It’s the beginning of Labor Day weekend, one the of the busiest times at work. I brought my camera to work like I always do but I didn’t expect to actually have time to use it. However, the weather was on my side. It was cold and windy today which scared people off so I ended up being able to take some photos after all.

First of all as you read this page you may notice that it feels different but since I haven’t posted in a while you probably can’t figure out what it is.

Good, now I have your attention. The two words in the title of this post are completely unrelated…

This past weekend, Sarah and I went to her cousins wedding in Madison. It was relatively small, just over 100 guests, but it, and the rest of the weekend, was very fun.

Well I’m back from Ireland and I don’t even know where to begin. So I won’t. Seriously. I hope the photos will do the trip justice because I’m not nearly skilled enough to do it with words. I’ve posted 15 here but there are over 60 in my Picasa album. Suffice it to say that I absolutely love it there and if it’s not my favorite place in the world it’s for sure in the top 3.

[by thoughts I mean photos]

For our last full day in the sub-tropics, we drove up the east side of the island visiting parks, beaches, and blowholes [rock formation] along the way.

Another quick photo post from last night. Sarah and I went out to dinner just to two of us which was much harder than you’d think, everything has seafood in it. Including salads. Annoying. After dinner we went to the international market a couple blocks away from the hotel and she picked out a new [...]

Well it’s been three and a half days and needless to say, I’ve taken a lot of pictures. Here are some of the highlights since my last post. In addition, we went snorkeling off the west coast of Oahu. I didn’t take many photos because we were underwater most of the time but there was [...]

Plants, animals, and a photo contest.

“A digital postcard” Click through for HD.

I know I promised to start posting again and I know I haven’t but I’ve been super busy. I’m about to finish up a new website for Centerstone Partners, a Private Equity Firm [I'll put up a post and a link to the new site when it's done]. I’ve been working for Wheel Fun Rentals [...]

I’m sorry, I know I haven’t posted anything in a week but I’m just enjoying being home and I got my new computer and I’m working on two websites with another in the pipe and work at the park starting on Tomorrow. Point is, I’m busy. I promise my posting schedule will get closer to [...]

Well as you can imagine, this week has been, and will continue to be, very busy. I’m just getting settled back in, seeing tons of people again, playing with my new camera and I start work next week. I’m probably going to skip posting about a weeks worth of tech news for lack of time [...]

The WWDC keynote just ended and it was definitely an interesting one but not for the usual reasons. Attitude problems? First of all, Apple has had some serious attitude and ego problems lately. With splash pages like the one above and ads for the iPad like this: “A magical & revolutionary product at an unbelievable [...]

Well tomorrow morning is WWDC where Jobs is expected to talk about iPhone 4, Safari 5, and some cloud services including MobileMe and the product of the LaLa acquisition among other things. I’ll post a roundup by 1pm pacific but in the mean time enjoy this amazing video by Francis and the Lights. The whole [...]

These little guys are terrifying. You’re not supposed to be able to do that in a helicopter…

Awesome video shot with a slow-motion camera in the Paris subway system. You will be surprised. Very unique look/story.

It’s been a whole week since my last tech talk post for lack to time to actually sit down and write but but a have an hour before class so here’s a very brief summary of what you missed. VLC 1.1 VLC is amazing. It’s the most full featured and powerful media player I know [...]

Some really unique flower/plant photos from De Vetpan Studios. [via Graphic-ExchanGE]

Auto-tune is best and worst thing that has happened to music this decade. If you want to hear the worst of it, just turn on your local Top 50 station. If you want to hear the best, go to Symphony of Science and listen to Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman and the best minds of our age sing about their passion.

Well summer is just a week away for me which means it’s time to start working again. I already have a bunch of websites lined up [see my website for the complete roadmap]. I wasn’t expecting to have so many paying projects so a couple websites that I had started as personal projects [Project Alpaca [...]

If I had to guess what the top 5 most viewed things on the internet were, I’d guess porn, people doing stupid things, kittens, absurdly expensive things, and porn
This post covers #4.

Photo from Daily Dose of Imagery.

P.S. Sorry the posts have been sparse lately, it’s been a crazy week. I’ll post at least every couple days this week and when I come home June 9th I’ll resume the regular 1-2 posts a day.

It’s been a fairly average week in tech news. A lot of interesting but not mind blowing things happened from mobile video chat, to new Chrome APIs, to reduced Zune Pass pricing.

As you may know, DJ Earworm creates a mashup of the Billboard top 25 every year. As you may also know, he is absurdly talented. Here is the United State of Pop 2009:

Art by Bobby Chiu. It’s very interesting, high detail, variable scale, frozen action.

For a while now, every gadget that Joshua Topolsky reviews on Engadget has awesome 8bit-style art as wallpaper. Recently, along with the launch of Engadget Alt, he revealed where he got these beautiful backgrounds. Eboy. Here are some samples.

