Amazing and impressive! – Robert
Welcome to Samso, an island off the coast of Denmark. Here is an example of something so remarkable: a community pulling together, investing together, and succeeding at becoming completely energy independent.
Thanks to Melanie T. for sharing this one with us.
New iPad Magic Act — On behalf of Stockholm — The Capital of Scandinavia and Step2 Communication. Performed at MIPIM in Cannes by Charlie Caper and Erik Rosales. Magic with technology.
As part of an upcoming documentary commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of the Titanic disaster, National Geographic has released this updated animation of the sea-liner’s collapse by noted detail stickler James Cameron. Using forensic data from the wreckage, Cameron and his team have amended the ship’s 1912 foundering. The sinking was not adjusted for the Titanic 3D rerelease, unlike certain historical events.
Suggestion: Best viewed in full screen mode if your system allows.
Thanks to Scott R. for bringing this one to our attention.
A TED presentation on Filter Bubbles and how they are changing our world in ways you never imagined. You will want to know about this if you spend anytime on the web using Google Search, or Facebook. 9 minutes. – Robert
CLICK HERE to watch the video.
Thanks to Kevin W. for bringing this link to our attention.
Here at Pixel Harbor, we celebrate the “good stuff”. After the tragedy in Florida that has saddened our country this week, here’s a different kind of story. It is important too. This story comes from my father’s home town of Picayune, Mississippi. – Robert
(CBS News) PICAYUNE, Miss. – In Washington Thursday, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts honored 10 teachers for their power to inspire. CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews spoke to one of them as well as the student whose life she changed.
CLICK HERE to watch the three minute video.
Thanks to Carolyn T. for bringing this story to us.
Jason Mraz’s new song, I Won’t Give Up, speaks to us as individuals and as a Nation. — Robert
CLICK HERE to visit YouTube for his video.
Thanks to Cathy B. for bringing this link to our attention.
A few YEARS ago — I recommended the music service PANDORA to you. Pandora is still great. Still useful. So is iTunes. 220,000,000 active members proves it. And NOW I want to point you to a new service that is an alternative to the first two — it actually compliments iTunes because it includes your current iTunes Library in the player controls. You see the details at their web site.
Try it out. It’s FREE. There’s a lot to explore on their web site.
This is not a paid endorsement. I just like it a lot!
-Robert
Sometimes a picture / video is worth a million words. I’ll let “Kara” speak for herself. – Robert
Jackie Gleason once said “What is a Critic? A Critic is someone who relaxes on the rim of the valley and watches all the effort that goes into fighting a battle below and when it is finished, the Critic rides down and kills the survivors.”
So many movies are trying to get made. Green lighted, funded, etc. If you survive the first steps, then actually making the movie has been compared to war. The Producer and Director move an army of production people through all the steps up to release of the film.
Making good movies is hard. Making good movies takes all the elements which include story first and foremost, but then all the craft work such as acting, directing, sets, music, ALL of it.
So my experiment today was this: I bought a ticket to see the movie John Carter. After I watched it, I bought another ticket and watched Safe House. Both were roller coaster rides. Both were lavish with locations and action. Both made me care about the outcome and the lead characters.
Tin Tin and Hugo — which I admit were brilliant productions — were a feast for my eyes. I marveled at the effects and construction of the films. But I DID NOT CARE about the lead characters nearly enough to FORGET the world outside the theater.
I want to suspend time and stop the noise of everyday life and enter a theatre and be taken away for just a couple of hours. Then I want to be returned safely to my home and remember the films that suspended time for me.
Remember how you felt after seeing Avatar, and latest Star Trek remake, and The Matrix and you said silently to yourself – Wow! that was something really different. And then you remember how you felt seeing the first Star Wars and now years later, you realize that George Lucas is a master of visuals and sets and effects and has absolutely NO plot writing skill. He steals every plot element and has stilted characters deliver the lines instead of letting them “act”. Star Wars is a money machine (and was a visual treat for every science fantasy lover out there in the 1977). Lucas’ Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark was the exception.
So what I got out of my experiment today was this: I’ve read a lot of pre-release reviews about how the Disney Movie (PG-13) John Carter is going to fail at the box office. It might. Simply because of terrible marketing. I just read one review in the LA Times. (Don’t read it if you hate spoilers.) And so I’m here as ONE SINGLE ticket buyer to tell you this: IF you decide to take a two hour break from life this weekend, John Carter is every bit as much fun as you can have at a movie and it delivers that suspension of time in grand, magnificent style.
