Dancing Clouds – Lightning as Captured on Nokia N8
Filed under General
Failing to capture nice images of lightning, which was practically impossible, I resorted to recording a video instead.
On night mode, without support, which explains all that jerkiness and shakes respectively.
Shot on my Nokia N8. Edited on Quicktime. Soundtrack’s just there so it’s watchable 
Tags: Nokia N8 video
N8 meets its Cousins!
Filed under Tech, Visual Graphics & Images
Time for my N8 to meet it’s old cousins, basically my previous best-buddy the E72 and it’s cousin’s X6. These images were taken over a week after purchase, notice how strong the protective screen is still stuck onto the display?
This post is solely on physical size comparisons, nothing further
More pics on the Flickr set.
Tags: Nokia E72, Nokia N8, Nokia X6
Groovin’ with Ken!
Filed under Entertainment, TVC, Youtube/Vimeo/Videos
Well I’m sure all of you, or at least most of you, would have watched Toy Story 3! As great as it was, the movies also introduced many other side characters, one of which is the interesting Ken.
Here’s a featurette that was used to promote the movie. I know it’s way too late, but hey, it’s interesting nonetheless.
Tags: Barbie's Ken, Toy Story
TV Intros Collection
Filed under Entertainment, Youtube/Vimeo/Videos
Came across this interesting site that has a huge collection of TV Intros (Yes, those intros in front of your favourite TV series) called I Love TV Intros!
Note: The videos are all FLV format.
Tags: TV Series, TV Series Intros
Photo: Space Shuttle Crossing the Sun
Filed under General
Interesting photo here, from last year, courtesy of Wired.
In the 0.8 seconds the Space Shuttle Atlantis took to cross the sun, French astrophotographer Thierry Legault snapped this picture with a five-inch telescope and a digital camera. The photo was taken on May 12 2009, the day before the Shuttle grappled the Hubble Space Telescope.
The next day Legault got a stunning shot of the two spacecraft together, right before Atlantis reached out to grab Hubble.
Tags: Space shuttle Atlantis, Thierry Legault
Five Secrets Restaurants Don’t Want You to Know!
Filed under Foods, Health, People
Who doesn’t love eating out? It’s great not to have to cook for yourself, but it can also be anxiety-inducing to think about someone else cooking for you. Just what happened to the food before it arrived on our table? Was the meat handled correctly? Did the cook wash his hands? Frankly, some of the common practices of the food service industry might surprise the average customer. Divine Caroline talked to some seasoned industry professionals to discover what words of wisdom they had about the behind-the-scenes scene at their favorite spot. It’s helpful advice, but best not to read on a full stomach.
1. Don’t Be the Last Table of the Night
Most servers complain about the party who walks in at five minutes ’til closing time, but what makes late-night dining ill-advised isn’t the inconvenience. Besides being a pain, it’s doubtful that the food will be very good. By the end of the night, the kitchen is in full clean-up mode, so entrées are more likely to be haphazardly thrown together than carefully prepared. They’re using ingredients that were prepped hours ago, and cooking them in ovens or fryers that contain the accumulated buildup of an entire night’s service. Sometimes chefs cook and clean at the same time, increasing the likelihood of your steak being sprayed with drain cleaner or particulates from the bleach they’re using to mop the floor.
2. Vermin Happen
Any place where food is stored is going to attract pests, and in large cities with older infrastructure (like Boston or New York), vermin are simply an unpleasant fact. Most restaurants battle against it every day, but it’s inevitable that sometimes customers are going to see a roach or a rat. Rare is the restaurant where they’re not at least an occasional problem. Even clean restaurants can attract pests, so seeing one isn’t an indictment against the restaurant’s cleanliness. Usually, if it doesn’t seem like the kind of place that would have bug problems, it’s probably a more-or-less isolated incident. Sadly, though, there are indeed restaurants where the pests seem right at home. Ben, from New York, says, “Customers should try not to freak out if they see something, and if they can subtly point it out to a manager or server, they’ll probably get a freebie or two.”
3. Be Wary of Fish
Although a restaurant might list a given fish on its menu, there’s no guarantee that the snapper listed on the menu isn’t a cheaper fish like tilapia. It’s not always the restaurant’s fault, as seafood distributors do most of the mislabeling. Unfortunately, restaurants themselves do engage in fishy business, like selling endangered or threatened species like bluefin tuna or Chilean sea bass under different names like “toro.” Most customers don’t even know the difference.
Very rarely do restaurants get food deliveries on the weekend, so anything served on Sunday night has probably been in the cooler for a few days at least, and might not be at the peak of freshness. Ben*, the former manager of a restaurant in New York, says, “Be wary of anything that needs to be very fresh on a Sunday, especially fish. Probably best to stay away entirely from a Sunday fish special.” Putting things on special is how many restaurants clear out merchandise that would otherwise go bad. A weekend fish special is basically saying, “Please eat this today because we can’t sell it tomorrow.”