This week feels so much less exciting when compared with the Google I/O craziness from last week but I suppose there are still a few things going on in consumer tech… GPS upgrade The U.S. Army is giving the aging GPS system a much needed overhaul. All 24 satellites will be replaced over the next [...]

Yesterday I started prototyping for a new website I’m working on and typography is an integral part of the design. So to celebrate the power of typography, here’s a recent post from Friends of Type.

I don’t know how they got this picture but it’s amazing.

There is something incredibly beautiful about these photos. I’m not sure if it’s the fantasy of it, the idea of a world without humans or what it is, but looking at them is just hypnotizing

Photo in a crowded subway. Somehow your eye just keeps getting drawn back to the headphone.

Beautiful and unique illustrations by Christopher Uminga, an artist from New Haven, CT. My favorite is Mr. Freeze.

This morning I woke up, started reading blogs as usual and I ran across another one that used my same template, Manifest. This of course is understandable because it’s a great template, but it was the 5th blog I’ve seen that uses it. I decided it was time for change. One of my favorite design [...]

First off, as promised, the Google I/O day 2 keynote. Watch it. Well watch the first half about Android, then stop because Google TV is stupid. Google Storage During one of the sessions at I/O, Google Storage, a competitor to Amazon’s S3, was quietly announced. I don’t really understand the ins and outs of storage [...]

Incredible time lapse made over six weeks with over 100 hours of footage of the preparation for Discovery’s next-to-last flight. [Air & Space via Gizmodo]

[This isn't happiness via ffffound]

[via Daily Dose of Imagery] [via Daily Dose of Imagery]

Froyo Finally… Day two was really the interesting keynote for consumers and man did they deliver. Here’s what’s new: Dedicated shortcuts: On the homescreen, there are dedicated phone and browser shortcuts for quick access. These are not interchangeable but if you want more options, Helix Launcher and Launcher Pro among others from the Market can provide further [...]

[Buamai via ffffound]

So here’s the news from day 1 of Google I/O. I got up at 9 to watch the keynote streamed live on YouTube which was fun. In addition I was watching the Cnet liveblog and the TWiT livestream with Leo Laporte and Tom Merritt. The first half hour was fast-paced and really fun. The last [...]

[deviantART via ffffound]

This week’s tech news will likely be divided into pre and post Google I/O news. I/O is Google’s annual developers conference that covers everything from Android to Chrome to App Engine. The event is two days long starting tomorrow. There are two keynotes, one of which will likely be Android only and introduce, among other things, the long awaited [...]

A beautiful animated model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater rising up from the landscape. The beginning is really the cool part, the rest is just little details but well done Cristobal Vila. [via Flowing Data, thanks Becky]

[via The Big Caption]

[via Gizmodo]

[deviantART via Web Design Core]

[via National Geographic]

Everybody knows that Minority Report is the go-to example for futuristic computer interfaces but as much as I love seeing tech concepts in movies [see: Iron Man 2], I love seeing more realistic demos even more. Researchers ar Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a concept work environment specifically designed for emergency response programs. It’s beautifully done, [...]

Froyo New Froyo software details are emerging as TechCrunch gets screenshots of USB tethering and WiFi hotspot functionality built it. WiFi hotspot has a very compelling feature for Sprint devices despite the fact that they charge extra and tethering of any kind has been a much wanted feature on the iPhone. AT&T however didn’t allow [...]

[via Daily Dose of Imagery]

Froyo on fire This week has been a flood of Android news, much surrounding 2.2 and Flash. As someone who has run the ROM from the HTC Desire which has Flash Lite, I was extremely skeptical about their promises. Flash Lite on 2.1 is usable but not up to par with desktop Flash. That skepticism was completely [...]

Either the strangest, or most brilliant comic I’ve ever seen. In the words of the author: Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young [...]

Another group of cool ads, some pretty old ones from an AdFreak roundup and one that Sarah and I just like from TV. First the classic cinema ad for Best Buy: Apparently this next one is for Philips, I don’t know what the tie-in is, but it’s a masterpiece: Almost more of a short film than [...]

Okay so it’s actually a Crocodile I think, but they’re basically dinosaurs right? [via Abduzeedo]

As anyone who has seen the bing ads lately will know, the major strength that they have been leveraging over Google is looks. Bing is prettier and attempts to do away with the list of links strategy [a gross over-simplification of what Google Search is]. They did hit one thing right on the nose though, [...]

[via Daily Dose of Imagery]

[via ffffound]

The most obvious war going on right now in tech is Apple vs. Adobe [and if you read more into it, Apple vs. everyone] but there is more conflicts going on all around. Browser wars The numbers are out for April and a cursory glance yields no surprises. However when you look at the number [...]

First of all, for people that aren’t into my tech posts, sorry. There has been a lot going on so tech talk posts will be plentiful and lengthy for a while although I do have some awesome pictures and other features in the pipes when the tech world cools down a little. That said, lets [...]

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS For those unfamiliar, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution on the market right now. Like most Linux distros it’s free, open source, and updates quickly [a full release every 6 months]. Every once in a while there are landmark Long Term Support [LTS] releases which will be supported for at least 3 [...]

