Easily add a cheap $30 Sunpak 0.45x wide angle lens with a Magnetic Mount to your Flip HD camcorder. This will add more width to the standard ‘lens’ by easily adding a magnetic mount to the front.
(Photo from Photo from http://www.hdhat.com)
YouTube user Garzilla08 posted a great test video to illustrate the difference between the stock ‘lens’ and the added Sunpak wide angle lens:
In an earlier post I commented on an article in Appleinsider, that Apple was charging over $10,000 to produce new titles in the iTunes LP format. Well, that is no longer the case. Apple just released free development tools for creating iTunes LP formated releases called Tune Kit along with a slew of documentation. The downside? An existing iTunes contract is required for Apple distribution, and the submission process is manual and limited until the first quarter of 2010. However… You can still use these tools or iTunesLP.net to distribute a slick iTunes LP yourself. And of course there is still the trusted needle and vinyl - just make sure to get enough test pressings. The art of vinyl mastering is fading away.
View of Kilimanjaro - photo by Tasha Rifkin
A little over a year ago Tasha and I went to Kenya on a safari. Our first few nights we stayed in a little hut on the foothills of the Kenyan side of Kilimanjaro. The ancient African volcano is not only a site of mystic beauty, it is also dramatically losing it’s glaciers at an alarming rate. New research just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the first time calculates the volume of ice lost from Mount Kilimanjaro’s snowfields. From 1912-2007, the mountain’s famous glaciers have decreased approx. 85%, with 26% of glacier present in 2000 now gone. That is 1/4 of it’s glaciers completely melted and leached into the newly created swamps of Amboseli in a 9 year period. We saw this evidence first hand when our Kenyan driver showed us Amboseli National Park with it’s barren dry landscape and pools of watery swamps. The park was once filled with Acacia trees only 10 years ago until a high level of salinity in the soil killed most of the trees. According to our driver, the level of salinity changes with the fluctuation of the water table, which in turn has been affected by recurrent floods - thus killing the trees and creating little marshes that attract concentrated hordes of African Wildlife (and tourists). He didn’t site reason for the rise in the water levels, but when I looked up at Kilimanjaro, It was not hard to put 2 and 2 together.
When the iPhone 3.0 update came out, iPhone developer Joachim Bean discovered a very simple way to unlock the Tethering feature that Apple built into the device. This feature which allows you to use the device to connect a laptop to the Web by either USB or Bluetooth was a known feature for the iPhone, but the service was not offered in the U.S. by AT&T because assumably they can’t figure out a way to build it into their services. It also appears that AT&T are tolerating the hack - probably because they know they can’t stop it. This little hack was so easy and useful I did it myself and used it often - especially to circumvent WiFi charges by cafes such as Starbucks. The 3G connection was also surprisingly faster than expected on laptop.
Then came along the 3.1 update which killed this little hack. But of course somebody found a workaround to that - Austrian blogger Benjamin Miller posted a tethering workaround for the iPhone 3.1 update. Of course another update came along and killed that.
Now we have the 3.1.2 update, and we have another workaround called Blacksn0w. This appears to unlock your iPhone and I would not recommend this if you are using your iPhone for developing, but if you like to explore and take some risks follow this tutorial. You can also reference this video:
After a trip today to the Montclair Art Museum, I learned one little fascinating thing. It may not be so much interesting or surprising to others, but one of my favorite Surrealist artists Man Ray once lived and worked at an art colony in Ridgefield, New Jersey. It was during his early years as an artist between 1912 - 1915. In fact, after the 1913 Armory Show, he created a series of paintings after a three-day camping trip in the Ramapo Hills of northern New Jersey. This trip apparently was a ‘momentous decision’ to Man Ray according to New York Times writer Grace Glueck:
“he would no longer paint directly from nature but rely instead on sources like his own memory. He began what he called ”imaginary landscapes” based on recollections of a three-day camping trip.”
Of course this was a springboard to what we all know of Man Ray’s work, but it was fascinating to know it partially began in Jersey….
