Diagnosed with autism at an early age, artist Stephen Wiltshire has been at the Pratt Institute since Monday drawing the entire New York City skyline — all 305 square miles of it — by memory. Stephen has the ability to remember things with incredibly detail and he can recall things like the number of columns on a building or the number of windows on a building (multiply this by several hundred buildings and you get a sense of how awesome Stephen is). Wiltshire, who has been featured in a number of TV documentaries about people with incredible talents because of their autism, has already drawn several other cities by memory.
To get a view of NYC, Wiltshire flew over the city in a helicopter just once and then started drawing at a public gallery space at Pratt on Monday. He hopes to finish the entire panoramic drawing by this Friday. If you want to keep up with Stephen’s progress, CBS News has a live feed of his public studio gallery where he is working from. See the live feed below.
At the funeral service for Billy Mays on Friday, July 3, 2009 in Pittsburgh, PA, the pallbearers all donned the iconic blue shirt uniform that Billy Mays made famous through his OxiClean infomercials. The Herald Dispatch has a couple of more photos from the funeral.
Photo: AP Photo/ St. Petersburg Times, Scott Keeler
I am never satisfied with the amount of USB ports my computer has. I always seem to need more USB ports to connect my supply of USB-enabled devices (card reader, multiple iPods, multiple portable HDDs, Nintendo DS Lite charger, nonsense desk toys, etc.).
Anyway, Griffin Technology has this pretty fantastic USB device called the Simplifi that serves as an iPod charging dock, a card reader, and a USB hub as well. It supports just about all recent iPod lineups and reads all popular memory card formats like SD, Compact Flash, and Sony’s stupid Memory Stick. On the back of the Simplifi are two extra USB ports for plugging in extra USB-powered devices.
I want it, and at $70, this sounds like a pretty good way to keep as many USB devices plugged in at the same time without having to worry about ejecting and swapping disks.