Yes, you Spartan wannabes, the Reach beta starts today and you can bet that if I had my Xbox here, it would be online right now destroying you. Sadly, I don’t. Which means that you’ll live through the summer until Reach officially launches. You’re welcome. But in all seriousness the game looks amazing. Here is [...]

Incredibly detailed paper illustrations by Yulia Brodskaya [via Abduzeedo].

Another new blog, The Big Caption, recommended by Nilay Patel. It’s a site dedicated to funny captions and typography. Here some of their latest posts:

I haven’t talked about games in a while and as if to remind me, my three most anticipated games all dropped details this week. Guild Wars 2 I like MMOs, Guild Wars especially, it has the depth of WoW without the subscription cost and it’s many many times more beautiful next to WoW’s cartoon-ish looks. [...]

This amazing sculpture was made completely out of staples by artist Peter Root. It took him 40 hours to organize 100,000 staples into stacks up the 6cm high. The likeness to a real city on first glance is unreal. The making of video is really neat also. He didn’t go into the project with a definite plan [...]

Microsoft It appears I was wrong when I said that Courier was looking less like vaporware because in a single statement from Microsoft, they both confirmed the existence of, and announced the termination of the Courier program: At any given time, we’re looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them. It’s in our DNA to [...]

It seems that Steve Jobs has been digging into Job Rubinstein bag of magic mushrooms because he just posted an enormous tirade about Flash. It’s about 1,600 words and it’s a relatively quick read but I won’t post it here because of the length, hit the tirade link to see whole thing. I’ll sum up [...]

Well I was complaining that not enough was happening in tech news so I guess I deserve it, but so much happened in the last 24 hours it’s going to be tough fitting it all in one post. I’ll start with the big one. HP to buy Palm Yea I know right? When Palm started [...]

As someone who spends every waking moment online, one of the tools I use the most is my web browser. There are many to chose from, most notably [ordered by market share]: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firerfox, Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari, and Opera. The decision can be made in a variety of ways, for me [...]

Sorry the the tech talk posts have been rather slim lately, but the tech news has been rather slim lately and I’m not going to just make stuff up [unless enough people want me to, I guess it could be kind of fun...] Google Maps/Earth update Google Earth is awesome. In fact I would go [...]

via Daily Dose of Imagery

A set of drawn and photographed scenes by Ben Heine [via Moolf].

A couple cool pieces from Poster Cabaret [via ffffound].

The above photo is from last night and you may recognize it. It’s the standard Atlas V that is currently used by pretty much everyone to get people and things into space recently [yes I know it looks like a giant penis... haha]. That’s not what is to terrifying about this. What’s in the payload bay is [...]

Ever since 1952, on the first Thursday in May, the government of the United States asks it citizens ”to turn to God in prayer and meditation”. It is absolutely not okay. I and other non-believers have nothing against Christians, Jews, Muslims, or anyone else praying in general. I don’t understand it, but that doesn’t change the fact I’ll defend your [...]

Nook update The Nook has been in the hands of consumers for some time now and it’s getting it’s first major update. The launch was dramatic to say the least. A tragic tale of under-stocking, and disappointed reviewers. As you may know the Nook runs Android under the hood but the aging 1.5. As far as I know, [...]

A set from Vimeo. First, the opening titles for the Typophile Film Festival 5. And the main event, Nuit Blanche by Spy Films who it turns out are responsible for many of my favorite videos including the Halo proof of concept, the Third and the Seventh, and the Snickers Tag Commercial. I won’t even try to [...]

Despite their absurd price, Samsung LED TVs are pretty much the best you can get as far as I’m concerned. I wish the screens weren’t as glossy but other than that color is great, black depth is amazing, they’re super energy efficient and they’re so thin you basically can’t see them from the side [1.2"]. [...]

Oh man… This is just insane, let me set it up for you. Basically every tech company has leaks. Some are worse than others but usually those who follow tech news as much as I do, always know a good amount about a product before it launches. Usually that means renders, some blurry photos, rough [...]

Although these these fliers from Josh Millard may seem useless, they are in fact far from it. Admit it. If you saw one of these on a random bulletin board, you would smile. [via Today and Tomorrow] If you want to make people happy and have a color printer, download the PDFs here, here, and here respectively.

I haven’t posted a TED talk in a while, in fact I haven’t been checking TED as much as I used to but I watched a few today and I’m hooked again. Here is the best of the ones I watched today. It’s an impassioned speech by Michael Specter, a journalist for The New Yorker, [...]

Mythbusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman were recently awarded Harvard’s Humanism Award. Adam’s speech was great [Jamie's might've been too but I can't find the transcript anywhere] Good evening. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to read my speech from my new iPad. Yep. I’m not only a humanist, I’m also an early [...]

Is it just me or is lightning in a volcano just about the most terrifying thing ever… All photos from the ongoing eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland. If you want to hear how that jumble of Js is actually pronounced, click here. It’s a much less confusing name than it seems, they just don’t break up pronouns [...]

