Have Camera Will Travel

Ms Sandiford to be executed for drug trafficking.

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:24:00 GMT

Lindsay Sandiford was arrested in May last year after she tried to enter the Indonesian holiday island with illegal drugs worth £1.6 million hidden in her suitcase.

Local prosecutors had called for the 56-year-old housewife to be jailed for 15 years. But today there were gasps in the Bali courtroom when a panel of judges announced Ms Sandiford would be executed for drug trafficking.

As the shock verdict was announced, Ms Sandiford, from Gloucestershire, slumped back in her chair in tears before hiding her face with a brown sarong as she was led out of the courtroom.

Marbella Forest Fire

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Sun, 2 Sep 2012 20:00:00 +0100

OwnFone: A Custom-Printed Phone Perfect for Seniors and Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:22:00 +0100

Some people need all the latest apps and features available on their smartphone so they can be connected 24/7, while others just want to make a phone call. For the connected crowd, read all the latest reviews onMashable. For the others, check out the OwnFone.

It’s designed to call only the people you want to reach most frequently. In fact, it can only hold 12 contacts. There are no keys or buttons to program. Instead you let OwnFone know who you want to add, and they program and send you a custom-printed phone, about the size of a credit card.

If you lose it, they just print you a new one. You do need to call OwnFone support if you need to change someone’s number, or add a contact.

OwnFone says it plans to come out with a phone that can be customized in braille in the near future. Right now OwnFone is only available in the UK.

Check out the video above for more details and let us know what you think of a printed, pre-programmed cell phone.

Estepona Wild Fires rage on a 2km front

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 01:33:00 +0100

Police and Ambulances hurried to evacuate as wild fires quickly spread our reporter on the scene photographer the devastation

Estepona on Fire

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 01:20:00 +0100

We had a tiny little fire today, which they put out.

Then an hour later, it restarted, and spread along 2 Klm of the coast.

It was horrible seeing old people being run out of their homes, and carried through the smoke by police and ambulances.

The pictures really doesn,t do show bad it really was.many houses have gone

During experiments on the axons of the Woods Hole squid (loligo pealei), we tested our cockroach leg stimulus protocol on the squid's chromatophores.

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 12:01:00 +0100

The results were both interesting and beautiful. The video is a view through an 8x microscope zoomed in on the dorsal side of the caudal fin of the squid. We used a suction electrode to stimulate the fin nerve. Chromatophores are pigmeted cells that come in 3 colors: Brown, Red, and Yellow. Each chromatophore is lined with up to 16 muscles that contract to reveal their color.

Paloma T. Gonzalez-Bellido of Roger Hanlon's Lab in the Marine Resource Center of the Marine Biological Labs helped us with the preparation. You can read their latest paper at:http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/08/13/rspb.2012.1374

London's secret music venue and their livestream act

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:24:00 +0100

With an invite-only door policy and super secret location, Boiler Room is London's most exclusive music venue. But elitism isn't the premise for its clandestine nature—in fact, anyone with an Internet connection can easily join in the fun. Using a simple webcam, the crew behind Boiler Room livestreams each set for the world to see free of charge, and each month more than a million viewers tune in to see performances by artists like James Blake, The xx, Roots Manuva, Neon Indian, Juan Maclean and more.

We recently chilled out to the smooth sounds of Brooklyn's How To Dress Well before rocking out to revered musician Matthew Dear, who brought down the house with an intense 40-minute DJ set. Keep an eye out for our interview with Dear, but for now you can get a little more insight into the underground music scene's most talked about livestream show by checking out our interview with assistant musical programmer and Boiler Room host Nic Tasker.

How important is it for Boiler Room to remain secret, at least in its location?

That is quite an important aspect of it, purely because it means when you do shows you don't get a lot of groupies, pretty much everyone in the room is either a friend of ours or one of the artist's. It helps to create a more relaxed atmosphere for the artist and I think they feel less pressure. They're also just able to chill out and be themselves more rather than having people being like, "Hi can I get your autograph?" If the artists are relaxed usually you get the best music.

It seems like there is more interaction among the crowd than at a typical venue, is that intentional?

It's definitely a social place. All the people that come down, most of them we know and they're all our friends. So they come down, hang, have a drink and just chill out, basically. From our very set-up, we do it with a webcam, we're not a highly professional organization but I think that's kind of the charm of it. The main thing is people come down with the right attitude.

How much of the show is prescribed?

I guess that depends on the artist. We never say anything. Literally, whatever they want to do—we're kind of the platform for them to do whatever they want, so if Matthew Dear wants to come and play an hour of noise with no beats, he can do that. That's fine with us, and I think that's why artists like coming to play for us. We're not like a club where you have to make people dance, we don't give a shit if people dance. It's nice if they do and it makes it more fun, but some nights you just get people appreciating the music, which is equally fun.

Is there a particular kind of artist you guys look for and ask to come perform?

No, not particularly, it's just whatever we're feeling. Thristian [Boiler Room's co-founder] has the main say on musical direction, but it's a massive team effort. In London there's five of us, New York there's two, LA there's one and Berlin there's two.

Tonight you had different set-ups for each artist, do you tailor their positioning in the room to their style?

It definitely depends on the act and what kind of music they do. With live bands we found what works nicely is having them opposite each other because it's like they're in rehearsal, like they're just jamming. Which is again trying to give them that chilled out feel that they're just at home jamming and there happens to be a camera there. For some of our shows we've had over 100,000 viewers. When you think of those numbers it's quite scary, but when you're in the room and it's all friends it creates that vibe that people don't mind. You can imagine if you had all those people in front of you it would be a very different situation.

Have you ever thought of Boiler Room as an East London version of Soul Train?

It's never crossed my mind like that, but I can see why you think that. I like to think of us as the new music broadcaster, kind of the new MTV, but obviously we operate in the underground scene mainly. But I like to think that what we do is as revolutionary as what they were doing. We're always growing into something new.

What's up next for Boiler Room?

