Shared posts

06 Oct 03:28

zchr: a classic











zchr:

a classic

08 Aug 01:46

Ultimate Dog Shaming 2

28 Feb 06:17

Photo



















20 Feb 22:07

These are the top-25 photos from Flickr in 2014

by Bhautik Joshi

From the hundreds of millions of photos uploaded on Flick in 2014, these 25 bubbled to the top.

Though beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we’ve compiled this list based on a number of engagement and community factors. The photos were scored by looking at a combination of social and interactive elements, including how often the photo had been faved and viewed, among others.

There were several community members who appeared in the list several times; we picked their top-scoring image. We saw three of the Flickr 20under20 winners represented in the list. And it was perhaps little surprise the the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Philae photo made the cut. We also included four honorable mentions because we loved them so much.

Congratulations to these amazing photographers!

***

Uploaded on 1/10/2014 by aleshurik

Nightly shower 130812 F4332

Uploaded on 2/17/2014 by PeteHuu

p e r s i s t | lofoten, norway

Uploaded on 4/13/2014 by elmofoto

Wherever you lay your head

Uploaded on 2/26/2014 by rosiehardy

John.

Uploaded on 4/24/2014 by LJ.

Lightbulb

Uploaded on 8/12/2014 by Alexandr Tikki

ixspreparation2

Uploaded on 5/19/2014 by yard2380

Night Reading

Uploaded on 1/21/2014 by laurawilliams

"Besides my dad, she was the only one in my family who was like this..."

Uploaded on 3/11/2014 by humansofny

loopy sky

Uploaded on 5/1/2014 by SoulRiser

Bear Lake - Pentax 67 + Portra 400

Uploaded on 8/1/2014 by http://www.trentonmichael.com

NAVCAM top 10 at 10 km – 10

Uploaded on 11/11/2014 by europeanspaceagency

Oil Pastels

Uploaded on 3/11/2014 by WideEyedIlluminations

Here, once again

Uploaded on 1/1/2014 by Deltalex.

Chinatown

Uploaded on 3/22/2014 by Masa

Such is the price of leaving

Uploaded on 4/28/2014 by Whitney Justesen

I will learn to love the skies I'm under.

Uploaded on 6/4/2014 by David Uzochukwu

on the neighbour's grounds

Uploaded on 3/20/2014 by Rosie Anne

The Dreamy Coast

Uploaded on 1/7/2014 by Rob Macklin

Bagel&Lox

Uploaded on 3/24/2014 by davideluciano

Little Sherlock

Uploaded on 1/19/2014 by Adrian Sommeling

Pyramid Barn

Uploaded on 1/14/2014 by stevoarnold

HIPA, a non-profit photography show for the east of England in 2015, we are currently trying to raise the profile of the event to attract sponsorship, so if you feel like visiting the site and 'liking' the page it would help hugely, many thanks

Uploaded on 4/24/2014 by rastaschas

Fim de tarde

Uploaded on 6/7/2014 by Johnson Barros

320/365

Uploaded on 8/8/2014 by alexcurrie

Red Anemone

Uploaded on 3/31/2014 by j man.

The Backyard Falcon

Uploaded on 1/14/2014 by Avanaut

"And when it all comes crashing down, who will you be?" - Miles Away

Uploaded on 6/14/2014 by The Change Is Me.

***

Uploaded on 2/27/2014 by oprisco


15 Oct 01:12

All these bash redirections are equal

by Peteris Krumins
Narcélio

Eu não tinha a mais remota ideia disso!

In bash you can place redirections almost anywhere in the command. All these are equivalent:

$ > file command arg1 arg2 arg3
$ command > file arg1 arg2 arg3
$ command arg1 > file arg2 arg3
$ command arg1 arg2 > file arg3
$ command arg1 arg2 arg3 > file

Try it yourself:

$ > file echo hello
$ echo > file hello
$ echo hello > file

Pretty cool, huh?

24 Jun 02:14

ma perae



ma perae

18 Mar 01:09

Photo



15 Mar 16:46

Photo



28 Dec 02:10

Photo







30 Oct 01:23

A dose of Dilbert psychology — You have your opinions because they feel good

by Abraham Piper
Narcélio

É o resumo da Internet.

29 Oct 16:29

Pesquisa: 90% das pessoas não fazem parte dos outros 10%

by @sensacionalista

Um levantamento feito pelo Ibope mostrou que 90% das pessoas não fazem parte dos outros 10%. A pesquisa mostrou também que entre os 10% há uma divisão: metade acha que não sabe, a outra metade também não tem ideia alguma. O Ibope ouviu 3000 pessoas em três capitais do país. Os que não estão muito certos chegam a 3%, enquanto os que não tem certeza encostam os 5%.