Apple fail #1: networking You’d think they would’ve learned their lesson with the iPhone when the exact same mistake affected wireless networks everywhere. First some background on how WiFi works. In your router there is a protocol called DHCP which is responsible for managing IP addresses [session numbers used to identify networked devices] on its network. [...]

These are unbelievable. Ultra detailed CG renderings and drawings. I especially like the first one, reminds me of Kaineng City from Guild Wars.

I love art [and photos] like this. Aging built structures being reclaimed by nature.

This weekend was great. Sarah and I spent pretty much the whole time together. We watched TV Friday night and used Matt’s mattress to make a giant bed that pretty much takes up my whole dorm room. Saturday we went to Anthropologie, the Land of Nod, and Crate and Barrel at U Village to look [...]

Jailbreaking Devin Coldewey just wrote a brilliant piece over at CrunchGear titled, “The User’s Manifesto: in defense of hacking, modding, and jailbreaking”. This debate about the morality of jailbreaking has far preceded the iPhone but really went ballistic after it’s release. It was been raging in the comments of tech blogs ever since and until today, nobody [...]

Another new blog that I’m following, Friends of Type. This one recommended to me by Sarah and it is amazing, both in terms of the website’s design and code and in terms of it’s content. Here’s a sample:

[via fffffound] Last weekend when I talked about the Tulip Festival, I promised to upload some of the film that I shot as well. Becky was kind enough to have them scanned in and here they are, 3 shots from my first ever roll of film: I think they turned out pretty darn good. Like [...]

Cloud printing Since netbooks and tablets, which are more cloud enabled than any device besides phones, there has been a lot of speculation about just how the printing problem is going to be solved. Despite Apple’s promise that the iPad would be a productivity and content creation platform suitable for the enterprise, they haven’t done anything about [...]

I really hope Obama changes his mind about the Constellation program. It’s images like this that inspired the countless generations of scientists that made America such a scientifically advanced nation.

I recently added a new blog to my reading list: Ads of the World. As the name suggests it’s an international showcase of great print advertising. Here are some samples

Gmail Gmail has been the gold standard in email for years, this is mostly due the unobtrusive nature of the ads and the incredible number of things it can do without being overwhelming.  Despite the meager size of the Gmail team, they continue to update their product regularly. The latest of these updates are drag [...]

Opera Mini A couple days ago against all odds Opera Mini made it into the iPhone app store. Although there have always been “alternative” browsers in the app store, they are all built on Safari, skin essentially. Opera is a completely different browser, different engine, different concept entirely. The argument has always been that apps that duplicate [...]

Windows Phone [only not...] Between the death of Widows Mobile and the launch of Windows Phone, we all thought Microsoft was finally pulling it’s crap together and forming a cohesive mobile strategy. Well… fail. Today they launched the fabled Project Pink phones. Both sliders, one portrait, the Kin One, and one landscape, the Kin Two. [...]

Amazing shadow art by Kumi Yamashita [via booooooom].

A couple random details and a trailer have dropped for Reach but the master list has finally been published [via resumePlay]. Elites: They are relatively larger [the Spartans are over a foot shorter]. They also have stronger shields that recharge faster and their movement is faster. The stronger shields and larger size should cancel each [...]

I. Love. This. Photo. Another great time-lapse video from Vimeo. A really cool Nissan Sentra commercial based on RC vehicles. See making-of at CrunchGear.

Yesterday Sarah and I took a day trip in Becky’s car up to the Skagit County Tulip festival. It’s about 45 minutes away but the drive when quickly. When we pulled up I was instantly blown away. I’m not sure what I was expecting from a Tulip festival but the amount of flowers was just staggering. The [...]

Windows Media Player I don’t know how this feature slipped under the radar at launch, but if you have a Microsoft Live account, you can stream your entire media library over the internet. Just choose the stream option in WMP, link a live account and you’re up and running. This of course is not a [...]

These beautiful pieces of urban art are the work of EVOL, an artist in Berlin who pastes paper on existing objects to imitate buildings. [via DesignBloom]

I’m sure everyone is familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water. Well it’s a beautiful building but trust me you’ve never seen it like this. Matija Grguric, an architecture student who builds scale versions of buildings in LEGO for fun has just finished a 1/40 scale Falling Water and it’s inscredible. [via Make]

Okay this week has just been huge on tech news. I have more than 10 stories in the pipes for tech talk posts but I’m not going to try to fit them all in today because that would just be ridiculous. I’ll just talk about the most timely of the topics which is unmitigated shitstorm [...]

iPhone OS 4.0 Jumping right in, the newest revision of Apple’s iPhone OS was unveiled this morning at 10am Pacific. Let’s talk about everything that was announced: Multitasking: Just like the rumors predicted, a limited expose-like multitasking will be included. As far as we know there is no background app limit [Jobs said in the [...]

