About Thor and Avengers

Did others find "Thor" a bit boring? A bit uninspired? Even the customes and grand fantasy worlds a little bland?
Except I guess for those into males, the Dolph Lundgren heir sure had some neato muscles... (really muscly without being Mr. Universe exaggerated).
Thinking of that, it didn't really have any of the other kind. Except Natalie, of whom I'm a big fan, but like has been proven, even the best actor can't be interesting in a boring film. (Take "Wolf" for instance: Michelle Pfeiffer and Jack Nicholson at their height of power, and still somehow a boring movie, in my view.)

... OK, so many Amazon reviewers disagree with me. I have to admit not being a big fantasy fan, and that I only watched less than half of the movie, so I could be wrong.
But I did feel that it was sort of an in-between movie, only there to build up towards the Avengers movie.

BTW, from the Avengers trailer (one of many, we seem to drown in trailers these days): Tony Stark says: "If we can't protect the Earth, we'll make damn sure we'll avenge it.".
I'm sure that'd be a great solace to five billion dead earthlings. And I'm sure the force which did such a thing will be quaking mightily in their boots when a half-dozen humans with slightly boosted strength and agility cry "Avengers Assemble" and attack their swarming space armada.

Cate Blanchett, unretouched

Cate on the cover, article.
Publishers want a recognisable person on the cover, with a real career; but they also want an empty vessel—for clothes and jewellery and make-up, which often seem to be supplied by the advertisers with the most muscle.

Beware the Morphing Flashback Malware

Beware the Morphing Flashback Malware, article.
Finally time to get virus protection for a Mac? I did, I got the Intego one mentioned in the article.

Saturday Night Fry

[Thanks to Alex]

Starring Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Barry Cryer.

Nokia 808 [updated] PureView- 41-megapixel camera phone

[Thanks to Timo]

Geez Loueeeze, this is getting ridic.

Update:




Ten years ago, I said: "I think that in ten years, we can get a pocket camera with large-format resolution" (large format is 4x5-inch negative or larger). But I didn't think it would happen in a phone first.

For the record I'm sure this thing can't compete with the new Nikon D800 36MP camera. There are many different sizes and qualities of megapixels. But still this seems pretty remarkable, and apparently it does have a Zeiss lens. The time can't be far off when camera-shake is a thing of the past, in any light. Low-light grain too. And small sensor cameras like this have practically infinite depth of field, so that handles focus errors also.

Update:
See links in the comments, like these pictures. The shallow depth of field in the first one indicates that this phone must have a much larger sensor than we're used to in phones.
Full resolution sample images. OK, this has the iPhone camera beat all to heck. Didn't see that coming so soon.

Update: Andrea sends this link to a hands-on article.
Sadly, the phone runs the Symbian OS, which is on its way out. But surely the camera will be used in more modern phones soon.

Zooey Deschanel, or who?

Zooey Deschanel's Rimmel Ad: Too Retouched Or Just Right?, article/poll.

A commenter, Christine F, wrote elsewhere:

Changes made to Zooey include:
Colorizing - both tinting her eyes aqua green to provide the correct contrast with the fushia make-up (her actual eye color is pretty grey-blue), and airbrushing all of her skin to a solid matte cool tone (her natural skin color is more peachy)
A nose job - her nose was both narrowed and bobbed by editing shading on the underside
Chin job and neck job - her chin line was made more square than it is naturally, and her neck was thinned, this was accomplished by darkening "shadows" vertically down her cheeks and neck, and then drawing in the chin they wanted her to have.

It's a bit weird when people become unrecognizable in an ad or mag photo shoot. Like any eccentricity is upsetting, or their personality had nothing to do with their success.

A little night set. Spoooky.

Again: the camera of course attempts to even things out and get details all over the frame, so it takes deliberate "violence" to the pictures to make them look like they looked to the eye when I photographed, meaning very dark indeed. They were incredibly drab coming out of the camera.

(All clickable.)

