Kind of now. Maybe soon.
3D Print Vinyl Records?
Author: Sam Kornstein
Wonkblog’s Choose Your Own Fiscal Cliff Adverture
After I posted Wonkblog’s summary of fiscal cliff offers, Dylan Matthews posted an interactive fiscal cliff graph where you can add/remove various policies to see how they affect estimated GDP and government debt. It’s good stuff:
Top Rock & Roll Riffs (with Tabs!)
I previously posted this pretty amazing video of 100 rock riffs played in sequence. Now, via Chartporn, someone’s matched the footage up with guitar tabs, making it easy for any guitar player to follow along and learn the tunes.
Fiscal Cliff Offers
Via Wongblog, this is the best description of the negotiations I’ve seen yet:
Broomstick (xkcd)
Bend When The Sun Moves – Out Today!
I’m excited to announce that an EP I worked on earlier this year with a group of great musicians is being released today. It’s called ‘Bend When The Sun Moves’ and our band is Vanessa Kafka & the Sunday Spins. The EP is available on iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify — and you can search for it on Pandora as well. There are also previews of the songs on Amazon. Here’s the album cover, designed by Neil Walton in the UK: I got involved with the project after becoming good friends with Vanessa while studying at Sloan. She was a classmate of mine, and we first played music together as part of the Rolling Sloans, a Sloan cover band that’s been in
Lightroom 5 Preset: Silhouette
Here’s my fourth free Lightroom 5 preset, Silhouette. It’s a fairly straightforward black and white preset that works especially well for partial or whole silhouettes. Depending on the starting brightness of the photo, you might want to adjust the strength of the silhouette effect by adjusting the ‘blacks’ control in the develop panel. Here’s the first example, a shot of a former Fidelity colleague’s son jumping into a pool: And here’s a second, a buffalo in a field I snapped while driving through Custer State park in South Dakota: Here’s the download: Lightroom 5 Preset: Silhouette To install it in Lightroom, simply right click any preset, select import, and then select the downloaded preset file.
1933 Beer Brewing Diagram and Subway Maps
Completely unrelated, other than that they’re both interesting, and both from 1933. A 1933 beer brewing diagram from popular science: And a some maps of the London Underground. In 1932 the map still attempted to show turns along the subway lines. By 1933, the design that dominates most subway maps today was born. 1932 with turns: 1933 without turns: And a 2012 London Underground map for comparison: And Boston, why not:
Lightroom 5 Preset: Vintage Rajasthan
Here’s my third free Lightroom 5 Preset, Vintage Rajasthan. My first two are here and here. I developed this one when editing a photo I took outside a temple in Udaipur, India. I was there working on an MIT research project, and got the shot on my way to a market in the early afternoon. The preset adjusts the color balance to add a vintage photo effect, and works well on shots that are vibrant with lots of colors. The original photo was bright and overwhelming, which to me was distracting, taking attention away from the the facial expressions. Here’s the photo with the preset: Here’s a second example: And one final: Here’s the download: Lightroom 5 Preset: Vintage Rajasthan To
When are MIT Students Asleep?
Via Joost Bonsen, my former MIT Media Lab instructor, here’s an interesting tool that charts a histogram of MIT student sleep patterns. You can filter by course and degree level. Undergrad engineering majors stay up late. Oddly, architecture and planning students seem to get the least sleep. Management students stay up late, but also sleep in — fitting. Click to picture to play with the tool: