5 Crippling Beliefs That Keep People Stuck, Unsuccessful, and Mediocre For Life

Is it just me, or is the whole “fitting in” thing highly overrated?

Yes, there’s a certain comfort in going with the flow, being one of many, and following the same path as millions before you. Yes, it’s easier to not be stupid and put yourself way out on a ledge and risk your predictable and stable life. Yes, it’s fun to fantasize about one day someone walks in and “discovers” your hidden brilliance and plucks you from your normal life and drops you into the one of your dreams. [read]

IKEA Based Ring Light – Redux

Continuous Ring Lights are quite popular as the work both with video and stills. A while back we featured a hack to build a ring light out of on old IKEA lamp called Kvartil chandelier, wich eliminated the woodwork from the common ring light design. Sadly that chandelier has been discontinued for a very long time now.

Luckily, there is a replacement. Photographer Iñigo Alonso found a replacement chandelier, the IKEA Glänsa. While it may look cumbersome at first glance (or glansa) stripped from all the spikes it provides a great ring light base. [read]

Sprint to carry iPhone 5 at same time as AT&T and Verizon

We’d originally heard that Sprint was getting iPhone engineers ready in their Kansas City headquarters in May and it looks like they will have been put to good use. Today the Wall St. Journal is reporting that Sprint will carry the iPhone 5 along with AT&T and Verizon in the US. The nation’s third largest carrier has been struggling of late and the addition of the iconic device on TRULY unlimited plans would certainly be a differentiator. [read]

Lens Length and Other Factors

Perhaps one of the more confusing subjects in the world of digital cameras is lens length. We hear terms like “telephoto”, “wide angle”, “field of view”, “5X” and a host of others to describe our lenses. Then once we get all of that business sorted out we crank in other arcane phrases like “crop factor” and “35mm equivalent”. Is it any wonder that it’s tough to make a decision on a lens?

While it is easy to grasp that a longer lens length offers more magnification and a short lens length provides a wider view, it helps to understand what a standard lens length is before we begin making comparisons. [read]

The 10 Best (New) Rhythm Sections

It’s the basic foundation of any rock band, but at a concert with flailing vocalists and squealing guitars, it could be the easiest thing to overlook—the rhythm section. Rather than attempt another all-time best list (Entwistle and Moon; Deacon and Taylor; and Jones and Bonham have all gotten their due), today we’ll take a look at some of drum/bass batteries that have popped up in the last 15 years or so that haven’t yet received that level of acclaim. [read]

Legotron, Mark I — 4×5 Camera made of LEGO bricks

The kid and adult in me LOVES this. – Back in August of 2009, I blogged about having an idea of making a 4×5 out of LEGO bricks. Ten days later I’d made some serious progress on it. I started with trying to use the LEGO builder App on the computer to spec it out before I built it, but my mind wouldn’t work like that, so I threw that out and borrowed a metric tonne of LEGOs from my friend Gregory. I made a couple of rounds of prototypes that proved to work well enough for my mind to think Hello World / proof of concept. Fast forward a bit and I got really busy and left the project sitting on a desk for just ages. A big hitch in the progress, other than being busy, was that I’d built just enough of the camera to realize I had to rebuild the main body to accomodate the film holder—a part I’d forgotten to plan for. [read]

Why Blocking Social Media During Civil Unrest Is Never the Right Choice [OPINION]

When people come together and gather their collective minds, they can accomplish nearly anything. On the other hand, this capacity can apply to situations both great and terrible. For instance, the sheer power of numbers can be dedicated to raising awareness for a worthy cause, or it can be used to fight back against a repressive regime, only to devastate the streets in a violent riot.

Thomas Jefferson said that the government should fear the people. Especially when those people are capable of powerful acts of defiance, it’s not surprising to see the government act on that fear by attempting to prevent the mobilization of a frustrated collective. [read]

Inside Prosoft’s Data Rescue Center

Ever lost your hard drive?  Not physically, but technically. – The Center is a division of Prosoft Engineering, a longtime Mac software developer and makers of Drive Genius 3, Data Rescue 3, and Data Backup 3. In addition to recovering data from hard drives that are physically damaged, users of ProSoft’s software can call upon the Center when the problem is beyond the scope of the software utility. [via MacWorld read]

Swoosh: 40 Years Fly By (Nike)

Designed by Carolyn Davidson in 1971. For $35. At the time, Phil Knight stated of the logo, “I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.” [read]

The origin of the mark goes like this: Knight wanted to differentiate BRS’s custom product from the ones they were importing from Onituska in Japan: “…so Knight turned to a graphic design student he met at Portland State University two years earlier.” One day in 1969, the student, Carolyn Davidson, was approached by Knight and offered $2 per hour “to make charts and graphics” for his business. For the next two years Davidson managed the design work on BRS. “Then one day Phil asked me if I wanted to work on a shoe stripe,” Davidson recalled. The only advice she received was to “Make the stripe supportive of the shoe.” Davidson came up with half a dozen options. None of the options “captivated anyone” so it came down to “which was the least awful.” [via kottke.org]

Chang and Eng: Lady Gagas of their day?

Chang Bunker was friendly, outgoing, alcoholic, shorter in stature and had a temper; for instance, while Eng was a quiet, withdrawn teetotaler with wider intellectual interests. One body, two individuals.

Their differences extended to different physical peculiarities and reactions to physical stimuli, a fact that fascinated physicians, Wu says. [read]