rollerskating in central park

Saw this in central park today.  I also saw a horse drawn carriage almost fall over when the horse got spooked by a drum.  fun day

Hang Gliding Yosemite

Hang Gliding Yosemite


Hang Gliding Doggy Style (Dog Mt. WA)

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation | Video on TED.com

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation | Video on TED.com

YouTube - Crater Face

Impression of Ian McKellen As the Fresh Prince reflects on his journey to Bel-Air

Wanted: Some douchebag that knows about Apples

(klik for biggr)

Photo editor online pixlr free edit image direct in your browser

For those of you out there who don't fly the Jolly Roger, check out this free online alternative to photoshop. It rocks!
www.pixlr.com - Edit images right in your browser for free

ENVISION : Step into the sensory box

ENVISION : Step into the sensory box from SUPERBIEN

Hubblecast 36: Gifts from the sky: honouring 20 years of Hubble

Church turned into house

Would You Live in this Church?

More pics available here

Landslide in Italy caught on video

Unmanned police drones: the next big thing?

Lady Gaga Accoustic cover - Igor Presnyakov

see more of Igor Presnyakov's videos here

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Return to Fractalland

Just wanted to share some videos I stumbled across today.  The author has done quite a few different renderings of both 2D and 3D mandelbrot fractals as well as other types of fractals.  Here are some of the coolest.  Click here to see all his videos.


Mandelbrot Fractal Set Trip To e214 HD from teamfresh.

The final magnification is e.214. Want some perspective? a magnification of e.12 would increase the size of a particle to the same as the earths orbit! e.21 would make a particle look the same size as the milky way and e.42 would be equal to the universe. This zoom smashes all of them all away. If you were "actually" traveling into the fractal your speed would be faster than the speed of light.

The mandelbox pixel blender render. from teamfresh.

This is a render I made late one night of a trip I took through the mandelbox. How I managed to get out is anyones guess!
you really should have your headphones on for this ten minute trip
The deep tech house music is used with permission from 90watts
an amsterdam based record label.

Robot Candy HD from teamfresh.

This particular two minute piece is not a zoom. Its a manipulation of the fractal set instead - This is just a part of one of the many fractal animations on my upcoming fractal dvd. This fractal animation consists of two layers.

Chinese Dragon Ferns And Needles On Fire In Ice. from teamfresh.

Enjoy!

Time-lapse video of Eyjafjallajökull

Awesome time-lapse video of the volcano

At the risk of rehashing the same cliched pictures and video of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, I think this one you will enjoy.


Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier

Are hugs really better than drugs?

The hugs vs. drugs debate surges on.

If you think hugs are better than drugs, you haven't tried LSD

Hairy Russian Sausage

Hairy Russian Sausage

This is precisely why I love Russians so much.


Step 1.  Put hard spaghetti noodles through a sausage.

Step 2.  Boil

Step 3.  Enjoy.

Fake Painting Photographs by Alexa Meade

Fake Painting Photographs by Alexa Meade | Bored Panda

I've seen plenty of paintings that look so realistic its hard to tell they are paintings. But I think this is the first time I've seen photographs that are hard to tell they're NOT paintings...

There are a lot more photos so head Here for the rest.

8 Wonders of the Solar System

8 Wonders of the Solar System: Scientific American

Artist Ron Miller takes us on a journey to eight of the most breathtaking views that await explorers of our solar system. The scale of these natural wonders dwarfs anything Earth has to offer. What might we see and feel if we could travel to these distant domains? By interpreting data from probes such as NASA's Cassini, which is now exploring the Saturnian system, and MESSENGER, which goes into orbit around Mercury in March 2011, the artist's eye allows us an early visit to these unforgettable locales.