Há ainda aqueles que não estão muito seguros (10%) e os que tem dúvidas (7,8%).
“O grupo dos que não fazem parte dos outros 90% vem se mantendo em 10% há muito tempo. Isso é um fenômeno que precisa ser estudado”, disse o presidente do Ibope, Carlos Augusto Montenegro. Para o sociólogo Antônio Abreu, a explicação é que os 90% são a maioria, enquanto os 10% formam uma minoria. “É difícil mudar esse estado de coisas”, disse ele.

06 Oct 16:00

Hex Colors: The Code Side Of Color

by Ben Gremillion

  

The trouble with a color’s name is that it never really is perceived as the exact same color to two different individuals — especially if they have a stake in a website’s emotional impact. Name a color, and you’re most likely to give a misleading impression. Even something like “blue” is uncertain. To be more precise, it could be “sky blue”, “ocean blue”, “jeans blue” or even “arc welder blue”.

Descriptions vary with personal taste and in context with other colors. We label them “indigo”, “jade”, “olive”, “tangerine”, “scarlet” or “cabaret”. What exactly is “electric lime”? Names and precise shades vary — unless you’re a computer.

Code Demands Precision

When computers name a color, they use a so-called hexadecimal code that most humans gloss over: 24-bit colors. That is, 16,777,216 unique combinations of exactly six characters made from ten numerals and six letters — preceded by a hash mark. Like any computer language, there’s a logical system at play. Designers who understand how hex colors work can treat them as tools rather than mysteries.

Breaking Hexadecimals Into Manageable Bytes

Pixels on back-lit screens are dark until lit by combinations of red, green, and blue. Hex numbers represent these combinations with a concise code. That code is easily broken. To make sense of #970515, we need to look at its structure:

The first character # declares that this “is a hex number.” The other six are really three sets of pairs: 0–9 and a–f. Each pair controls one primary additive color.

Hex Reading
The higher the numbers are, the brighter each primary color is. In the example above, 97 overwhelms the red color, 05 the green color and 15 the blue color.

Each pair can only hold two characters, but #999999 is only medium gray. To reach colors brighter than 99 with only two characters, each of the hex numbers use letters to represent 10–16. A, B, C, D, E, and F after 0–9 makes an even 16, not unlike jacks, queens, kings and aces in cards.

Diagram showing how hex colors pass above 0-9

Being mathematical, computer-friendly codes, hex numbers are strings full of patterns. For example, because 00 is a lack of primary and ff is the primary at full strength, #000000 is black (no primaries) and #ffffff is white (all primaries). We can build on these to find additive and subtractive colors. Starting with black, change each pair to ff:

  • #000000 is black, the starting point.
  • #ff0000 stands for the brightest red.
  • #00ff00 stands for the brightest green.
  • #0000ff stands for the brightest blue.

Subtractive colors start with white, i.e. with the help of #ffffff. To find subtractive primaries, change each pair to 00:

  • #ffffff is white, the starting point.
  • #00ffff stands for the brightest cyan.
  • #ff00ff stands for the brightest magenta.
  • #ffff00 stands for the brightest yellow.

Mixing additive colors to make subtractives

Shortcuts In Hex

Hex numbers that use only three characters, such as #fae, imply that each ones place should match the sixteens place. Thus #fae expands to #ffaaee and #09b really means #0099bb. These shorthand codes provides brevity in code.

In most cases, one can read a hex number by ignoring every other character, because the difference between the sixteens place tells us more than the ones place. That is, it’s hard to see the difference between 41 and 42; easier to gauge is the difference between 41 and 51.

Diagram emphasizing the first character in each pair of characters

The example above has enough difference among its sixteens place to make the color easy to guess — lots of red, some blue, no green. This would provide us with a warm violet color. Tens in the second example (9, 9 and 8) are very similar. To judge this color, we need to examine the ones (7, 0, and 5). The closer a hex color’s sixteens places are, the more neutral (i.e. less saturated) it will be.

Make Hexadecimals Work For You

Understanding hex colors lets designers do more than impress co-workers and clients by saying, “Ah, good shade of burgundy there.” Hex colors let designers tweak colors on the fly to improve legibility, identify elements by color in stylesheets, and develop color schemes in ways most image editors can’t.

Keep Shades In Character

To brighten or darken a color, one’s inclination is often to adjust its brightness. This makes a color run the gamut from murky to brilliant, but loses its character on either end of the scale. For example, below a middle green becomes decidedly black when reduced to 20% brightness. Raised to 100%, the once-neutral green gains vibrancy.