I recommend it to you NOT as a “must see” film but as a genuine good use of your movie dollar.
Celebrate the excellent. A lot of people worked very hard to create this two hours and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Everyone’s a critic. Your mileage may vary. -Robert Barnes
PS: In case you wondered… Safe House was excellent as a Bourne Identity style action movie. But John Carter was “Fun” and exceptional and really benefits from the big screen. Don’t wait for this one on your TV. John Carter is based on the series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs who later wrote Tarzan.
Robyn shares her personal story and how it inspired her current path as a “Real Food” evangelist. Grounded in a successful Wall Street career that was more interested in food as good business than good-for-you, this mother of four was shaken awake by the dangerous allergic reaction of one of her children to a “typical” breakfast. Her mission to unearth the cause revealed more about the food industry than she could stomach, and impelled her to share her findings with others. Informative and inspiring.
About this speaker
Robyn authored “The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It.” A former Wall Street food industry analyst, Robyn brings insight, compassion and detailed analysis to her research into the impact that the global food system is having on the health of our children. She founded allergykidsfoundation.org and was named by Forbes as one of “20 Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter.” The New York Times has passionately described her as “Food’s Erin Brockovich.”
CLICK HERE to go directly to the video.
Thanks to Kevin W. for sharing this very relevant link with us.
Last May, Jetman achieved a beautiful and memorable flight in the Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA… and here’s the official souvenir video! Many thanks to all who were involved in that adventure!
CLICK HERE to view the flight.
Excellence comes in many forms with levels of danger and difficulty. In your heart of hearts, who wouldn’t want to do this just once. (assuming you lived through it) — Robert
Thanks to Dr. Jones for the link.
Motion Induced Blindness
Applicable for anyone who drives.
When you do the demonstration, if you think the yellow dots are being removed, start moving your eyes around and you will discover that the yellow dots do not disappear. Keep your eyes scanning when you drive!
It works exactly as described and is one major reason people in cars can look right at you (when you’re on a motorcycle or bicycle) — AND NOT SEE YOU.
From a former Naval Aviator: This is a great illustration of what we were taught about scanning outside the cockpit when I went through training back in the ’50s. We were told to scan the horizon for a short distance, stop momentarily, and repeat the process. I can remember being told why this was the most effective technique to locate other aircraft. It was emphasized (repeatedly) to NOT fix your gaze for more than a couple of seconds on any single object.
The instructors, some of whom were WWII veterans with years of experience, instructed us to continually “keep our eyes moving and our head on a swivel” because this was the best way to survive, not only in combat, but from peace time hazards (like a midair collision) as well.
We basically had to take the advice on faith (until we could experience it for ourselves) because the technology to demonstrate it didn’t exist at that time.
Click on the Image or Click Here to experience the actual demonstration.
Source: Provided by Prof. Michael Bach PhD, Ophthalmology, University of Freiburg, Germany, from his collection of Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena.
Thanks to Carolyn T. for passing this one along to us.
A team from Georgia Tech, led by Post Doctorate Fellow Mario Romero (School of Interactive Computing) has designed BrailleTouch for touchscreen mobile devices. The prototype app allows visually impaired people to easily type and opens the door for everyone to text or type without looking at the screen.
Click the image above to view … or
CLICK HERE to go to the original YouTube video.
Thanks to Dr. Jones for passing this one along to us.
Google has launched the Art Project site. It’s a collection of famous museums and galleries. You can visit amazing venues from the Met to Versailles. Using Street View technology, you can interactively move through the buildings. You can focus on famous paintings you want to view. Paintings are captured in high-resolution, so you can see unbelievable detail.
CLICK HERE to visit and explore the Art Project
Thanks to Sally C. for passing this along to us.
For his series titled “Pneu”, Belgian artist Wim Delvoye created a series of decorative objects by hand-carving intricate patterns and floral motifs on used car tires. Through his manipulation of found objects, Delvoye transforms things that seem useful in everyday life into sculptural pieces that carry a different value from their original intended purpose. Delvoye calls his own approach to art ‘glocal’, referring to ‘local’ and ‘global’, which is his own ironical way of describing art.
Thanks to Junk Culture for this one.
Thanks to Carolyn Terry for this link.