[See the rest here]

Joby Gorillapod

It's not always easy to carry a full tripod with you when you are out taking pictures. That's why I was really happy to find these awesome Gorillapod tripods that can wrap their legs around just about anything to give you a steady shot, without carrying around the bulk and weight of a regular tripod. The legs are really sturdy and require the perfect amount of force to bend into the shape you prefer.  It's one of the best accessories for my camera I've purchased so far.  There are a number of different models depending on how heavy your camerais, so be sure to pick the right model.  (links at end)

Amazon.com: Joby GP3 Gorillapod SLR-Zoom Flexible Tripod for Digital SLR Cameras: Camera & Photo 

(this link is for SLR-Zoom cameras, and it is for just the tripod.  It is also available with a swivel ball attachment that allows the camera to rotate in all directions available here.  More information, as well as a form to help you choose the correct model for your camera can be found at joby.com)

Pattern Building

This is kinda fun

(Automata Theory)

Is this real life?

The search for the source of the "mystical experience" is nothing new by any stretch of the imagination.  Shamans have experienced first hand the transformational capacity of psychedelic plants which are are said to be capable of opening the door to the divine.  Almost all of organized religion is at least in part based upon some type of mystical experience powerful enough to mold the future actions and behaviors millions of loyal followers.  Wikipedia mentions the following common general descriptions (among others) of the fundamental mystical experience:

• Nullification and absorption within God's Infinite Light (Hassidic schools of Judaism)
• Union with God (Henosis in Neoplatonism and Brahma-Prapti or Brahma-Nirvana in Hinduism, fana in Sufism)
• Experience of one's true blissful nature (Samadhi Svarupa-Avirbhava in Hinduism and Buddhism)
• Seeing the Light, or "that of God", in everyone (Quakerism)

But what is behind these experiences?  Whether you hold the opinion that these are mere brain chemistry fluctuations or that they are true channels to the gods, the power of the transcendental experience simply cannot be denied. 

It stands to reason, then, that the search for the true meaning of this experience is one that has been highly debated for centuries if not millennia.  For many years, science has primarily avoided the subject, unsure  of how to best refute something they could neither see nor measure.  In recent years however, our ever-expanding (albeit never-complete) search for understanding of the human brain has led researchers to the ability to reproduce similar mental states by use of magnetic impulses applied to certain areas of the brain itself which have been identified as correlating to a mystical experience.

Link: Is God only in our brain?

These responses to magnetic stimulation, however, don't just pertain to Union With the Field, similar electrical activity in the brain are believed to extend also to the realm of alien encounters and abductions.  The staggering number of eerily similar abduction reports raises many questions that have been shoved onto the back burner of mainstream science for decades.  Just as with the mystical experience  If you happen to have a subscription to NewScientist magazine, you will have access to the entire article regarding magnetic stimulation of the brain and the sensation of an alien abduction, available here (if you don't have a subscription I'd HIGHLY recommend it, it is one of the best magazine's I've ever read.  most of newscientist is free but archived articles, such as this one from 1994, require a login).  Long story short, the author of the article underwent magnetic brain stimulation in a laboratory, investigating for BBC's "Horizons".  He relates his experience as such:

I was wide awake throughout. Nothing seemed to happen for the first ten minutes or so. Instructed to describe aloud anything that happened, I felt under pressure to say something, anything. Then suddenly my doubts vanished. "I'm swaying. It's like being on a hammock." Then it felt for all the world as though two hands had grabbed my shoulders and were bodily yanking me upright. I knew I was still lying in the reclining chair, but someone, or something, was pulling me up.

Something seemed to get hold of my leg and pull it, distort it, and drag it up the wall. It felt as though I had been stretched half way up to the ceiling. Then came the emotions. Totally out of the blue, but intensely and vividly, I suddenly felt angry - not just mildly cross but that clear-minded anger out of which you act - but there was nothing and no one to act on. After perhaps ten seconds, it was gone. Later, it was replaced by an equally sudden attack of fear. I was terrified - of nothing in particular. The long-term medical effects of applying strong magnetic fields to the brain are largely unknown, but I felt weak and disoriented for a couple of hours after coming out of the chamber.

