This is the music video for “Blue Steel” by Bot’Ox. It shows a bunch of scenes of a car in slow-motion driving into inflatable pool toys, soft objects, and things that generally bounce when hit. Pretty cool.
I’m about to stop using Firefox…
August 12, 2009 @ 3:35 pm
Has anybody else been experiencing major problems with the latest version of Firefox?
The latest version doesn’t seem to handle itself as well as the previous version and that means that at any point in time, the Firefox browser will become sluggish, slow-to-respond, or stop working altogether forcing me to do a Force Quit on the application.
I’ve been trying to pinpoint the exact cause (whether it’s a website I’m visiting or a script that’s running somewhere or possibly one of my add-ons), but so far it just seems like Firefox does a terrible job of staying afloat after a certain number of tabs. This was never the case before with previous versions of the browser.
Could be a major memory leak. But in any case it’s a big enough problem that I’ll sacrifice the headache for now and start using Safari until the next version of Firefox comes out (or until Chrome for the Mac gets a solid release).
World Trade Center re-opening delayed until 2018
August 4, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
Photo from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP
The Daily News is running a news story on a secret leaked document from the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center (LMCCC) that says that the WTC rebuilding site is years behind schedule and that the buildings probably will not be open until 2018.
Furthermore, the 9/11 Memorial which was supposed to open by the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks won’t actually open until at least 2 years after that date (sometime around 2013). To top it off, the PATH terminal that is part of the WTC site is projected to miss its June 2014 opening date and will instead be opening around 2018.
This is so ridiculous. Seriously.
The fastest way to export photos in Adobe Lightroom
July 16, 2009 @ 10:57 am
I honestly haven’t noticed this in my heavy usage of Lightroom, but a software analyst named Lloyd Chambers has discovered that Adobe Lightroom doesn’t fully make use of all CPU cores during the photo exporting process.
Chambers found that if a photographer wants to produce JPEG or TIF images from the originals in the program, the fastest way is to divide the batch into thirds and export each third separately. Using a modern Mac Pro system, exporting a test set of photos took 351 seconds as one batch and 189 seconds divided into three batches running at the same time.
“The big disappointment is the sluggish performance importing and exporting files, which are tasks that are key to efficient workflow–tasks one has to do over and over. Most of the ‘juice’ of a Mac Pro goes untapped,” Chambers concluded. “You have to load it up with more than one job to force more of the available CPU cores to be used. Lightroom should do this automatically!”
Many, including myself, aren’t making too big of a deal about this since the speed overall and the reliability of Lightroom has never been a problem. However, I think it would be nice to have the option to utilize all CPU’s to their max capacity (even if it does mean that the rest of the computer becomes almost unusable during the exporting process). Anyway, I’m gonna try that rule of dividing batches into thirds when I do my next export. I want to see how fast it will get on my MBP.
Ground Zero is going to take a lot longer to rebuild than previously thought
April 18, 2009 @ 10:52 am
Photo courtesy of wtc.com
1010wins is reporting that new developments in the rebuilding of the former World Trade Center at Ground Zero put the project at a full completion date of about 2030 (plus or minus a few years). The developer, Larry Silverstein, apparently only has enough money in the bank to insure 2 of the towers.
The Freedom Tower and Silverstein’s three planned towers — designed by architects like Lord Norman Foster and Richard Rogers — are all expected to be among the city’s tallest towers.
But an analysis prepared for the Port Authority by the Cushman & Wakefield real estate brokerage projected that while two of Silverstein’s towers could be built by 2013, a third wouldn’t be built until 2030 and fully leased until 2036. A second tower that hasn’t been built yet wouldn’t be fully leased until 2025, the analysis said.
This is a major blow to the painful and slow rebuilding process that has taken place downtown since 9/11. And with the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 coming up very soon, it looks like nothing — not even the WTC Memorial — will be completed.
-_-
The most annoying people in New York City
February 2, 2009 @ 4:16 am
With nothing better to write about, The New York Post has published an article that takes a look at a recent poll from People Who Deserve It that asks New Yorkers to vote for their least favorite type of person.
Reactions to the poll put slow-walking sidewalk blocker at the #1 spot with 29% of the votes. At a close second was self-important bluetooth guy (the guy who talks loudly into the air because he’s on a bluetooth headset on the street) with 24% of the votes. The Post created the image above to break it down for you in case you couldn’t think of the people on your own. However, with only about 2300 people voting, this is in no way an accurate representation of the sentiments of the average New Yorker. I suspect that if more New Yorkers voted, the percentage for slow-walking sidewalk blocker would be a lot higher. I hate slow-walking people.
Support this site
