Nikon’s “Small World” is an international photomicrography competition. A photomicrograph (or micrograph) is an image that is taken through a microscope, and Small World has been celebrating the professional researchers and the part-time hobbyists who have dedicated their time to taking these amazingly minuscule photos. The competition is in 36th year now and Nikon has just released its 2010 winners list.
The top prize in photomicroscopy went to Mr Jonas King at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, USA who photographed a mosquito’s heart at 100x magnification. The vibrant photograph is created using a technique that tags a specific part of the subject with fluorescent molecules, and when the subject is illuminated with light of a certain colour, the fluorescent molecules emit a color that is different to light that was previously absorbed. The result is seen below.
See the top five Small World photomicrographs after the jump.
Set 150 years from now, assuming 2160 AD, there was a colossal war on planet Earth. Combat mechs were designed to play out the war, but when it ended, nobody told them. Now these mechs ravage the lands, still following their century old instruction.
Our story starts you off as a prisoner on a Pyramid slaver ship. The hero then attempts to trail another prisoner who had a head-start on the escape and ends up being ejected off the ship with the aid of a escape pod (I say aid very lightly), to notice that the young woman has beaten him to it.
After the hard crash landing you wake up in a blur to find that she has equipped your forehead with an electronic crown of sorts. It turns out that it is a slave device, which commands you to the will of the slaver. She announces herself as Trip, a member of one of the larger tribes left on earth, who now wants to make her way home with our help. Not that we have a choice, because no one likes dying from an aneurism.
The hero, Monkey (Voiced by Andy “Gollum” Serkis), is a wanderer who travels the land for food and fuel, is now bound to Trip. Equipped with a plasma staff he has to battle his way through impossible battles with mechs of all proportions. The staff also doubles as a rifle of sorts where he is able to target and shoot enemies from a distance.
The +1, Trip (Voiced by Lindsay Shaw), is a computer wizard who helps Monkey through the adventure in every aspect. Be it with scanning environments, combat assistance, or just generally not getting involved.
Alright it is time now to get into the “nitty gritty” of things. The adventure continues after the jump.
The works of artist Sam Buxton really do stand out. He creates fantastic little dioramas from a flat sheet of thin stainless steel. The laser-cut designs can be folded up and out to reveal an intricate, miniature scene. His Mikroworld series contains lush gardens, work spaces, and even a trip to the moon, and the attention to detail in each piece is quite amazing.
Each of the designs is packed flat and comes with instructions that enable you to erect it. Have a look at some of his distinctive fold-up metal structures after the jump.
In February 2004 the Internet was irreparably changed, and depending on which side of the fence you sit, it was either a good thing or the ruin of basic human interaction. I fall squarely in the latter group, as I feel Facebook has skewed the basic principles of what defines a friend and how we communicate. It is a phenomenon which has taken the most ardent critic by surprise, me included. Although it would be foolish to ignore the 500 million odd users that would instantly vaporise should anything happen to their lives profiles.
So like all things popular and fashionable, a movie just had to be made about Facebook. My initial reaction was one of trepidation, as the idea of watching some varsity student plugging away at his code holed up in a dingy dorm room isn’t appealing. Guns, explosions, and gratuitous nudity are always surefire winners. The Social Network, by the looks of the trailer, will actually be a good watch despite it’s lack of mindless douchebaggery.
The Social Network is a movie which follows the birth of Facebook and the trials and tribulations that moulded it to what it presently is. The protagonist Mark Zuckerberg is played by Jesse Eisenberg, who has lent his talents to off-beat movies such as Adventureland, Zombieland, and The Village. Justin Timberlake also appears in the movie as Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster, which I must admit I am curious that he was cast in such a role. He is not exactly the first typecast that comes to mind in context of all things webbified. As long as he doesn’t sing or dance, it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.
Some interesting and some not-so-interesting facts about Facebook after the jump.
People spend over 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook.
Of the 500 million users, 150 million access it via their mobile device.
Mobile Facebook users are twice as active as their desktop counterparts.
50% of Facebookers are logged onto their accounts in any given day.
The average user has 130 friends.
100% of Facebook users waste 2 gazillion man hours a year (Ok, I made that one up).
On a side note, Mark Zuckerberg was involved in some dubious shenanigans, which does make me question Facebook’s privacy policies. Wikipedia gives the low-down.
Whether one likes it or not, Facebook has changed the way people interact digitally, and probably for generations to come. Whatever happened to plain old email correspondence?
The Social Network releases in South African cinemas on November 5th.
I’m set to get an education this week, and no matter how much humour the trainer will try to inject into the course, I doubt it’ll be much fun.
I’d love to regress to my childhood when exploring new things was filled with amazement, and I’d want Jess Bradley as a teacher. This illustrator from Bristol, England loves creating cute and quirky characters and started off a project to create a rather odd alphabet. Have a look at her super-cute alliterated designs after the jump.
Graphic designer Stanley Lau from Singapore goes under the pen name of Artgerm on DeviantArt and his art has been viewed over 8 million times! Together with his buddies, Lau founded the Imaginary Friends Studios and creates concept art for video games companies and comic book publishers. The designs are absolutely amazing, have a look at some of his digital paintings after the jump.
As witnessed from the results of a hue test, I’m pretty awful with colours. It’s in serious fail territory if I have to go about naming them. And I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Scientist Stephen Von Worley took the 5+ million results from a colour survey conducted by XKCD and created an interactive infographic that shows the differences between men and women when it comes to colours. Von Worley plots the 2,000 most commonly-used colour names as a series of dots on a graph. The size of the colour dot indicates how common the colour is and the horizontal axis divides the gender – women tend to use colour names towards the top part, men uses one the bottom part, and dividing line represents the 50-50 split between the sexes.
It’s interesting to see the different colour preferences. While men seem to use some lolworthy descriptions like goblin green, vomit yellow, shit, and really dark blue, women tend to prefer colours like chartruese, antique rose, dark cornflower, and islamic green.
See the interactive version of the infographic on Data Pointed. Mouse over the dots for more information and read Von Worley’s writeup.
If you watched the 10 best jumps ever compilation, you may have marvelled at Joseph Kittinger’s most amazing high altitude jump. Kittinger holds records for the highest parachute jump (31,300 m), longest freefall (4 minutes, 36 seconds), and fastest speed achieved by a human being through the atmosphere (988 km/h). 50 years on and a challenger enters.
Ace BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner has teamed up with Red Bull and the Kittinger himself in attempt to make history. The mission is called Red Bull Stratos and would have Baumgartner ascending to a height of 36,600 m above the earth and jumping off the gondola. His stratospheric freefall jump would then beat Kittinger’s record and would make Baumgartner first human to break the speed of sound with his own body.
Red Bull Stratos was announced in January of this year and the record-breaking attempt will take place between September 20th and December 31st. Check out this little clip as they prepare for their mission to the edge of space.
This is ludicrous. No, this is Japan and as frequent commenter and writer Macross likes to tell us, the bomb affected them more than they’d care to mention.
In the movie entitled Female Ninjas: The Magic Chronicles, the assassins are equally skilled in all manner of sexual arts as they are in ninjin’. And in this clip from the movie a female ninja dispatches a foe by using deadly bubbles from her nether regions.
See more bad ninja magic at io9. And speaking of bubbles, you might like what we did to some local bikini models.
I always love a good laugh and here’s one for this dreary Friday.
What is it with guys and the abuse that they hand down to noobs and women, in online gaming. I have been on the receiving end of these, being a male and a noob, but women get the worst of it.
Here’s one for the ladies (if OLP has any female-gamer readers) and the guys who need a good laugh.