We have had visual people in doing 3D mapping, and that's something we're looking forward to progressing—doing more with the visuals. We've got the upstairs as well, we're starting to do breakfast shows with some high profile DJs, we're going to be doing that regularly. Each will have an individual format. The next step is progressing the US shows, we're alternating weekly between New York and LA, so the next step is to take Boiler Room to America

Breaking Free of the Co-dependency Trap presents a groundbreaking developmental road map to guide readers away from their co-dependent behaviors and toward a life of wholeness and fulfillment.

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 10:07:00 +0100

Breaking Free of the Co-dependency Trap presents a groundbreaking developmental road map to guide readers away from their co-dependent behaviors and toward a life of wholeness and fulfillment.UK Citizens

This is the book that offers a different perspective on codependency and is strongly recommended by Dream Warrior Recovery as part of a solution based recovery. This bestselling book, now in a revised edition, radically challenges the prevailing medical definition of co-dependency as a permanent, progressive, and incurable addiction. Rather, the authors identify it as the result of developmental traumas that interfered with the infant-parent bonding relationship during the first year of life.US Citizens

Drawing on decades of clinical experience, Barry and Janae Weinhold correlate the developmental causes of co-dependency with relationship problems later in life, such as establishing and maintaining boundaries, clinging and dependent behaviors, people pleasing, and difficulty achieving success in the world. Then they focus on healing co-dependency, providing compelling case histories and practical activities to help readers heal early trauma and transform themselves and their primary relationships.

Vintage Ads Most Disturbing Household Products

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 05:27:00 +0100

Maybe. But it's really hard to see how even our parents and grandparents didn't get nightmares from ...

#13. Three-Legged Dingo Boots

vintageadbrowser.com

The Message:

Here are some boots that you should buy, because famous people wear them. Three of them.

The Horror:

Wait, what?

Yes, amazingly, the fact that this ad stars a pre-murder O.J. Simpson is the second-creepiest thing about it. And you can squint and try to read the text all you want -- it makes no reference whatsoever to the fact that their spokesperson has three legs. There's no cute slogan like "Boots so comfortable, you'll wish you had another foot!" Nope. It's like some guy in the art department just said, "Eh, I don't like how you can't really see the chair, let's just add another leg to fill that space."

We know what you're thinking: "Cracked, this is obviously a subtle 'big dick' joke. 'Third leg?' Get it?" But, no, it turns out this was a whole campaign they did with various celebrities, some of whom are women:

eBay
Like, uh ... this famous lady right here.

But O.J. seems to be the most frequent star of the "Third Leg" campaign, which apparently lasted for years. Note how his afro shrinks as he gets more comfortable with his new appendage:

The picture in that third ad would have been perfect for the cover of his book.

Please don't blame us for the inevitable nightmare in which O.J. is running after you, in the dark, those three boots pounding down the pavement after you with a noise like a wounded horse.

#12. Lord West Suits Will Impress Your 7-Year-Old Date

vintageadbrowser.com
"I like my women like I like my code names: 007."

The Message:

Women of all ages dig men in tuxedos!

The Horror:

According to the text, this dinner suit is for "sophisticated traditionalists," a euphemism we weren't previously aware of for "child molesters." Because there's no other way to interpret this picture. That's not tenderness on their faces. That's hunger. If you told us that they're a father and daughter, that would only make it creepier.

And it turns out that this is only the worst example in a whole series of ads associating little girls with selling tuxedos.

eBay
The style is best described as Godfather meets Lolita.

Can you imagine the pitch meeting that led to this campaign? Picture Don Draper from Mad Men standing before his clients, selling them on this idea:

"Class. Elegance. Making out with little girls. These are the values your company represents."

"Did ... did you say 'making out with little girls,' Don?"

"Yes," replied Don with perfect confidence.

"OK, just making sure."

Sitting at the end of the table, Peggy looks at Don and smiles. He did it again.

#11. Man in Tuxedo Carefully Considers Naked Child

library.duke.edu
"Told you it was bigger. Now pay up."

The Message:

Regular soap sinks in the bathtub, causing children to take longer in washing themselves and their fathers to get angry and spank them. Prevent child abuse by buying Ivory Soap -- it floats.

The Horror:

OK, they're clearly just fucking with us at this point. Remove the text and the message becomes clear: "In the old days, child predators used to dress way better than they do now." But let's put the pedophilia overtones aside for the moment and examine the text.

Was the elaborate scenario described under the picture (involving childhoods ruined by non-floating soap) really such a common problem in the '20s, or was this based on the painful personal experiences of whoever commissioned this ad? We're betting on the latter option. Note that the father's body language doesn't say "I'm going to spank you" -- he's clearly pondering which part of the kid's body to break first.

"Maybe the 28th trimester isn't too late for an abortion."

#10. "Are You Sure I'll Still Be a Virgin?"

thesocietypages.org
"If you didn't think band camp counted, I don't see why you'd think this would."

The Message:

Don't worry, teens, you can use Tampax tampons without losing your virginity.

The Horror:

Be honest: How many of you looked at this picture and immediately recognized it as a Tampax ad? And how many looked at it and thought it depicted a teenage girl being sexually propositioned? It's not just us, is it?

This ad would have looked 90 percent less sordid if both people involved were clearly visible. Instead, the second teenager is for some reason sitting on the floor of the porch with her back to us, so we can't see how young, or scared, she is. But, of course, all of that is purely from our own depraved imagination. The real ad is simply about two teenagers debating whether or not inserting a tampon counts as sex.

#9. Escaped Convicts Love Revell Authentic Model Kits

vintageadbrowser.com
"Is this the new plan, boss?"
"I've spent all day plotting against Superman; this is 'Lex Time'."

The Message:

Hey kids! Check out these sweet model kits!

The Horror:

There's only one possible scenario in which this picture could have come to exist: The photographers were getting ready to shoot this ad when they realized that the boy who was supposed to be holding up the models in the picture never showed up for work. Panicking, the man from the ad agency looked around the studio.

"Dmitri, can you come here for a second?" he said to the guy who fixes the lighting. "Stand here and hold this model. Yes, that's great. You'll play the boy in this ad."