(Fuji X10 on EXR auto. EXR combines pixels in this camera's special sensor to gain sensitivity or dynamic range, trading against a bit of loss of resolution.)


The last one with no editing: 

Panasonic GX1, low light progress (vs Fuji X10)

One of the few heart-breaking things about the Micro Four Thirds format has been that neither Olympus nor Panasonic has until recently exactly been leaders when it came to low-light quality. In fact they have been behind the times for the size of the format and camera.

But now Panasonic, with the new GX1 (following the the GF1 and GF2 line, not sure what the X is doing there) has made remarkable progress. See below cropped images shot at ISO 3200 at GF2 and GX1:

GF2: 

GX1:

GF2:

GX1: 

Like I said, remarkable. This goes straight from "not really usable at this setting" to "very usable at this setting". And this progress is made while at the same time upping the resolution from 12MP to 16MP.
Get the full size images here: GF2 and GX1.
These I got via the very ingenious Camera Comparison page at Imaging Resource.

I must say though, that perhaps I will just keep my current favorite, Fuji X10. As you see here, despite the smaller sensor, it has the same image quality as the Pana GX1! Damnable impressive. And its lens is 1.5 stops faster than the compact zoom which comes with the GX1. It's a very impressive all-round semi-compact camera. So unless you need exchangeable lenses, the choice is hard.

I should note that the GH2, a bulkier and more expensive camera, but highly capable especially for video, has about the same quality again, maybe even a notch better. The GF2 and GH2 came out at the same time about, and I was not aware that there was such a large gap between them in this respect. Usually sensors of the same size from the same time and manufacturer has comparable quality.

In defense of weird

Get full-sized version. (Your browser may scale it down to fit in the window, if so you can click on it to get non-scaled version.)

Gizmon

This is the Gizmon Leica-inspired "rangefinder" camera, a real conversation starter. In the present configuration, a 5-megapixel small-sensor camera, which can email photos to yourself or various services with additional software.

Mastered for iTunes

Mastered for iTunes: how audio engineers tweak music for the iPod age, article.

How to Remove Your Google Search History

[Thanks to Tom]

How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect, article.
On March 1st, Google will implement its new, unified privacy policy, which will affect data Google has collected on you prior to March 1st as well as data it collects on you in the future. Until now, your Google Web History (your Google searches and sites visited) was cordoned off from Google's other products.
-

Mix and match

With the Micro Four Thirds system (though we had hoped more makers would join), you can mix and match lenses and cameras. Like this hilaaaarious mix. A Panasonic GH2 with an Olympus 45mm F:1.8 portrait lens, and an Olympus Pen Lite (E-PL3) with a Panasonic 14-140mm zoom. The latter is perhaps the only longish zoom lens which has not disappointed me with corner performance. And the latter is an outstanding lens despite its small size, so that inspired me to put it on the 16MP Panasonic instead of the 12MP Pana. Doesn't it look good on the large camera though?

Now, though, Olympus went for in-body stabilization, and Panasonic (sadly I think) went for in-lens stabilization (which many of their lenses don't have). So now we have the Pana without any stabilization at all here, and the Olympus with both body and lens stabilization. It's probably a good idea to turn off one of them so you don't get the "too many cooks" situation.

Filmmaking with the Olympus PEN

[Thanks to Bert]

With the tiny PEN E-P3 cameras they could get right up in the horses' face at full racing speed, 60km/hour. Brilliant.
The Micro Four Thirds footage held its own against full-frame 35mm sized sensor video. (Or 35mm film cameras, it's a bit fuzzy which he's talking about.)
(I wonder why they didn't include any footage they shot with it though, an odd omission. This seems to be an Olympus commercial, so perhaps they couldn't get the rights.) 

