One Year in 40 Seconds
One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.
This short video from Eirik Solheim is made from a series of images shot from the same spot over the course of one year. He used some pretty cool tools in Photoshop to align the shots and make it work. He also recorded audio throughout the year. All details on how this video was made are on his website at eirikso.com.
Christmas Shopping in Durham
The above photo from 1962 is from the great site, Endangered Durham, that tracks the history of Durham, NC building by building and block by block.
This Was the Week That Was
N&O Photo by Robert Willett
Last week I was interviewed by the News & Observer, and the article appeared this week on Monday morning in the print edition and on the web. I was on the front page of both. This generated a lot of Twitter activity (which appears below), and I was featured two times on 30 Threads (here and here), a local blog aggregation site.
I had a conversation with my friend Ryan who wanted to post my quote from the article, but was concerned about the News & Observer copyright. Other friends joked about the wonky caption in the paper (and online) that said I was “linked up and copiously spread across the internet.” I spent the first part of the week pretending I was a famous and acting like a rockstar.
The story was also picked up by the Charlotte Observer and the Corpus Christi Caller Times. Finally, the best was on Wednesday when the article was translated into Spanish and appeared on a Mexican computer website. By the end of the week, my fame was fleeting and it was back to normal.
Twitter Chatter from the Week
Conventions of Twitter:
The first thing is the @username of the person speaking
If the first thing after their @username is @anotherusername, they are speaking to that person
RT or Retweet means to re-post something that someone else posted (and giving the credit for the original post)
I am @dgtlpapercuts, so these tweets (Twitter posts) from Monday December 15 and Tuesday December 16 are either by me (@dgtlpapercuts first), to me (@dgtlpapercuts after the person speaking) or about me (@dgtlpapercuts somewhere in the Tweet). They listed with the oldest tweets first, and follow in chronological order.
@GinnySkal: @newsobserver Your lead story on newsobserver.com contains a 404 error, I want to read it b/c the pic looks like @dgtlpapercuts
@dgtlpapercuts: @GinnySkal The picture is me, but @newsobserver is an auto feed, so they may not answer
@jreesnc: I see @dgtlpapercuts on today’s front page of the N&O http://idek.net/zm
@GinnySkal: @dgtlpapercuts I thought it looked like you! Now I really want to read the story.
@dgtlpapercuts: My thoughts and photo are part of today’s Raleigh N&O lead story on the Future of the Internet http://idek.net/zm
@30THREADS: Awesome, one of my favorite local bloggers (@dgtlpapercuts) is featured in @newsobserver. The caption is so funny http://snurl.com/89180
@dgtlpapercuts: RT: @30THREADS: Awesome, one of my favorite local bloggers is featured in @newsobserver. The caption is so funny http://snurl.com/89180
@KE4ZNR: @dgtlpapercuts Good write up bro! Good to see positive attention towards Social Media!
@waynesutton: Retweet: @30THREADS: Awesome, one of my favorite local bloggers is featured in @newsobserver. http://snurl.com/89180 (expand) @dgtlpapercuts
@theRab: retweeting @30THREADS: Awesome, one of my favorite local bloggers (@dgtlpapercuts) is featured in @newsobserver. The caption is so funny
@theRab: @dgtlpapercuts in the year 2020! The future is now me thinks. @newsobserver story: http://snurl.com/89180
@ayse: @dgtlpapercuts That caption is hilarious! Congrats on the nice article.
@dgtlpapercuts: That’s to all for the comments on my appearance in today’s N&O http://idek.net/zm I am linked up and copiously spread across the Internet.
@theRab: @dgtlpapercuts are you from the future? sent back to copiously spread the message of social linking….
@dgtlpapercuts: My star power has overcome my typing ability today. Last tweet was “Thanks to all…”
@dgtlpapercuts: @theRab I am from the future where we have solved all the world’s energy needs with lava lamps.
@underoak: @benmarvin Yes, great comments today. My fave at @dgtlpapercuts story in N&O: “I was promised a flying car. Where is it?” (Can’t find now).
@isabisa: @ginnyskal it IS @dgtlpapercuts!
@theRab: @dgtlpapercuts i was going to reblog your awesome N&O quote but ended up with http://icanhaz.com/jeffcohenwisdom maybe you can retweet it?
@theRab: @dgtlpapercuts there’s a post secret like opporunity there
@dgtlpapercuts: @jtobin You want me to follow Kathy on Twitter (which I did). Facebook wants me to become her friend. What’s up with this?
@GinnySkal: @dgtlpapercuts It’s probably because you’re famous now. Everyone wants to be your friend.
@dgtlpapercuts: @GinnySkal Fame is fleeting. This morning: lead story on N&O web http://idek.net/zl Now hard to find a link: http://www.newsobserver.com/
@jtobin: @dgtlpapercuts Facebook must have read today’s News & Observer. Congrats. Great placement!
@dgtlpapercuts: @jtobin Thanks. Fun to be a Hyper-Local Rock Star for the Day among friends. Tomorrow we’ll all be watching shoe throwing Iraqis again.
