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).
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.
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.
Toilet seats down: a scientific and humorous analysis - It turns out that game theory, specifically Nash equilibrium, can be employed to analyze the situation of the toilet seat being left up or down. The author here, building on previous examinations (which were published in peer reviewed publications), addresses the “costs of yelling.” That is, when anger is directed by a woman against a man who has not left the seat in the correct position.
Discussion and conclusions
For “mankind”, the analysis in this paper has the following appeal: Once again, it has been found that the social norm of leaving the toilet seat down is inefficient; hence, “mankind” may feel vindicated.
For “womankind”, the analysis in this paper is appealing for the following reason: It has been shown that the social norm of leaving the seat down is a trembling-hand perfect equilibrium. Hence, this norm is not likely to go away, at least in the near future.
Finally, I thought the title of publication responsible for this was funny: “The Science Creative Quaterly—in which, with respect to our name, we are as confused as you are.” (via df)
You Picked the Wrong Day to be Crappy - Ostensibly, this is a post about football, but the title, “You Picked the Wrong Day to be Crappy,” applies to so many things, that I simply had to share.
Tulsa time capsule - In 1957, folks in Tulsa, Oklahoma put together a time capsule to be opened 50 years later. That works out to 9 days from now that it will be opened. Thing is, they took an entire, brand new gold 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Coupe and stuck it underground. Will the car be rusted? Will it have survived? We will find out soon. Oh, and here’s the best part:
As part of the “Tulsarama!” festivities, citizens of Tulsa were asked to guess what the population of Tulsa would be in the year 2007. The guesses were then recorded on microfilm and sealed in a steel container buried with the car. When the car and artifacts are excavated, the person whose guess is closest to Tulsa’s 2007 population is to be awarded the Belvedere.
As promised: an addendum to my realignment notes—the revised comment ranking system. Nils mentioned that the challenge of earning new comment ranks was good and necessary. So, I have (very nearly) maintained the difficulty in getting ranks. There are still iron crosses at 1000 and colored iron crosses at 5000 comments. However, Dan argued (and I originally noted) that 125 commenting thresholds were rather widespread markers of achievement. So, I have changed things a bit. Now, vertical bars next to a commenter’s name represent the number of comments they have left, and therefore their rank. Each vertical bar represents 100 comments and every time the tumbledryer leaves 10 comments, their vertical bar increases in height. After 100 comments, a new vertical bar grows up next to the previous one.
This mechanism gives the user feedback on a more regular basis with regards to their progress in commenting rank. So, as you progress through tumbledry’s ranks at a slightly faster rate (every 100 instead of 125 comments), you are better able to gauge your progress and proximity to the next level of achievement. Oh, and I’m going to brainstorm the best images to represent this stepwise progression through ranking—I could return to the old irons, but split them into pies, the size of the pie increasing as progress was made. We’ll see.
