Friends

I love my friends, and I feel like I'm very bad at expressing my gratitude and appreciation for them. I started thinking of them the other day, and to my comedic delight (and surprise), I realized that a great majority of my friends' names are either nouns themselves or homophones of nouns (obviously not proper nouns...that would make this whole post stupid)...check it out:
Chase (a chase)
Lance (like for skewering people)
Max (this is for the math geeks...a max, as in a local or global max)
Brad (a brad, you know, for paper)
Abby (an abbey)
Phil (it works better as a verb, but fill is also a noun)
Mike (mic - short for microphone!)
Mat (self-explanatory)
Derek (oil-derrick anyone?)
Jon (haha...a john)
...even Albanians!
Stela (actually means star in Italian, so stretchy, but whatev)

Anyway, kinda crazy, but funny, I thought...

Italian Motorcycle Display

This is exactly what the great neo-realist films remind me of...I'm surprised I haven't seen this as a scene in one of them...

A Fantastic Look at Marriage and Divorce Trends in the US

Pew Research Center has released a very interesting interactive map. What intrigued me most was to see that the average divorce rate in the country hovers around 9-12%. I had imagined it to be much higher with all the talk of the "alarming" number of divorces happening nowadays...

Three Crazy Cool Physics Experiments

Check them out:
Electromagnetic Black Holes...on Earth
RFID in Pictures (if you don't know what RFID is......it's the way cards can wirelessly open doors, it's the way you can pay for your TRAX ticket by credit card without swiping, and it's the reason why US (and other) passports should be kept closed at all times)
Table-top Black Holes

Monday Update!

So, it looks like Lance and I made it to New York without any problems. I hope you all had a few laughs reading the tweets we put up. It was a long drive, but very doable. Maybe I'll do it again soon, now that I have even more reasons to come out this way!
We'll have some good times here in NY, and I'll be back to Salt Lake on Wednesday night. We're just waiting a for the girls to return before we spend our Columbus Day in Manhattan.
There's been a lot of stuff in the past few weeks that I've been meaning to post, and I figure while I'm waiting here, I should get them out.
First of all, tech excitement: Google Wave. What is Wave? It's a revolution of some sort. Check this short video out:


This is probably one of my favorite photographs and one of my most favorite art projects I've seen in a long while. How do you photograph a redwood tree, and make it look good? Plenty of issues involved, although most are alleviated with the same techniques used for architecture photography. The biggest problem though, is the close proximity of other trees. Here's how one guy is doing it, check it out: Biggest, Tallest Tree Photo Ever. And speaking of photography...digital still cameras are making a wave in the motion picture industry. (A Canon 5d Mk II was the primary camera used in this doc...if that doesn't mean anything to you, I'm sorry.) Also, don't miss the hardest photos to capture in nature.

For those who liked The Beatles: Rock Band video I posted a while back, this is also a must-see. All about the artwork behind the game. More videos too!!!

Time Telescope- I'm in an optics class right now, so this is fantastically interesting to me: Cornell researchers have developed a "time telescope." I quote:

Using the method, they were able to shift a 24-bit light pulse from 2.5 nanoseconds to 92 picoseconds in length without losing any information -- delivering the it to its destination 27 times faster than traditional fiber optics.

This is absolutely incredible. (And no, it does NOT mean that the info was traveling faster than light, Lance and Max.) Along similar lines, NASA is also innovating existing tech. NASA's always wanted 3d printers to develop: it's cheaper to create spare parts in space by printing them, rather than shipping, but until recently, the process has still be kinda sketchy (although there has been some great successes in current 3d printing, like printing a usable handcuff key). NASA, however has now developed an electron-beam printer, which would revolutionize manufacturing--even here on Earth:

Normally an aircraft builder might start with a 6,000-pound block of titanium and machine it down to a 300-pound part, leaving 5,700 pounds of material that needs to be recycled and using several thousand gallons of cutting fluid used in the process.
With EBF3 you can build up the same part using only 350 pounds of titanium and machine away just 50 pounds to get the part into its final configuration. And the EBF3 process uses much less electricity to create the same part.

How's that for green innovation?
And don't forget the Best of Hubble!

If you like documentaries, you should check out SnagFilms. You will definitely find something you should watch! If you don't like documentaries, you're crazy. And regardless of whether you like or not, everyone who hasn't seen Man On Wire, had better.

Here's a great article about how we can make warfare...a little less deadly. I'm a very strong advocate of peace, if you know me, but I also understand that war is, regrettably, sometimes unavoidable. However, there's no reason why this can't be our first option, instead of throwing billions of dollars of munitions, killing millions of people.

And finally, for my friends who are system admins or system supporters or anyone who likes to have a lot of digital tools with them at all times: NirSoft Launcher. Check it out.

Other random stuff:
Minimalist Movie Posters
Hammer v. Feather on Moon
Cardboard Sculptures of Media Machines
Shepherd Fairey and Creative Commons

It's a lot, but I've been a lazy poster this semester!!!

Road Trip!

Lance and I have left on a short-long little road trip to New York! I won't have internet to update what's going on all the time, but I do expect to have cell reception, so I will posting updates and what-nots on twitter.
My twitter name is zoti_soli, and you can find updates here: http://twitter.com/zoti_soli
If you are a twitterer, follow me and you can receive updates as well!

Help the Tower!

Just got this e-mail from a professor of mine:

Our friends at the Tower Theatre are in a bit of trouble. They are taking donations as small as $5.

Help the Tower!
Ever wanted to be more involved in your film community? Now is your chance to really make a difference.
Upon starting the 4:30 digital screening of the film Afghan Star last Friday, the Tower's digital projector shorted out and is now beyond repair. The machine was purchased in 2000 when the lumens, or strength of light power, were based on one chip and not extremely bright. Since then, technology in this field has made a vast improvement and current available projectors have potential to give us festival quality projection. We are so close! Still, we need your help to make it possible! So join in by making a contribution today and be directly invested into providing film access at the Tower Theatre for many years to come.

We're raising money through Facebook Causes, if you're not a member of Facebook it only takes a few seconds to sign up and start helping!

Click here to visit the cause page and DONATE!

We're trying to reach the goal of $8,500 in only four days, so please help now! All donations are tax deductible and every little bit helps!

For those of you who don't know, the Tower is one of the oldest operating theatres in Utah. It is entirely funded by the Salt Lake Film Society, is one of the favorite local theaters, maintains a library of the most beautiful and obscure films in Salt Lake, and is a site for the Sundance Film Festival. If you can, do donate!

CCTV

No, it doesn't stand for closed-circuit television--although I find much humor in the acronym. Central China Television has created an awesome little ad. It's nice to see some creativity thrive in socialistic countries, proves some of the critics wrong.
Plus, it's good to see Chinese CGI used as CGI, and not substituted for the real thing.