Worth Repeating: Fabian Oefner

Video:


Fabian Oefner: Psychedelic science -- Swiss artist and photographer Fabian Oefner is on a mission to make eye-catching art from everyday science. In this charming talk, he shows off some recent psychedelic images, including photographs of crystals as they interact with soundwaves. And, in a live demo, he shows what really happens when you mix paint with magnetic liquid--or when you set fire to whiskey. More on TED.com...

Why I'm posting: Art plus science equals wow.

Feed Sift

Five things I felt like sharing...

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Two Kinds of Loyalty (Seth Godin)

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Ignorance is not an opinion (Dilbert)

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Feed Sift

Five interesting things I wanted to share...

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Recreating the Past with Model Cars and Forced Perspective -- Neat camera trick! (Twisted Sifter)

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Seattle Gets Its Redneck On -- Country music and NPR. Makes for interesting political beliefs. (Crosscut)

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September 2013 Photos

Picture This

The top 10 photos from our Flickr pool.  (Not counting a few obscure ones, mostly work-related.) 

Orca

Handy Manny

Stuffed Animals

Resolved: I Will Take More Photos

We have a picture frame in our foyer that holds four photos.  The goal has always been to pick our favorite non-people photo each month and put it in the frame, moving the others up.  We were successful for a year or two, but then we stopped and for a year and a half, the same photos appeared in the frame.  Kind of sad, really.

I recently decided to update the frame and went to look at the photos we'd taken.  For all of December, there wasn't a single photo that wasn't of people.   I grabbed the camera, set it to manual, turned off the flash, set it to a slow shutter speed, aimed in at the tree, zoomed in and then moved the camera around as I took the photo.  Had some interesting shots.

And then nothing for November and some simple photos of flowers for September.

So, for the new year, I resolve to take more photos, to try to be more artistic, more creative, looking at the world in new ways through the lens.

Our Popular Flickr

Here's the most popular public Flickr photos. Advantage to early movers, these are all older photos. Also, proves the importance of naming photos (and probably of putting them on the map and tagging them as well.) Click on any photo to enlarge.

Odds and Ends 54

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MASHABLE -- 15 Incredible iPhone Dog Photographs

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GOOGLE MAP INSTANT -- If you liked Google Instant, you'll find this fun

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INHABITAT -- Boeing’s Solar Spy Plane Could Fly for Five Years Straight

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RBOGASH -- Memories of Boeing Plant II (closing soon) - Thanks, Rob

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ENGADGET -- Xerox to sell on-demand Espresso Book Machines to retailers who sell books to people

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MSNBC -- A day in the life of the trapped Chilean miners - cool article

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CNET NEWS -- Philly subway to capture energy from braking trains - love all the ways people are finding to capture "free" energy

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CROSSCUT -- Metro drivers' wages threaten bus service

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I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER -- The Internet In Real Life

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Dolphin accent. Oops, like sorry, mate. Bet he was embarrassed.

Eye-Fi is so cool

I may have written about Eye-Fi before, but I don't care. If you have a digital camera that uses SD cards (like most cameras these days) and you don't have an Eye-Fi card, you are missing out on some great potential for your camera.

Eye-Fi cards plug into your camera and make your camera awesome.

First off, they have a wireless antenna in them.  So as you take photos around your house, they are instantly transferred over your home network back to your computer.  (Or, if you're out and about, as soon as you get home, turn on your camera and your pictures are whisked to your computer.)

Some cards don't need a wireless network and establish their own in order to let you move photos to a laptop while you're out.  There's even a way to combine that with a slideshow program

I Spy with my Eye-Fi

I scored at the conference I went to earlier this month.  There were some great giveaways... PureSend gave away these great little notebooks and really solid stainless steel water bottles... ExactTarget did "room drops" of $10 iTunes gift cards and Subscribers Rule! pins and hats.  (Had never heard of a "room drop" - where they pay the hotel to leave gifts in our room for us when we're not there.)  e-Dialog hosted a small intimate dinner and I was one of the people they invited.  One session on SMS had a contest where we texted them the answer to a question and they gave away a $50 gift card which I ended up winning.  (I used it to get gifts for the family and pay for some of the incidentals meaning less to have to ask for reimbursing on.)  And then they also had a "vendor tour" - I didn't do it last year, but I figured I could act like a grownup, I could go talk to salespeople without accidentally agreeing to buy anything.  Anyhow, you visit vendor booths and they stamp a little card.  After you've gotten all your stamps you turn it in.  Pretty much all of the vendors were giving away iPod Touches.  Except PureSend which was giving away a tiny 8mp digital camera and an Eye-Fi card, which I also won. 

I've played around a little with the camera, but I didn't get to play with the Eye-Fi card until today.  It's really pretty slick. The box contains a small card reader and a tiny 2GB SD card.  You plug it into the computer and it's supposed to bring up the installer program.  (Mine didn't, I had to go onto the card and start the setup program.)  Then it installed some software, and then it updated the software.  It tried to connect, got stopped by the computer's firewall.  I gave it permission, it tried again, and succeeded.  And then it didn't do anything.  And if I tried to get it to do anything, it just kept opening new tabs in Firefox asking me to sign-in to my account, even though I hadn't yet created an account.   I had to look through their forums, and finally found a link to register, but it said it couldn't find the card and so it wouldn't let me.  So I saw someone else that said to just remove and reinsert the card.  I did that and it indicated that it recognized a new card and proceeded to let me register it.

It needed to access the wireless network in the house, so I entered in the non-broadcast SSID and the WEP key, but then I ran into another roadblock.  My router only allows authorized devices to connect.  I couldn't figure out how to find out the Eye-Fi card's MAC address, so I had to go into my router settings and let all devices connect to it.  Then restart the connect process, which it did just fine.  (And then go back into the router, find out the MAC address of the newly connected device, authorize it and then re-lock-down the router.)

After that, it was smooth sailing.  It's a very cool little device.  You insert it into a camera (It worked perfectly in both of our computers) and as you take pictures, they are uploaded, via the wireless network, to your computer.  You can also simultaneously upload them to a photosharing site if you want, which is pretty slick.  If the camera turns off or you go out of range of your wireless connection, it will just resume as soon as you go back in range, even mid-photo.   (You can pay $15 a year and then be able to do the same magic from any AT&T/Wayport WiFi connection which is most McDonalds and Starbucks.)

New Species

 

Some photos of new species.

Photos Uploaded

Added a bunch of new photos from our recent trip.  If all the ones of us that you see are the backs of our heads, that means you haven't signed in, or aren't connected to us on Flickr as friends or family.

Photos Uploaded

The photos have been uploaded to Flickr. If you can't see them, you need an invitation (or you haven't logged in).

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Oh, Home Depot

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View from cemetery

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Eric came by with these yummy cookies. I sadly declined.

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No thank you. :) Yay, me.

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