A music video by Patrick Jean. It’s just brilliant. My favorite parts are Tetris and Breakout. [via BoingBoing]

iPad In a strangely Déjà vu moment, some over-reaching censorship has been spotted in the iPad’s shiny new bookstore. Some may remember Microsoft’s Twitter censorship debacle on the Zune HD in December. It didn’t censor actual tweets that were posted, it just censored their display on the device [naughty words you posted on the Zune would still [...]

Slates Well as the dust settles on iPad launch weekend, other slates are coming out of the woodwork. HP’s slate which I mentioned yesterday was the first. Just after the commercial started airing, an internal document [above] leaked comparing the slate to the iPad [via Engadget]. This is interesting because we usually don’t get to [...]

Microsoft First a quickie, the 4.5 firmware for the Zune HD is available today [via Gizmodo]. It basically just adds, AVI, DivX, and MPEG4 r2 support as well as Smart DJ on the player. Now Smart DJ is a feature like iTunes Genius feature that chooses music based on a song, artist or album. Smart [...]

Old Spice has hilarious commercials. From their older CGI heavy ads like this one: to their one-shot, Superbowl wonder: They just do good work. Their latest ads, while still quite entertaining, are very in your face, and very very odd. Take a look This one is also from a recent but separate campaign. Less with [...]

Beautiful graphics by Maxime Quoilin

Well it’s launch day and although I’ve mentioned it here and there, this seems as good a time as any to condense those thoughts into one post. First a disclaimer: I obviously haven’t touched this device yet and although a complete review would be impossible without doing so, that’s not what this is. These are [...]

Click images for sources: daily dose of imagery Wall Street Journal Ross Brunggink [via ffffound] Booklover

Droid commercials Verizon just released two more ads for the Droid [via Phandroid]. Both emphasize the apps that are available. The first is space themes and shows off Google Skymap, the second focuses on multitasking. Obviously the whole Droid ad campaign is focused around appealing to guys, so as a tech enthusiast, I think they [...]

Right off the bat I’d like to point out that the photos above are of course not mine. I wish I could’ve shot at the concert but not SLRs allowed and I wasn’t about to take pictures on my phone [although Corissa, Rachel and Stephanie all used the LED flash on my Nexus One to [...]

Sarah talking to her parents on the phone behind a pool of Rose petals.

Here is a completely random and unrelated batch of photos I’ve run into the last couple days. Stereography is when you take two pictures simultaneously and flash between them to simulate 3D. Of course there a better methods now, but back in the 19th century there weren’t. Here are some really cool photos Japan [via PinkTentacle] [...]

April fools jokes In the tech world, specifically the web-based tech world, April fools is a big deal. Any tech company with a decent sense of humor has them. This of course means that you can’t trust anything at face value for the whole week but in the end it’s worth it for the good [...]

Zune At the announcement of WP7, many of those interviewed seemed to indicate that contrary to all logic, the Zune HD would not be getting parallel firmware upgrades and compatibility with WP7 apps. However as the dust settles, and people start to notice other things going on at Microsoft again, it appears that the Zune [...]

While I was watching the premier of Life on the Discovery Channel, which was amazing by the way, I also saw some pretty neat ads. Two are from Target, the main sponsor of Life: [well I have been saving this post as a draft for a week, trying in vain to find the Target ads [...]

Photos from daily dose of imagery and seattlePI. First, just a cool shot of buildings in NYC. Seconds, a static load test on the wings of Boeing’s upcoming 787 Deamliner.

Most of you at one point or another have wondered how the internet works. It’s actually very interesting, but I’m not going to explain it now. Disappointed? Good. Ask me in person and I’ll do my best. What I am going to talk about is one small element of the way the internet works. Big [...]

A combination of factors have led me to the following videos. Although extremely related, I found the first on CNN via Google Reader’s amazing Explore feature and the second on TED, one of my favorite media hubs on the internet. CNN’s piece is a short interview with Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and one of my [...]

I know these past few tech talk posts have been really long but I just haven’t been writing them everyday and this stuff builds up fast. I will be back to normal schedule next week when classes start. A couple days ago I mentioned that Apple was expected to fall first in every category at [...]

A collection of great animal portraits from Steve Hoskins via My Modern Met.

US Marines in Afghanistan feeding cereal to a stray puppy. From Time.

Think F is for friends? O is for orange?  C is for cat? A is for apple? Well Niel Cameron begs to differ. From unreality here is his interpretation. See the rest of them here.

First the laughs. This commercial aired during the NCAA tournament, although since I’m a geek and don’t like sports, I saw it on Cnet TV… Either way, it’s a clever commercial and while I’m skeptical about a non-primary colored pixel, George Takei’s reaction at the end is hilarious. Have a watch: Next for the magic. [...]

Until now we have been drooling over the Courier concept graphics with the painful though in the back of our minds that it is probably vaporware. However, a recent job listing seems to indicate otherwise. [via Gizmodo] Microsoft let slip the following mention of the “upcoming Courier digital journal” in a blurb advertising a job [...]

