I remember when 1920x1080p seamed impressive for that size. Actually, it still is.

http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/after-three-years-and-spending-one-hundred-and-thirty-million-dollars-someone-must-be-embarassed-to-show-this-trailer-for-empires-of-the-deep-with-olga-kurylenko?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Increased production of energy from a number of sources including deepwater drilling, natural gas exploration and Canada’s oil sands could make North America the next Middle East, according to a new report from Citigroup. (snip)

Full article: http://www.cnbc.com/id/46804871/Is_North_America_the_Next_Middle_East_for_Energy

http://www.wix.com/arturodebernardi/photos#

ScienceDaily (June 13, 2012) — A group of Japanese scientists have surprised themselves by being able to predict the success or failure of blockbuster movies at the box office using a set of mathematical models. The researchers, publishing their study June 15, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics, used the effects of advertising and word-of-mouth communication to create a model that turned out to be successful in predicting how each movie fared once it hit the silver screen. The only data the researchers needed to put into the model were the daily advertisement costs of 25 movies that appeared in Japanese cinemas. Their model was originally designed to predict how word-of-mouth communication spread over social networks, applying it to conversations about movies in particular, which was a success; however, they also found that when they overlapped their predictions with the actual revenue of the films, they were very similar. They now intend to apply their model to other commercial markets, such as online music, food snacks, noodle cups, soft drinks and local events. The researchers, from Tottori University, used their model to calculate the likelihood of an individual going to watch a movie in a Japanese cinema over a period ranging from 60 days prior to the movie's opening date to 100 days after it had opened. Recognising that word-of-mouth communication, as well as advertising, has a profound effect on whether a person goes to see a movie or not, whether this is talking about it to friends (direct communication) or overhearing a conversation about it in a café (indirect communication), the researchers accounted for this in their calculations. The daily number of blog postings for each of the 25 films was also collected from the internet as a means of comparison for the researchers' calculations. Lead author of the study, Professor Akira Ishii, said: "If a person is reading and commenting on a friend's blog, we consider this as direct communication. If a person happens to come across a blog through a series of web pages and links, we consider this indirect communication." The result was a set of graphs outlining a person's intent on watching movies such as The Da Vinci Code, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Spider-Man 3, Transformers and Avatar, based on the daily amount of money spent on advertising the film and word-of-mouth. When overlaid on the actual revenue from these movies whilst screened in the cinema, they appeared to match very well, meaning the calculations could provide a fairly good prediction of how successful a movie could be even before it is released. (snipped)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120615103702.htm

Print it, fold and match the tabs, glue it ..... make 100 of them......be the envy of all your friends.:-)

But whenever the environment is not under control, a well-working continous auto focus can be really, really helpful.

Yet all the recent implementations of continous auto focus in cameras using contrast based focusing suck - they just don't work good enough to be useful. They are either to slow or do too much visible "focus hunting".

I understand that any focusing based on contrast only will require some sort of "hunting", because the direction in which to adjust the focus plane cannot be predicted based on contrast only.

But continous focusing is relevant mostly for video (not for still images), and the resolution of the sensors is usually much much higher than the resolution of the recorded video. So it seems like a very obvious idea to adjust the focus plane only by the smallest possible amount (according to the step motor of the lens), one step back, two steps forward, one step back, and if properly sized, these steps are small enough that the change of the focus plane is not perceivable in the (relatively low) resolution of the recorded video, while it is still big enough to yield a significantly different average contrast in the (relatively high) resolution of the sensor.

I am pretty convinced that my old Sanyo hybrid camera did precisely that: With just one sensor chip and no phase detection, it could only base focusing on contrast. While shooting video, you could hear a very faint noise that was indicating the lens was focusing back and forth just a little - not as much as to be visible in its 720p output file.

Now I wonder: Why don't they just implement this simple method in current cameras? Why do they follow this primitive approach of "accepting some variation in contrast without moving the focus plane at all, then suddenly hunt focus from scratch"?

I remember at launch, canon claimed they reworked the canon 1DC to dissipate heat away from the sensor and digic processor better than the 1DX. I figured they were bluffing even from then because the cameras share an identical shell, shape, size, weight, etc.... I am an electrical engineer and I have access to GHZ oscilloscopes and data loggers.