------
Like Mike Johnston, I want to lament Japanese camera-makers' inability to make sensible names for cameras. Who the heck can remember the differences between an "E-PL2", an "E-P3", an "E-PM1" etc? Now, a "PEN Lite", that makes sense, but that's not its official name, no-no, it's an E-PL3!
And of course the brand new OM-camera "resurrection" couldn't just be called the "OM-5", it had to be called the "OM-D EM5", for lord knows what reasons. Maybe so, here in 2012, we are reassured that in fact it is both electronic and digital!

Camino browser

I'm just trying out the Camino browser on Mac. It seems very nice and user-friendly, and, surprise: it seems markedly faster than both Safari and Chrome, both of which have made big deals out of how fast they are.

Hurrah: unlike Chrome but like Safari, it has simple keyboard shortcuts to the nine first bookmarks in the bookmarks bar. I use those constantly. (And you can import your Safari bookmarks, though you have to drag the bar bookmarks to the bar in Camino to have them show up there.)

Rendering seems perfect too. Sometimes with a new browser, the rendering of pages is off. For example, for months there was no way you could change the font size in Google's Chrome browser (of all the stupid things). Of course Camino is only new to me, it's a 2.1 release.
(Chrome, like many Google projects, seems to have a looong beta-ish phase. For example I still can't find any setting to get new tabs to open on top, which just bugs me since it's the way I use tabs 90% of the time.)

The Front Fell Off!

It's not real as circulating emails claim, but still very funny.
By John Clarke and Brian Dawe.

Googlighting

Apparently this is Microsoft attacking Google Docs. It's pretty weird.

To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios

To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios, hardcover book.
[High sticker price, but notice you can get it much cheaper, even new.]

I couldn't find this book as paperback or ebook, but when you get it, you understand why: it's a gorgeous and huge hardcover, big in every way, including page count. And it's beautifully produced, big color pictures everywhere, high-rez renders from Pixar films, sketches, and photos.

I warmly recommend it if you like Pixar movies or you're curious about how an animation movie studio is run, or at least can be run if it's done by these people.
This is a company I'd love to work for. People there work very hard*, but they are inspired to do so, and they are supported from every side by a company who loves fun and cooperation, and does everything it can to make both happen. For example, their third home was built from the ground up to have all the communal facilities in the middle, so everybody would get to see everybody else daily, instead of being cut off into segments by roads and separate buildings.

Fun fact: the bulk of Steve Job's fortune actually came from Pixar, not Apple. And also, when he bought Pixar in the eighties (and he supported it through a whole decade of running in the red), he thought he'd bought a computer company, which it was, with a small animation department which very few people thought was very important.


*Toy Story II was finished under such enormous time pressure (a lot had to be remade if the film were to be really good) that a number of people ended up with actual health damage from it. And Pixar took big and permanent steps to prevent this kind of thing happening again, both with scheduling of films, and with in-house ergonomics experts and such. 

A Gallery of the Most Accurate Female Video Game Costumes

A Gallery of the Most Accurate Female Video Game Costumes, picture post.

"Failure notice" spam (updated)

In the past week or so, I seem to be getting great amounts of those "failure notice" type mails you get from a mail server when an email could not be delivered. But they are not answers to any mails I've ever sent. I think they are some kind of spam (which is sometimes confirmed in the middle of all the code and tech-talk, "spam likelihood 99%" or such). But they don't have links to any sales pages, so I don't know how they are supposed to work.

Does anybody else notice a rise in this phenomenon?
Know how it works?

Update:
Thanks to commentors. Indeed it seems related to an old email address of mine (maccreator.com) having been used as fake return address on spam. Not long ago I took an old main address off a spam filter service, and I'd forgotten that the other email address was forwarded to that one for filtering.

Mr. Inappropriate

Well, we all do that, although we can hope for more subtle endings.

And she didn't even show anything much. But then Danish princesses tend to be beautiful. 

Women usually don't understand this kind of behavior. I think they don't have that kind of addiction, not to that degree. For us men, it's like living in starvation and then finding yourself in a room with a huge, luxurious free buffet which only opens in 20 minutes. It's inhumane to expect you to just ignore it.