Coke has always been a relatively forward thinking company and whether it was for the right reasons, has made impressive environmental efforts. Sometimes, the solutions are just so simple that it just leaves you speechless. This concept from Yanko Design by Andrew Kim is just brilliant. Stackable, collapsible, sustainable, 100% sugar cane bottle, and they look [...]

Okay so there is a lot of drama. And not just the usual “might change the industry” drama that I talk about and none of you can really relate to. It’s “this will change the relationship between two of the world’s superpowers” drama. I’ll explain… Google has submitted to China’s ridiculous laws for years and [...]

Today, on what really grinds my gears, the usual culprit: Apple. First a quote from a security expert on OS X being safe, but not secure. I’ll give you one guess what the first to fall are expected to be at pwn2own… Safari and the iPhone. Security expert Charlie Miller on the record-breaking 20 zero [...]

I got back into down just after 6am Friday and after a quick nap, Sarah and I picked up Will from daycare. We played in the backyard for about an hour which gave Brennan and I a chance to play with our new toys. Mine, an external flash; his, the Red One.

You may have noticed that I didn’t post anything yesterday. Like nothing. Far from my usual two to four posts a day. The reasons is three-fold. 1) Took the red-eye home so I was crazy tired. 2) Visiting people. 3) Playing Call of Duty. A lot. So to make up for it, here are some [...]

From Fubiz via ffffound.

A collection of photos and illustrations from daily dose of imagery, 10steps, and Gizmodo. Staples Boom No smoking

Super abstract, super awesome. By James Roper [via ffffound].

FFFFound another great designer, Dimo Trifonov. Here are my favorites.

Windows Phone 7 Series I know I’m posting about WP7  almost every day but there is a lot of activity so suck it. First, Engadget has posted an enormous roundup of everything you would ever want to know about WP7S. ever. I’m not even all the way through yet but it’s very well done. Second, [...]

Internet explorer 9 It seems like IE 8 just came out but details have already emerged for the next iteration [via SlashGear]. The focus is on HTML 5, JavaScript and Direct 2D. JavaScript is using a new engine in the current beta and it will support hardware accelerated HTML 5. The benchmarks look fast, even competitive in their [...]

This is a painting of Batman, underwater, fighting a shark, with a lightsaber… wtf. [via io9]

Another collection from Vimeo.

Some sci-fi art from the photo blog Japanese Scientists. Here’s a bonus funny graphic that fairly accurately describes all button mashers in my mind.

A collection of hilariously simple and honest illustrations of the differences between the major browsers. From CollegeHumor via the Next Web.

Above is a solar eclipse, one of the most beautiful cosmic events visible from Earth. Seeing this post on Boing Boing reminded me of a couple other things that I’m excited about. First of all it reminded me of Life, the new series on the Discovery Channel which follows in the footsteps of the breathtaking [...]

The Wacom Cintiq 21UX that was announced a couple weeks ago got the hands on from Engadget. It’s a 21.3″ 1600×1200 LCD with an active digitizer. It recognizes 2048 levels of pressure, and has tons of hardware controls including two programmable touchpads on the back of the screen. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense [...]

Beautiful. The last of it’s kind. You can buy a used one if you want though. I hope to see more photos of the incredible machines the engineers at NASA come up with to push our civilization ever closer to Type I. Good thing Obama is so supportive of the space program… Oh wait.

Today Gizmodo published the results from their monotone shooting challenge. Here are my favorites from the contest and a few additions from the Wall Street Journal that adhere to the same standards. Gizmodo Wall Street Journal

It’s a busy time in the tech world, GDC just ended in San Fransisco, MIX is going on right now in Las Vegas and and SXSW is going on in Austin Texas. Here are some of the highlights so far: There will be a class of games designed for Xbox, WP7 and PC like Harvest’s [...]

I’ve been adding photo and design blogs over the last couple of days so I thought I’d share the list of new additions along with photos from the latest. today and tomorrow Graphic-ExchanGE National Geographic – Photo of the Day Wall Street Journal – Photos of the Week [daily dose of imagery] The last of [...]

Happy lazy Sunday everyone. Here are some pretty photos and graphics. More later.

Needs no introduction…

The glass is neither half empty, nor half full. It’s twice as large as it needs to be. Actually this glass is only about 10% larger than it needs to be… whatever.

I recently started following a few new design and photography blogs, here is a great art piece from one of them Bounce Room 1 & 2 are 2 paintings by Michael Guidetti. They’re not just normal paintings, I would call them augmented paintings. Together with the paintings come projectors which add animation to the sceneries. [...]

Android rocks. How much? Well to put it in perspective, the inventor of the cell phone uses it. Actually it doesn’t mean all that much, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s getting a little out of touch with tech at his age. Nevertheless, he ditched his iPhone for a Droid so he must be pretty [...]

Here are a couple really cool, really abstract ads. One for MSN and One for MTV. [via Gizmodo]

Well no Diggnation Seattle scheduled but there could be. If you don’t know Digg is a social news website started by Kevin Rose. Every week he and Alex Albrecht get together, get drunk and talk about their favorite stories [and a lot of other stuff]. It’s sometime informative, always interesting and always hilarious. Every once [...]

