Stunning paintings of Russians during World War II:
Russian airman falls onto anti-tank barrier from his shot-down plane.
Stalin has a lot to answer for. He killed millions of his own people, including his most competent military commanders, and thereby nearly lost the war.
The people in these paintings won the war despite Stalin, simply by enduring. I can only weep at what they might have done on their own.
Wow. This is absolutely gorgeous. I have no idea whatsoever what it means, but it sure is pretty.
As I say in the comments there, though, don’t expect a musical retelling of the story of Carbine Williams.
Background:
Blender is an open source 3D computer rendering and animation package, to put it mildly.
Carbine Williams was convicted of killing a deputy sheriff during a prohibition-era raid on his still. While in prison, he secretly developed a firearm mechanism. When his work was discovered, he was released and went to work for Winchester developing the M1 carbine, used by U.S. troops during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
Under modern rules, he wouldn’t even be allowed to touch a firearm, and had his work been discovered in prison, he would have been up for a longer, harsher sentence, not parole.
I whole-heartedly endorse this crucial PSA, which I picked up from Boing-Boing via Fred Gallagher’s Twitter Feed.
I thought the headline on this article was about some weird new kind of surface to paint on.
Via Ghost of a Flea, another great TED talk, less than five minutes, on the search for self-portraits of Leonardo da Vinci.
It’s just amazing what turns up when you search even a small database using a few simple rules.
More faces from The Flea: “The Land of No Smiles”, North Korea. A set of haunting, surreptitious photographs.
This automobile is…not to my taste:
However, I recognize excellence when I see it, and the fanatical restoration job on this specimen is exemplary.
If you have any feeling for cars of this vintage, spend some time perusing the archive.
How detailed was this job? The guy cataloged the bolts in the engine compartment as he removed them, cleaned them, replated them, and reinstalled each bolt in its original position.
My Ubuntu system has crashed, and I can’t be arsed at the moment to fix it, so I’m running off a bootable live CD (from Hudson and Hudson’s Ubuntu 7.10 Linux: Unleashed.) That means I’m not logged in with my usual permissions. So, all the stuff I want to put in my bookmarks are going here.
Boat on a lake with IR photography
The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression because of not one but a combination of misguided policies that made it harder for employers to create jobs and harder for consumers to buy things. Keynesian commentators talk as if FDR made a single key mistake, like not incurring big enough budget deficits. This ignores the tripling of the tax burden during the New Deal period (1933-1940). Also ignored is the fact that New Deal spending was mainly paid for by the middle class and the poor, because the biggest revenue generator for the federal government was the excise tax on beer, cigarettes, chewing gum, and other cheap pleasures disproportionately enjoyed by the middle class and the poor. Moreover, several New Deal laws made everything — especially food — more expensive when Americans desperately needed bargains.
The New Deal certainly did do some enduring good works. However, those are completely overshadowed by the horribly misguided mangling of the marketplace in the short term, and the lasting damage to our political system in the long term.
Every day, from 31 March 1979 through 25 October 1997, Jamie Livingstone took a Polaroid instant photo of himself, his family, his friends, or his world.
It’s an extraordinary collection, now available on the Photo of the Day website.
Chris Higgins told the story on Mental Floss.
Higgins also linked to an lovely little film by Charles and Ray Eames detailing the technology underlying the project, the Polaroid SX-70 instant camera. The SX-70 first enabled many of the uses that digital cameras now find. That camera was also a hacker’s dream, which could be cannibalized for at least two crucial technologies: The flat battery pack, and the sonar range finder. (That last is still a mainstay of many robotic navigation and detection systems.)
You may know the Eames by their chairs, or by another of their films, Powers of Ten.
One of my favorite webcomics, Girl Genius, is taking a holiday break with a Gaslamp Fantasy reworking of Cinderella.
Cinderella, played by our favorite Mad-Girl Spark Agatha Heterodyne, has repaired her Fairy Godmother’s Magic Wand using Mad Science, and used it to transform a pumpkin into a coach to take her to the Prince’s Science Fair, where she plans to enter a project she’s been keeping secret from her Stepmother and Stepsisters, who will be entering their own step-projects. *whew* I do not know of any other webcomic presenting anything like this level of art, three times a week, without fail.
Story’s kicking along just fine, too.
Bravo to Phil and Kaja Foglio and their team!
Below the fold, Agatha-ella’s version of the Pumpkin Coach, far and away the best I’ve ever seen.
I cannot wait to see what happens when Agatha-ella uses the wand on herself for her ball gown. Oh, wait. It’s a Science Fair, not a ball. Hm. Not much you can do with a white coat, eh?
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In a total splurge, I got a Wacom Bamboo 6 x 8 graphics tablet.
It’s wonderful, and I wish I were artist enough to use it properly.
Unfortunately, last time I updated Ubuntu, it quit working. I had hoped that the upgrade to 8.10 would fix that, and it did — almost.
The stylus on this thing has an “eraser” button, which can be set in the GIMP to work just like an eraser. There’s also a wireless mouse that works with the tablet.
The stylus works, pressure sensitive, side buttons, and all, but neither the mouse nor the eraser work. I just spent a couple of hours dinking with /etc/x11/xorg.conf, which controls the user interface, but no joy.
So here’s my current mood:
self-doodle
Look, on a good day? I can pick out “Chopsticks” on a cheap toy piano. Controlling the GIMP with the Bamboo is like putting me in front of a really big pipe organ. I can pick out “Chopsticks” on any number of interesting-sounding stops.
Strongly, strongly recommended for anyone with any interest in drawing on the computer. Far easier to use than a mouse (fingers instead of wrist), pressure sensitive strokes — fabulous. I hope to be worthy.
One purchasing choice to consider: I went for the 6″ x 8″ pad. This gives you extra resolution. However, the cursor position on the screen is controlled by the absolute position of the stylus on the pad. To go from one side of the screen to the other, you must move the stylus from one side of the pad to the other. You cannot do this with simply wrist action; you must move your whole forearm. Also, with an ordinary mouse, if something on the desk gets in your way, you pick up the mouse, move it back a bit, and put it down. This trick does not work with the Bamboo. These problems would be less severe with the smaller 4″ x 6″ pad. Moreover, the small pad comes in a stripped down package with no mouse and no software — $70 versus $200 for the 6×8 Bamboo “Fun” package I got.
I think I prefer the larger version, but it’s definitely taking some getting used to.
[update]
I believe that ergonomically, the pen position, with your wrist held sideways, is far superior to the flat wrist mouse position. It’s the difference between a good handgun stance and the gangsta grip.
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