Each week the moderators and staff of NatureScapes select one photo that particularly stands out in each of the image critique galleries. This photo becomes that gallery’s Image of the Week, and at year end one image is selected from these to be the gallery’s Image of the Year.
A monstrous dust storm (Haboob) roared through Phoenix, Arizona in July
What a year! Here’s to 2012 being a more quiet and less destructive year.
CLICK HERE to view the 45 selected images.
Thanks to Dr. Jones for passing this link along to us.
After solar flare, massive storm speeds Earthward. A solar flare Sunday triggered an outburst of solar material that should hit Earth Tuesday. The disturbance could lead to voltage swings on some power lines, as well as stronger northern lights.
The Christian Science Monitor By Pete Spotts, Staff Writer / January 23, 2012
An outburst from the sun late Sunday night is bathing Earth in the most powerful solar-radiation storm in six years.
The radiation storm is the first act of an event that will crescendo Tuesday, when the brunt of the outburst – called a coronal-mass ejection – arrives at Earth. It could trigger a disturbance of Earth’s magnetic field, leading to voltage swings in long-distance power transmission lines as well as the appearance of the northern lights as far south as New York.
The current radiation storm – rated an S3, or strong, on a scale of 1 to 5 – could damage satellite hardware and present an increased risk of radiation exposure to passengers flying at high altitudes across polar routes, say space-weather specialists. These risks, however, are expected to be manageable.
The outburst, which occurred at 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Sunday, marks the second major solar eruption in three days.
Sunday’s event began with a moderate solar flare that was “nothing special” on its own, says Doug Biesecker, a solar physicist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo.
But the flare triggered the release of billions of tons of energetic particles from the sun’s atmosphere. This coronal-mass ejection (CME) is hurtling toward Earth at 4 million miles an hour, “by far the fastest CME directed at the Earth during the current solar cycle,” Dr. Biesecker says.
CMEs are vast clouds of protons, electrons, as well as heavy atomic nuclei formed in the nuclear fusion reactions that power the sun.
This CME’s unusually high speed is accelerating some of its protons to nearly the speed of light, and they are arriving in quantities not seen since May 2005.
The resulting radiation storm could cause some hardware or onboard software glitches for satellite operators. And radio communications at high latitudes, as well as navigation-satellite accuracy for high-precision uses, could suffer some degradation for the duration of the radiation storm.
A geomagnetic storm Tuesday could further affect satellites.
For satellite operators, geomagnetic storms have a Janus-like quality. If strong enough, they can produce voltages on a satellite’s exterior that can be powerful enough to arc and cause damage. And the storms can increase the atmosphere’s drag on satellites, causing them to lose altitude.
But such storms also can increase drag on space junk that can pose a risk to satellites, sending more of it to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
This week’s geomagnetic storm also could bring auroras to viewers farther south than usual.
Biesecker says the storm may reach a level that could render auroras visible as far south as Idaho and New York, and perhaps even Illinois and Oregon if the CME’s intensity is large than estimated.
CLICK HERE to view the original story.
After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago my wife and I (Sean Ohlenkamp) decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto (883 Queen Street West)
CLICK HERE to watch the video.
Thanks to Doug B for passing this one along.
Largest picture captured in 111 Giga Pixels The picture was made with the Canon 5D mark II and a 400mm-lens. It consists of 1.665 full format pictures with 21.4 mega pixels, which was recorded by a photo-robot in 172 minutes. Converting 102 GB of raw data with a computer that had a main memory cache of 48 GB and 16 processors… took 94 hours. The picture is the largest in the world. Zoom in to see any particular building or object.
Click Here to view and explore the image
Thanks to Carolyn T for the link.
16 Year old girl guitarist plays “Wonderful Slippery Thing”.
Some people are just beyond excellent at what they do.
Simply Wow!
Thanks to Bill B. for calling attention to this one.
CLICK HERE for Shuttle Flight Deck
This is a great maneuverable picture of the shuttle flight deck. Use your mouse to move around and see all angles. The windows have protective covers on them. Notice the two large square holes in the floor as the picture rotates around to the back of the Flight deck. These two openings lead to the Mid-deck, which is below and holds all the stowage, sleep stations, food prep, toilet, airlock to the payload bay, and room for 3 seated crew for launch.
Move your mouse to get around the flight deck.
Thanks to Bob P. for passing this one along to us.
