Jordi Soler

Una mezcla entre Pandora y Spotify. Radio online bien hecha.

Echofi - Better Spotify Radio

Stephen Hawking dejando claro en 2 líneas la imposibilidad de viajar en el tiempo. A sus pies:

Letters of Note: Stephen Hawking on Time Travel

Ya hay más gente navegando desde dispositivos móviles que desde IE6 e IE7 juntos.

Los que no adapten sus webs van a sufrir en el futuro...

More People Browse On Mobile Than Use IE6 & IE7 Combined

Parece que vamos a tardar una eternidad en convertir "Jurassic Park" en una realidad...

DNA Sequencing Caught in Deluge of Data

Se nos fue el Aptera, y con él el futuro de los coches eléctricos...

Maggie Koerth-Baker originally shared this post:

Ya es Navidad en la Ciudad Condal...

Maletas del instituto mental Willard Asylum: un apasionante proyecto histórico-psicológico.

Willard Asylum « Jon Crispin's Notebook

Quedará en nada, pero hay que reconocer que los tienen bien puestos.

Breaking News originally shared this post:

"Place the ring on her finger and repeat after me." said the priest. Chester nervously placed his grandmother's wedding ring on Felicity's finger. Then came the vows, the kissing, the confetti and the long awkward drive to the reception where they both wondered if they'd made a terrible mistake.

After dinner there were speeches of varying tones, from light hearted Farrelly Brothers to emotional Disney. Chester asked for everyone to raise a glass to his grandparents who had passed away the year before. His grandmother had eventually succumbed to the confusion which had plagued her for a decade. In protest to a 30% rise in city centre parking charges she had decided to park her car at the bottom of a lake. A week later, stricken by grief, Chester's grandfather was seen throwing himself into the same lake where his wife of 60 years had drowned. Although his body was never recovered.

After tears were shed and cakes were cut it was time for dancing. The bride and groom met on the dancefloor as You Can Never Hold Back Spring by Tom Waits sounded from the speakers. But before the first chorus arrived there was a defeaning bang as the doors to the ballroom flew open. There stood Chester's grandfather, naked from the waist down. Very much alive, very much erect.

"I have come for my bride." he roared, pointing at Felicity with both his finger and his penis. He approached the startled newlywed and began to kiss her. Nobody tried to stop him. They were too shocked and amazed. Shocked that he was still alive, amazed that a man of his age could maintain an erection so strong and true.

Eventually, after the trouserless grandfather made strides towards second base, Chester took hold of him and said "This is my wife, grandad. Nana is dead."

"Then why does she wear my wife's ring? By law she is now my bride." exclaimed the old man. He grabbed Felicity's breast. Neither Felicity nor Chester were lawyers and were unsure of what to do. Perhaps he was right. There did seem to be some logic to what he was saying.

"Maybe I should go with him..." Felicity whispered to her husband. "He is very old. I don't want to upset him."

"Yes. It's probably for the best." Chester agreed.

Hand in hand, Felicity and the grandfather left the wedding reception. "I can't believe you fell for that." he said as they got into the limousine. "But it's too late. If you go back now you'll look like an idiot." And he was right.

Taken in various locations around Maniwa and Okayama Prefecture in Japan between 2008-2011 this brilliant series of photographs captures the wild frenzy of gold fireflies as they mate after thunderstorms during the June to July rainy season. Shot using a slow shutter speed, the neon green and yellow contrails seem almost digitally imposed on the scenic landscapes, but I assure you these are real. See them a bit larger here. (via polaroid dreams)

A new piece by currency artist Mark Wagner that redefines dirty meaning of dirty money. (via julien foulatier)

These whimsical sculptures by Korean artist Kang Duck-Bong are made by adhering myriad cuts of PVC pipe and covering them in a thick shellac of urethane paint. The process creates an uncanny sense of motion, the figures appearing blurred and perpetually in motion. Kang’s work is on display at Gallery 4Walls in Seoul through December 23 as part of his solo show, Disguise. A huge thanks to Cho at Gallery 4Walls for providing the imagery for this post.

As its qualities are determined by the cutting edge of engineering rather than fashion or component cost, technology defines a competing system of value to traditional luxury. That hasn't stopped Bentley aiming for the old-school appeal with its curious clutch-style $20,000 laptop. Though about as powerful as a late-1990s toilet seat iBook, it even scooped the prestigious Microsoft Fashion PC Award.

You could even say that technology is a problem for makers of luxury goods. Compared to an iPhone, for example, a calculator-display $30,000 cellphone from Vertu has a serious credibility problem. One step removed from a Tomy Teletubbies Telephone sprayed with glue and rolled in diamonds, such designs tread a delicate balance between fashion and ridicule. By thoroughly concealing its functionality with creative design and ostentatious materials, however, Suissa computers' luxury desktop PCs aim to distract buyers from the spec sheet.

Makers of luxury computers have a choice to make: specs or sparkly stuff. The former invests in the diminishing returns of the aforementioned 'alternative' value system, which means maximal engineering at ostenstatious cost, doomed to rapid obsolescence. Boutique gaming PCs, where spending money on hardware is part and parcel of the enthusiast scene, are ground zero for this class of luxury item. What better example than the pure luxury PC above, which is named the Pure Luxury PC. Prices start about just shy of ten grand.