Google had a big enterprise announcement yesterday for their Apps Marketplace [TechCrunch]. It is essentially a set of extensions for you website. Anyone using Google Apps will be able to use the collection of cloud-based apps in their websites. Google has opened up several existing APIs so that third party developers can integrate their products as tightly [...]

AT&T’s first Android phone, the Backflip is now available and that’s a great step for them right? Wrong. They totally miss the point. Android is a truly open operating system, you can replace everything from the keyboard to the mail app to the search with applications, not just from the app store, but from anywhere [...]

Flash is a controversial standard to say the least. From what I’ve wrote about iPad Flash support, you may get the impression that I support it, however this couldn’t be further from the truth. I hate Flash. Any developer with user experience in mind hates Flash. However ultimately it’s up to the end user whether [...]

I can’t even think of anything to write to introduce these videos… They’re just awesome. [via CrunchGear] [via Gizmodo]

Those who are familiar with the Engadget Show will know that different electronic bands open and close each time. Sometimes it’s a guy called glomag other times it’s NullSleep. They are an 8-bit, or chiptune bands, and probably the most unique sound you’ll hear in a while. Click here to listen to a track while [...]

Notice anything about these two screenshots? Well they are taken from my phone so you would expect to see the ever-present missing plug-in blocks on desktop versions of websites. Do you see it now? I have Flash. The left screenshot is from Engadget loaded on my Nexus One and the right is the settings menu [...]

Nothing like a busy Saturday to make a lazy Sunday. A post on ffffound inspired me to play with text and the photos from yesterday. I have some math to do today but I’ll get to it later. In the mean time, I’m listening to Sunday Radio and watching time lapses. Make sure to watch [...]

Yesterday was absolutely beautiful. Not only that but it was also the first Saturday after the Cherry Blossoms in the Quad bloomed. That meant everybody in the city was there. Lauren’s boyfriend is in town for a couple weeks and we decided to go on a photo walk with them, Sang and Corissa because none [...]

This is an infographic. It’s pretty. It’s about trees. Trees are old.

Music visualization has been a fun trick for a very long time but most of them are really stupid [distorted waveforms, infinite tunnels, etc]. Sure they are kind of hypnotizing but when was the last time you saw a truly beautiful or truly useful visualization. Well if you want both, look no further than the Zune visualizer. [...]

To beef up my portfolio a bit, I’ve been doing sites for friends. The first one I did was lukespringer.com. I’ve been working on sanghyuncho.com [the homepage is done and the landscapes page is half done. The other pages aren't up yet and there are a lot of photos to add but you can get [...]

Let’s face it. Microsoft has really messed up the last 3 or 4 years… Vista… Windows Mobile… They just haven’t been innovating. Suddenly, different parts of the company started to get things right. First, Xbox 360 came out and got a great makeover, and Project Natal is due this year. Next Windows 7 was an [...]

In a span of 12 hours, official shots for Portal 2 and Crysis 2 got released. One is cryptic, the other is just awesome. Personally, I’m more excited for Portal 2. Which game are you most anticipating and why?

I’ve been following a photo blog for some time called FFFFOUND. It’s a social image bookmarking site and it’s really really random. Here are some of my favorites from the year so far:

Despite the shyness of the sun, yesterday was beautiful. I was helping Sang scout for locations for a photo for the Daily and I snapped a couple shots. It was pretty empty in the quad when we were there unfortunately so the photos seemed a little empty. Nothing complements pretty flowers better than a pretty [...]

Right now in my dorm I have a giant poster of a tiger lying in the snow, and three posters of different colored forest scenes. They are nice enough, but I would much rather have these. First, a collection of beautifully designed posters by Ross Berens of the planets in our own home solar system. [...]

Great find while browsing Vimeo. I must’ve watched this 4 or 5 times in a row. Totally captivating. Full screen for full effect: More from Beeple What are some of your favorites from Vimeo videos? Leave ‘em in the comments.

In 2007 Valve released Portal. Minds everywhere were blown. Portal was based on such a simple idea and yet it was embedded in a deep, rich, mysterious storyline. Two days ago, they quietly released a minor update. The update was a puzzle and speculation has been flying as to it’s meaning. Needless to say, one [...]

[n. A sensory overload caused by the introduction of a new product or event in geek culture. Characterized by shocked silence or incomprehensible sputtering. See also: infopwn] What I’m going to be talking about today is actually a hypothetical nerdgasm. It’s my ideal computer. This thought process actually started a little over a month ago [...]

Let me preface this by saying that the patent, copyright, and IP laws, although not as inherently stupid as the DMCA are out-dated, and are almost never used the way they were intended. That said, a good 85% of the blame still lies on the heads of the petulant companies who insist of leveraging their power [...]

