Mauer Hit
Fantastic off camera lighting kit - Some time ago, Mykala linked me to an article at Strobist about building your own softbox for $10. Since then, I have regularly dropped in to read the website responsible for that tutorial. It’s all about how to get your light off of your camera and into the space around you, and creating extremely interesting effects, etc. Turns out that if I actually had a camera with a PC sync terminal (just about any camera except my own, ha), the least expensive lighting kit would be perfect. You get a great manual flash, off-camera connecting cords, a tripod, a diffusing umbrella (like the kind from your school portraits), and other extraordinarily useful accessories. Plus, for a bit more money, you can connect cameras like my own. Just takes a bit more fiddling.
As we were driving home from the Twins game, John switched the radio to The Current last night (thanks for the free ticket, guys!). Anyhow, the radio played a song from the Scottish band Travis. These guys have another album out, called “The Boy With No Name.” The song I heard, and the entire album, are really surprisingly good. You guys may remember a song from three albums ago (about 7 years back) called “Why Does it Always Rain On Me.” Remember? Anyhow, Wikipedia talks about the rollercoaster of the album that song was on in 1999:
However, when the album slipped as far as No. 19, it stopped. Word of mouth and increasing radio play of the single “Why Does It Always Rain on Me?” increased awareness of the band and the album began to rise back up the charts. Then, when Travis took the stage to perform this song at the 1999 Glastonbury Festival, after being dry for several hours, it began to rain as soon as the first line was sung. The following day the story was all over the papers and television, the song became an anthem (it is consistently rated as one of the decade’s best songs, as is the album itself), and with word of mouth and increased radio play of this and the album’s other singles, The Man Who rose to No. 1 on the British Charts.
So, I realized I already knew the band—but the song I heard was so good, I decided to grab their newest album.
Turns out, “The Boy With No Name” is a pretty darn solid musical compilation. It’s a well paced, melodically interesting album that oscillates between lush anthems and intimate acoustic pieces. The song I heard was “My Eyes” (iTunes), but I really like “Under the Moonlight” (iTunes).
Instant camera attached to cat - When you attach a camera to a cat and set it up to take pictures of the things it sees, you get to see some interesting things.
Well, I thought the hardest part is done by developing the software and soldering the controller board. But it is more the housing to protect the camera. You can not imagine what kind of requirements have to be fulfilled if you want to equip your cat with a camera. I built a small housing out of plastic plates and put it on the collar of the cat for evaluation purpose. This housing was last seen as the cat walked out of the door… Probably the wires I used for attaching were not strong enough. Or someone released the cat from the interesting looking piece. For the second try I used the plastic package of a child toy (Kinderueberraschung), put a stone in it for loading it with some weight and attached it again to the cat collar. This time the part returned - dirty and scratched outside, water inside. What the hell is the cat doing !? This raised the requirements for the camera protective housing a lot:
- Shock resistant - cat jumps from tree, housing hit ground
- Scratch resistant - Cat cleans itself with claws or sneaks above the ground
- Water resistant - If cat drinks, the piece around their neck will hang into water
- Theft resistant - If equipment draws attention cat will loose it, especially if it is easily removable.
From the looks of the pictures, the work was worth it.
What “dynamic range” means - Take sixty quick seconds and learn what it means when the audio engineers of today are required by record companies to produce music that is lower in quality than previous generations. By “lower in quality,” I do not mean the music itself.
You see, record companies want the albums from their artists to sound louder—especially useful on the radio, as the music competes with car noise. Yet, (to simplify) you can only program a CD to play between, say, 0 and 100 in loudness. Thus, for that “loud” sound, the entire dynamic range (the difference between the loud and soft parts of the track) gets compressed into the 98-100 region of loudness. Music has no “punch” and in some cases must be distorted to fit.
An Islamic bank is the majority owner of the Caribou Coffee chain: true! - This actually kind of makes sense, this Islam bank has about an 88% stake in the company… and it makes sense, because Wikipedia tells me that coffee became popular in Islamic countries with the ban of alcohol by the Shari’ah.
Lest you get the wrong idea, an important note:
In July 2002, the First Islamic Investment Bank announced that they had severed all ties with Dr. Al-Qaradawi, so the issue is now moot. First Islamic also hired Washington, D.C., law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to review its charitable donations, and they have certified that no charitable contributions from Caribou’s coffers go to groups banned under U.S. law.
That is to say, I link to this purely for the sake of trivia. It’s a rather interesting commentary on our globalization.
Nathan Sawaya builds incredible Lego sculptures - I’ve linked to Lego builders before, but this guy takes it to a whole new level. The artistry in capturing the human form in Legos is great. I especially like the yellow guy, with Legos spilling out.
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