The other option is tradition; the luxuries of gold, mahogany and other artistic and material extravagances that even the most tech-illiterate consumer can appreciate. Here is the beautiful Moneual gold computer, jam-packed with features such as a Core 2 Duo processor, 6" display, and Windows Vista.

Art Lebedev is taking pre-orders for the Optimus Mini Six, Popularis and Aux keyboards. If you have to ask, you can't afford them.

Previously: World’s *est: Art Lebedev Pultius Cudgel-like Remote; Optimus Tactus touchscreen keyboard concept art

From Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance, a list of facts and very strong opinions about the nature of time.

4. You live in the past. About 80 milliseconds in the past, to be precise. Use one hand to touch your nose, and the other to touch one of your feet, at exactly the same time. You will experience them as simultaneous acts. But that's mysterious - clearly it takes more time for the signal to travel up your nerves from your feet to your brain than from your nose. The reconciliation is simple: our conscious experience takes time to assemble, and your brain waits for all the relevant input before it experiences the "now." Experiments have shown that the lag between things happening and us experiencing them is about 80 milliseconds.

5. Your memory isn't as good as you think. When you remember an event in the past, your brain uses a very similar technique to imagining the future. The process is less like "replaying a video" than "putting on a play from a script." If the script is wrong for whatever reason, you can have a false memory that is just as vivid as a true one. Eyewitness testimony, it turns out, is one of the least reliable forms of evidence allowed into courtrooms.

If Breaking Bad's central conceit — that a harried high school chemistry teacher and his former student team up to enter the lucrative world of methamphetamine production — seems too outlandish to you, here's a strange case that demonstrates just how life can mirror art.

The Boston Globe reports that 74-year-old university mathematics professor Irina Kristy and her 29-year-old son Grigory Genkin are being charged with cooking meth in their Somerville, Massachusetts home. Kristy is an adjunct instructor at nearby Boston University (where she still teaches) and Suffolk University. I don't know the specifics of her academic history, but I can imagine that having no tenure could inspire some pretty dire action:

A lecturer in the math department at BU since 1987, Kristy teaches three courses each semester, said school spokesman Colin Riley on Friday [...] Kristy also taught math as an adjunct professor at Suffolk University from 1985 until Monday, when "after the university learned of the charges,'' she was "placed on administrative leave through the end of the semester,'' school spokesman Greg Gatlin said Friday. [...]

On Nov. 7, in a daylong search of the second-floor residence at 19 Oxford St. that Genkin and Kristy share, investigators from local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies recovered evidence that the site was being used to make methamphetamine, Somerville police said in a statement last month.

Authorities disposed of "a large amount of materials believed to be hazardous," and the bomb squad detonated further dangerous substances. As a former student writing for The Suffolk Voice noted:

The evidence that the Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.) gathered from the duplex are ingredients commonly used when making Meth. The list includes: solvents, cold medicine, and reactive liquids in old Snapple bottles. (Being a student of Professor Kristy myself, this evidence is shocking, because she has never taught a class this semester where she wasn't drinking from Snapple bottles) [...]

Geez Louise, even Jesse Pinkman quickly learned that you never cook where you eat. Speaking of her students, none seemed overly enthused with her classroom demeanor, but they found Professor Kristy to be an easy grader. After this incident, there really should be an unofficial, pan-collegiate statute guaranteeing students free As if their professor is accused of cooking crank.

Breaking Bad portraiture by Cara Thayer & Louie Van Patten.

Who knew that Super Mario and the X Men could go together so well? Apparently artist Casey Edwards did because she’s the one who came up with these clever mash ups.

Link Via BuzzFeed

Is this the future of watching movies? Check out these video clips, which claim to be taken in one shot with no post production processing, about immersive movies using the PlayStation 3:

In the past, projection mapping worked only from a single, static view point, and thus was very limited. By attaching the PlayStation Move to the camera, we can track projections to screens in real time, enhancing the effect of spatial deformation and false perspective on the projections and allowing viewers to look round (virtual) corners, bend walls, create a hole in the wall, or remove the walls altogether to reveal vast expanses of virtual worlds.

Real? Fake? What do you think? YouTube Clip 1, Clip 2, and Clip 3

It's certainly inconvenient if your password is hacked and your identity stolen. But if the CIA's password is hacked, it may mean a death sentence for its covert operatives.

Recently, there was a huge setback for the CIA when its spies in Iran and Lebanon were caught because their password was cracked. What was that password? PIZZA:

In Beirut, two Hezbollah double agents pretended to go to work for the CIA. Hezbollah then learned of the restaurant where multiple CIA officers were meeting with several agents, according to the four current and former officials briefed on the case. The CIA used the codeword "PIZZA" when discussing where to meet with the agents, according to U.S. officials. Two former officials describe the location as a Beirut Pizza Hut. A current US official denied that CIA officers met their agents at Pizza Hut.

From there, Hezbollah's internal security arm identified at least a dozen informants, and the identities of several CIA case officers.

