"just plain cool" entries

Time Lapse of Galactic Center of Milky Way rising over Texas Star Party

According to William Castleman: “The time-lapse sequence was taken with the simplest equipment that I brought to the star party. I put the Canon EOS-5D (AA screen modified to record hydrogen alpha at 656 nm) with an EF 15mm f/2.8 lens on a weighted tripod. Exposures were 20 seconds at f/2.8 ISO 1600 followed by 40 second interval. Exposures were controlled by an interval timer shutter release (Canon TC80N3). Power was provided by a Hutech EOS203 12v power adapter run off a 12v deep cycle battery. Large jpg files shot in custom white balance were batch processed in Photoshop (levels, curves, contrast, Noise Ninja noise reduction, resize) and assembled in Quicktime Pro. Editing/assembly was with Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9.”

Space Shuttle Atlantis during Solar Transit

In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope. Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault) Thierry made this image using a solar-filtered Takahashi 5-inch refracting telescope and a Canon 5D…

I Am Trying To Believe (that Rock Stars aren't Dead)

Trent Reznor says "Steal my music" as he recognizes the future of the music business is him monetizing his talent through touring. The rock star made from highly leveraged disc sales is dead.

A Graphic Designer Puts Print on Demand Through Its Paces

A report on the UnderConsideration blog outlines a fascinating experiment called Dear Lulu. From the blog coverage: This past July, fourteen students attended a two-day workshop at Germany's Hochschule Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences with Prof. Frank Philippin and London-based designer James Goggin. The brief, as explained by Goggin: "My plan for the workshop is to investigate the visible and…

The Last HOPE

The Last HOPE conference in NYC was a great mix of hardware hacking, open source, phone phreaking, lock picking, sleeping on the floor, and good old fashioned paranoia mongering.

Mental Landscapes, David Brooks and the Aspen Festival of Ideas

David Brooks gave a talk last week in Aspen that inspired me and that I can't stop thinking about. Note that it comes in three parts. His book is due to come out in the fall of 2009. Brooks discusses an intellectual revolution that brings together neuroscience, sociology, psychology, behavioral economics, genetics, and a variety of other fields in an…

BarCampBank is spreading

When Ben Black and I organized the first BarCampBank in North America last year, we hoped that it would spread. According to William Azaroff's post on NetBanker, the movement is there and growing: What's all this about BarCampBanks? From a North American premiere in Seattle almost a year ago, we've witnessed two more in the last few months, and eight…

Waxy: "Google App Engine ported to Amazon's EC2"

Andy Baio posts what might be a response to Tim's concerns about Google App Engine. Interesting! I loved Daring Fireball's one-line description: "So much for the lock-in argument." There's definitely still a concern if/when people find themselves addicted to the services Google provides beyond simple app hosting — as Andy writes: The App Engine SDK doesn't use BigTable for its…

Data Center heating the Town Pool

According to GreenerComputing.com: A public swimming pool in Zurich will soon be heated for the comfort of local residents, thanks to an innovative solution: heat generated by a data center that would otherwise be classified as waste. The new data center in Zurich is one of three projects in Europe and the Middle East that IBM has announced in recent…

Trendalyzer view of the banking crisis

The team at "And Still I Persist" has created their own version of Hans Rosling's "Trendalyzer" (see: Radar post) to visualize the current US banking crisis. "First lets look at the top 8 banks and their mortgages that are 90+ days late. Below is a flash charting system, feel free to use the controls and experiment. We chart the total…