4. Hygiene Isn’t Perfect
Most restaurants have high cleanliness standards, but truthfully, sanitation isn’t always perfect. “The kitchen can be a gross place,” says Angie, a pastry chef in San Francisco. “I have seen servers and chefs come back from the bathroom or a cigarette break, not wash their hands, and go back to handling food.” Restaurants are busy places, and many times the workers just don’t take the time to be sanitary. Although state boards of health set strict rules for restaurants, some rules (like wearing gloves) are only followed on inspection day, because following them all the time would slow down production. The truth is that chefs handle food with their bare hands, bartenders touch your garnish after wiping down the bar, and servers are touching menus and utensils used by other patrons without washing their hands in between tables. Also, if it’s flu season, you can be sure that at least a few employees on duty will be sick. Since restaurant employees aren’t usually paid for sick time, they have no choice but to come to work when they’re ill, no matter how sniffly or sneezy they might be.
Of course, not all restaurants are cesspools of filth. As a general rule, cleanliness depends on the standards set by the owner, and high-end or family-owned restaurants tend to have better hygiene than chain restaurants or diners do because the owners have more personal accountability and a reputation to preserve. To gauge a restaurant’s cleanliness, look around the dining room. If the ketchup bottles have crusted nozzles, the bathroom is foul, or the floor looks like it hasn’t been swept all week, chances are that the kitchen is a reflection of those same standards. Restaurants with high standards pay attention to small details.
5. Don’t Look Behind the Scenes
I once worked in a restaurant where the service stations were in view of the customers, and many people were shocked at some of the tasks we performed. We refilled the ketchup bottles from a giant plastic bladder, dirty buspans were stored next to fresh food, and the floor was covered in debris. What they witnessed wasn’t criminal or negligent; it was just part of the inner workings of a restaurant, which can be shocking for someone who’s never worked in one. Sometimes it’s better to stay in the dark, so if you have the chance to peek into the kitchen or the staff-only area, don’t.
Once your food is in front of you, don’t let it out of your sight, because you never know what could happen to it. When entrées are boxed up to go or sent to the kitchen to be cooked further, sometimes the staff cuts corners. Kim, a former server and bartender from New York, advises, “Always wrap up your own food. I’ve seen too many pizzas picked out of the garbage and breadsticks roll under the counters.”
Most of these, we already knew, but it’s always good to remember and practise likewise
Tags: Foods, restaurants
No Green-thumb? Nevermind, there’s Solar Powered Flowers For Your Garden
Filed under Environment, Tech
For those love to sit at their garden in the summer evening, here is a neat solar powered blossoming lights for your garden. The Blossoming Solar Lights come in small flowers shape and it has very small solar panel attached to bottom of the each stem.
As funny as it may sound, I think by now, it’s probably one of the best selling garden deco items out there, at least not in this region maybe.
This will add cute garden lights in your garden landscape and the blossoming solar lights’ motorized flower will bloom every single morning and closes up during night. The crucial mechanism is the small solar panels located on each stem. Beside capable recharging the batteries, it will power the LED light and flower petals that automatically open and close. Interestingly, you will be able to choose between pink or white petals to your liking at separate prices. The flowers sell for USD34.95 each.
Tags: electric flowers, solar powered lights, The Blossoming Solar Lights
Sound Design: ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Avatar’
Filed under Entertainment, Youtube/Vimeo/Videos
3 great movies (as 1) and another follower almost a decade later. All with great sound design concepts, done by the same group of people. Worth the watch.
More videos here.
Tags: Avatar, sound design, the Lord of the Rings
‘Inception’ Ending Revealed
Filed under Entertainment
One of the greatest movies of this decade undeniably; ended in a way that everyone felt challenged, including myself. Discussions and debates on the internet, justifications by analysts; so many things came up thereafter in that regard, none of which was conclusive, at least till this leak from Sir Michael Caine himself.
As if you didn’t know what the spinning top ending really meant! Still, if there’s a glimmer of doubt in your mind, check out what Sir Michael Caine says about it here.
[WARNING: SPOILERS alert!]
Ok, so if you hark back to the ending, you’ll remember Cobb was reunited with his children and father (Caine) in a sob-alicious final scene. As his usual style dictates, he spins the silver top to double-check he’s back in reality, but doesn’t care enough to watch whether it ever stops spinning (thus, representing he’s in real life).
Caine let slip with the spoiler-goods when he appeared on BBC Radio to promote his autobiography. This is what he had to say about director Christopher Nolan’s ending:
“[The spinning top] drops at the end, that’s when I come back on. If I’m there it’s real, because I’m never in the dream. I’m the guy who invented the dream.“
There you have it, final confirmation the ending was exactly what you suspected.
BBC via Gizmodo
Tags: Christopher Nolan, Inception, Sir Michael Caine
Steve Jobs declares victory over rivals
Filed under Tech
With Apple posting record profits amid zooming sales of iPhones and iPads, CEO Steve Jobs declared victory over main rival and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM).
“We have now passed RIM, and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable feature,” Jobs told the Canadian media in a conference call after Apple’s astounding results Monday.
“We are out to win this one,” Job said.
Jobs also thrashed Google’s Android and its growing market share, something he doesn’t acknowledge of anyway. Surprisingly, he however mentioned of Nokia as a strong and healthy competitor, a company worthy of admiration likewise.
On tablets of other manufacturers, he also said “The current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA, dead on arrival,” before also stating “Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small.”
Source: Various
Tags: Android, Apple, Blackberry, Google, iPad, iPhone, Nokia, RIM, Steve Jobs