What if other planteary bodies orbited our world at the same distance as the moon?
I ran across this story in USA Today and it’s surprising what it reveals — and the hot links it offers to let you address these privacy issues quickly. Here’s the intro to the story. Click the link to visit the complete story and access the hot links. – Robert
What Apps Can Access Your Social Media?
By Sarah Kessler, Mashable
There are more than 130 Facebook app developers with access to my profile. Sixty-eight apps have permission to post to my Twitter feed, eight of them can access my LinkedIn data and another eight are connected to my Gmail account. You don’t have to be an online privacy expert to understand that’s probably too many, but how many apps have permission to your account?
Israel-based entrepreneur Avi Charkham has cut down the time it will take you to find out. After becoming frustrated with how difficult it is to locate app permission pages on social sites, Charkham compiled direct links to such pages for eight different networks into one place on the site MyPermissions.
CLICK HERE for the rest of the story (and links.)
Find the original story from Mashable here: http://on.mash.to/xM9eqa
Here’s to the Sane Ones. The people who use their brains, question dogma, don’t accept sound bytes as “reality” and want to see our country thrive. Here’s to the people who know that solutions are full of complexity, compromise and balance. Here’s to a year we can vote for people of character, statesmanship, vision and imagination. Stick a pin in the blow hards and reward the heros and heroines. Here’s to the bright ones who want to make a positive difference, and that’s everyone I list as friends. Happy New Year to all of you.
Pixel Harbor is back for a new year of sharing what’s interesting, notable and qualifies as some of the better examples of excellence.
I hope you’ll find value in what you see here and keep coming back for more. I’ve received a number of good pieces from the collective “you” during the downtime while we’ve been moving to Reno. These contribution will find their way to the screen in the coming months. I plan to post less often and let Facebook and Google+ continue to be THE social nets they’re intended to be. Pixel Harbor is more like a digital magazine focused on inspiration and brain food.
Your feedback is encouraged. Your comments and contributions help us all. Please invite your friends to subscribe. The more the merrier. — Robert
Image by Robert Barnes
Against The Fall Of Night
Number One • World Trade Center
There are people on this Earth that would bring another age of darkness. They seek destruction, they seek chaos, they have no conscience, they know no pity or empathy for their fellow man. They would burn books they dislike. They persecute those who worship God in a manner different from their own. They would subjugate women as chattel and legalize slavery of their neighbors. They would rule the world or destroy it.
They come from all varieties of national, ethnic and religious diversity found on our planet. They are forces of ignorance and destruction. Their brand of hatred leaves no room for Truth or Love.
We stand as a family, a people, a nation — against this tide of evil.
I shot this image of the World Trade Center in 1980 while working to open the CNN New York Bureau in the lobby. It is the companion piece to my other work titled “The Fabric of Civilization”.
Visit BarnesGallery.com to view more and print a free copy as part of our remembrance of 9-11.
The reason the dinosaurs died out was partly due to their inability to adapt to changes in their environment. Not wanting to follow in their footsteps, Pixel Harbor and Barnes Gallery are starting our move to the Tahoe area in Nevada. We have found real delight during our 10 years working in Santa Fe, New Mexico but we’re ready for a change in scenery and altitude. We don’t know the details where we’ll be settling yet, and will spend the summer working them out.
Pixel Harbor and BGB • Barnes Gallery Blog will both be taking a summer hiatus. I’ve decided to give myself the time to make it through the move and relocation, which I think will mean that you won’t see much of me here this summer, although I may not be able to resist the urge to toss up another astounding bit of the good stuff for your enjoyment from time to time.
Many of you help make this blog what it is by contributing links and whole articles. Please continue to send your best gems to Robert@PixelHarbor.com There are about 300 of you who regularly visit this blog each week. You are invited to write me directly and I’ll save them up for the future. Your feedback is always encouraged and welcome.
Have a great summer, and I hope to see you online in the fall. — Robert Barnes
Sony is reported to have played this video at its annual shareholder meeting in 2009. Now, with 12,000,000 viewings on YouTube (so far) — it’s not too late to share this with the rest of us.
This is what the people who want to run the country, should be talking about.
CLICK HERE if the embedded video isn’t visible.
Thanks to Chuck P. for forwarding this link.
Peter Blaskovic brings us Fluid Painter.
CLICK HERE to visit the web page and have some creative fun.