The odd thing, and little known fact, is that "eating" (if you catch my subtle metaphor here) really never satisfies, though one continues to believe it will. It's a no-win game.

Michael Reno Harrell - Southern Suggestions

[Thanks to Lou]

SLR camera simulator

Thanks to Ray for pointing to this: DSLR camera simulator.

It simulates the effects of various settings of an advanced cameras. Some of the results you only see after pressing the shutter button.
This one for instance was "taken" at 1/10 second, and got shaken.

(I should say that shake-safe shutter speeds vary a lot with the person, the lens, any built-in stabilizor mechanism, and not the least luck (take several pictures if you're in doubt and it's an important picture).

King, not the King

I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

  -- Fred Allen

I can't understand why anybody would pay to get a novel, when he can write one himself and earn a million doing it. 

  -- Stephen King

(OK, King didn't say that, so far as I know, I made it up, but I thought it a nice counterpoint.) 

Nothing mad doing

To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.

           -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

I think that's a quite pessimistic and cynical view. I've occasionally been mad at a good friend of mine, and then I've seen her as a controlling bitch. But when I'm in a good mood, I see her as a lovely person with a good sense of humor. Which view is true? Perhaps neither, or both. But if I have to choose, I'd take the latter. Not only is it more pleasant and fun, but I do think it's more likely to be the truth, since anger is such a strong emotion that it tends to skew one's view of anything. 

Bar side wall at night

(Clickable) 

Fuji X10. Taken around midnight hand-held, just one street light, quite dark. I'm a bit amazed I got detail in the black-painted door and window. In fact I could have lifted the detail up quite a bit more in Photoshop, but then I lost much of the "midnight feel" of it, so I gave that up. 

I think it has a peculiar atmosphere to it, the formality of the composition gives a strength to the spooky, scruffy, lonely street/house. It has life to it, the building is being used every day, but it's a sort of twisted, neglected life. Or at least it seems to to an immigrant from Denmark, where you have to go very far to the edge of things to find any buildings in this kind of bad repair. Here in Northern UK they are everywhere. 

Tiny Robotic Bee doesn't work?

Tiny Robotic Bee Assembles Itself Like Pop-Up Book, article and video.

This is interesting, but unfortunately it also exemplifies what's rampant these days: unclear, sloppy, and inconclusive "reporting".
I wrote in their comments:

It's a *bit* of a flaw in the article that it does not state whether this little robot works in any way yet. I guess not. But it would be nice to have some statements about how far it is from working. I see it needs an external power-source to flap the wings, that's not promising, and the video does not show it flying. 

"...have been working on bio-inspired robots that are about the same size as a bee, can fly and can work autonomously as a robotic colony." ... sounds like it is working. Not clear writing, folks.

This is from Wired, one of the largest tech-oriented publications we have, both on paper and digitally. Shouldn't there be a minimum standard for completeness of articles in such a publication? Surely the question of whether the technology they report on actually works yet or not, is one of the most essential elements to make clear. 

Abstract night shot

I think this would work framed on a wall in a modern home.

(clickable)

Actively listening (updated)

By "active listening" I mean listening to music without doing anything else, no reading or working or talking.
I find that I rarely do any active listening these days. I used to do it when I was much younger.
Do you do it? More or less than when you were younger? If it changed, why do you think it did?

----
I'm just reading a collection of essays by William Gibson (Distrust That Particular Flavor), and the very latest bit I read today was about how Gibson really don't care about the fidelity of the equipment and channel by which he listens to music, he thinks the music is there even by the worst channel.

I think there's a danger of "knowing too much" for enjoyment of something. For example, because I photograph, I notice if the highlights are blown in a photo, and it may spoil the enjoyment for me. But for somebody who know nothing about the technical aspects, it may be a wonderful picture which he gets great enjoyment from.

Buttercups

Thanks to Mary. When I got them yesteday, they were all closed up and didn't look like nuttin'. Now they got bigger, yellow and all pretty-like.

