Michelle showed me this great site today. Cedric Delsaux is a French commerical photographer with mad Photoshop skillz and a creative mind. In addition to his beautiful, low saturation photo portfolio, he has a collection called the “Dark Lens” that are everyday, rundown Earth scenes with elements from Star Wars inserted into the shots. They’re so well done, the lighting so right that it’s hard to figure out how he did them.
The site is nicely done too. All in all, it’s worth some time to check it out.
cedrickdelsaux.com
I take a lot of photos and try to help pose my subjects once in a while. Here's a good article and video with simple tips on how to look better in photos.
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Photogenic
I'm sure like many of you, I have latent superhero talents that I think could help the rid humanity of injustice, defend the Earth from intergalactic calamity, and rescue hapless maidens from nefarious plots. Unfortunately, I've been trapped in my alter ego my entire life because I never knew where to get the stuff superheroes need -- you know, eye masks, truth serum, hidden lair equipment, and so on.
Now, the Internet, source of all that is good and right in the universe, has delivered again. The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company has everything an aspiring superhero needs. I especially like the Lair section where you can buy a forcefield generator or a "Stop Sidekick Misuse" poster (with helpful tips like "Don't practice heat vision on your sidekick".) Even better, all proceeds go toward 826NYC, "a non-profit nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write." So even by shopping there, you're doing good.
The site is beautiful and very fun, and of course, useful for budding do-gooders. So, check it out and unleash your inner superhero!
Thanks to Leslie for the link!
You must watch this mad bicycle action.
According to the YouTube blurb, this guy is Danny MacAskill, a team rider fro Inspired Bicycles. I had no idea you could this stuff on a bike. Not sure whether to show it to the boys to inspire them to work hard at stuff or to hide it from them forever in the fear they would try this. Wild.
(Thanks to Warren for the link.)
Recently, I've been afflicted by a disease common to many men (esp. expats it seems) in Beijing: I'm obsessed with an old sidecar motorcycle called the Chang Jiang 750. It's a copy of a 1938 BMW R71 motorcycle that was made in large quantities for the Chinese army through the second half of the twentieth century. Shops around town restore the surplus bikes and make them look absolutely gorgeous. A fully loaded and sweetly restored bike might run 30000-40000 RMB+ (about USD $4500-6000); although this is expensive by local standards, I consider it something of an affordable luxury.
The bikes aren't super fast (they have a 746cc engine creating 24 or 36 horsepower), they leak oil, and you can't ride them on the freeways in Beijing, but I think they're just plain cool. (I'm torn between the charcoal grey and the deep blue. Of course, black just looks great too.) Plus, since they're older than thirty years old, you can export them back to the US afterwards. I just need to convince myself and the family this is a good idea...
There are quite a few websites on these motorcycles. Here are a few I found useful and seemingly trustworthy.
Community: CJ750.org
Shops:
Big Bill's Bikes aka ZMW
Jimbo's Classic Sidecars
Beijing Sidecars
(All photos from cj750.net -Big Bill's)
When I first joined Microsoft in 1990, I was given a postcard of our corporate campus. The company had been in that location for about four years and had just over 5000 employees. I’ve scanned the photo and included it below on the left. For a comparison, I have included the Live Maps 3D view of the site today. The maps view is even a little old since there’s building 37 on the right side now (the dirt construction in the maps view.) (BTW, I used DeepZoomPix to display these photos; this is a new technology from Microsoft’s Live Labs. You can drag the photos below around and zoom pretty deeply into them.)
You can see the how we have more buildings and fewer soccer fields, big trees, etc. It’s also interesting how much the trees around the parking lots and driveways have grown. Of course, there are many many more buildings on campus now that aren’t in view. The area behind campus had a lot more trees before; it’s all houses today.
[Updated 4/18/2009 to point to the new DeepZoomPix (formerly PhotoZoom) location]
Two of the things Andrew (11) and Michael (8) love most are Halo and the Discovery Channel. So, they were delighted when they saw this parody of the Discovery Channel's "I Love the Whole World" commercial and insisted I post it here.
March 8 is International Women's Day. Until two days ago, I had never heard of this international holiday. According to Wikipedia, this holiday was originally a Soviet holiday, spread to other Soviet-bloc and Communist countries (including China), and is a recognized holiday in few other countries that begin with the letter i (e.g. Israel and Italy. Notice that United States does not begin with i.)
As I understand it, when March 8 falls on a weekday, at least Microsoft gives female employees in China a half day off (I imagine this is true across China - can anyone verify?). This year, since March 8 fell on a Sunday, the company handed out flowers to all of the women and gave them an Amazon gift card. Here's a picture of the admins handing out flowers to all of the women as they entered our building.
I would have been more impressed if some of the senior male leaders had been down there handing out the flowers -- maybe next year...
Just for the record, there is also an International Men's Day. Some might question the need for a holiday to recognize the role of men in a male dominated world, but to each his/her own.
So, as a man who has a certain fondness and much respect for women, I'd like to wish all of the ladies a Happy International Women's Day!
The kids keep asking me to join the xbox team because they think it would be cool, but I think working at Lego would be even cooler if only for the business cards. They write your info on a mini-fig. Even better:
"Reportedly, LEGO even attempts to match an employee's features with their own minifigs."
Totally impractical, but I love it.
Thanks to my brother, Ives, for pointing out this article from Wired's Geekdad column. (He's totally impractical too, but I love him as well.)
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