"But sir," said the photographer, "Dmitri was just released from jail. In fact, he's still wearing the prison jumpsuit."

"No, no, he's perfect. Look at him. Look at that childlike innocence in his face."

"Could you open the top button maybe, show a little chest hair?"

"Perfect."

#8. Our Competitors = Surgical Ass Torture

vintageadbrowser.com
"Don't worry, sir, the gloves are just to establish atmosphere."

The Message:

Using cheap toilet paper can lead to medical complications.

The Horror:

... which in turn can lead to rubber-gloved hands inserting clamps in your anus. Better play it safe and go with Scott Tissues.

This attempt to traumatize customers into buying their product with threats of anal torture was part of a whole marketing campaign created during the Great Depression in which Scott Tissues' slogan went from "Wipe your butt with us" to "Wipe your butt with us, or die in a world of asshole pain."

Of course, it was all bullshit: There's no such thing as "toilet tissue illness," it was just a thing they made up to convince people to keep buying tissues at a time when they were lucky enough if they had a toilet.

#7. "Before You Scold Me, Mom ... Maybe You'd Better Light Up a Marlboro"

deceptology.com

The Message:

Before you beat your baby for stealing your favorite hat, have a cigarette and relax yourself. Then beat the baby.

The Horror:

How many times did this months-old child have to be punched before it learned to pick up the Marlboros and offer them to mommy to calm her down? If that's not the saddest thing you've imagined all week, you're dead inside. This is actually one in a series of ads from the '50s, back when Marlboro was targeting mommies instead of rugged cowboys. Sometimes the babies actually seem to be guilting their moms into smoking more.

tobacco.stanford.edu
"You turned me into an addict when I was a fetus, now deal with it."

Oddly enough, the version of this ad aimed at fathers doesn't involve scolding, but a pompous baby in a basket defending daddy's rather feminine cigarette tastes (note the reference to "beauty tips" at the bottom).

tobacco.stanford.edu
This is the kind of debate babies have all the time.

Paper Passion, a scent from Geza Schoen for Wallpaper magazine, makes its wearers smell like freshly printed books

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:38:00 +0100

Paper Passion, a scent from Geza Schoen for Wallpaper* magazine, makes its wearers smell like freshly printed books. I suppose it can be alternated with "In the Library," a perfume that smells like old books.

Paper Passion fragrance by Geza Schoen, Gerhard Steidl, and Wallpaper* magazine, with packaging by Karl Lagerfeld and Steidl.
“The smell of a freshly printed book is the best smell in the world.” Karl Lagerfeld.

It comes packaged with inside a hollow carved out of a book with "texts" by "Karl Lagerfeld, Günter Grass, Geza Schoen and Tony Chambers."

HANGING OUT WITH FRIENDS TODAY

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:33:00 +0100

Grabbing a cup of coffee

Dining out at your favourite restaurant

Spending some time at the museum

Meeting at a popular fast food centre

Relaxing at the beach

Going to a game

Going out on a date

Taking a drive around town

I am thankful I belong to another generation !!!!

“It’s become appallingly clear that our Technology has surpassed our Humanity” -- Albert Einstein

Tattoos are permanent reminders of temporary feelings

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 14:46:00 +0100

'It's wisest to pick someone whom you cannot break up with or divorce.' Photograph: Gary Powell/Getty Images

Tattoos are permanent reminders of temporary feelings – at least if you believe the report in Thursday's Daily Mail, which looked at "embarrassing" matching couple tattoos – designs that complement or complete each other across two, romantically involved bodies.

Yet there are millions of people who feel no embarrassment about the tattoos they share with their friends, lovers and even exes. Moreover, as with most perceived "new trends" in tattooing, this practice is one with a history far older than the current generation; it's a phenomenon that provides both an insight into human beings' fundamental relationships with their own bodies and the bodies and lives of those close to them.

Tattoos have been used as markers of association for probably as long as human beings have walked the earth, to mark tribal affiliations, regimental membership in the military, membership of fraternal orders such as the masons or US college Greek letter groups, and to signify gang membership.

The most common of these types of affiliative tattoos, though, is marking an attachment to a loved one. There's an old adage in tattooed circles that suggests getting your lover's name tattooed on you is a sure kiss of death for that relationship, and it's an old gag too: Norman Rockwell's famous 1944 Saturday Evening Post cover painting, The Tattooist, shows a salty sailor in the tattooist's chair, having yet another name added to an arm already full of the crossed-out names of past paramours. Even earlier, a cartoon in Punch from 1916 shows a "fickle young thing" – a well-turned-out young woman, as it happens – revisiting her tattooist to seek an amendment to the ornamental crest tattoo on her arm as she has, euphemistically, "exchanged into another regiment".

None of this seems to have affected the long-standing popularity of having names or symbols tattooed to commemorate couples' love and bond. Magazines in the 1920s reported the latest fad for newlyweds was getting matching tattooed wedding rings; preserved tattooed skins in the Wellcome Collection from the late 19th century feature names and portraits of lovers; studies of tattoos in the American navy in the 18th century reveal a large percentage of seamen of the period bore tattoos of the names of women; even Christian pilgrims in the 16th century were recorded to have borne the names of their wives on their skins, as tokens or identificatory marks; and records attest to romantic tattooing even in ancient Rome – St Basil the Great (329-380) is said to have condemned the tattooing of a lover's name that he observed on someone's hand. While I'd certainly never advocate getting a permanent mark of your relationship too hastily, it does seem that the instinct to inscribe a permanent token transcends the ages. Caveat amator.

