DB's shared items in Google Reader

July 16, 2009: Electrified Plants

2009-07-16T05:11:46Z

It took photographer Robert Buelteman 10 years, working an average of 60 hours a week, to produce 80 photographs.
Damnnnnn!:eek:

Quote:

Working in complete darkness, he begins by placing his chosen plant onto a metal board which he then passes the electrical surge through.
He can even pinpoint areas where he wants to focus the charge using a wand and a simple car battery.
As his subject lights up with the current, and emits radiation invisible to the naked eye, Mr Buelteman captures the moments by passing a fibre optic cable back-and-forth over the plant. The cable emits a beam of white light which is just the size of a human hair and whatever the miniscule torch-beam touches, transfers the image onto film.
The captivating blue haze that surrounds every leaf, petal and stalk is actually gases ionising around them as the plant is electronically shocked.

Uh... um... oh. :unsure:

Quote:

'You just have to imagine it like a painter creating a picture on canvass,' he said. 'The plant is the subject just like the painter's bowl of fruit or the person they are capturing.
'The electrified board I place the plants on is the canvass. The fibre optic cable emitting the light-beam is my paintbrush.
'Another way to try and understand it is like a normal photograph on a normal camera, except I am manually controlling the exposure by hand. In the same way the image I capture is simply burned onto film.'

Ahhh, of course. :smack:

Quote:

But despite these being the first pictures of their kind in his profession, Mr Buelteman says he has in fact invented nothing and uses a combination of age-old techniques developed decades ago. Semyon Kirlian - developer of Kirlian photography - accidentally found in 1939 that it was possible to photograph electrical discharges at the edges of objects if that were being shocked on an electrified plate.

At 10 years X 60 hrs/week = 80 photographs, I can see why it didn't catch on. :haha:

link

woman on yellow wall

2009-05-06T08:03:33Z

Queen street, east of Church.
To read the text, check the higher resolution image on flickr.

Rain, Rice, Gods and Gems

2009-04-13T15:05:56Z

For the first two weeks in February, I joined my family in a trip to India. Though I was born here in the U.S., we used to go back to visit family in India pretty regularly when I was a kid. But then I got older, was always busy, and before I knew it, it had been 25 years since I'd visited. It was well past time to remedy that oversight, and perhaps the single thing that drew me back the most was the idea of visiting the village where my father was born and raised.

During our brief visit there, my father and his brothers took me on a walk through the rice paddies that surround their village. Our family owns all of the paddies from their house until the nearby river. Along the way, I stopped to quickly take this shot of the Shiva temple that the village uses for worship.

I still have vague memories of accompanying my grandfather once or twice on his near-daily walks to this temple when I was a kid. His walks to the temple continued until he was well into his 80s and perhaps his 90s.

The green in the foreground is unretouched, the actual vibrant color of a newly-planted second crop of basmati rice. Historically, this region of western Orissa was plagued by recurring droughts. A single rice crop was a blessing, just enough to provide sustenance in an area where a family of four often earns the equivalent of less than $500 a year.

But in recent years, a combination of government-planned irrigation projects and the serendipitous discovery of some precious gemstones in the region funded a pump system that enables a second annual crop. This second crop meant many villagers could go from just putting food in their mouths to actually making a little bit of money. Nearly every home in the village was made of mud when I lived there as a child, but on this visit nearly every home had been rebuilt with brick, with some even sprouting second stories. The village school had been rebuild and classes extended all the way to high school instead of ending at the fourth grade.

The style of temple shown here is very typical of the architecture of village temples in our state; We saw similar mandirs in honor of Shiva, Rama, a few Krishna temples, and other various deities in the many villages we drove by during our trip. I didn't actually go in this temple, but I spend some time walking in the nearby rice paddies that are still being planted and harvested in my name.

Jamaica’s Most Wanted » RM fires off arrest warrants in Lutan Fyah ...

