Smoothies

Smoothies

Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid — Albert Einstein

Another ISS video as it passes over stormy Africa with Milky way in background

This video was taken by the crew of Expedition 30 on board the International Space Station. The sequence of shots was taken December 29, 2011 from 20:55:05 to 21:14:09 GMT, on a pass from over central Africa, near southeast Niger, to the South Indian Ocean, southeast of Madagascar. The complete pass is over southern Africa to the ocean, focusing on the lightning flashes from local storms and the Milky Way rising over the horizon.

The Milky Way can be spotted as a hazy band of white light at the beginning of the video. The pass continues southeast toward the Mozambique Channel and Madagascar. The Lovejoy Comet can be seen very faintly near the Milky Way. The pass ends as the sun is rising over the dark ocean.

Stay true in the dark & humble in the spotlight. — Harold B. Lee
A word of encouragement during a failure is worth more than an hour of praise after success. — William Saroyan
It’s up to you to find beauty in the ugliest days. — Unknown

The invisible side of design

As designers, we tend to get distracted by aesthetics of our creations, and often do not pay enough attention to the other, invisible side of our work. This talk discusses the significance of purpose, substance and context in our design decisions. It argues about the value of storytelling, content strategy and thorough editorial work. It also provides practical examples of and insights into the invisible side of design.

Slides can be found at Speakerdeck.com.

What your eyes say about who you are

As you read these words, try paying attention to something you usually never notice: the movements of your eyes. While you scan these lines of text, or glance at the sidebar over there or look up from the screen at the room beyond, your eyes are making tiny movements, called saccades, and brief pauses, called fixations. Scientists are discovering that eye movement patterns — where we look, and for how long — reveals important information about how we read, how we learn and even what kind of people we are.

Researchers are able to identify these patterns thanks to the development of eye-tracking technology: video cameras that record every minuscule movement of the eyes. Such equipment, originally developed to study the changes in vision experienced by astronauts in zero-gravity conditions, allows scientists to capture and analyze that always-elusive entity, attention. The way we move our eyes, it turns out, is a reliable indicator of what seizes our interest and of what distracts us. Scientists are now using eye-tracking technology to explore how we learn from text and images, including those viewed onscreen.

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All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work … It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions … It’s gonna take awhile … You’ve just gotta fight your way through. — Ira Glass
My two sons

My two sons

Jaron D’haese - 02-01-2012 at 09:55u - 50cm - 3,080kg

Jaron D’haese - 02-01-2012 at 09:55u - 50cm - 3,080kg

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. — John W. Gardner

Discovery of a new particle?

The most coveted prize in particle physics - the Higgs boson - may have been glimpsed, say researchers reporting at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva.

Finding the Higgs would be one of the biggest scientific advances of the last 60 years. It is crucial for allowing us to make sense of the Universe, but has never been observed by experiments.

Scientists say that two experiments at the LHC now see hints of the Higgs at the same mass, fuelling huge excitement. It has made its first clear observation of a new particle since opening in 2009, and is exploring some of the fundamental questions in “big physics”.

This newly discovered particle is called Chi-b (3P) and will help scientists understand better the forces that hold matter together.

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The Hobbit: Un unexpected journey

Finally, Peter Jackson has announced a release date for the Hobbit movie! 14th of December 2012, the movie will be in theaters.

This is my most awaited movie since the Lord of the Rings Triology in 2001-2003.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem! — Howard Zinn