Single tattoos that span multiple bodies appear to be a more recent phenomenon, however. In 1977, New York-based tattoo artist Spider Webb undertook what was probably the first conceptual art project to use tattooing, in a piece called X-1000, in which he tattooed single, small Xs on to 999 individuals, and, as a culmination, one large X on the final, 1,000th skin, conceived as one contiguous work. This tattoo, potentially spanning thousands of miles at any one time, was, Webb said, "the largest tattoo ever done at any point in history". In 2000, as the culmination to a performance art project begun in 1998 designed to highlight the horrific lives and plights of the homeless and hungry in Mexico City, Santiago Sierra produced his piece 160cm Line Tattooed on Four People, a single black line tattooed across the backs of prostitutes in exchange for wraps of heroin, as a symbol of their desperation, interdependence, and utter powerlessness. Sierra would later remark: "You could make this tattooed line a kilometre long, using thousands and thousands of willing people." In 2003, author Shelley Jackson famously published her short story Skin on the bodies of 2095, one tattooed word per person. These tattoos bring together strangers in common cause.

My favourite set of matching tattoos, though, are probably the ongoing collection of work worn by twins Caleb and Jordan Kilby, tattooed with matching work by influential and extraordinarily talented New York-based artist Thomas Hooper. If you must get matching tattoos with someone, it's wisest to pick someone whom you cannot break up with or divorce, and to get the work carried out by a tattoo artist who will produce a piece of work that will stand the test of time on its own terms.

Latvian company creates leather bound Ferrari

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:22:00 +0100

We're familiar with seeing tight leather on smoking hot women, and weird old men, but it's a first for us seeing a leather bound Ferrari F430.

There seems to be a lot of fuss over this leather bound Ferrari F430 in the UK with both The Sun and The Daily Mail reporting about it recently.

However, this isn’t a new car by any means as US motoring blog Jalopnikreported on the F430 way back in August last year. It’s a pretty cool, albeit manky, car so we thought we’d show you anyway.

It’s the work of a Latvian custom car company called Dartz who hit the headlines in 2009 when they created a $1.5 million ruby red SUV with whale foreskin-covered seats. Yes, foreskin…

Anyway, some high roller with more cash then sense decided it would be a great idea to cover his €170,000 Ferrari in dark leather.

The owner of Dartz, Leonard Yankelovich, said: "One of our very rich customers from the Cote d'Azur wanted a leather exterior and knew we could deliver.

"It took three of my staff 16 working days to apply the leather and finish. He was more than happy when he picked it up."

He won’t be too happy when he scratches it though.

Is this the most expensive way to ruin a Ferrari?

The Deutsche Börse photography prize exhibition has always presented a roving eye across different kinds of photography and photographic images.

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 09:36:00 +0100

A detail from Muse (Film Portrait Collage) XVIII (2012) by John Stezaker, shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse photography prize. Click for full picture. Photograph: Alex Delfanne/Courtesy of the artist and The Approach, London

The South African photographer Pieter Hugo's images of the human and animal inhabitants of the Agbogbloshie, in Ghana's capital Accra, present a record of a dismal work and an appalling place. With its hellish fires and acres of dead computers, its wandering cattle and scavenging inhabitants, Agbogbloshie is a rubbish dump and reclamation site for defunct electronic goods. A girl in a tatty white dress and a bowl on her head poses amidst the smoking landscape. A cow sits before a broken keyboard. A young man, with a nest of scrabbly wiring on his head and an old tire over his shoulder, might almost be modelling a piece of mad millinery. It is all horribly photogenic. Well aware that many other photographers and writers have been here before him, Hugo still succumbs to the same photojournalistic cliches his work tries to escape.

The Deutsche Börse photography prize

The Photographers' Gallery, London
13 July – 9 September 2012

However delicate her arrays of small images I feel much the same about the Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi's images, hung in clusters and groupings and runs of images. A web of crochet-work, a pallid spider, a full moon. Here are some tadpoles, and there they go again, wriggling their amphibian tails across a video screen inset in the wall among the still images. After the tadpoles, fireworks, exploding with that same wriggly rhythm. Some images are blown up big: light catching a motorcycle side-mirror, a tiny green frog sitting on someone's hand, a baby suckling at a breast. Wolfgang Tillmans, who uses similar methods of juxtaposition, scale jumps and leaps of subject matter, is better.

The American Christopher Williams shows just three largish photographs: a sumptuous, carefully composed shot of green and red developing trays in a photo-lab still life; a finger pressing a button on some kind of photographic flash machine; a tubular bale of hay in a field, shot in black and white. I'm as aware of the long intervals of white wall Williams has put between his images as I am of the pictures themselves. It all looks deeply meaningful, portentous and clever, but is somehow academic and feels dead. Maybe it's meant to.

John Stezaker's work is also photography about photography. He doesn't even take the photos himself. But Stezaker is by miles the best image-maker here. He has that great unteachable gift: an eye and a sensibility. Splicing old Hollywood publicity shots, marrying male and female faces, or – by an apparently simple act of gluing – sticking an old postcard over half a woman's face, he creates marvellous, funny, disturbing androgynies and what appear to be psychological crises in his subject's faces. No matter how long you look at them, Stezaker's hand-cut collaged images never lose their strange dynamism. A number of tiny, singular greyed details, cut from the incidental backgrounds of larger images in a 1920 compendium called Countries of the World, show single men and women walking and standing at kerbs and beside railings. A man and his shadow take a walk. Tiny figures cross a square. These miniscule details, smaller than stamps, ache with their frozen, fleeting human presences. Space and time collapse as you stare, nose to the glass. Another man stops and turns on a country road, as though disturbed by our looking. These people probably never knew that their passing had been recorded. Stezaker's 3rd Person Archive, this collection of hundreds of such image-fragments, is one of photography's great lost and found works, a major work masquerading as an archival curiosity. Photographer or not, he alone deserves the prize.

It sells out in days, is read in 45 countries and has been called the world's hippest interiors magazine.

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 09:34:00 +0100

Apartamento magazine's Omar Sosa, left, and Nacho Alegre

Media news might be dominated by the decline of print, but Apartamento is quietly bucking the trend. Back in April, its founders, Nacho Alegre and Omar Sosa, celebrated as they sold all 25,000 copies of its ninth issue. The biannual, English-language publication was started in Barcelona from a tiny room in Alegre's house, yet now hits newsstands in China, Lebanon and Kenya, as well as recording big sales in Berlin, London and New York. One London shop reported selling 140 copies, compared to the 15 or so copies the rest of the magazines it stocks usually sell.

