2 Cellos
Apparently I am a little late to the game on this one, but I just stumbled across 2 Cellos. If you also find yourself out of touch with that bit of current popular culture, you have to watch this video.
It gets better. After someone showed one of their videos to Elton John, he hired them for his band. And it has only grown since then. They have a big pile of videos available on their youtube page featuring everything from Guns ‘N Roses to Michael Jackson. It’s well worth a look.
The Hansen Writing Ball
Most of us are familiar with the old-school typewriters. Those with the crazy jam-prone typebars and the impossibly long key travel. But have you ever seen what came before that? Meet the Hansen Writing Ball. It was invented in 1865 by Rasmus Malling-Hansen and looks more steampunk than anything, ever. It made quite a splash, and was actually in use in offices until 1909, but eventually replaced by the mass-produced version that we all know so well. The wikipedia entry on it is fascinating, and includes a very interesting story on Nietzsche’s adventure with the Hansen.
Chuck Norris vs Communism
That’s not the plot for the movie that you are going to catch on Showtime in the wee hours of a Friday night, though it certainly could be. For our purposes here, it’s the start down a path that shows the interesting part Chuck Norris and the VHS tape played during the communist regime in Romania in the 80s.Irina Margareta Nistor was a translator at the national television station. A meeting with an entrepreneur led to her becoming the under the table voice that brought Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee, and a host of other larger than life stars to the people of Romania. Her story has now been chronicled in a documentary by Ilinca Calugareanu, and it is fascinating. You can watch a short version of the upcoming feature-length documentary at the New York Times.
The John McAfee story…
Chances are you have heard about the peculiar life of John McAfee. It just gets stranger, and better. I won’t even try to summarize. Just go read this post.
There’s your problem!
Batteries man… There are a lot of things that depend on batteries in our world, and some of them occasionally go ignored. Especially if they are in some sort of a backup scenario, like the UPS you see in the picture above. As you can see, not only are these well past their expiration date, they’ve also begun to swell an alarming amount. It’s always a good idea to mark the date of your last battery replacement on the outside of the enclosure, and set up some kind of system to remind you when their factory recommended refresh date is.
ISO 409,600!?
If you were into photography at all during the film days (yes, technically the film days are not over, but come on… it’s a niche at best these days), you are probably familiar with ISO, the standardized measurement of film speed. ISO 100, 200, and 400 were all rather common, but film realistically topped out around ISO 16oo. There were some 3200 and 6400 films, but for the average user, 1600 was the limit.
As we venture further down the path with digital photography, the ISO system is coming with us. It’s now rather common for a low-end camera to be perfectly usable at ISO 6400. And if you look to what is happening on the high-end, it’s getting crazy. We saw the 110K mark cracked in 2009 with the Canon 1D Mark IV and Nikon D3s both hitting ISO 102,400. In 2011, Canon’s 1D X took it to ISO 204,800. And now, Nikon’s latest, the D4s, has a staggering ISO 409,600.
Granted, you are not getting a great photo at ISO 409,600. But you are getting a readable image. You can see an example of just what ISO 409,600 looks like at Fro Knows Photo. While it is really cool that 400K even exists, the interesting takeaway from that post is in the ISO 25,600 photo. That’s perfectly usable, and has us looking at a realistic four stop gain over comparable film cameras. It’s cool living in the future.
Travel virtually to Bologna, again
If you have been playing along with the home game, you will remember a post about the Google Maps tour of the Lamborghini museum in Bologna. Well now, Ducati has joined in the fun. The Ducati museum is also in Bologna, and they now have their own Google Maps tour. If you like motorcycles, and especially if you like Ducati motorcycles, it’s fantastic. There are over 40 bikes, tracking the company’s history from 1946 right up to the latest GP ride. The history of Ducati is very interesting. What started as Radio Brevetti Ducati, producing radio components, went on to become one of the premiere motorcycle brands in the world. You can read more about that at the Ducati wikipedia entry.
The world’s greatest forger
Do you know the name Wolfgang Beltracchi? Even if you don’t, you may have seen his paintings. And that fact is at the root of one of the craziest ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ stories you’ll ever hear. Wolfgang is a very talented painter, but he chose to use those talents to paint forgeries. Not just any forgeries though. He didn’t copy known paintings. Instead, he created whole new works that famous painters might have painted. Then, with the help of his wife, created the provenance necessary to authenticate them. They were very successful.
Wolfgang’s paintings ended up on the covers of auction magazines, hanging in museums, and were selling for millions of dollars. He was eventually caught because of an ill-conceived tube of white paint. The pigments in that tube didn’t exist when the painting they were used on was supposed to have been created. That discovery opened up a can of worms that is still being sorted out. At his trial, prosecutors identified 36 paintings that had sold for $46 million. But nobody knows exactly how many of them are still to be discovered.
Fun fact. The Beltracchi painting you see at the top of this post was purchased by Steve Martin. The entire story is fascinating and sounds like the treatment for a Hollywood film. You can read all the details at the CBS News post.
The Lotus C-01 is real
Rumors have been circulating for quite some time that Lotus was going to make a motorcycle. Exactly what form that would take was as big a question as whether or not it would ever actually happen. Now we know the answer to both. It is really happening, and they’ve built a drag-style cruiser, complete with a 200 HP v-twin. There are not a lot of other details available at the moment. Apparently, they will only build 100 of them, and the price hasn’t been announced. More background, and more pictures, are available at the Top Gear website.
Sinkholes, Man… Sinkholes
Some natural disasters are horrific just based on their sheer scale. When a volcano blows up on your head, the sheer size and power of it is mindbogglilng. Or when you see a tornado just pick up barn. And some are horrific based on the out of nowhere surprise. That’s where sinkholes come in. And this is a particularly dastardly one. Of all the places in Bowling Green, KY, this sinkhole could have opened up, it was directly under the National Corvette Museum. Yikes.
The hole is something on the order of 40 feet wide and 20 feet deep, and it swallowed eight Corvettes when it appeared. Those include two ZR-1s that were on loan from General Motors. There are more pictures and a full list of the cars consumed at the story on The Verge.
Update! Here is security cam footage of the sinkhole opening.
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