Looking forward to tonight's sleep beneath the stars. And above the ground...
Rachael Talibart's Amazing Seascapes
Newhaven never looked better. Rachel Talibart uses superfast shutter speeds and telescopic lenses to pick out these dramatic solid-looking waves.
“Growing up in southeast England, Rachael Talibart spent several weeks every summer on her father’s sailboat, exploring the coastlines of France and the Netherlands. These family voyages were meant as a vacation, although Talibart never had much fun—she was a “shockingly bad sailor” who was almost constantly seasick. Because her nausea was worse inside the boat, she spent most of her time alone in the cockpit, looking out over the ocean.
’I spent ages staring at the waves,” she remembers. “I used to imagine creatures in the sea.’”
Found on Wired. See them all there.
Wakazono
Can it ever make sense to talk about 'art' or 'craftsmanship' in the context of a computer-machined hunk of aluminium?
Yes!
Designed by Nendo:
“Firstly, grooves of 5mm deep, 1.8mm width were carved in constant intervals on the vase’s exterior, resulting in two different levels on the surface. The first pattern was then carved 2mm deep from the external surface, while the second pattern was carved 6mm deep from the deeper immersed surface.
This calculated process results in the creation of a four-layer surface with different depths, allowing the patterns to appear visually according to the angle in which the vase is viewed. The dimensions and proportions of this process were carefully examined and tested due to the effects of deviations; if the initial grooves are too deep, the dark casted shadows will visually block the pattern, conversely if it is too shallow, the two patterns will blend together without a distinct separation.
By using multi axis machinery, some grooves were carved to 1.8mm in width, and only 1mm thickness at the edge. These narrow dimensions cause complications, as the grooves can easily break due to clogging of scraping material. Furthermore, if the cutting speed is too high, the temperature of the cutter rises, and can cause metal distortions. Accordingly, the production’s duration and dimensions were carefully adjusted, and milling was done gradually in 0.5 mm deep layers.
This delicate process originated from a 100kg block of aluminum, that after 7 months, resulted in a 15kg vase.”
Man Cave
Right now you absolutely cannot get me out of the man cave.
The midst of GCSEs
I am so impressed at the sheer graft our kids are putting into their revision.
Up a tree in the sun
Another brilliant climb in the wonderful weather. A huge (and very familiar) London Plane in King George V Playing Fields in Exeter. Just great!
Brilliant Steganography
FontCode is an ingenious system of tiny font adaptations to hide messages in printed (or screen-text) documents. It would be perfect for watermarking, for example, while the video demonstration uses it as an elegant (though undetectable?!) alternative to QR codes.
from Wired.
Mohini and Marco
Mohini Dey is the most exciting bass player in the world at the moment, and if a phone-quality video of her with Marco Minneman is all I can get, it's all I am going to watch. This is just great.
More...?! OK.
More wisteria.
Shut up. You're just jealous.
Top Cache Award
I just received two more Top Cache awards for my treetop geocaches. I'm absurdly pleased with all of these. Thanks to Amberel for his awards, and his craftsmanship!
Blue Angels 360
Some 360 video is better than others....
Almost at peak Wisteria
Westonbirt Arboretum
Arb Show 2018 is very good. But not as good as the entire rest of the arboretum!
Jim's Ukulele Songbook
Goodness gracious me, Jim Carey has updated his 2000+ song songbook for ukulele. You can get it from his amazing website here in pdf form.
(Though if you are online it is worth looking at them on his website because you can transpose any song into any key, change the chord diagrams if you are left-handed, change what instrument you are using etc. It’s a real piece of work.)
Facebook's T&C Reading Level is College-Age
I thought I'd run a reading-age checker over Facebook's Terms. I did not include the onerous "other terms and policies" because they are only available as separate documents. (It is curiously tricky to just get all the terms you sign up to in one place.)
The Flesch Reading Ease level is 39.6. This is the middle of the "College Age" range (30-50).
It seems to me that any Terms document should be written at the reading-age of the youngest people you allow to create accounts. Facebook's is currently thirteen. (I am assuming of course that all people over college age have a reading level that reflects that. They don't.)
Fingle Bridge
How to Fight Climate Change: Figure Out Who's to Blame, and Sue Them
There is a (miserable but) brilliant article in Wired today.
“In a climate “tutorial” that was part of the California cities’ lawsuit in March, Chevron’s attorney Ted Boutrous didn’t attempt to deny a single thing about the physics and chemistry of climate change, or even that human activity caused it. He just said it didn’t make sense to blame oil companies. Burning hydrocarbons doesn’t kill people; people burning hydrocarbons kills people.”
“We don’t know what will happen, but no one thought tobacco litigation would succeed, and that completely changed public health policy”
““The future is here,” Herring says. It’s a future of terrifying disasters—and a future where scientists know more about the underpinnings and mechanics of those disasters. But maybe most importantly, it’s a future where you can attribute a cause. It’s a future where you can ascribe fault.
And that means you can sue the people responsible.”
What was I thinking?
WAS I thinking?!
How to Strike
Wow - this is absolutely the way to do it...
Okayama buses strike by continuing to run and refusing to take anyone’s money
“In cases such as this, management may use the labor stoppage against the drivers, appealing to the public that they are putting their own needs before the community’s. So to show that isn’t the case, Ryobi drivers are continuing to clock in, but without performing the part of their job that requires them to accept payment during certain times. In other words, free bus rides for all!”
Read the whole article in Japan Today (02/05/18)
Who Gives a Crap?
“We started Who Gives A Crap when we learnt that 2.3 billion people across the world don’t have access to a toilet. That’s roughly 40% of the global population and means that around 289,000 children under five die every year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation. That’s almost 800 children per day, or one child every two minutes.”
Read the rest here.