(Fuji X10.)

Peter corrected me:
Daffodils, Eolake; Daffodils! ;-) 

Ooops, yeah. Well, they are very early, aren't they, I thought it were only buttercups and snowdrops which came this early.

These are the mini-kind. Hardly bigger than buttercups, fingertip-sized.

Gustav's Interiority Complex

[Thanks to Anna]

"Interiority complex" is a good word. I wonder if it was a misspelling, but I like it.

Changing room "kiss" gag

If you like hidden-camera style gags, I think this one is pretty inventive.

Once I was having lunch with my older sister and her friend, and when I was getting our coffee, a beautiful waitress walked past the waitress who was taking my payment, and kissed her on the neck. I don't know the back story of that, but as she passed me, I said "me too?". She hesitated for a second and said "nah, you're too tall".

A bit later, seated at the table with my sister and friend, she walks past and without warning bends down and kisses me on the neck. I look after her and she asked quietly "was that good?" I nodded. My table compadres didn't ask for an explanation, and I didn't give one. But it did liven up the day for sure.

Let the Robot Drive

Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here, Wired article.

I'm looking forward to self-driving cars. What a waste of time to stressed out over traffic for hours daily, when you could be curled up in the back with a book, some work, or a blanket and pillow.

NatGeo photo contest

National Geographic photo contest.

===
BTW, any ideas for a theme if I make another contest?

"Romantic Blush"

Fakeness/bad taste alert. "Is it possible to show that your eyes are in love?" Urrrgh.



Somebody said something like: "sincerity is the most important thing, if you can fake that, you got it made."

Shake it baby (updated)

This was parodied on South Park, but it really didn't need it, it is its own parody. Woa.



It is only missing: "the man in your life will enjoy the results as well!" 

Update:
Philocalist said: This was featured quite recently on UK daytime TV - I think there was a clip on YouTube featuring Holly Willoughby (the presenter) in action ... her facial expression was priceless!:-)

Found it!:

 

What I find particularly interesting is that the women all seem to want to point the thing at their faces while working it...

Robyn - Robotboy

I think this is one of the songs I found via the seminal comedy Ideal (originally named "I deal").

Today's Levitation

[Thanks to Aniko]

Today's Levitation, photo blog by Yowayowa, young female Japanese photographer.

Ca(r)mera troubles

(clickable.)

Manic Pixie Dream Girls (updated)

Russ mentions Manic Pixie Dream Girls. I love them! I even know some in real life. (Hi Sally, hi Bettina.)

Unlike what they say at the link, I do think they exist in real life. It's a mis-definition to say they are "always happy". Look at Natalie Portman's character in Garden State, she is far from happy all the time.

But it may seem that way, and I think that's the reason they are rare in real life: one of the qualities of MPDGs is that they seem to float a little bit above life, it does seem to affect them as seriously as it does most people. Which is another reason we love them. We all wish we could be like that. At least unless we are *really* beaten down, to the point were unseriousness seems threatening, heretical.

"The New Girl"

I'm trying to watch a new sitcom, The New Girl, with Zooey Deschanel. It's rather odd, though. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a comedy, but it's very unclear in what direction the comedy is supposed to be going. The Zooey character breaks a televesion with a basketball. Is that funny? Don't look at me, I dunno.

In the intro, the men carry a frame and background forth to frame Zooey as the New Girl. And then the men walk away sort of aimlessly, while Zooey looks at them confusedly. How is this funny exactly?

And they have four young, highly attractive, single persons, one of them female, in one apartment, and apparently there's so far not a hint of romantic attraction taking place. Very realistic, what's next, one of them is an alien and one is a ghost?
The upside is that Zooey is just so deadly cute that she can almost carry it all by herself. (See pixie girls.)
I'll give it a chance or two more.

iPhone "rangefinder"

Totally useless, but too cute. Phone case disguised as a rangefinder camera.
Update: not totally useless... it actually gives a better grip on the phone when photographing, and it provides a slightly better shutter button.

