Yes, I should be doing something else (isn’t that when you usually browse YouTube?), but this is brilliant, in my geeky opinion, so I had to share.
This is part of a project at Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, recently presented at the TED 2012 conference in California, here’s a quote from their site about this video:
“Kumar, along with GRASP Lab members Daniel Melligner and Alex Kushleyev, are helping scientists and engineers create smarter, faster, and more flexible robots by mimicking the swarming behaviors of birds, fish and insects. Figuring out how to move in unison without crashing into obstacles, or one another, is a critical skill for robot teams to develop, especially since they may one day be used to survey landscapes, build structures, or even play music.”
Here’s a nice roundup and demonstration of the current batch of iPhonegraphy accessories from AdoramaTV.
My favourite? The Owle Bubo, I’ve wanted to try one of these out since I first saw it a year or so ago. Love the idea of making a movie with one of these.
This Time Lapse video blew me away. A full description of it from the Tenerife based photographer Daniel Lopez is included below. Enjoy!
“El Cielo de Canarias” / “Canary Sky”
Project produced by Daniel Lopez. www.elcielodecanarias.com
Scenes taken from Tenerife, more than 2,000 meters above sea level and over a year to capture all possible shades, clouds, stars, colors from a unique landscape and from one of the best skies on the planet. First in a series of videos nocturnal and crepuscular Time Lapse taken in the Canary Islands trying to capture the beauty of each island.
To capture the natural movement of the earth, stars, clouds, sun and moon TimeLapse technique was used, Dolly vertical and horizontal rails, spindles with horizontal and vertical movements. HDR data collection.
Some scenes of the video:
– “The Cathedral” in the plain of Ucanca, night shot with the planet Jupiter across the scene. – El Arbol de Piedra (Roque Cinchado) with a Tajinaste pointing to Polaris. – Tajinastes “night”, The Red Tajinaste, endemism Canario blooming in spring. – The “hat” in the Teide. Formation of a cloud known as cap at the peak of Teide. – “Waterfalls of clouds crossing the mountains and rivers of multicolored clouds. – Sea of clouds crashing against the mountains as it did the sea. – Large pool of water in the plain of Ucanca lenticular clouds where stars are reflected. – Tajinastes night with the Milky Way taken out on the horizon with a dolly track. – Video of the sun setting and a double green flash. “ – Pleiades and the Andromeda galaxy between rocks in the mines of San Jose. – Scenes spectacular sunset in the Teide National Park with clouds and moving dolly. – ArcoIris from the Teide National Park. – Multicolor Halos around the moon. – Clouds remain stationary hours at the site are changing their colors as the sunset
Daniel Lopez is a photographer / astrophotographer based in Tenerife . Works by photography and video, specializing in evening using many techniques, from camera tripod grasp heaven and earth in the same photo, amateur telescopes to take pictures of astronomical objects to professional telescopes to capture details and high resolution. It also performs and produces videos about nature, landscapes and interesting places in the draw is always something new and take another different view and “magical.”
I am probably known for being a bit curmudgeonly, let’s be honest!
When this post goes live I will be part way through a day of repeated Video Conference training sessions (the same thing over and over in 30 min slots) with a lot of top level Corporate people.
Which is fine! I’m happy to spend the day doing that, but it can be a little trying, especially as technology usually conspires against me in these things.
So, as it is Friday, the weekend starts at close of play today and while I admit that I am getting soft as I get older, here is a video that made me smile because of its sheer enthusiasm and fun. Plus it is still Apple related.
My favourite thing is the Apple Store Security, you’ll see what I mean at the end. I hope this video makes you smile
I am a self confessed Apple fan. Our house is well equipped with Apple branded gadgets and has seen several iterations of the current devices passing through it’s doors on the way out to eBay.
Currently I own an iPad, iPhone 3GS and a 4 year old 15″ MacBook Pro. My Wife has an iPhone 4 after recently upgrading from a Motorola V3 / iPod Touch combo. My kids even pretend to have iPhones and iPads all the time, not knowing anything else in their 5 and 3 year old lives.
I am not trying to show off here, I just want to make it clear how entrenched in the Apple Ecosystem I am at present. Yes, it is very sad! ^_^
The iPad Effect
The thing is, since taking possession of an iPad, I have found myself for the first time ever, thinking about selling my iPhone with out the express intention of replacing it with another iPhone.
In fact, I am actively seeking a replacement for my 3GS that includes the features missing on or equal to those of the iPhone but at a cheaper price.
These include a decent camera, HD video, Wifi hotspot sharing without the ‘Apple tax’ (i.e. extra charges just because it is an iPhone), and the fabled ‘openness’ of other platforms.
This is the enormity of the iPad’s impact on my gadget life.
