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2012 / 11

2012 / 11 / 27

4 YEAR OLD MOUNTAIN BIKER

Malcolm's first descent - by Main Haole / Malcolm's Dad.

"I did it! I did it Dad!! Oh yeah buddy."

I can't help but cringe a little bit, but this little guy's first person view and hilarious dialogue show's that his Dad clearly has him well prepared and that he's having a blast.
Utterly charming.

From the YouTube video description:
Malcolm's first Descent of the first ramp on Hellion at Highland Park (age 4 yrs). Thanks everyone for your encouragement and comments. Malcolm lives in Maine. We ride often at Highland Mtn Bike Park enjoying not only the incredible trails, but the supportive and friendly community and staff which Mark Hayes has created. Kudos to all of you there, and thanks for having us. Malcolm also participted in The Maine Youth Bike Race Seris (in Falmouth, ME) this past summer. It's another wonderful place for kids to get together to ride and have fun. Thanks to Andrew Freye for organizing this event. Malcs is indeed 4 years old and hopes that this video will encourage other kids and their caregivers to get out there and ride! Again, glad people are enjoying the video
-Dan (aka Malc's Dad)

2012 / 11 / 24

HUBBLE TELESCOPE PHOTOS

Photo credits:
the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
( Some manipulations applied )

There are few things more amazing than the constant stream of photos from the Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990. The imagery captured over these last two decade plus has completely changed the way we think about space, and artists depictions of it. The previous perceptions and representations were all of a blank slate of black nothingness sprinkled with the occasional wide spread pinpoints of stars and planets... and there is an undeniable truth to that perception relative to the human scale distances we are used to... but Hubble has shown us the gorgeously variated and dense complexity of our universe when percieved in some locales at immense scales... scales where our galaxy to these images would be but a pinhead to the earth in relative scale.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought,
What the hell good would that do?"

Ronnie Shakes

2012 / 11 / 23

MILITARY ROBOTS

Boston Dynamics robots in development for DARPA

Cheetah - Petman - Big Dog
Compilation of Boston Dynamics videos by JrStudi0s's.

Boston Dynamics has 9 robots in development for DARPA
( Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ) ie U.S. military.
Cheetah can run at up to 28 mph. Petman and Atlas are humanoid. Bigdog is a qudraped mule that carries up to 400 lbs and follows it's leader over rough terrain. Sand Flea jumps up to 30 feet over obstacles. Rhex crawls into tight spaces over rough terrain. Rhise climbs vertical walls.

As sooon as they incorporate voice rcognition and solar power, I will be taking Bigdog to haul my gear on my next long hike.

2012 / 11 / 20

MEGALAPTERYX FOOT

New Zealand Museum of Natural History.

Though very similar to the look of a typical long distance hiker's foot after 2 or 3 weeks,
this is clearly the foot from a

Probably the one that had it's head lopped off it's bus sized neck by "Lord of the Rings" massively thewed warrior maiden Eowyn with a quick sweep of her 2 foot long sword.
The New Zealand Museum of Natural History seems to think it's the foot from a species of Moa bird endemnic to New Zealand, a flightless, dinosaur like bird extinct by 1500.

2012 / 11 / 18

REALITY OF HUMAN FLIGHT

Alexander Poli wingsuit flying in New Zealand, Switzerland, and Norway.

If this doesn't make your palms sweat, I don't know what will.
Leaping from cliffs to glide/fly into tight canyons, through waterfalls, and between tight rock walls. Probably about the most jaw dropping cool, and roll the dice dangerous activity as one could possibly find.

From the YouTube video description:
GoPro HD Athlete Alexander Polli wingsuit diving in New Zealand, Switzerland, and Norway. This is proximity flying with a wingsuit and proximity flying in tracking gear (tracksuit) without a wingsuit; tracking gear consists of a jacket and pants that inflate with air, which then increases push force when you move your body through the air. Proximity flying with a wingsuit is recommended only for very trained athletes and is considered a very dangerous sport. Proximity flying in tracking gear leaves even less margin for error and requires a more specific choice of flyable lines—if you get too deep, you don't have wings to help you get out.

Music by: Lindsey Sterling

2012 / 11 / 15

ESPRESSO BOOK MACHINE

Automated one step on demand book printing machine by On Demand Books.

A very cool little self service machine that does the entire book production process at once. Impressive. Times they are a changin'.

This company seems primarily geared to selling the Espresso machine to third parties like bookstores and libraries. They offer printing directly, but fees did not seem to be noted on their site. Locations where Espresso machines are available are listed. One at the University of Texas Student Union for example, has fees of roughly $13 for 100 b&w pages with color cover printed, cut, and bound in less than 4 minutes. Up to 800 pages. Presumably self service.

