Good grief it’s been a long time since I updated this thing. Too long. But in the name of progress, I’ve made some subtle changes to the site (most notably: no more flexible width), and I plan on finally spending a bit more time around here in the days and months to come… So stay tuned!

In the meantime, check out this video from the launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969. This is an HD transfer from a 16mm original that was running at 500 fps; this 8 minute clip shows roughly 30 seconds of real time. Sweeeeet! Big ups to Mark at Spacecraft Films for the amazing clip.

Took me a while to finally post this, but have you seen this video?! If you haven’t and you’re at all interested in what the future may hold for you and yours, you should watch this clip. It’s a touchable, fully animated HOLOGRAM of raindrops (and a baby elephant, and more) that you can actually FEEL in your hand.

Without diluting the quality of the hologram (which is absolutely amazing in its own right), a specially designed device called the “Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display” basically blasts accurate little ultrasonic waves (“acoustic radiation pressure fields”) from above the hologram itself and creates the sensation of pressure on the user’s hand. Led by Hiroyuki Shinoda and his group at the Shinoda Lab, the University of Tokyo researchers recently displayed this sweet piece of kit at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans. For more info, check out the one page synopsis of the project here (PDF).

Many congrats to the Shinoda Lab. It’s 2009 and they’ve created holograms with haptic feedback. Just imagine…

Here’s the first of what’s sure to be many Costa Rican bug pictures on the site. A couple more moth shots after the break… As always, click the photo for fullscreen.

The … heavenly … view from our front yard in Playa Granda, Costa Rica. Click the image to see it fullscreen!

For liberal-leaning peeps, it basically comes down to a “new” face vs. “old guard” (San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and 71-year-old two-time governor Jerry Brown). For you conservatives: varying shades of the same ish (varying in their views on same-sex rights, mostly). Your team is led by former eBay C.E.O. (and former McCain enthusiast) Meg Whitman. Whitman likens the situation to the board room; naturally, she’s ready to whip the state into shape. From the article, at a recent campaign appearance:

She claims that’s why eBay’s founder, Pierre Omidyar, hired her: “Pierre said he was looking for adult supervision at eBay.”

Adult supervision! Perfect! Anyway, most everyone agrees that the state is in trouble (though make the point that California always seems to be in trouble); but this time it seems to be a different kind of trouble … and opportunity. Check it out, it’s a great Times Magazine article on the Arnold-led leadership crisis and who is poised to take on the challenge.

This is where Ryan and I stayed in Costa Rica while writing our next project — our every day for two months. Make sure to click and see the whole image fullscreen! More sweet beach pics after the break.

Nighttime in Playa Grande. Click the image to see fullscreen…

Not a particularly stellar shot (max photoshop noise reduction!), but I’ve been using/looking at it in dev for a couple months now and felt right publishing it. I live just off this corner …