I would like to help out the community and try and hack the 1DX. I don't know where to start, so I figured I would start a post here. I am familiar with the GH13 hack and driftwood hacks, and they show the great potential of crowd sourced hacking. I hope I can help just the same with the canon 1DX. Thanks for your time

When I stack my most used ones together they look like a small city CBD. I would prefer a CBD of lenses to my current full postcode of lenses with its outlying trashy suburbs.

OK, so we've got a Murder of Crows, a Huddle of Lawyers, a Splatch of Brochures on a hotel-room sideboard...

What's an appropriate collective noun for a group of lenses?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2012/oct/18/nora-ibsen-dolls-house-video

Seems like my instincts about GH3 being a safe choice were well founded.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/17/panasonic_bank_bailout/

2 serious issues at hand: Financial (slower PC sales, lack of differentiation amongst competition, increasing price pressures, managerial shakeups) and Technological (competition from Intel, Apple, ARM and Nvidia)

I didn't buy a Macbook Pro because it used AMD/ATI graphics, and have avoided AMD products for the last couple of years since Adobe continued partnering with Nvidia for the Mercury Playback Engine for acceleration with no option for AMD acceleration until the last release. So, I know I have definitely avoided their products lately...

I am rooting for AMD to turn it around, because like illustrated in the Hard drive industry recently, less choice means drastically higher product prices.

Factors include a desire for shorter commutes, walkable neighborhoods, economic considerations and, in the case of Generations X and Y, born between 1965 and 2000, they want the non-car mobility they did not get as youngsters.

"Having the freedom not to be tied down to a vehicle all the time is a big plus to that generation,"

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/feb/02/us-overbuilt-big-houses-planners-find/

Once the car was seen as a symbol of freedom, but when everybody has a car, freedom is not having to use it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49339942/ns/technology_and_science-science/#__utma=14933801.1349081064.1347555318.1349774623.1349783631.171&__utmb=14933801.1.10.1349783631&__utmc=14933801&__utmx=-&__utmz=14933801.1349750738.165.13.utmcsr=msn.com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/&__utmv=14933801.|8=Earned%20By=msnbc%7Ccover=1^12=Landing%20Content=Mixed=1^13=Landing%20Hostname=www.nbcnews.com=1^30=Visit%20Type%20to%20Content=Earned%20to%20Mixed=1&__utmk=174832034

STOCKHOLM — A French-American duo shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for inventing methods to observe the bizarre properties of the quantum world — research that has led to the construction of extremely precise clocks and helped scientists take the first steps toward building superfast computers. Serge Haroche of France and American David Wineland opened the door to new experiments in quantum physics by showing how to observe individual quantum particles without destroying them.

College de France / NIST Frenchman Serge Haroche, left, and American David Wineland share the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics for their work in quantum optics. That was previously thought impossible because single quantum particles lose their mysterious quantum properties when they interact with the outside world, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. A quantum particle is one that is isolated from everything else. In this situation, an atom or electron or photon takes on strange properties. It can be in two places at once, for example. It behaves in some ways like a wave. But these properties are instantly changed when it interacts with something else, such as when somebody observes it. Working separately, the two scientists, both 68, developed "ingenious laboratory methods" that allowed them to manage and measure and control fragile quantum states, the academy said. "Their ground-breaking methods have enabled this field of research to take the very first steps towards building a new type of superfast computer based on quantum physics," the academy said. "The research has also led to the construction of extremely

Hopefully he lifts off today and gets back safely, it must be a buzz doing that, he has got big balls for sure

If you can't access the redbull page later, you can view it on http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vkJ5ItzEq3M#!

I just thought I'd let the community know that I've started a blog about filmmaking. The first post is up now, though it is really just a few introductory thoughts on filmmaking in general, aimed mostly at those that struggle to get started on their film projects. Most of the posts in the future will be more technically based, and it is part-blog, part storage and organization space for all the stuff I've learned about filmmaking. The internet and forums are great, but sometimes re-finding a certain webpage or forum thread can be a pain. I guess this blog is just a place for me to compile all the different useful tidbits that I come across, and share them with others.

Here it is, take it or leave it: http://23point976.blogspot.com

The first few posts will probably be about stuff that most PV'ers already know, but I want to make sure that I've got the basics covered before moving on to more advanced topics, so that in the future my blog is a more complete resource for others, especially those just starting out.

