COMMENT
Alex Rodriguez finds out just where a $25 Kiva loan goes, how it’s spent and whether it really helps someone.
Alex Rodriguez finds out just where a $25 Kiva loan goes, how it’s spent and whether it really helps someone.
Here’s the behind the scenes of how the viral video Walk Across America was filmed.
What is Google? It seems like it wants to be everything. Everything good, everything free, everything useful. It’s given us an incredible search engine, maps, Earth, Street View, Docs, etc, etc. And now, this. A Font Directory so you and I — anyone with a little HTML sense — can easily and simply try out new fonts and use them in our docs. For free. Who are running this company? Aliens? Thank you!
Google Font Directory
Any photographer with a web site will appreciate this.
View more fonts at: Google Font Directory.
[Mashable]
Read the article and view the collection at: Retin Art.
[alltop]
Svalbard Doomsday Seed Bank
OK, so it’s a Doomsday Seed Vault located in an old copper mine on the remote Arctic island of Svalbard, Norway. But it’s more important than you may imagine. Essentially, every single commercially grown plant we buy at the supermarket is a clone of one of only a few specially selected strains of genetic material. This poses a problem: crop species are exposed to any disease which can exploit that single strain, for example, a newly mutated strain of fungus could wipe out an entire world crop in matter of months, and cause massive food shortages.
Read more and view more pictures at: Atlas Obscura.
Kodak Digital 1
It doesn’t matter what it was called; to us, it will from now on be known as Digital 1 — the first digital camera ever built. It happens to be by Steve Sasson who, on one fateful December 1975, after a year of piecing together a bunch of ‘new’ technology in a back lab at the Kodak Elmgrove Plant in Rochester, was ready to try the “rather odd-looking collection of digital circuits that we desperately tried to convince ourselves was a portable camera.”
The lens came from a used parts bin from the Super 8 movie camera production line, the imaging sensor was a new type of CCD imaging array with an A/D converter implementation stolen from a digital voltmeter application, and several dozen digital and analog circuits were all wired together on approximately half a dozen circuit boards.
Kodak Digital 1 - Recording Media
The recording media was a portable digital cassette recorder which took 23 seconds to record a crude 100 line black and white image. It took 16 nickel cadmium batteries to power the contraption. That, ladies and gents, was the humble beginnings of the first ‘portable’ digital camera.
Kodak Digital 1 - Playback
To view the recorded image, a microcomputer was used to display the images on a B&W TV screen.
Starting today, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting an exhibition of Leonard Nimoy’s latest photographs in conjunction with R. Michelson Galleries.
Leonard Nimoy is probably most famous for playing the role of Mr. Spock in the Star Trek TV Series and movies. He is also an avid photographer, starting as a teenager developing films in the family bathroom / darkroom. He studied at UCLA under Robert Heineken in the early 1970’s and later received an “artist in residence” appointment at the American Academy in Rome.
Leonard Nimoy’s photography is included in many museum collections, including The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Judah L. Magnes Museum, The LA County Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum of NY, The New Orleans Museum of Fine Art and The Hammer Museum.
You can meet Leonard Nimoy in person at the opening reception of Leonard Nimoy: A Retrospective on July 29th from 6 to 8pm at the R.Michelson Galleries, Northampton MA. He will also be signing books purchased at the opening reception [only].
Leonard Nimoy: A Retrospective
Featuring work from Secret Selves, The Full Body Project, Shekhina, The Black and White Series, and Self Portraits
July 29 – October 31, 2010
R.Michelson Galleries, Northampton MA
Leonard Nimoy’s Secret Selves Exhibit at MASS MoCA
August 1– December 31, 2010
MASS MoCA, North Adams MA
His name is Stephen Wiltshire and he is “The Human Camera.” He was diagnosed as autistic at 3. With no language, he lived entirely in his own world. At the age of five, educators at the Queensmill School in London noticed that he enjoyed drawing and his drawings showed a masterful perspective, a whimsical line, and even a natural innate artistry. His first word was “paper.” He has a particular talent for drawing lifelike, accurate representations of cities, sometimes after having only observed them briefly.