No visits from spacemen or entereing into Nirvana, but it does go to show that the brain is capable of interpreting this stimulation in a way that, while not abiding by any rules of the physical universe, is extremely convincing and undeniable to the observer.  It's obvious that subjective experience and neuronal firing in the brain are inextricably linked, but there are still so many questions to be answered.  Who is to say what really happened to the many people who have experienced a mystical union with the Great Beyond or been kidnapped by little green visitors from distant galaxies, all too eager to poke, prod, and probe there way into the victim's body.  What we do know is that these experiences tend to feel and seem so real to the subject that many are completely incapable of distinguishing what is "real life" and what is perceived.  Our brains are programmed to work in a specific way that, to me, seems more than just chance.  Perhaps magnetic fields are just one way our bodies download information from the universe-at-large, a means of communication with the great life-force that researchers have finally learned to hack into.  Or maybe they're all a bunch of kooks.  We may not know the answer to these questions any time soon, but we are getting closer all the time.  No matter how far science takes us though, there will always be questions to which we simply can't (or shouldn't) know the answers.

STFU PLZ

The Mandelbulb

 I'm sure everyone who hasn't been completely shut off from society for the past 30 years or has ever stepped foot inside a head shop has seen something along the lines of this next picture, but maybe never knew its name:

It's your standard Mandelbrot fractal pic.  It's nothing too special, we've all seen it before, but it does get a little more interesting when you start to look at how it's made and what exactly it is.  For those of you who might not know, a Mandelbrot set is in essence nothing more than a complex math equation that has been run through a computer algorithm to calculate which parts of the image should be colored and which parts are empty.  What is unique about fractal sets is that you could zoom in on a specific point in the image continuously,  without ever losing detail, as the equation would continually update the image to produce a increasingly complex image at any scale.

Big deal, right?  well, if you're craving more psychedelia, you're not alone.  The search has been on for about 20 years for a way to move the Mandelbrot set into the 3rd dimension.  I'm going to spare you all the gory details of the math equations involved in this blog post (find that here).  Long story short, math goons have cracked the case and found a few different ways to adapt the Mandelbrot set equations for 3 dimensions.  Like the 2-D fractal counterparts, these images are designed to grow exceedingly more complex the further you zoom in; in fact it should never lose its detail no matter how far you zoom in.  Check out some of the results:

Find many more examples and an in depth look at the math and logic behind these awesome images over at Skytopia: The Unraveling of the Real 3D Maldelbulb.

Baby-Tossing: New Olympic sport?

Apparently in India, it is considered beneficial to an infant's health and future prosperity to drop them off a 50-foot rooftop.  My only question is, who came up with this tradition?  It's kind of one of those things like who decided to drink milk from a cow for the first time?  Anyway, the good news is none of the babies have died yet (although, I'm sure the record-keeping process on these sorts of things may leave something to be desired).  [warning:  if dropping babies off of rooftops bothers you you might not want to watch this]



edit:  scratch that last part

The Carina Nebula

Outer space is way bigger than the internet.

Link

Prologue

The internet is big.  My plan is to make it more manageable for you.  Originally I had planned to launch distributed denial of service attacks against all the sites on the internet that suck.  I quickly realized, however, that this would take way too long and I really don't have the patience for that.  Instead, I decided to just provide a blog with some of the stuff on the internet that DOESN'T suck, so you don't have to waste your time with the stuff that does, leaving you plenty of time to do the things.  So, CSIFO was born.  But alas, I am only one person, and with a full time job it is almost impossible for me to find all of the sites on the internet that don't suck.  That's where you come in.  If you happen to find a website online that is worthy of CSIFO, feel free to send me a recommendation (contact form is over there --> somewhere), and if, and only if, it withstands my rigorous 99 point inspection, I'll add it to the list.