2009-03-20T03:41:12Z

... Pump attendant charged with credit-card fraud · RM fires off arrest warrants in Lutan Fyah’s arson case · Police kill two in shoot-out · Man freed of rape after only getting to first base · Stepdad on bail for carnal abuse ...

Short and Sweet: A Lesson about Using Twitter in Business

2009-01-29T02:13:00Z

I just got the latest Evernote newsletter, which comes about once a month to regular users like myself. The company has some great news to kick off '09, not the least of which is the closure of a $4.5 million round of funding. That's great news, and they've earned it steady improvements to an innovative product.

The last note in the newsletter has a telling lesson for businesses who think that Twitter is just another megaphone for broadcasting how awesome your company is:

As many of you know, we're big fans of Twitter. A while back we asked you to tell us what you liked about our @Evernote tweeting and what you didn't. The response was clear: more suggestions on how to use Evernote and fewer links to media coverage. So, for those interested in the latter, we just launched a second Twitter account focused solely on media and blogosphere coverage.

Emphasis is mine. There are two lessons here: 1. People want value from corporate communications, especially when it comes through a channel like Twitter where you have to be not only concise, but relevant. And double-especially when your product is a productivity app!

Twitter is a conversation, not a one-way broadcast, and definitely not an SEO enhancer. To misuse it is to hear the gentle sound of interested customers losing interest.

Let's hear it for learning from your customers and responding in action as well as word, as Evernote has here.

looking forward

2009-01-22T06:24:05Z

A girl watching Obama's speech live at Dundas Square in Toronto.

In honour of Obama–a poem, from Walt Whitman

2009-01-20T19:39:58Z

[EDIT] I revoke my poem.

I knew the opening four lines, but NEVER studied the text–until now!

GOOD GOD…Why didn’t somebody say something????

Horrors!

My intentions were honourable though. Completely. AND I had that scene from Dead Poet’s Society in my head, where the student stands on his desk as the teacher is leaving…and starts reciting the poem.

“O Capatin, My Captain….”

I believe people–like administrations–can change. What I’d like to believe even more is that this change in administration brings a change in people. And we lead ourselves into a new era.

Battlestar Galactica: Fracking Rack

2009-01-13T21:41:00Z

I'm not entirely au fait with Battlestar Galactica, but it looks as though this montage has left Captain Data with a rather obvious interest in Princess Leia's bosom. Or is she a Cyclon? I can never remember. Beam me up, Spocky!

Thanks to Vishal! Original is here!

these floating, shapeless oceans

2009-01-06T19:23:38Z

11th Grade

2008-12-19T00:00:00Z

Layer upon layer of absurdity

2008-12-03T11:36:00Z

Life is absurd. But my life seems extra absurd these days.

Last week, a BBC radio producer in Ecuador emailed me out of the blue. She said she had read my blog post about my recent pilgrimage to Obama, Japan, and wanted to interview me about my visit.

I wrote back and said I would be happy to talk about it. We arranged a mutually convenient time for a simple interview. Or for what I thought was going to be a simple interview.

When the producer called at the designated time, she asked me to hold the line for a few minutes before she patched me through to a live talk show. A live talk show? Now? I started to panic.

She explained that I was going to be on a South American-wide evening talk show and that the hosts would ask me questions in Spanish. She reassured me that the questions would be translated into English, and my answers would be translated into Spanish. So there was nothing to worry about.

And just like that, with no advance warning, I was thrown into the middle of a live BBC talk show. In Ecuador. From Kyoto. On Obama. In Spanish. Absurd doesn't even begin to describe the experience.

The hosts (a very lively duo, whose names I forget) asked me lots of questions about Obama. What was it like? What kind of town is it? What do the people of Obama the town think about Obama the man?

My favourite part of the show was when they asked me if I had heard the song "Obama is Beautiful World," which was recorded and produced by the "Obama for Obama Support Group." I told them that not only had I heard the song, but that I was lucky enough to have had a private listening of the CD with none other than the president of the Obama Support Group himself.

They asked me to recite a few of the lyrics, if I could. I told them this was tricky. The song is written in Engrish so the lyrics don't make a lot of sense. It's better to listen to the meaning behind the words. So I talked about how the song meant that the world would be a better place with Barack Obama in power. Or something like that.

It was at this point in the interview when the absurdity of the situation hit me. Here I was, sitting in my apartment in Kyoto pontificating about a Japanese town that accidentally shares its name with the next president of America on a live BBC radio show out of Ecuador when I should have been in class studying Japanese, which is something I am actually getting paid to do.

My life at that moment seemed buried under layer upon layer of absurdity. But that's exactly the way I like it.

The more absurd things get, the happier I am.

Sleet

2008-12-01T00:00:00Z

Butler

2008-11-24T17:29:49Z

The only reason these aren't the salt and vinegar variety is because I already ate that bag for breakfast.

by dooce in Daily Chuck

Bookstore Sorting Fail

2008-11-21T12:01:00Z

Submitted by Ron

Call In Gay

2008-11-20T14:44:19Z

December 10 is Day Without A Gay.

Gay people and our allies are compassionate, sensitive, caring, mobilized, and programmed for success. A day without gays would be tragic because it would be a day without love.

On December 10, 2008 the gay community will take a historic stance against hatred by donating love to a variety of different causes.

On December 10, you are encouraged not to call in sick to work. You are encouraged to call in "gay"--and donate your time to service!

Comments | Posted in General

Picnic Fail

2008-11-19T15:01:32Z

Looks more like a win to me, Amy D.

Fix NFL Overtime

2008-11-16T09:00:00Z

I’m too busy to watch much football, but I do enjoy the NFL when I get a chance. In week 11, there were two games where the score was tied after 60 minutes. The Jets beat New England on a routine field goal at the end of a nice drive, but it feels kind of like the coin toss won the game. And Philly and the Bengals tied, which is also a lousy outcome. Up here in Canada, we have a better solution.

The Canadian Football League (season’s just winding up, next Sunday is Grey Cup day) has a variant of college-football overtime procedures, like so:

Team A gets the ball on Team B’s 35-yard line and you see what happens. Absent defensive heroics, they’ll probably get at least three points. If Team B forces a turnover and scores off that, they win.
Team B gets the ball on Team A’s 35. After they’ve had their turn, either it’s still tied or someone has won.
If they’re still tied, they repeat the process, in the opposite order, which mean Team B gets two offensive series in a row.

The only flaw in the system is that it allows for at most two repetitions of this, so ties are possible albeit incredibly rare.

Hey NFL, look north and learn.

Today, it's Japan, China, and India at the Moon

2008-11-14T21:57:00Z

Remember when the U.S. and Russia were the only countries with space programs and their own rockets? Then came the European Space Agency, mostly launching commercial satellites from French Guyana. Somehow my 1970s kid brain is still stuck in that mindset.

But it's wrong, wrong, wrong. Yes, the U.S. still sends plenty of astronauts into orbit, and has wonderful robotic probes venturing throughout the solar system. But how about the Moon? As far as I can tell, the last time America sent anything to the Moon was ten years ago, when the Lunar Prospector orbited, then intentionally crashed into a crater to test for water. Russia hasn't sent anything since the Luna 24 probe in 1976. The ESA was there more recently, with its SMART 1 five years ago.

Who is sending spacecraft to the Moon now? That would be Japan, China, and (most notably today) India, which hit the moon with a flag-painted impact probe sent from its Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter mere hours ago.

The U.S. has a lunar orbiter scheduled to launch next year, and both it and Russia have grand plans to send people back, but for now, it is the countries of Asia that are telling us about our nearest neighbour in space. I think that's pretty cool.

November 12, 2008: Beez

2008-11-12T05:28:49Z

I got this email from Leah, but I don't know if it originated with her. It didn't say 'forward' but the writing, which I've edited for clarity, didn't look like hers.

Quote:

So I'm using my bbq this weekend... so I thought ill clean it up..
I have know there are bee's coming from under the cover so I thought I’d kill them, obviously... so heres the bbq in question.

Quote:

Now I know these bombs aren't for bee's and that but I thought I’ll suffocate/smoke them out. So here is the weapon of choice and delivery system.

Quote:

I thought I was pretty smart hehehe designed to be easierly manovered under the cover of darkness... so then I released the weapon of buzz destruction.
OMFG! the sound from under the cover was incredible!!! You could hear it 3m away easy... then I ran like the clappers.

Coming back few mins later to see the death toll was at least 20mm deep, a mass grave.

Quote:

I continued to remove the cover and to light the bbq to give it a clean, when I noticed some fatty looking substance on the top of the side shelf thing.
Bit weird.. I clean it before I put it away for winter and no way was there fat there so I begun to wonder...... NO..... it can't be could it?
I slowly removed the rest of the cover only to find the HQ.
We think the queen flew away.... either that or a small child has wings and has been living in the hive coz that thing was huge!

I wonder how long it took to build those combs?
I suppose after using a Flea & Roach bomb, you shouldn't chocolate dip the bees, or eat the honey. :greenface

Craigslist: It's Worth $2 Just For The Optimism

2008-11-10T21:45:00Z

Oh Craigslist, is there nothing you can't lowest common denominator?

Thanks to Brian! Original is here.

Bikini Food Fight Video (comedy) [del.icio.us]

2008-06-25T14:24:08-07:00

"We can promise exposure". Well, naturally.

Overlay.TV - Watch it. Click it. Get it. [del.icio.us]

2008-06-24T13:46:57-07:00

Quite interesting--YouTube gone meta.

Border yoga event stretches boundaries at U.S.-Mexico fence [del.icio.us]

2008-06-24T12:28:18-07:00

Games without frontiers. Sort of.

MakeMeBabies Predicts What You and Your Lover’s Kid Will Look Like [del.icio.us]

2008-06-24T11:30:13-07:00

Really smart Facebook app. Money in the bank. Assuming, you know, they figure out how to monetize it.

The Stalled Server Room - The Daily WTF [del.icio.us]

2008-06-24T09:12:05-07:00

This just seems like a recipe for social disaster.

YouTube - LSU Fake FG vs South Carolina [del.icio.us]

2008-06-23T15:40:38-07:00

Watch the replay. That's the cheekiest hand-off ever.

MTSS Episode #17 (The Penis) at Midwest Teen Sex Show [del.icio.us]

2008-06-23T10:30:49-07:00

Pretty funny. Not safe for work or prudes.

YouTube - Simpsons Map for Quake III Arena [del.icio.us]

2008-06-23T09:55:10-07:00

The level of detail is remarkable.

Wild times for sports blogs may be nearing an end - Los Angeles Times [del.icio.us]

2008-06-22T15:35:49-07:00

Features the wrongest prediction of the year: "What's the shelf-life for a website that only has women in bikinis?" Uh, I think we can measure that shelf-life in decades.

YouTube - Birthday Greetings from Joe Cocker [del.icio.us]

2008-06-21T18:41:23-07:00

Quite funny. Still an exceptional performance, but excellently meta.

His hands are still on the wheel [del.icio.us]

2008-06-20T09:34:15-07:00

But, then, where else would he put them?

Surviving the Hits - Measure for Measure - New York Times Blog [del.icio.us]

2008-06-19T07:00:04-07:00

Revealing and honest article by Suzanne Vega, about being a 'two-hit wonder'.

When Candy Design Goes Terribly, Hilariously Wrong [del.icio.us]

2008-06-12T13:18:20-07:00

Nobody turned these things sideways?

For the Prom... [del.icio.us]

2008-06-10T13:55:56-07:00

I only looked this way after the prom.