Saturday: Science!

This is longish but it's still pretty cool, none the less.



(s)He Blinded Me With Science!

Breakfast

One of the best things about bein' an adult is eating whatever you want, whenever you want, and that includes pumpkin pie for breakfast.  I might have seconds.

Totally unrelated, this:

Heh.  "I'm sorry, Dave..."

Saturday: The Final Frontier

I can't get enough of this stuff.  It's best viewed in full screen mode.

Astronaut - A journey to space from Guillaume JUIN on Vimeo.

What's best?  The lightning?  The northern lights?  The cities at night?  Well, all of it, actually.

In Which We Become a Shill For Our Browser

I upgraded to Firefox 33.1 this morning... or rather FF upgraded me, auto-majickly.  Part and parcel of the upgrade was this short lil vid for my viewing pleasure, which is now yours*:



There's a LOT to like about Firefox from a technical and user-friendly perspective, in addition to that "independence" thingie.  I really don't understand why people still use Internet Exploder or the like.

* We couldn't have a weather report as our only post today.

It's Fun to Be an Astronaut

Pretty danged cool, this:



Well, they have to fill up their time somehow, no?  It ain't "all work and no play" up there.

Linkage

The annual Nikon Small World photomicrography winners have been announced for 2014 and they are spectacular.  A screen-shot from the web site:

Go, look, and be amazed.  Or not, you soul-less person, you.

Pretty Cool

This:



That lil girl is gonna get a LOT o' candy this Halloween.  A LOT.

Another One o' Those Time-Lapse Video Thingies

Time-lapse vids seem to make everything much better than real life, including big cities.  Case in point:



The usual, customary, and reasonable drill applies:  View full-screen HD.  The colors are simply VIBRANT.

h/t:  Digg, where they say:

MOST COLORFUL BOSTON HAS EVER BEEN

This Cool Layer-Lapse Makes Boston Look Freakishly Beautiful

And not a single drunk college kid in sight!

Thank The Deity At Hand for that last, eh?

Amazing

As the man sez: Turn it UP.  Sound is the key to this video.



H/t:  Gerard.

Tall Cotton...

... as in "living in."  We just had to test our new and improved inter-tubes connection and here's one of the results:

OK, it's not the advertised 100 Mbps but it's plenty damned fast.  I ran about five tests (there are a myriad of choices available) and this result was about average.  I find it strange that my upload speed exceeds my download speed, which is not at all typical.

More Bits and Bytes

There was a lot of interesting stuff in the overnight mail today.  Herewith three of those items...

First... a political 'toon.

Heh.  I'll spare you the double-entendres that immediately came to my mind.

No dysfunction HERE:

Air Frame: A B-1B Lancer flies over northern Iraq after conducting air strikes in Syria against ISIS targets, Sept. 27, 2014. The strikes were conducted as part of the President's comprehensive strategy to degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist organization. (Air Force photo by SrA. Matthew Bruch) (click to embiggen)

Bad to the BONE... make sure you embiggen this pic.

An altogether different flying experience... which would be a suite at 30K feet.  A couple o' screen caps from a VERY interesting article:

This piece might be the most extensively-documented photographic essay I've ever seen, on any subject.  See "What It's Like to Fly the $23,000 Singapore Airlines Suites Class" here.  It's simply freaking amazing; the food alone might be worth the ticket price.

In other news... we got our inter-tubes connection upgraded from 5 Mbps to 100 Mbps this morning.  The difference is astounding... web pages don't load on the screen now, they POP.  I think this is pretty amazing for a dusty lil rural town of only 12 and a half thousand people.

Saturday: Ain't Technology GRAND?

Home-made time-lapse video...



Now that's just pretty danged cute.  Apropos o' everything... the selection at the Usual Source is pretty weak this week.

Just For Fanbois

If you're a fanboi you already know all of this.  But, Hey!  We're all about service, dontcha know.  That and we just LOVE those Taiwanese folks who put this sorta stuff together.



And there's this from Digg:

The bottom line: You will feel like a lesser human being if you don’t immediately purchase one of these phones.

Spoken like a true fanboi.

Final Frontiers and All That

NatGeo's website has one of the better articles about the Voyager spacecraft and their missions that I've ever seen.  A couple of screen shots (click to embiggen, as always):

Be prepared to spend about a half-hour (more or less) when you go.  It's well worth the time.

Burnin' Some Rubber

Literally...



I found this fascinating and watched the vid at least four times.

In other news... we went to bed (well, "went to couch" would be much more accurate) around 2130 hrs last evening with predictable results: up at oh-dark-thirty.  I have a feelin' nap time will arrive a bit earlier than usual today.

In other, other news... SN1 is 48 today, 50 is right around the corner.  I dunno if he feels old or not but **I** sure as Hell do.  Happy Birthday, Buck!

Saturday: HyperFanGirls

Amusing, if you like David Attenborough's style:
 


Just a casual observation: there's a LOT o' money in orthodontia.  

And then there's this, which is pretty cool stuff.



I'd be looking into that software if I did time-lapse vids.

Fascinating

A short film on watchmaking:



The micro-scale of the milling machines used to fabricate the gear wheels and such fascinates me, as does the deft touch required to assemble the watch.  It also makes me wonder how Seiko assembles their products.

Apropos o' not much, I quit wearing my greatly-beloved Seiko Lassale watch shortly after I moved in to El Casa Inmóvil De Pennington these three years ago.  The watch is sitting on my nightstand, patiently waiting for me to replace its battery, which may or may not ever happen.

Isn't she a beauty?

I can't bear to get rid of it, though.  We've been through a lot together.

Data Drives EVERYTHING...

... even the music you listen to*.  I found this article at FiveThirtyEight fascinating: "Why Classic Rock Isn't What It Used To Be."  Here are a couple of screen caps from said article:

Who knew there was such a large variation in regional choices?  Not me.  I'm not in step with the author of this study when it comes to Tampa, mainly coz I loves me my Stones, Eagles, and Fleetwood Mac (the EARLY Mac, NOT the Buckingham/Nicks abomination).  If I had to pick a city on the second list to stay the Hell out of it would be KC coz I make no truck with the likes of Boston, Rush, and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The article also delves into how the streaming music services define "classic rock," which is pretty much the same way the broadcasters do.  Very interesting stuff, all the way around.

* This assumes you actually listen to Classic Rock on the radio or a streaming service.  As for me?  I don't.  Thank The Deity At Hand for XM, Pandora, and meTunes Radio; if I want Classic Rock I'll drag it out of my collection.

Star Trails

Via High Fructose Mag...

That's a screen shot of what you'll see here.

Cool!

This is just about the only GOOD thing that ever came out of Earth Day...



Explanation:

NASA has released a 3.2 gigapixel "Global Selfie", comprising 36,422 individual images stitched into a mosaic representation of the Earth.

The agency explains: "On Earth Day this year (22 April), NASA asked people all around the world a simple question – 'Where are you on Earth Right Now?'" We asked people to answer the question on social media, with a selfie. The goal was to use each picture as a pixel in the creation of a 'Global Selfie' – a mosaic image that would look like Earth appeared from space on Earth Day."

Well, Dang.  I didn't know this was happening, which is the story of my life: a day late and a dollar short.