This is no photochop. What you are looking at is a genuine, Vietnam era camera gun. It gives new meaning to photographers everywhere saying they’re going to go “shoot” their subject! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!1!
But seriously, it’s pretty impressive from a situational engineering standpoint. Gizmodo was able to get a hold of a guy who was a war photographer in Afghanistan recently. He gave a good, detailed explanation of the why behind carrying a camera gun. He has some other term than “camera gun” (rifle stock), but really camera gun is pretty much the coolest term I’ve heard in a long time so we’re going with it.
It was developed as a way to have really steady long zoom shots, while being able to get out of your way in a hurry. I think rally car photographers should think about this one too. And maybe wedding photographers who specialize in the action sequence of the ceremony.
All owners of the Xbox 360 received an extra Christmas present when they updated their console a month ago. I know I am a big fan of the new look and feel. I just ran across a post by the design firm Gridplane that came up with a competing concept for the New Xbox Experience. Behold what might have been:
Update: I have added an image gallery with all the concepts available at Gridplane’s site. You can view the original article here.
While I love the color palette they have chosen, I think they took a few steps back on functionality. The white gradient is very subtle and pleasing, and the shade of green reflects the history of the Xbox color palette while moving forward. Functionally, however, I think the way they present the different groups of information does not give the user enough information about where they are. What comes next? What group were the just viewing?
It is a great attempt, and I appreciate Gridplane sharing it with us.
(via Gizmodo)
Ars Technica links to an article done by the Rocky Mountain News investigating red light cameras in Denver. While I have much to say about red light cameras specifically, and even more about traffic “laws” in general, the interesting thing to me about this news comes in the last paragraph of the Ars Technica writeup; longer yellow lights make for safer intersections.
While this makes sense intellectually, it has now been verified through anecdotal evidence. Next we need to get cities to stop treating traffic violations as a source of revenue and start treating them like a safty issue.
One of the more interesting (to me) additions to the new version of GarageBand included in iLife ’09 is the Learn to Play feature. So now, not only can you put together loops, synthesized music, and your own instrumentals, you can learn to play any instrument you might want to record. Want to add a piano track to your musical opus, but don’t know how to play? Well, Learn to Play probably isn’t for you since it will take you quite a while to really learn the piano; but it’s a start!
Along with Learn to Play are Artist Lessons, where leading pop musicians will give you prerecorded instructions on how to play some of their songs on their instrument. Gizmodo has a good review of Artist Lessons, and they sound like a really good deal to me.
It’s all about the price point. At five dollars, these artist lessons are an impulse buy. Five dollars is around what you would pay for five minutes of a lesson with a less-than-average instructor in the real world. While it doesn’t give you the personalized training that another person would, it gives you enough to get started, and enough tools to improvise from the one song you learn to progress.
If I had access to iLife ’09 and a piano of sorts, I would be all over it.
