After taking a 20-minute helicopter ride, artist Stephen Wiltshire, who has autism, is drawing New York City’s skyline from memory.
I’m absolutely amazed by this since my memory isn’t that good and I have no artistic ability, which is evidenced by my drawing of that bloody pipe, which took me about 10 attempts to get right.
You can see other pictures of his progress and trip to NYC, and even a live stream when he’s drawing, on his website.
At a trade show, a company attached tiny banner ads to flies, and set them loose on the crowd.
The weight keeps the flies at a lower altitude and forces them to rest more often, which is a stroke of genius on the part of the marketing creatives: the flies end up at about eye level, and whenever a fly is forced to land and recover, the banner is clearly visible.
I’m sure some animal rights groups are already up in arms.
Growing up in Manhattan means that you sometimes have to do things a little differently than, well, pretty much the rest of the country, and as Halloween approaches, and I compare stories of youth with colleagues and friends, I’m beginning to understand just how different Manhattan Halloweens are compared to others.
An atypical example of Manhattan Halloween decorations
I’ve heard about it from friends and seen references to it in movies, but since I’ve never seen it in person, it’s sort of like Bigfoot…I’m beginning to doubt it really exists. In Manhattan, there isn’t that one special house in the area that goes overboard with Halloween decorations; that one special house that everyone from several streets over comes to visit because everyone knows they have the best candy and obscene amounts of it; that one special house that truly embraces the spirit of Halloween and shames all the others around it for even trying to be festive. Unless you live in an area that has single-family townhouses (which is somewhat rare on this island) you really won’t see Halloween decorations, or any other holiday decorations, adorning the outside of a building. Multiple dwelling abodes must conform to the lowest common denominator wishes of its inhabitants, and it’s always safest to not display any decorations than risk offending someone who, for whatever reason, is offended by Halloween.
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The BBC gave “Humpty Dumpty” a happy ending by changing the last line from “Couldn’t put Humpty together again” to “made Humpty happy again”. They previously changed the ending of “Little Miss Muffet”, as well.
Tom Harris, the Labour MP for Glasgow South, said:
I think it’s becoming a bit too much of a trend with the BBC. We need to stop this moronic activity.
I agree.
One of my favorite software programs is Adobe Lightroom, and late last night, they announced the availability of a public beta for version 3. The beta is good until April 2010, so that should give us a hint at when the final version will launch.
Improvements I’m looking forward to include: better handling for large catalogs, an entirely new import system, better noise reduction, and “publish services”. The Lightroom Queen has more details about the new version, and Eric Scouten lists other links that have additional details.
One thing they didn’t fix was the name. It still appears to be the oddly named “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom”.
I guess I’ll have to start playing with it this weekend.
On October 13, 2009, I was summoned for petit jury duty in New York State Supreme Court at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan. This is the second time I’ve performed jury duty for the state, and the first in criminal court.
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The Internet has reached it’s maximum potential. It’s a photo of a piece of the Berlin Wall tied to Danny DeVito’s foot with an iPhone charging cable.
It’s all downhill from here folks.
A new video of Babe Ruth has been found and it includes footage of him striking out, which he didn’t seem too pleased at. No video of him playing the outfield or pitching for the Yankees or Red Sox has been found…until now. This video includes about eight seconds of him playing in the outfield:
He is shown in right field, hands on his knees, glove on his right hand. To a casual fan, it appears unremarkable. But it represents the archive’s only game action of Ruth playing in the outfield — where he spent more than 2,200 games — other than a between-innings game of catch.
Archivists at Major League Baseball’s video library now have to figure out what year and which game the footage is from.
Vodkaster has produced the best movies of all time subway map. Each genre is a separate line, and I love how they were able to do a pretty good job of intersecting the lines with movies that straddle genres. Nicely done.
By beating his former team last night, Brett Favre became the only quarterback in NFL history to notch wins against all 32 teams. He did it in typical Farve fashion: 24 for 32 for 271 yards, 3 TD passes, and a QB rating of 142+. He didn’t look 39 years old out there.
Lucy, a classmate of Julian Lennon and the girl who was the inspiration for “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”, passed away. She was 46. It was lupus.
His four-year-old son Julian had drawn a magical picture of his playmate surrounded by sparkling stars while at Heath House nursery school in Weybridge, Surrey, and when he told his father his picture’s title, John was obviously inspired.
A picture of the drawing can be found at the end of the article (doesn’t look anything like her).
Scientists have discovered the oldest fossilized remains of a human ancestor. It’s about a million years older than Lucy, it’s female, and is named “Ardi” (unfortunately not after a Beatles song).
All previously known hominids—members of our ancestral lineage—walked upright on two legs, like us. But Ardi’s feet, pelvis, legs, and hands suggest she was a biped on the ground but a quadruped when moving about in the trees.
They also theorize that bipedalism allowed the male to carry and bring food back to the female, which was a move away from brute strength towards monogamy.
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