Unlike many traditional interiors magazines, which feature cold, minimalist rooms full of unaffordable designer gadgets, the living spaces in Apartamento are often small, cluttered and have a lived-in feel. The people covered are largely creative types – photographers, artists, musicians – who are invited to talk about their living spaces.

Media news might be dominated by the decline of print sales, but for the past four years Apartamento has been quietly bucking the trend

These spaces are often rented, with family members, dirty laundry and used crockery all starring in photoshoots. Past features have included everything from tips for rooftop gardens and salad recipes to stories of nightmare roommates and a love letter fromChloë Sevigny to her New York apartment.

"It's not about design and products. We're not design fetishists," said Alegre. "The idea is about how people live in their homes and being able to tell their amazing stories. It's more like a diary."

Alegre and Sosa came up with the idea based partly on Alegre's experiences sleeping on friends' couches as he travelled across Europe as a photographer. It was originally planned to be a book before the pair hit upon the idea of an interiors magazine with a twist. The first issue, in April 2008, was funded entirely by the pair and quickly sold out its print run of 5,000. The money meant they could upscale in time for the third issue and recruit more people, such as Milan journalist Marco Velardi. There are currently seven full-time staff, aged between 24 and 32, and it has started to expand into a creative agency with footholds in New York and Milan as well as its HQ in Barcelona.

Apartamento's first issue featured cult filmmaker Mike Mills and indie band Mystery Jets, sourced through their network of work contacts and friends. Since then names as diverse as Swedish artist Carl Johan De Geer and former REM frontman Michael Stipe have featured, although even these are rarely contacted through traditional press avenues. "We're friends with Michael Stipe's boyfriend, who is a really good photographer," says Alegre. "You get a nice result that way, but it's not possible with everyone. We'd like to feature David Hockney but it's hard when you don't know anyone."

This naive approach gives the magazine much of its charm. Yet there are other reasons that account for its impressive sales figures. Apartamento does not run trade news and refuses to run articles that sell products for fear it will corrupt the spirit of the magazine. It charges a high cover price of €12 (£9.50), bucking the trend to go free and rely on advertising, which is minimal. Apartamento is also distributed directly to shops – concept stores and bookshops as well as newsstands – giving more control and a bigger slice of profits. Its chief operations officer, Victor Abellan, believes that the distribution network is in keeping with the magazine's ethos: "Speaking directly to stores gives us an emotional link between the reader, the retailer and the magazine."

. Rather, the whole thing has a strong human aspect, linking homes to the people who live in them rather than the items contained within. As designer Andy Beach says in issue seven: "A real living space is made from living, not decorating. A bored materialist can't understand that a house has to become a home."

Jeremy Leslie, magazine designer and founder of the blogmagculture.com, said Apartamento has several unique aspects. "Most of their articles lead with the name of the person rather than the solutions-based '10 ways to improve your storage' routine of other magazines," he says. He says its design has also helped it stand out, with high pagination and single columns of text lending it a bookish air. Its founders may not be "design fetishists", but Apartamento is held in high esteem in the design world – in 2010 it won the Yellow Pencil award for the best magazine.

Leslie's view that the decline of print does not mean that great magazine ideas can't take off is backed up by statistics such as an April study byDeloitte that found 88% of UK magazine readers still chose print as their preferred method of reading articles, with 35% subscribing to at least one printed magazine in 2011.

There are parallels with Apartamento's rise and how Vice magazineturned the style magazine on its head by targeting a different kind of reader to more traditional magazines. Although Alegre says Apartamento is not meant as a reaction to interior design magazines such as wallpaper*, it has clearly tapped into an area of home life and creativity previously under-served by such publications. Already there are plans to upscale Apartamento's circulation until it hits a "steady state" of 80,000 copies. However, Alegre is adamant that what is most important is retaining the magazine's spirit. . "It could get massive with us doing advertorials and running pieces about how nice companies are and how ecological their wood is," he said. "But we don't care about making lots of money from doing things the wrong way – we'd sooner not have to compromise."

series of hyper-realistic images entitled 'bodybuilder's world'. the personal project

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 09:32:00 +0100

belgian photographer kurt stallaert has conceived a series of hyper-realistic images entitled 'bodybuilder's world'. the personal project
suggests an imaginary world with a literal 'powerful twist'. at first glance the subjects look ordinary in their daily surroundings,
but on closer inspection they have been augmented to look like avid members of the professional fitness sport. the faces of the individuals,
often those of children, are attached to the superhuman trunk of a bodybuilder generating a peculiar sense of curiosity, particularly
within the everyday life setting.

the faces of children are attached to those of bodybuilders

the subjects are often within an everyday life setting

artists have shown us how to look past the rain and see its beauty.

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 09:29:00 +0100

Rock stars … Jonathan Jones inspects the prehistoric ‘land art’ in Avebury. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

A giant rock rises up out of the field, a ragged, jagged colossus unmoved by the wind and driving rain. Further along the path looms another, then another, then another, all arranged in a curving line that vanishes behind a church tower and a barn. Meanwhile, on a patch of grass, two massive, lozenge-shaped stones stand tall in front of the Red Lion pub. Everywhere you look, in fact, there are eerie, unexplained slabs – jutting into what ought to be just another charming Wiltshire village.

The three stone circles of Avebury are a masterpiece of land art. That term is more often used to describe 20th-century works, the sort that reside in craters or sit by lakes in the American west. Yet when you look at, say, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, the curling pier made of rocks and earth he built in Utah's Great Salt Lake in 1970, it is clearly inspired by the henges of prehistoric Britain. Avebury is one of the most haunting of these monuments. Although it was created 5,000 to 4,500 years ago, by people who left no writing of any kind to explain their intentions, it seems likely the stones and ditches that pepper Avebury had a religious purpose: they were meant to commemorate ancestors, to commune with the dead. As you walk around these immense, twisted stones, faces and agonised figures seem to rise to the surface.