Ridgefield Landscape (New Jersey), 1913 - Oil on canvas
“We took the ferry to the Jersey side and a trolley to the top of the Palisades. It was open country without any houses. We walked up a road for about half a mile and came to a clump of woods. We followed a narrow path for another 10 minutes with silence all around us except for the twittering of a bird now and then, and came out on an open hillside with a panoramic view of a valley. In the foreground, scattered here and there stood a few simple and picturesque little houses with fruit trees in between. To the right, among taller trees, could be seen more substantially built rustic stone houses. It certainly looked like my idea of an artists’ colony.”
- MAN RAY, Self Portrait
More reading:
I had a brief flashback today when I found an old photo of my very first computer - a TRS-80 Color Computer 2. Although, it didn’t do much with it’s 32 KB of RAM, 9 colors, and Cassette tape data drive, I was so proud of this little machine. I remember retyping Basic code into the terminal to create little games from game books. Back then, you would either buy a cassette game or a book with the code and retype the code in. If you made an (syntax) error you were screwed. It would take hours to find the missing character or type-o. Sure, I could have had a pricier Commodore 64 with it’s fancy joysticks and cartridges, but I went Tandy style with a licensed Microsoft DOS operating system. I wouldn’t trade that for anything. I look back today and realize how much this thing influenced me. Hats off to Radio Shack, and a big thank you to Mom and Dad.
For more TRS-80 interest go here:
TRS-80 emulator- (re-live the old days)
Bedlam- (My Favorite cassette text game)
Specs- (From the Old Computer Museum)
A Recent unboxing- (Yes, somebody actually videotaped their TRS-80 ebay purchase)
Best for last… An old commercial:
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Pauline Kael And Stan Brakhage (1964?)
I was lucky enough to attend a few of Stan Brakhage’s lecture/film screenings during the late 90’s at the Millennium Film Workshop. He was always kind of smug and pompous, but he loved to show and talk about his work. He was very passionate and cared about what he was doing. He believed in his work. One odd thing I remember he mentioned was his penchant for mass market mystery novels. That was quite weird yet honest.
Here is a brief description of this audio recording hosted at UbuWeb:
Legendary film critic Pauline Kael is captured here in conversation with filmmaker Stan Brakhage. While the tape is incomplete, we do hear Brakhage defend his practice, his epic film DOG STAR MAN, his influences, his search for ” a happening in structure”. Brakhage proudly declares: “I’m an amateur filmmaker, I make home movies.”
For those who aren’t familiar with the WPtouch plug in for wordpress, no need to get familiar. Wordpress has just launched a mobile version of the WPtouch theme and will now redirect mobile devices there. iPhone and Android phones will get the slick WPtouch theme (displayed above) while other devices will get redirected to the older version of the WordPress Mobile Edition. It seems a bit late that Wordpress has finally decided to have redirects for mobile devices, but I guess the stats of over 60 million page views a month of WordPress.com blogs on mobile devices prodded them to finally get this going. I still prefer the customizable WPtouch plug in, but I totally see a market for themes here.. in a BIG way.
Polaroid has decided to rise from the bankrupt ashes and make cameras again. Well at least the joint venture between Gordon Brother Brands and Hilco who now own the rights to the Polaroid name have decided to follow the lead of The Impossible Project to make the instant photos a reality once again. The camera will be manufactured in China by Summit Global and the film will be made by The Impossible Project.
Here is the statement from the Impossible Project:
We are pleased to herewith announce a history making cooperation between Polaroid and The Impossible Project:
As we have created quite some buzz about Analog Instant Photography over the past 12 months, the Polaroid licensee - The Summit Global Group - now can’t resist any longer and announced at a press conference on October 13th in Hongkong that they will re-launch some of the most famous Polaroid Instant Cameras.
Therefore they are commissioning The Impossible Project to develop and produce a limited edition of Polaroid branded Instant Films in the middle of 2010.
The Impossible Project is proud and excited that its ambitions and all the relentless work that has already been invested are now becoming the foundation for Polaroid’s comeback as a producer of Instant Cameras.
Large-scale production and worldwide sale of The Impossible Project’s new integral film materials under its own brand will already start in the beginning of 2010 - with a brand new and astonishing black and white Instant Film and the first colour films to follow in the course of the year.
