Warren, Connecticut. Great dinner with friends. The room was pretty dark and just a few candles were lighting the table and the light on Anne’s plate was inviting me to try out the S100 in low light.

Common cranes fly over Venice, Italy. Amazing BBC footage. Zoom out, it’s worth it.

[via Coudal Partners]

On Mt. Greylock, Massachusetts. Hiking down the Haley Farm Trail on the west side of Mt. Greylock we came across a dead black birch with huge mushrooms on it. Hiked out to the tree and shot straight up hoping to catch the mushrooms but instead got an interesting shot of the creepy decaying tree and the trees around it.

SOPA and PIPA

Notice that I didn’t reblog the image but instead linked back to the political cartoonist Daryl Cagle’s blog. I’m not making a statement here, I came close to reflagging the image with proper permission and attribution of course, but, I want Cagle to get the traffic, he’s the artist so best to just put in a link. It’s a great cartoon as you’ll see if you follow the link.

I saw this cartoon on the site Political Irony where the site’s author discusses his own reposting of the cartoon and goes on to discuss the difference between copyright infringement and stealing (they’re different).

My question is different and I posted it as a comment on Political Irony:

An interesting question is whether revenue generated by advertising at a site that has permission to reuse material ought to be shared with content providers, many of whom are traditional “analog” artists who may not know a referrer log from a lincoln log.

And, I think those of us who are consumers of reflagged content have an obligation to follow links when interested so that the content provider gets some traffic (and maybe a comment) too. Most of these folks draw these cartoons for their day jobs and while they may make money from newspaper syndication, as we all know, that medium of exchange is in trouble.

Interview with Michio Kaku December 23, 2010 on the evolution of civilizations

Micho Kaku is a theoretical physicist who’s incredibly articulate, funny, and fascinating. His site contains numerous interviews and lectures. Dig around after listening to the one linked to above, he’s quite an amazing person.

Fantastic. I started on an Olympia portable typewriter although didn’t learn to touch type until my third computer. I noticed the reporter in the video wasn’t using all her fingers and was looking at the keyboard.

[via Retronaut]

How The Glock Became America’s Weapon Of Choice

fresh Air had a fascinating show today about the plastic Austrian pistol, it’s history and evolution. I’m not into guns but this was a fascinating listen for me nonetheless.

PressPausePlay from House of Radon on Vimeo.

The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.

This is an amazing film, really worth making the time (an hour and 21 minutes) to watch. It’s well thought out, well shot, well edited, and the message is nuanced, not a slam dunk for digital or against it.

[via PetaPixel]

This is my favorite 4min selection of a larger work by Ralph Steiner. The original was silent, and the DVD had it set to classical music. I have swapped the audio for an electronica/industrial track by 3 Liquid Hz – Little Boy.

I like the remix (by VertikalDesign) and I can imagine that the original is excellent too.

[via wimp.com]

This is a wonderful film by the designers Charles and Ray Eames.

Zoom it out full screen and enjoy the colorful tops and bokeh.

[via core77]

Time Lapse – Rail Bridge Replacement, Cow Lane, Reading from Chris Wilkinson on Vimeo.

Upper Cut Productions was commissioned by BAM Nuttall and Network Rail to film a rail bridge reconstruction project in Reading, during the Christmas period of 2011.

3 weather-proofed time lapse cameras were installed in various locations to capture the progress of the new bridge construction – they took nearly 1/4million photographs over a 6 month period.

Following the short video of the bridge move between 24.12.11 and 28.12.11, this video reveals the full project from the bridge construction to the site clearance after New Year.

This is one of the best time lapse videos of anything I’ve ever seen. What an incredible construction job, building the bridge and moving it. And the fact that they used multiple cameras and wove the time lapse together so beautifully does justice to the amazing construction job. Wow.

[via wimp.com]

LACMA has a great exhibit up: California Design, 1930-1965: “Living in a Modern Way”. Worth seeing if you’re in the area.

Deborah Sussman, whose work is included in the exhibition, talks about her early history with Charles and Ray Eames and her long career as an influential designer.

Huntington Library Gardens, Pasadena, California. Went on an outing with my mother today. Decided to use S100 to shoot trees from below since this place has an amazing variety of spectacular and rare trees. I’m quite pleased with the way this small camera worked; I got a nice variety of decent images.

Marshall Soulful Jones, part of Team Nuyorican 2011, 2nd place finishers at the National Poetry Slam in Boston, perform “Touchscreen”. The Bowery Poetry Club NY.

Brilliant, down to the head movement.

[via wimp.com]

Weegee’s Killer Decade

The International Center of Photography has a show up Weegee: Murder is My Business that looks incredible.

Weegee (Arthur Fellig) was a street photographer’s street photographer and photojournalist.

Singer Patti Smith’s photographs on display

But Smith is also an avid photographer and takes a camera on tour and whenever she travels. “Camera Solo” is the first museum exhibition of her Polaroid photographs at the Wadswoth Atheneum in Hartford Connecticut. It can be seen until February 19, 2012.

Who knew she was also a photographer. I’d better get over to see her show in Hartford.

[via Gary Sharp]

Put Down the Pitchforks on SOPA

Pogue lays out the situation calmly and clearly. Its worth a read.

Some people are O.K. with the goals of the bills, acknowledging that software piracy is out of control; they object only to the bills’ approaches. If the entertainment industry’s legal arm gets out of control, they say, they could deem almost anything to be a piracy site. YouTube could be one, because lots of videos include bits of TV shows and copyrighted music. Facebook could be one, because people often link to copyrighted videos and songs. Google and Bing would be responsible for removing every link to a questionable Web site. Just a gigantic headache.

But there’s another group of people with a different agenda: They don’t even agree with the bills’ purpose. They don’t want their free movies taken away. A good number of them believe that free music and movies are their natural-born rights. They don’t want the big evil government taking away their free fun.

The second group of people is the group I don’t want to be associated with. This is what clouds my support for the entire protest.

Grant Simon Rogers knows how to shoot trees from below. Wow.

[via Colossal]

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

There’s no doubt piracy is wrong but having Congress, many of whom still think the internet is a “series of tubes” design laws to protect copyrighted material maybe isn’t the best way to go about stopping it.

fightforthefuture.org/pipa

[via The Kid Should See This]

Roderigo, a Brazilian Pilot has put together a nice collection of videos shot from the cockpit of an Airbus 319 he’s flying. Looks like he might have used a GoPro Camera.

[via Zapong]