Inside Kettle’s Yard gallery in Cambridge. Photograph: Paul Allitt

Modern artists in far-flung places have taken inspiration from Britain's prehistoric wonders for a good reason: Avebury's stone circles have shaped this landscape with a sublime and mysterious power that has endured down the ages. But what makes them art? And what makes them British? These are questions I'll be asking myself over the coming months, in a new series for guardian.co.uk: every day, I'll try to tell the story of British art, one image, object or structure at a time. And I've started by visiting Avebury, York Minster and Kettle's Yard gallery in Cambridge – all homes to great British art, from the prehistoric, medieval and modern periods.

What connects these places? Is there a common theme? British art really just means art made on these isles, but the moment you scratch at its "Britishness" you find multiculturalism is nothing new. From Avebury, I travelled north (and forwards a few thousand years) to York Minster, where some of the best-preserved stained glass in Britain creates a spectacle of colour that changes as daylight waxes and wanes. As I wandered through the hushed interior, sunlight struck one window, sending a stream of deep reds and blues across the stonework. It was a moment of pure ethereal beauty, a medieval light show that has lost none of its power.

York Minster's Five Sisters window

One tall window looked as if its images had melted away, damaged perhaps in one of the fires that have ravaged York Minster. But on closer inspection, the blue-grey glass of the towering Five Sisters Window is patterned in an elaborately geometric manner; it seems almost computer-generated. Surely these designs were influenced by the Islamic tiles British knights off on crusades in the east would have seen? This 13th-century window rejects figurative fuss in favour of pure mathematics and subtle, suggestive shades of colour. What, in theory, could be more British than York Minster? And yet the influence of Islam glows in its most impressive window.

The truth is that, for most of its history, British art was not self-consciously British at all. Islamic influences aside, the medieval art on these isles is deeply shaped by France, Europe's cultural leader in the middle ages. Before heading for Cambridge, I took a detour into the 18th century to explore the emergence of a more patriotic style. At Chatsworth House in Derbyshire hangs Thomas Gainsborough's Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, her beauty caught in a rapidly painted swirl of hair and silks. This was once the most expensivepainting in the world, financier JP Morgan having paid $150,000 for it in 1901.

This is what many people mean by truly British art: a tremendous Gainsborough portrait of a posh person. It reflects the fact that, in the 18th century, some artists began to define themselves as British in style and attitude. The first to aggressively promote himself this way was William Hogarth, who mocks the scrawny French in his 1748 painting O the Roast Beef of Old England. In the art of Gainsborough, and even more so in the work of Constable and Turner in the Regency period, you can practically smell the countryside, hear the rain, taste the ale.

Critics have traditionally seen such paintings as the essence of British art. But, while I love these artists, their work is just one strand among many that have shaped our history. You only have to walk out of Chatsworth House into its gardens to see that. With its roaring cascade, its colossal rock garden and vistas sculpted by Capability Brown, this landscape is one vast art installation, as astonishing, in its way, as Avebury. Landscape gardens are the British aristocracy's great gift to the world of art, and self-consciously international in their influences. At Chatsworth, I sheltered from the rain in a temple created by a French designer in the early 1700s. I looked out on to a landscape peopled by statues of Greek gods. Not so Little Britain.

I don't think our country has some overarching national genius, some artistic gene passed down the cultural bloodline; but I do believe there is one thing uniquely British about the art that is made here. The simple geography of its creation has consequences: art has responded to, and has helped make, our landscape. A passion for the land of Britain, its jutting rocks and its soaring oaks, is what connects Avebury and Gainsborough.

My last stop ushered me back to modern times. Kettle's Yard was a ramshackle, falling-down cottage when the 20th-century art collector Jim Ede first came across it in the 1950s. He transformed it into a magical place that contains both a vision of art and a vision of Britain. As I picked my way around the gallery, the wan East Anglian light cast a silver-grey hue that suited the simply furnished rooms housing gently placed works by such modernists as Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore and the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Smoothly chiselled organic forms in white and black stone invite the mind to slow down and make connections.

This house near the river Cam is so infused with a love of the land, it seems to have sprung from the very landscape. Ede saw modern British art as a natural extension of its ancient rocks. His house is full of pebbles he collected, like some stone-age aesthete, for their beauty; images of Britain's stone age circles recur in the paintings on the walls. In one tangled dream picture, Vexilla Regis by the Welsh poet and artist David Jones, mystical enchantresses float through a wooded landscape that evokes the legends of King Arthur and the Mabinogion. Way off in the distance of this 1948 work, Jones has drawn a stone circle, a symbol of all the mystery and possibility that waits, silent, in the British landscape.

It takes me straight back to Avebury. As rainwater pooled in the crevices of its ancient stones, I contemplated the green landscape rolling away under the steel sky. This is where we live, I thought – and, down the ages, artists have shown us how to look past the rain and see its beauty.

Freeze Fresh Herbs in Oil to Preserve Them

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Thu, 5 Jul 2012 13:08:00 +0100

Have a few fresh herbs sitting around that you won't get to using before they turn? Sure, you can freeze them in water or dry them out, but if you know you'll use them relatively quickly, you can add a few weeks to their life without damaging their potency by freezing them in oil instead. We've shown you how to make simply syrups with them, and how to use sea salt to dry them, but if you have some lovely herbs you want to use, but won't get to before they turn brown, consider dropping them in an ice cube tray, filling up the cubes with olive oil (or any other oil of your choice, as long as it freezes nicely), and popping them in the freezer. When you're ready to fry some potatoes, for example, pop out a couple of rosemary oil cubes—you'll need the oil for the pan anyway, and the rosemary will be right at home. Need some oil in a baking dish or crock pot for a few chicken breasts? Grab a frozen sage oil cube. The sky's the limit. The only thing to note is that with some herbs have a shorter shelf life when frozen in oil than in water (like garlic, for example), so this won't beat drying if you're looking to keep your herbs fresh for months and months. It will, however, work for weeks on end, and if you freeze them, pop them out of the ice cube trays and put them into zippered baggies, they'll keep even longer. Then, the next time you need oil for a recipe, you can add a little fresh flavor at the same time. Hit the link below for even more oil-freezing tips, and some tips on which herbs take well to freezing and which don't.