One of the promotional photos show the guy covering the lens totally with his fingers while shooting!

CCTV police officer 'chased himself'

[Thanks to Bert]

CCTV police officer 'chased himself' after being mistaken for burglar, article.

Olympus OM-D

It's not every day we see a new camera line announced, but Olympus is coming out with the "OM-D" line, a line which I suspect will replace the original Four-Thirds format DSLR cameras from Olympus. I really can't see them coming out with another mirror-camera now.
This new line seems quite promising, there should hardly be any limits for making professional cameras of this type, and the linked article says: "Naturally we had to take a look at image quality, and that was looking pretty good too, a step up from the Pens for sure." Very interesting, since the Pen doesn't suck, and it's the same sensor format.
Sensitivity goes up to a dizzying ISO 25,600, and while I really doubt the two top settings are very good, if even 6,400 is very good, then that is a break-through for the M4/3 format. (But then auto-ISO is limited to 1600 by default, so let's wait and see.)

Here it is next to the OM-1 of the original OM line which the new cameras are clearly meant to capture some glow from. If they live up to that, could be very good, for those were durn good cameras, especially considering their path-blazing compactness.

Catherine Tate - Nan - Tommy Upson

"Nan" is played by a much younger woman, Catherine Tate. She plays many very different characters in her show, of both sexes, a regular chameleon.
Here is guest star Peter Kay, also aged beyond recognition. (He's from around here by the way.)

 

I don't know, maybe it's an acquired taste, especially since it sort of builds on earlier sketches with the same characters.

NAZI'S on the MOON Movie (2012)

TTL found this trailer of the now-finished Iron Sky movie. Looks promising. Good ol' visual SF.

What I'm waiting for is full CGI movies, like Pixars, but made for adult audiences instead of family audiences. Don't get me wrong, I love the best of the family movies, not the least Pixar's, but it's still an artificial restriction.
Perhaps it's the issue of realistic humans which is the problem. It's hard to make realistic humans, and human characters which look like animé characters is hard to take seriously if it's not a comedy or a family movie.
I guess they could make it a comedy and yet *not* a family movie. There has already been lots of animated films/TV like that. It seems nobody is banning South Park, despite being graphically vulgar and a cartoon, so why not CGI movies? (Not that they have to be vulgar, there are many different ways of making movies which are aimed at adults.) It would just be great to see outstanding SF movies like that, for example. (Of course they could mix it, which is already happening to a huge degree.)

Book Autopsies (updated)

Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies, photo essay.

Bert found this page of pictures of sculptures, made by cutting out parts of books, one of the ingredients is revealing art on some of the interior pages.

Update: Dave said:
Bit gimmicky, though, don't you think?

 Eolake said...
Yeah, I guess it does lean a bit in that direction. I've posted other things, like for example the guy who makes small sculptures carved from the lead in a pencil. (I've called it "art or sport?")

The funny thing is, if one looks at the most fancy art galleries, a lot of modern art also depends on gimmickery. Like a sculpture I saw, where the materials were listed as "wood, foam rubber, and urine".

Also, I think for many people, a big part of what's needed for them to appreciate "art" is "something I can't do". Which really, to me, is pretty incidental to the central artistic value.

For me, additionally, something like these books has an aesthetic quality which comes, not exactly from the gimmick, but from enjoyment of detailed craft. Similar to a model ship. Not exactly art, not exactly useful either.

Winter dusk

(Canon S100 on auto.) (Click for bigger pics.)

All except the second one have been darkened in mid-tones to more approximate how the eye saw it rather than how the camera interprets it. Maybe I could have gotten similar results by a stop of under-exposure, but I'd have had less control and might have lost shadow details.

Nikon D800

Nikon D800 is out. As I had feared, it's not modest or compact at all, it's a monster in all ways and particulars. 36 megapixels, for flying out loud!
In other words, über-super-pro in all aspects, with what follows in weight and price.