First Candidate – Nokia N8
It is with this purpose in mind that I have applied to trial the Nokia N8 and I heard today that it is on it’s way. I can upgrade to the N8 with Orange UK for just £49.99 today, as opposed to £230-ish for an iPhone 4, but if I wait until June I can get the N8 free for £10 less than I pay now for the 3GS.
Once I have received the N8 trial unit I will be going ‘cold turkey’ and hiding my iPhone for the two week trial period. The N8 will be my only phone/mobile computer (other than iPad)/camera/video recorder for those two weeks.
I will be seeing if I can live without the App Store on my Phone, how the iPad works with a non-Apple phone, if at all and what the Ovi Store experience is like for someone so used to Apple’s way of doing things.
I will post here as much as I can about my experiences over these two weeks, but I will probably put out more regular updates over on Twitter.
I am probably more excited about seeing Cars 2 later this year (22nd July) than my kids for two reasons:
It looks like great fun (and I secretly love watching Cars)
It will be my 3 year old Son’s first ever cinema experience – he lovesCars and Mater’s Tall Tales, so we thought this would be an ideal first viewing for him, though probably not in 3D.
Time for my wife and I to start arguing about discussing who will take our Daughter to see the 3D version. Be sure to watch the extended Trailer below in HD at Full Screen.
Bladerunner is my all-time favourite Sci-Fi film and soundtrack. There are so many moments in it and the whole feel of the film is very emotive for me.
That’s why I was delighted to discover the video below from quality film maker François Vautier on Vimeo.
An explanation of how he did this is included below too, but if you want to see the video in its full glory take the HD link to Vimeo and watch it full screen. It is amazing and probably the best Bladerunner tribute I have ever seen.
An experimental film in tribute to Ridley Scott’s legendary film “Blade Runner” (1982) This film was made as a unique picture with a resolution of 60.000 x 60.000 pixels (3.6 gigapixels) It was made with 167,819 frames from ‘Blade Runner’.
1>first step : the “picture” of the film I extracted the 167,819 frames from ‘Blade Runner’ (final cut version,1h51mn52s19i) then I assembled all these images to obtain one gigantic image of colossal dimensions : a square of approximately 60,000 pixels on one side alone, 3.5 gigapixels (3500 million pixels)
2> second step : an illusion I placed a virtual camera above this big picture. So what you see is like an illusion, because contrary to appearances there is only one image. It is in fact the relative movement of the virtual camera flying over this massive image which creates the animated film, like a film in front of a projector.
When something is advertised as ‘Free’ it often comes with strings attached and is rarely, really, free. The good folks over at creativeLIVEare offering something for nothing, well almost, but the something they ask back is a little bit of word-of-mouth promotion and it is well worth it for what you get in return.
I have enrolled on several of their Photography courses in the past and the talent they have brought in has been considerable, including Chase Jarvis (who was instrumental in setting this project up), Scott Bourne (Aperture master), Zack Arias (Rock photographer/Lighting guru) and that’s just the Photographers! There are many more talented people who have lent their talents to the creativeLIVE courses and who have shared their knowledge for free.
If you can’t tune in at the time the course is going out live, you can catch up later, sometimes they stream the event on a loop for a few days afterwards and then video courses are available for purchase afterwards, at a fairly reasonable rate for the number of hours tuition you get from the professionals involved, usually around $79-$129 depending on the amount of content.
They even streamed a whole weekend workshop live (actually 3 days) with the awesome Vincent Laforet on HD DSLR Video Production, which was very detailed and fascinating for the bits I was able to tune in for.
To top that, starting this Wednesday 25th creativeLIVE are running a Jasmine Star (super adulated Wedding Photographer with the best looking blog I have ever seen) workshop for 5 days, to include live streaming of the Photographer as she covers a real wedding.
That’s 5 days! What these guys and girls are providing for free is really, really impressive.
The only downside is that the time difference can be a bit of a pain for us in the UK, with some courses, such as the one I have just enrolled on Web Design Boot Camp running very late, in this case from 11pm – 1am GMT. So unless they stream that one for free afterwards I would have to pay to see it probably.
If you are at all curious about the Photography, Web Design, Photoshop, CS5, even Water Colour world, you should definitely check out the creativeLIVE calendar and see what is coming up, you can’t beat the price!
I have wanted to experiment with off-Camera Flash for ages but I always thought you needed 2, 3 or even 4 of them to make a decent shot and at £350+ per unit, I had given up on the idea. Having seen this video from Derrick Story, I now know that very decent results are achievable with just one, albeit still very expensive, Flash unit and a great deal of talent.
I still can’t afford to buy one, but this has made me even more interested in saving up and scouring eBay for a decent secondhand Canon 580 EXII or whatever it will be called by the time I finally get one. I can dream…
Twitter
Facebook
Flickr
RSS
When something is advertised as ‘Free’ it often comes with strings attached and is rarely, really, free. The good folks over at