mclaren 12C spider convertible

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Tue, 3 Jul 2012 19:45:00 +0100

'MP4-12C spider' by mclaren

mclaren automotive has produced its second 'MP4-12C' model, the '12C spider'. bred through the essence of a race car, the '12C spider' incorporates a

convertible roof explicitly designed to let users experience the sounds of the vehicle's V8 twin turbo engine. unlike many other convertible models,
the hard top roof can be operated whilst moving at speeds of up to 30 kph (20mph) taking less than 17 seconds to raise or lower. with the '12C' originally
designed as a convertible, its 75kg carbon fibre monocle frame required no additional strengthening for it to feature in the 'spider'.

closing the hard-top

the raising of the roof frees 52 liters of space for storage. in 2013, vehicle lift will be available as an option, allowing for the '12C spider' to be raised
in the front and rear for improved ground clearance, up to 40mm (1.5") at the front and 25mm (1") at the rear.

the MP4-12C will be launched in 'volcano red', one of 17 exterior paint finishes currently available for the '12C' and '12C spider'.
first deliveries to customers are planned for november 2012.

closed top

3/4 top view

3/4 rear view

top view

interior view

specifications:

0-62 mph (0-100 kph) : 3.1 sec
0-100 mph (0-161 kph) : 6.1 sec
0-124 mph (0-200 kph) : 9.0 sec
¼ mile (400m) : 10.8 sec at 134 mph (216 kph)

engine configuration: V8 twin turbo, 7 speed automatic

star wars recreations of famous photographs

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Tue, 3 Jul 2012 14:53:00 +0100

a photo series by david eger recreates famous photos and paintings with star wars figurines and handcrafted sets
above: 'troopers raising the flag on iwo jima' (joe rosenthal's 'raising the flag on iwo jima')
all images © david eger
as part of a year-long project '365 days of clones', canadian art teacher david eger has recreated famous photographs and paintings
using star wars figurines. the scenography is done in real life rather than in photoshop, in a project that was eger's response to his
new year's resolution to pursue personal photographic endeavours more often.

eger photographed each piece on a date relevant to the original work: the anniversary of the date the photograph was taken
in the case of most contemporary pieces; or the birth or death dates of the artist for images like his recreations of pablo picasso's
'guernica' or leonardo da vinci's 'vitruvian man'.

'troopers atop a skyscraper' (charles c. ebbets's 'lunchtime atop a skyscraper')

'abbey road' (ilan macmillan's 'abbey road' cover shot of the beatles)

'galactic gothic' (grant wood's 'american gothic')

'B.F. boba fett' (cover of film 'E.T. extra terrestrial'), with yoda in bicycle basket

'migrant trooper' (dorothea lange's 'migrant mother' great depression photograph of florence owens)

'a royal kiss' (recreation of the wedding day first kiss of prince william and catherine middleton at the buckingham palace)

'gandhi' (margaret bourke-white's portrait of gandhi spinning cotton)

'million trooper march' (bob adelman's photograph of martin luther king jr.)

eger's setup for the 'million trooper march' recreation

'the cloned kiss' (alfred eisenstaedt's 'the kiss')

A British photographer's adorable images of puppies, ducklings and even kittens in hammocks will brighten up any rainy day.

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Tue, 3 Jul 2012 14:35:00 +0100

Master of cuteness Mark Taylor's images are in demand all over the world for the purr-fect way they capture a softer side to our best-loved animals.

His photographs are a legacy from his late mother Jane Burton who pioneered the style so familiar on calendars in offices and maths teacher classrooms everywhere.

Fosset the kitten with a yellow gosling: Photographer Mark Taylor is famous around the world for his cute shots of animals in unusual poses

Fosset cuddles up to his gosling friend: Mr Taylor's photographs are a legacy from his late mother Jane Burton who pioneered the style

Stanley the kitten with a duckling: Despite the menacing look in Stanley's eyes, Mr Taylor has never had any incidents where one subject ate another

Using a simple clean white background and some unusual animal pairings Mr Taylor's style has seen him make the cover of prestigious wildlife magazine National Geographic.

In this set of heart-warming images Mr Taylor shows why he's one of the best in his field tapping into that desire in us all to see something fluffy.

More...

Women cat owners are 'more likely to kill themselves' due to higher chance of infection with parasite found in feline faeces

From ducklings with puppies, to dogs with kittens and even rabbits Mark captures them all on camera as if they were the best and friends.

And thankfully so far he's had no case of any of them eating each other.

Hear me roar: Kittens Stanley and Fosset have a cuddle

Guess who! Stanley holds his paws over Fosset's face as they play

King of the castle: Stanley climbs on top of Fosset

Not just for Christmas: Stanley and Fosset pose inside a gift box

Touch on that: Stanley offers his paw for a fist bump. Right, he poses with a bright red flower

Oh you! Stanley gestures towards the camera as he lies in a hammock

Time for a cat nap: Stanley and Fosset enjoy a snooze

Keeping it in the family: Mr Taylor's daughter Siena, pictured with Stanley, helps to pose the animals for her father's photo shoots

Mr Taylor, 47, creates his images all at his home studio Warren Photographic, in Guildford, Surrey.

His father Kim is a world-renowned wildlife photographer. His mother Jane, who died in 2007 after a brave battle against cancer, was one of the first to use a unique style now so well adopted by her son.

Mr Taylor, a father of one, said: 'There have been a few close shaves when we have put the different animals together, but we often "introduce" the animals to a rabbit in a cage first to gauge the reaction.

'If the dog starts licking its lips we know it might not work out well, and for example it's best not to put a Jack Russell next to a rabbit.

'I have helpers in the studio and some of the animals extras we have here, for example we have six rabbits, but others we have to bring in.

'The key to the photograph is making sure the animals are not doing anything they don't want to do because I think you can tell if they are not enjoying themselves.