Link

ThinkGeek's Portal bookends are a wonderfully geeky way to keep your books from falling off the shelf. Great for the bookish gamers in your life.

Portal Bookends (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Kurt Vonnegut finally got his first major biography recently, and so far everybody who's reviewed it has been shocked by one thing: just how bitter Vonnegut was, in his last years. Biographer Charles Shields spent a lot of time with Vonnegut while working on And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life.

And by all accounts a portrait emerges of a man who's still angry at his first wife, still struggling with old traumas, and still feeling as though nobody appreciates his life's work. It's a very different Vonnegut than the sweet, humorous person we glimpse in his work. Update: We received an email from Mark Vonnegut. See below.

As Vonnegut's friend John Casey tells the Daily Prospect:

I think it's a valuable book... Any Vonnegut fan is going to love it, and probably read it with a kind of sinking feeling of how this wonderful writer kept thinking he was a failure. I mean, both early on, when he wasn't selling and was classified as this science fiction hack, and then even later, when he was so much more filled with self-doubt than I knew.

In the same article, Shields describes meeting Vonnegut for the first time:

I find an 84-year-old man who is angry about his parents, and is unhappy about his first marriage that ended years before. He feels he is unappreciated by critics, that he has been ignored by the eggheads. So I met a man who should be enjoying the golden years of fame and success. Instead he comes off as a very aggrieved person who wanted to settle some scores, and wanted it known just how he had been treated.

As the Guardian writes:

The book paints a picture of a man who was often distant from his children, cruel to a long-suffering first wife, caught in an unpleasant second marriage and spent much of his later years depressed and angry. "Cruel, nasty and scary are the adjectives commonly used to describe him by the friends, colleagues, and relatives Shields quotes," wrote one reviewer, Wendy Smith, on the Daily Beast website. The New York Times reviewer, Chris Buckley, called Shields's portrayal "sad, often heartbreaking".

We received an email this morning from Mark Vonnegut, who writes:

I'm happy to reassure you that Kurt did not die a bitter man who kept thinking he was a failure.

Charles Shields spent very little time with a much diminished 84 year old who right up to the end showed more flashes of brilliance and warmth than most. There's a ton of evidence, including his art and writing that he fought hard and largely succeeded to overcome PTSD from WWII and a quirky, but not altogether unloving childhood to have mostly loving and supportive relationships with his siblings and children and even his allegedly distant father. Shields had to ignore most of what I and other people who knew Kurt and most of what he read in the letters to come up with these shocking truths about a beloved writer.

It's too good a bit to go away, but Kurt had next to no interest in investments or expensive things and never bought Dow stock.

Why don't people employ a modicum of critical thinking before buying into the truth of a book whose existence is completely and utterly dependent on a picture that Shields would have made up out of whole cloth if he had to. Not a perfect man or father and I'll grant you two failed marriages.

My best regards to someone whose affection and respect for my father shines on.

Shared by jordisoler
...y eso sin mencionar desde dónde deben reciclar el agua.

Washington-based painter Tyree Callahan modified a 1937 Underwood Standard typewriter, replacing the letters and keys with color pads and hued labels to create a functional “painting” device called the Chromatic Typewriter. Callahan submitted the beautiful typewriter as part of the 2012 West Prize competition, an annual art prize that’s determined by popular vote. I don’t know how practical painting an image with a color typewriter is, but if Keira Rathbone can do it… (via dark silence in suburbia)

The Battle of Hoth - the grandest battle of the original Star Wars trilogy. The battle features all the tension of Yavin, machines more fearsome than those in the Battle of Endor, and a vulnerability not seen in the rest of the series.

How did this epic battle sequence come to be? Take your first look at some never-before-seen concept art that shows how every shot in the desperate defense of the rebel base was planned out.

A small number storyboards used for the early conceptualization of The Empire Strikes Back reside in private collections, and the storyboards command thousands of dollars at auction. These boards and are based on the fifth draft of the script for the movie — and most of the boards here are being shown publicly for the first time.

These storyboards show off the work of Joe Johnston (designer of Boba Fett's armor and director of The Rocketeer and this past summer's Captain America: The First Avenger), plus Nilo Rodis-Jamero.

After finalizing the shooting script of Empire Strikes Back, George Lucas commissioned a final set of storyboards, storyboards likely residing in a Lucasfilm vault behind more metal and lasers than Walt Disney's frozen head, with the final documents protected by guards from THX 1138. 1980's The Empire Strikes Back Notebook shows few of the final draft storyboards. Enjoy these early storyboards of the Battle of Hoth, presented in chronological order of the sequence.

The art in this gallery is courtesy of the collection of Guy Van Gompel, with exceptions noted.

Han Solo steps off of his tauntaun while searching for Luke Skywalker. From a private collection.

A Hobbit-like apparition of Obi-wan looms over the terrain of Hoth. From the Propstore of London.

An injured Luke Skywalker reaches out for the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi. From the Propstore of London.

A snow speeder passes by as Han Solo finds Luke Skywalker.

A probot eyes the shield generators protecting the Rebel base on Hoth.