@glowbird: Just posted to @30Threads a link to the N&O article about 2009 internet predictions (featuring @dgtlpapercuts!) http://is.gd/bY0r
The Lengths that Some People Will Go
After a 30-minute interview with a reporter from the News & Observer about the future of the internet, and what it is like to live a connected life in this always-on, mobile world, photographer Robert Willett arranged to meet me at my house to take some pictures. We had a great time hanging out for the two and half hours he spent shooting my picture. We talked about photography (obviously), music and social media. Connections. It’s about connections.
Was it just me sitting in a chair with my laptop? Well, yes, but if his editor agrees with him and me and uses one of the great photos he took (not the one in the previous post), it will be so much more.
If the paper were not struggling, and it was still a big deal to have your picture in the paper, this would be very cool. As it is, it will be very cool for my friends and my family (kind of). I will post a link when it is available.
And just to show the power of networks, it was due to my connections that I was interviewed. The reporter who interviewed me during Startup Weekend back in July remembered me (I made him join Twitter), and suggested that I would be a good subject for the article. I know something about all these connections.
Enceladus, Moon of Saturn
This photo of the Southern Hemisphere of Enceladus is a mosaic of 21 photos taken by the Cassini spacecraft. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Here’s a link to more photos of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons from Boston.com.
Saturn’s tiny, icy moon Enceladus has recently been visited by NASA’s Cassini orbiter on several very close approaches – once coming within a mere 25 kilometers (15 miles) of the surface. Scientists are learning a great deal about this curious little moon. Only about 500 kilometers wide (310 miles), it is very active, emitting internal heat, churning its surface, and – through cryovolcanism – ejecting masses of microscopic ice particles into Saturnian orbit. Cassini has been orbiting Saturn for over 4 years now, and has provided some amazing views of tiny Enceladus, some collected here. Another close flyby is scheduled for Halloween, October 31st.
Hat tip to Wired’s Geek Dad blog
9-11 Artifacts
Screen capture of series of photos stitched together to make panorama by Raymond McCrea Jones/The New York Times
Here are some interactive photos from the NY Times, with narration, of artifacts from the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center towers. The distinctive steel tridents are recognizable from the fascade of the towers.
Steven Weintraub, a consultant to the Port Authority on the preservation of 9/11 artifacts, and Jan Ramirez, the Chief Curator and Director of Collections of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, describe artifacts from the World Trade Center now held in an 80,000-square-foot hangar at Kennedy Airport. The museum is to open in 2012.
New Blue Devil Mascot Suit
Photo by News&Observer’s Chuck Liddy
At last night’s Duke Football game, a new Duke Mascot made his first appearance. I didn’t even know a new one was in development, but I am sure the current suit was pretty ratty. When I was in school, I considered trying out to be the Devil, but one of the requirements was that you needed to be six-feet tall. I am not.
Blue Devil 1930
Duke University Archives. Durham, North Carolina, USA.
Blue Devil 1970s
Duke University Archives. Durham, North Carolina, USA.
Blue Devil 1995 (large foam head appeared in 1981)
Duke University Archives. Durham, North Carolina, USA.
Thoughts and Images of Back to School
Earlier this week, kids everywhere went back to school. In our area, Monday was the first day of school. I took pictures of my kids on Sunday, just to document them at the beginning of 3rd and 5th grade. There are certain moments that just require documenting, and back to school is one of them. I even saw a dad with a video camera on a tripod walking away from a local elementary school on the the first day of school. A tripod seems a bit much. I posted on Twitter that handheld video was probably okay for junior’s first day of kindergarten.
When I realized that many others were also documenting their kids on the first day of school, I went searching on flickr for tagged photos. Below is a slide show of photos tagged “first day of school.” I have no idea who any these of kids are, but they are all going back to school.
I even have a friend, Whit, who wrote a poem to document his son’s first day of school:
Second grade with Mrs. Gustafson?
I hope it will be lots of fun.
I think no classmate of yours will be a newt.
So recently you were just a larva.
And now you have become a marva-
Lous young man. What a hoot!
Photos Recreated in Lego
I had recently planned a post called iconic photographs, but I was thinking about photos that I have taken over the years, especially of my kids. My point was that certain photographs capture a moment, and the photograph is what you remember, rather than the moment itself. With photos I take, I choose the best ones and, in old days frame them, and now post them online. Those are the photos that represent certain times in my kids’ lives, but that is because I have seen the images so many times. The same is true with classic, or iconic, photos made famous by publication in magazines such as Life. They become icons because of their association with a time or event, and because of the repetition of our seeing them again and again.
These are the types of photos recreated in Lego by amateur photographer Mike Stimpson, as seen on Wired.com. I chose to post the photo above because the mystery sailor is my stepdad. He never revealed his identity when photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was alive, because he did not want to embarrass him and disclose details about his most famous image. He was concerned that people would be disappointed to learn that this photograph that symbolized the end of World War II was a just kid from Perth Amboy, NJ in a sea scout uniform (a part of the Boy Scouts) who thought it would be cool to go to Times Square and kiss nurses.
NPR Interviews Naked Baby from Nevermind and He is 17
Imagine if your naked baby pictures wound up on the biggest selling record of the 1990s? Well, Spencer Elden’s did and NPR interviewed him.
Photo by Jason Lazarus