'My mother was a pioneer if you like of this idea of using the clean white backgrounds and I like to think I am carrying on her legacy.'

You wanna start something? Stanley goes nose to nose with a Bichon Fris

My big mate: Stanley nuzzles up with Great Dane pup Tia

Where u go? Stanley and Tia have a play

Keeping it in the family Mr Taylor's daughter Siena, 10, is also on hand to pose up with the animals in the pictures.

Mr Taylor, who uses a Cannon 1DS Mark III camera, said that he felt his photographs were so popular because they tap into an desire in us all to relate to animals.

He said: 'I think the fascinating aspect of this type of photography is that it taps into something in us all that sees ourselves and human emotions in our pets and other animals.'

Animal-human hybrid stickers invading Parisian streets

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 02:00:00 +0100

While marketing and mainstream communications campaigns have derived branding inspiration in the comic-like cartoon style of street art, and the values attached to its culture—freedom, community, transgression—the paradox still exists to see it framed and sold through traditional art channels.

We caught up with street artist Rafael Suriani at his recent show, "Collages Urbains", at Cabinet d'amateur gallery in Paris, where he told us more about street art and his relationship with the medium.

Suriani's mark features animals, surviving and thriving in the streets for its powerful and highly recognizable aesthetic. In his half-human-half-animal figures, the animal faces act as liberating masks, allowing the artist to express social criticism in an elegant way. The vibrant, seemingly playful creatures refrain from getting too serious and maintain a suggestive tone that avoids the obvious.

The stickers are the result of a double-binding process that first assembles man and animal, then adheres the resulting figure to the wall. In the past, Suriani has drawn from his Latin-American heritage, playing with shamanic mythology figures such as toucan or jaguar. In his recent series, on the other hand, he is more interested in urban domestic animals such as cats and dogs—according to the artist, the convention that they tend to resemble their owners offers a metaphoric way to talk about us people. Recently Suriani made a series of French "Bulldogs" as a special dedication on London walls, using this breed to cartoon and make fun of some French characteristics. Each dog expresses a different state of mind—humor, spirituality, criticism or beauty.

Suriani uses the rare technique of hand-painting every poster he sticks on the streets. Making each sticker is the result of a process involving selecting photos from the Internet, cutting them in Photoshop, then screening and painting before cutting the final product. Such repetition lies at the heart of street art practice, which is often based on plastering as many spots as possible, invasion-style.

When considering the ephemeral fate of the piece of work destined for degradation of the elements, police destruction or theft from passers-by, the time and effort for such little reward seems remarkable. Suriani explains, however, that the fleeting nature of his work is freeing and allows him to be audacious with both subject and technique. To him, because there is no pressure or constraint, that achievement is rarely a failure.

In the end, the piece of art is not the only sticker by itself, it is the sticker in its context, seen as a whole on the wall with the daylight shining on it, the motorbikes parked against it or the branch of a tree creeping across. Rarely is the work's time spent on the wall its only life, after all, with the rise of dedicated photographers immortalizing the scenes for the Internet.

Suriani claims his intention to step into the city's landscape by bringing much-needed beauty comes with a positive message. Rather than being aggressive or controversial, Suriani takes pleasure in having people on the street enjoy his figures. His work is bound to the city—physically, geographically and socially—compelling the public to refresh their view of their surroundings and drawing their eyes to the places that typically go unnoticed. As an architect, Suriani has found a way to unveil the city and change people's perception of the scenes they see everyday without truly seeing them. The choice of venue is very important, based on aesthetic consideration with attention to the context and surroundings like the location.

EURO 2012 POSTERS BY DAVID WATSON

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 01:43:00 +0100

Euro 2012 recently began and, for those of you who don’t know, it’s the European football championship. European football is what we Americans call soccer, and it has slowly gained steam over the years, although still not as popular as American football… Whether you’re into the championship or not (or even sports in general), you’ll probably love these simple, modern posters David Watson ofTrebleseven designed for it.

Each poster represents a particular country that’s playing, and the colors of their flag are incorporated into one of the various circular designs. I love the typographic twist these posters have and how they don’t have blatant sports references in them.

AWARE2 gigapixel camera

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 01:34:00 +0100

'AWARE2' gigapixel camera by duke university
above: 3 increasing zoom levels of footage taken by the camera

engineers at duke university have developed a camera able to take photos with up to one billion pixels of resolution.
the 'AWARE2' gigapixel camera uses 98 sensors each at 14 megapixels, capable of detecting detail from as far as 1 kilometer away.
the current model weighs in at approximately 100 pounds, and only shoots in black and white.

explore more of the super high-resolution photos on duke's site with these zoomable examples of a lake scene, building atrium and riverside town.

original image shot at .96 gigapixels; explore the full zoomable image here

the 'AWARE2' camera

camera processor render

making of 'AWARE2' gigapixel camera

Man stranded in desert builds motorcycle out of his broken car

noreply@blogger.com (Qleap) — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 08:57:00 +0100

According to Merriam-Webster, ingenuity can be defined as "skill or cleverness in devising or combining" or "cleverness or aptness of design or contrivance." We'd say that's an apt description of a Frenchman named Emile who reportedly found himself stranded in the deserts of Northwest Africa after breaking a frame rail and a suspension swingarm underneath his Citroën 2CV.

What to do? Why, disassemble the broken hulk and build yourself a motorcycle from its pile of parts, of course! As the story goes, Emile was able to use the inventive machine to escape the desert, though not before convincing the local authorities that he wasn't an insurgent and paying a fine for importing a non-conforming vehicle...

Since Emile was the only soul in the area, nobody has been able to confirm the veracity of the events that led to the little French runabout's conversion into a makeshift motorcycle. That said, judging by the images you can see here (apparently from the March 2003 issue of 2CV Magazine), this Citroën-bred two-wheeler does indeed exist, and it was definitely fashioned from parts scavenged from an old 2CV.

Emile, wherever you are, we take our hats off to your real-life MacGyver skills, sir.