Your Daily Photo (Something Rotting in the State of California, or at Least Under My Orange Tree, Edition)

Nothing better than mangling Shakespeare quotes on a Friday afternoon.

(actually, there are lots of better things to do than mangle Shakespeare quotes on a Friday afternoon)

Taken Wednesday, inspired by the latest Gizmodo Shooting Challenge (along with those 'blue' photos I posted earlier), here's both monochrome sets as slideshows below. Enjoy the lack of variety in colors!

Your Daily Photo (I Blame Gizmodo Edition)

So, over at Gizmodo, they have an interesting Shooting Challenge this week. Above, a bull stares at the awesomeness of a velvet paisley jacket while a broken cigarette lighter mutely reflects (and refracts) by the light of a single stinky (cherry and mulberry scented, as bad as it sounds) candle. Below, that shot along with 53 others all lit by a single candle (except for the first two, where I forgot I had my TV on in the room) in a Flickr slideshow for your perusal. I've got till 6pm Sunday to pick one to submit as an entry into this week's challenge. Vote in the comments, or if you prefer, silently judge my efforts without giving me any feedback, the choice is yours.

Your Daily Photo (Woahhhh Dude, That's Like Trippy and Stuff Edition)

Gizmodo had a shooting contest this week. Didn't submit this, but did follow the instructions to create this shot.

Your Daily Photo (I've Got Your Background Right Here Gizmodites Edition)

The folks at Gizmodo posed the question, what's your background?

I uploaded a flickr set of the 12 pics I'm using currently.

Windows 7 has a background slideshow built in (all but the Starter edition, anyway), some of these shots are in other sets, some weren't uploaded otherwise, all have been cropped to 16x9 to match my TV's aspect ratio (my desktop's 16x10, but the autocrop works better going from 16x9 to 16x10 than the other way around, I find).

Here's a slideshow of the 12, just because...

Ohhhhhh, Snap!

Maybe Canon owners are just more self-absorbed.

Damn, that's a great comment.

(and yes, my title is dated, and makes me sound like a gay man trapped somewhere between the mid 80s and early 90s, but within the context of the link, and the comment, I'm sticking by it)

This Steve Jobs May Be Fake, but the Hype Over the Macbook Air is Very, Very Real . . .

Fake Steve Jobs fake blogging with fake statements about fake performance features of the very real Macbook Air:

And then there is Air. I don't like to call it a product, because to me it's more than that. To me it's a vision. My vision. It's a statement. My statement. It's a no-compromise laptop that has the fastest processor ever invented, the most RAM available on any computer in the world, the best keyboard, the best screen, and the longest battery life of any laptop ever made, plus it's thinner and lighter than any computer ever created in all of history. How do we do it? How do we make the fastest, most feature-packed laptop but put it into a tiny package and give it such amazing battery life? I like to think of it as magic. And so should you. That's all you need to know. We did it. And it's magic.

The ladies seem to love it (at least this lady, and this lady). I'd have called it the LL Cool Macbook, instead, and I'd offer it in pink as soon as possible. Purse-sized (and an arm-toning 3lbs!, that's a feature not a flaw), but still 13 inches of visual splendor, what every woman wants (in a laptop?).

I'm not saying gender plays a part in reaction to the macbook air (why would it?), yet the more male dominated Gizmodo (and its mostly geeky male commenters) greet the device with considerable more scepticism, enough so that they've opened an official 'flame war' thread for people to bash (and praise) the device. Out of the 250+ comments so far, the bashers greatly outweigh the praisers.

Sexiest. Folding. Bike. Ever!

Yeah, I know, 'sexy folding bike' is pretty much a contradiction in terms. Folding bikes always say one of two things, dork or European (or European dork, need I say more).

But look at this concept design from Cannondale (via Gizmodo). It's an attractive machine. If performs reasonably well, folding it isn't too great a chore, and can be mass produced at a decent price (say retailing at about $1000) then they would clean up with this sucker.


In the comments at the Treehugger post (the post itself is from way back in February) I link, someone saying they were one of the engineers who worked in this thing claims this is a '10 years in the future' concept and not something that's technically feasible at this point. The main problem is the 'hydraulic drive' rather than a belt or chain.

Some folks still think this bike is ugly, but in the finest of schoolyard traditions, I say to them, "you're ugly".