Book publishing is going through some major technological and procedural advances/change. The relatively new process of digital POD (Print On Demand) allows low volumes of books (even one at a time) to be printed quickly at very reasonable prices. Traditional offset printing is more complicated and has longer setup, requiring plates to be produced, and hundredss or thousands of books need to be printed to get the price per book down to typical book prices, but the price per book goes down the larger the print run, getting cheaper than POD at very high volume. The quality is higher with offset printing, but digital is getting very close.

This gives an idea of the state of POD technology, and this machine is a very impressive and innovative example in it's compactness and one step ease of use, though it's not neccesarily the equipment used by many of the relatively new self publishing / POD services which offer full color printing and a variety of production, editing, and distribution services. This is a rapidily evolving industry, and still suffering from growing pains. Even the reputable firms are still evolving in the quality levels / consistensy for this somewhat bleeding edge innovation, and there are also a number of companies that have sprung up in recent years that offer mostly useless self publishing services for high fees, so buyer beware.

2012 / 11 / 11

DANNY MACASKILL

Defining what's possible on a bike - video by Stu Thompson of Cut Media.

A beatifully composed video of jawdropping stunts.
Danny "MegaSkill" MacAskill has redefined what is possible on a bike, launching, balancing, and pirouetting up, over, and on top off every feature of urban landscape imagineable.

From the YouTube video description:
Industrial Revolutions is the amazing new film from street trials riding star Danny Macaskill. Filmed and edited for Channel 4 's documentary Concrete Circus. Industrial Revolutions sees Danny take his incredible bike skills into an industrial train yard and some derelict buildings.' Filmed in the beautiful Scottish countryside Danny Macaskill's latest film was directed by Stu Thomson (Cut Media/MTBcut) for Channel 4's documentary Concrete Circus.

Music is 'The Wolves' by Ben Howard courtesy of Universal Island Records

2012 / 11 / 09

OREGON FOOTBALL UNIFORM

by Nike

The new NASA alternate black ops spacesuit by Nike.
Oh wait...my mistake...it's the Oregon football uniform.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last,
"what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
"It's the same thing," he said.

Winnie the Pooh ( A. A. Milne )

2012 / 11 / 08

JOHN MUIR TRAIL - THE MUIR PROJECT

Almost There

Beautiful trailer for an upcoming full length JMT movie.
The creators hiked the arduous 200 plus mile JMT with up to 75 lb packs, hauling an array of video equipment. (Typical pack weights for this hike range from 15-40 lbs).
There are several other teaser videos on their site.

From their website:
During the summer of 2011, a group of multimedia artists spent 25 days hiking the 219 mile long John Muir Trail. This is the first glimpse into their epic journey, accompanied by the single, ALMOST THERE by Opus Orange. Official Website: http://www.themuirproject.com JMT: The Muir Project key players/hikers: Jason Fitzpatrick (Co-Director/DP), Ric Serena (Co-Director/DP, www.ricserena.com), Jennifer Serena (Still Photographer/Producer, www.jenserena.com), Durand Trench (Location Sound Recordist), Zee Hatley (Camera Operator), Paul Bessenbacher (Music Composer) and Bernard Chadwick (Musician & Installation Designer) and David & Kelly Finlay (Colorado-based teachers) Color Graded by Bob Curreri http://bobcurreri.com/ Music:"Almost There" by:Opus Orange courtesy:Emoto Music opusorange.bandcamp.com

2012 / 11 / 01

PLANET EARTH FROM SPACE OVER 6 DAYS

video by James Drake from Russia's NTs OMZ satellite.

From the YouTube video description:
A timelapse of Planet Earth from Electro-L, a geostationary satellite orbiting 40000km above the Earth. The satellite creates a 121 megapixel image every 30 minutes with four visible and infrared light wavelengths. The infrared light appears orange in these images, and shows vegetation. The images were obtained beginning on May 14th, 2011 and end on May 20th. The images are the largest whole disk images of our planet, the resolution is 1 kilometer per pixel. The images are "masked" by a circular barrier that blocks out the light of the Sun and other stars. This is to prevent damage to the camera by exposure to direct sunlight. The images have been interpolated (blended) to create a smooth animation.

Images Copyright NTs OMZ. Videos Copyright James Drake

See more Electro-L movies and full-size images at http://Planet--Earth.ca/
See the inside of my mind at http://infinity-imagined.tumblr.com/
The archive of full resolution unprocessed images is available on the NTsOMZ website; You will have to download them via FTP http://eng.ntsomz.ru/electro/source_images
Send all Questions and comments to planet.earth.archive (at) gmail.com
If you are going to share these images,
please embed the YouTube player instead of re-uploading in another web player. Thanks!
If you would like to use these videos for Television or other media, contact me at planet.earth.archive (at) gmail.com

( All content property of respective owners )