Also, if I gain any sort of readership, I'd love to at some point bring on a few forum experts for "guest-posts" on certain topics . . . but that's a ways down the road.

http://oliviatech.com/tuesday-tips-%E2%80%93-vaseline-as-a-cheap-diy-softening-filter-for-your-camera

It’s October, the month for scary stuff. A fun way to add a little drama and mystery to your photos is with a simple softening filter. Rather than purchasing one that is fixed or using the magic of post production to fake everyone out, why not DIY it with a little magic lube from the Gods? Vaseline has a multitude of uses, all of which are amazing by the way. One of those amazing uses is to utilize the greasy substance as a DIY softening filter for your camera. (snip)

Big Bang Abandoned in New Model of the Universe A new cosmology successfully explains the accelerating expansion of the universe without dark energy; but only if the universe has no beginning and no end.

87 comments

THE PHYSICS ARXIV BLOG Tuesday, July 27, 2010

As one of the few astrophysical events that most people are familiar with, the Big Bang has a special place in our culture. And while there is scientific consensus that it is the best explanation for the origin of the Universe, the debate is far from closed. However, it's hard to find alternative models of the Universe without a beginning that are genuinely compelling.

That could change now with the fascinating work of Wun-Yi Shu at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. Shu has developed an innovative new description of the Universe in which the roles of time space and mass are related in new kind of relativity.

Shu's idea is that time and space are not independent entities but can be converted back and forth between each other. In his formulation of the geometry of spacetime, the speed of light is simply the conversion factor between the two. Similarly, mass and length are interchangeable in a relationship in which the conversion factor depends on both the gravitational constant G and the speed of light, neither of which need be constant.

So as the Universe expands, mass and time are converted to length and space and vice versa as it contracts.

This universe has no beginning or end, just alternating periods of expansion and contraction. In fact, Shu shows that singularities cannot exist in this cosmos.

It's easy to dismiss this idea as just another amusing and unrealistic model dreamed up by those whacky comsologists.

That is until you look at the predictions it makes. During a period of expansion, an observer in this universe would see an odd kind of change in the red-shift of bright objects such as Type-I supernovas, as they accelerate away. It turns out, says Shu, that his data exactly matches the observations that astronomers have made on Earth.

This kind of acceleration is an ordinary feature of Shu's universe.

That's in stark contrast to the various models of the Universe based on the Big Bang. Since the accelerating expansion of the Universe was discovered, cosmologists have been performing some rather worrying contortions with the laws of physics to make their models work.

The most commonly discussed idea is that the universe is filled with a dark energy that is forcing the universe to expand at an increasing rate. For this model to work, dark energy must make up 75 per cent of the energy-mass of the Universe and be increasing at a fantastic rate.

But there is a serious price to pay for this idea: the law of conservation of energy. The embarrassing truth is that the world's cosmologists have conveniently swept under the carpet one the of fundamental laws of physics in an attempt to square this circle.

That paints Shu's ideas in a slightly different perspective. There's no need to abandon conservation of energy to make his theory work.

That's not to say Shu's theory is perfect. Far from it. One of the biggest problems he faces is explaining the existence and structure of the cosmic microwave background, something that many (snip)

• 3.0091x Introduction to Solid State Chemistry (MIT)
• C550x Introduction to Computer Science I (Harvard)
• CS191.1x Artificial Intelligence (Berkeley)
• 6.002x Circuits and Electronics
• PH207x Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical & Public Health Research (Harvard)
• 6.00x Introduction to Computer Science & Programming (MIT)
• CS 169.1x Software as a Service (Berkeley)

They aren't some rag-tag group of online classes offered by the schools' affiliates for publicity. They are some of the most popular classes offered at the physical campuses, taught by the actual professors. There is a wiki for each class, a discussion board that the professors participate in and problem sets corrected by an online grading program. If you earn a passing grade, you earn a certificate (small fee for a physical copy).

I'm currently enrolled in 6.00x, an introduction to computational thinking taught in Python. The class opened yesterday. I'll post my thoughts in here in case anyone is interested in joining a class now (you can still enroll!) or in the future (the classes offered will increase each semester). Feel free to ask any questions you may have.

The question of whether euro-crisis art is a passing fad is a valid one. With no resolution to the single currency’s problems in sight, however, the region will continue to throw ample raw materials at politically-aware artists for some time. The Economist

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2012/09/euro-crisis-art

Can I please get a loan VK? Enjoy!