are trying to tell that matters, not the gear. We are quickly moving past a time when video and film are two separate mediums. Film may finally make that dreaded transition to the realm of the hobbyist. The Red One may be its harbinger. There are currently 40 feature “films” being shot on this puppy. That happened a lot sooner than I thought it would.
What else does this mean? TV shows will look better for one. Hell, as the price of technology predictably drops, everything you consume will look better. We’ll peer upon the world with ever-increasing fidelity. And that is where the real excitement is.
Watch this hypnotic skateboarding video for an example of the Red One at play. Gorgeous! The Bones Brigade would be proud. Must watch it fullscreen….
We have reached the pinnacle of civilization. I knew this day would come. Didn’t think it would happen this soon or in this manner though.
Yes, I’m sure I’ve proclaimed this before, and will most likely do it again when they perfect teleportation. But I can unequivocally say at this very moment that we have arrived. Ladies and gentleman, we can now print logos and other images in a sepia-toned, caramel-flavored design directly on our lattes. Yes. They can now put artwork on the surface of a beverage.
A company named OnLatte, Inc. has designed a special printer called, cleverly, the Latte Art Machine. It is in prototype form but if the results are any indication of what this puppy can do, we’ll be at version 1.0 in no time. Just hope they come up with a better name before every trendy little coffee shop goes out and buys one of these. Holy Barista Batman!
OnLatte displayed their new toy at the SIGGRAPH 2008 conference with wild success. Here’s a bunch of images of the caffeinated goodness from that very conference. There’s also a video at that page that demonstrates how this thing works.
While I didn’t travel to Los Angeles for the festivities, I can imagine through the magic of Photoshop, what a Miabi Mochaccino would look and taste like. Down the hatch.
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I wanted to talk about Hulu for a second. I absolutely love this site. I’ve considered canceling my cable many times in the past because I don’t really watch TV anymore. Then came Hulu. Now I definitely don’t watch TV anymore. I Hulu.
Hulu’s been around for nearly a year now. I jumped aboard when I first heard about it. Deciding to give it a chance even though many, many, many sites have come and gone with the same principle. But Hulu has the power of General Electric behind it. And that is a power not to be taken lightly.
It first started, when I was catching up with 30 Rock. I won’t discuss the joys of having Liz Lemon at your fingertips because that is plainly obvious. Then I started watching a few movies on the site that I’d never seen before. Eight Men Out was a movie I’d always wanted to see but never got around to it. Glad I finally did. Say it ain’t so, Joe.
But, the real beauty of Hulu is that it has enabled me to check out show’s I’d heard of but never would have seen. For example, Firefly. Firefly is an awesome Sci-Fi/Western created by Joss Whedon. Though, I’d never really been into Joss Whedon’s other stuff, I absolutely became attached to this show. It even gives Battlestar a run for best Sci-Fi show ever. (-end geek) The characters are excellent and the show itself is both hilarious and thrilling at the same time. Since it was canceled after only 14 episodes, I managed to watch the entire series in just a few days. Then rented the movie Serenity. It’s times like this that you wish you hadn’t been so eager to consume. Now I have no more Firefly to enjoy. I already miss it. But because of Hulu, I can easily watch the show again and again. Jewel Saite is cute on levels approaching Jenna Fischer-ian.
Last year, I bought the pilot episode of Miami Vice from iTunes. The pilot is really a feature length movie and I thought it was a great piece of machismo escapism. And by all accounts ground breaking at the time, if a bit dated now. I watched this show as a kid, but can honestly say I never really got it then. The only thing I really remember is the sexy opening title sequence with that sweet sweet Jan Hammer Miami Vice theme. What have I discovered now because of Hulu? This is the sweatiest show I’ve ever seen. Shit, Crockett and Tubbs have sweat stains on their pastel-colored suits in nearly every scene. Can we get wardrobe in here? This show personifies the 80′s as much as Madonna writhing around in a wedding dress does. The writing does seem to hold up though, and I’ve been enjoying the first few episodes.
So trust me. Sign up for Hulu if you haven’t. It’s free.
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I regularly listen to this awesome podcast called RadioLab. Which is re-purposed from a radio show of the same name on WNYC in New York. It’s a great dialogue on all things science-y and I’d encourage anyone with such interests to seek it out on iTunes. Being a colossal science nerd, the discussions are lively, difficult, and folksy. My cup of tea, with honey.
In the most recent podcast, Robert Krulwich, (one of the show’s regular moderators) sits down for a live discussion with author, Columbia professor, and astrophysics genius (and I suspect atheist) Brian Greene to talk about the Multiverse. Even summarizing the deliberation here would be quite a challenge. Which is why I urge you to check out the show on the web.
Basically, Greene discusses the theory of multiple universes. In which there are infinite dopplegangers of every single one of us, doing the exact same things we are doing at this very moment, in infinite variations. Virtually destroying the notion of individuality. He likens the Multiverse Theory to a giant piece of Swiss cheese. Where each bacteria-bored hole represents another universe. He also explains it is more likely that we are living in a Matrix-style simulation, fabricated by a “super-expert” race of beings, rather than living on a real soil and sand planet. And finally, he can be quoted as saying, “There is no free will, there is only physics.”
Mr. Greene is quite lucid throughout and even though his theories make him seem like a quack, he calmly explains that they are based off of real scientific observations. The subject of Occam’s razor does come up, to Krulwich’s credit, which I subscribe to rather heavily. Greene debates it’s “simple” principle and offers a different opinion on simplicity. Obviously, infinity comes up as well, but thankfully they don’t delve too deeply into that ball of frustration.
It’s a mind-bending discussion and a fun little exercise for your forehead muscles. Huh??
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The company I work for has started a new internal initiative called We Get Fit. It’s all about getting healthy. Much to my surprise, yesterday we all received branded pedometers to wear on our belts. Which is really cool because everyone at work looks like they’re stuck in the 80′s with their totally retro beepers. (Technology is NOT cyclical!) The idea is that you are supposed to take 10,000 steps a day. These are the first steps to a healthy heart. Along with cheesecake and coffee.
Well this sounded quite interesting to me, so I put this little piece of magic in my pocket when I woke up this morning to see how I was doing. Wore it all day and went about my daily business. I thought I had this in the bag. Took no unnecessary steps. Every step I took was meaningful. I was walking with purpose.
Just got home. Took it out of my pocket and what do you know? I only took 7836 steps. Incredibly unhealthy. After a half hour of walking around my apartment in circles, I gave up. Looks like tomorrow I’ll have to take a few extra trips to the hot dog stand downstairs. I need to get to that 10,000 step plateau baby!
Just know that we’re out there. Walking, counting.
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