Monday and Tuesday was Sophomore registration. Now I didn’t really have a whole lot of choice, I had to take PHYS 121 and MATH 126 but I also wanted another 3 credit class to fill out my schedule a little. Sarah recommended ARCH 150 which was a 3 credit class that she was going to [...]

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned Google in every single Tech talk post so far. This is partly because I love Google [It's not that I'm a fanboy, it's that they can do everything better than everyone else [Okay, I'm a little bit of a fanboy but I don't hesitate to admit when they do stupid [...]

Those who are around me a lot know that one of the things I say quite frequently [maybe 3 or 4 times a week out-loud but several times a day in my head] is the phrase “I hate stupid people”. Now you may think this to be extremely callous and rude. It is. Make no [...]

Infographics. If newspapers and websites are oysters, infographics are their pearls. After the headline, they are the first [and sometimes only] part of an article you read. The above example is quite literally an nonsensical infographic as a piece of art and I would love to have a print like this in my office someday. [...]

You may be familiar with a game called a “Wikipedia Race”. We used to play this game to pass time time in Echo [in the pre-Bubble Spinner days]. For those that don’t know, in a Wikipedia race, two or more players start at the same page on Wikipedia [Mozart for example] and race to a [...]

I’ll start today with another cool/only-slightly-tech-related product [I'll probably do this regularly]. This product is a watch with no face that project arms on a clock onto your wrist when you touch the side [Yanko Design]. I think it looks kinda awkward when the lasers aren’t on, I think I’d rather have them showing all [...]

Is this not the coolest rotor blade you’ve ever seen? They are both awesome looking and functional as it turns out. David Coldewey at CrunchGear says, “They’re not only shaped like a sword you might find in Final Fantasy XIII, but they have little mechanized flaps that are automatically adjusted in order to reduce the [...]

Back in Minnesota, it’s just about the time where you’re getting sick of winter, and all the pretty white snow is turning into disgusting brown slush. Here is Seattle, it’s gorgeous outside. I wore a t-shirt to class today and as I walked through the quad to pick Sarah up from the music building, I [...]

Good news a bad news for Google today. Starting with the good news, new features in both Search and Mail. On the search front Google has added Facebook status updates to their real-time “Latest results” box [TechCrunch]. This box which appears in the results for certain searches has only contained tweets until now. However, since [...]

Today is a mixture of emotions. I’ve had anxious [Math Midterm tomorrow morning], stressful [Computer Science homework due tomorrow night], and excited [It's a woot-off]. But most recently humor which is what I want to mention. For those that don’t know, woot is a site that sells stuff at cheap prices. One item a day [...]

I didn’t really have anything to do today, I was going to put up another tech talk post but there weren’t enough big stories. Basically everyone is in “what the fuck is Apple doing?” mode. For those that didn’t see the post last night, see it here and for those that did, I updated it [...]

This is a section that I’m going to include at the end of all my posts from now on. It will be a quick and dirty list of what’s happened in the consumer tech world since my last post. Apple’s App Store sex crusade continues. Apple recently decided out of the blue that they don’t [...]

[playlists and programs] I have been programming and listening to music a lot more lately [often both at the same time] and they both contain infinite loops to a certain degree. In terms of programming, this is bad. We have been learning recursion, a ton of new data structures and all the different ways to [...]

[New word that a learned from Sarah... I thought she made it up. Also describes the state of my websites] My websites are always changing. I’m learning so much new code and seeing so many websites everyday it’s hard not to change them. Either I get bored, or inspired, or tired with the old layout. [...]

[Malaysia] I know I said I was going to post photos a couple days ago while I was in Malaysia but there are two reasons why I didn’t. Mainly because they charged US$16 a day for internet at our resort [wtf] but also because I didn’t really have anything to post. That doesn’t mean that [...]

[Eion Colfer/Douglas Adams reference and continuation of yesterday's post] I clearly spoke too soon. I thought that it couldn’t get any better than last night’s dinner but the Christmas night dinner that I just came back from was just jaw dropping. Starting from the beginning: My aunt and uncle’s driver dropped us off at a [...]

The harbor view out of the Ritz Carlton club in Singapore. The construction is a hotel/mall/casino above the next Grand Prix track. And yes, that is a soccer field on the water.It’s Christmas morning in Singapore, at time of writing, those of you in Minnesota probably haven’t even had dinner on the 24th yet. This [...]

Let’s do this post like one of those crazy movies that starts with the last scene: I need ideas for an app that I’m going to write. There, now let’s back up and I’ll tell you why and how I got to this point. Click to enlarge. As you can see from the screenshot above, [...]

[Not auto-tuned] Click to enlarge. As I mentioned in a post a couple days ago, I’ve been entrenching myself ever deeper into the consumer tech world since coming to UW [I'm not sure if they are related or if it's just a natural progression]. That of course means that I have fun new sources that [...]

[To be pagan?] All the wrong reasons I bet I can guess what you thought when you read that: “What? Who is pagan?”. Well not a lot of people actually, but they used to be all over the place in Europe and the evidence is probably glowing in your living-room right now. I’m talking of [...]