A funny thing happens when we treat hex colors as if they were increments of ten. By adding one to each of the left-hand character of each pair, we raise a color’s brightness while lowering its saturation. This prevents shades of a given color from wandering too closely to pitch black or brilliant neon. Altering hex pairs retains the essence of a color.

Diagram showing how hex affects brightness and saturation

In the example above, the top set of shades appears to gain yellow or fall to black, even though it’s technically the same green hue. By changing its hex pairs, the second set appears to keep more natural shades.

Faded Underlines

By default, browsers underline text to denote links. But thick underlines interfere with letters’ descenders. Designers can make underlines less obtrusive by scaling back hex colors. The idea is to make the tags closer to the background color, while the text itself gains contrast against the background.

  • For dark text on a bright background, we make the links brighter.
  • For bright text on a dark background, we make the links darker.

To make this work, every embedded link needs a <span> inside of every <a>:

a { text-decoration:underline;color:#aaaaff; }

a span { text-decoration:none;color:#0000ff; }

Example of underlines that pale compared to the clickable text

As you can see here, underlines in the same color as the text can interfere with parts of type that drop below the baseline. Changing the underline to resemble the background more closely makes descenders easier to read, even though most browsers place underlines above the letterforms.

Adding spans to every anchor tag can be problematic. A popular alternative is to remove underlines and add border-bottom:

a { text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid #aaaaff; }

Better Body Copy

A recurring design problem is that a specific color may be technically correct but has an unintended effect. For example, some designs call for headers and body copy to be the same color. We have to keep in mind that the thicker the strokes of large text appears, the darker the small text appears.

Example of text that, while technically correct, appears too bright

h1, p { color: #797979; }

Example of text technically darker but visually the same

h1 { color: #797979; }

p { color: #393939; }

While technically identical, the body of the copy is narrower, and more delicate letterforms make it visually brighter than the heading. Lowering the sixteens places will make the text easier to read.

How To Warm Up Or Cool Down A Background

Neutral backgrounds may be easy to read against, but “neutral” doesn’t have to mean “bland”. Adjusting the first and last byte can make a background subtly warmer or cooler.

Examples with slight background color variations

  • #404040 — neutral
  • #504030 — warmer
  • #304050 — cooler

Is that too much? For a more subtle shift, use the ones places instead:

Examples of very slight variations in background color

  • #404040 — neutral
  • #594039 — warmer
  • #394059 — cooler

Coordinate Colors With Copy-Paste

Recognizing the structure of a hex number’s number/letter pairs gives designers a unique tool to explore color combinations. Unlike color wheels and charts, rearranging pairs in a hex number is a simple process to change hues while keeping values similar. As a bonus, the results can be unpredictable. The simplest technique is to move one pair of characters to a different spot, which trades primary colors.

A common design technique to make text or other visual elements coordinate with a photo is to use colors from within that photo. Understanding hex colors can take that a step further, by deriving new colors that coordinate with the photo without taking directly from the photo.

Examples of how swapping primary colors can yield coordinated but interesting results

Going Forward

Don’t let the code intimidate you. With a little creativity, hex colors are a tool at your disposal. If nothing else, next time someone asks if you can solve a problem with code in any language, you can simply say:

“Shouldn’t be harder than parsing hexadecimal triplets in my head.”

Further Reading

You may be interested in the following articles and related resources:

(il)

© Ben Gremillion for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

04 Oct 23:31

“Nothing can ever be created or...



“Nothing can ever be created or destroyed.”

Walkabout (1971)

04 Oct 17:35

Recorde mundial de tiro olímpico no próprio pé

by noreply@blogger.com (none)
O Comitê Olímpico Brasileiro, que já não anda com boa imagem por causa dos eventos relacionados ao roubo de dados do Locog (mesmo com os panos quentes jogados) e também à invasão da sede da Confederação Brasileira de Desportos no Gelo*, resolveu se queimar de vez em pira olímpica.

Está acionando extrajudicialmente - com promessas de ir para as barras dos tribunais se não atendido - os organizadores das chamadas "olimpíadas acadêmicas": como a Olimpíada Brasileira de Matemática, de Física, de História.... Por um raciocínio torto, o COB alega que tais usos do termo "olimpíada" lhe causam prejuízos.

Não são eventos comerciais, não são nem mesmo de natureza esportiva (como as paraolimpíadas) que pudesse levar a algum tipo de competição de marca.

Algumas dessas competições acadêmicas, de fato, usam logomarcas baseadas nos anéis olímpicos e isso poderia ser alterado. O Ato Olímpico, de 2009, protege os símbolos relacionados aos jogos olímpicos e paraolímpicos (ou paralímpicos como querem o COI e o COB). O COB quis que entre os termos protegidos fosse incluído até "olímpico" e "olimpíada", mas sem sucesso: estão protegidas, no entanto, as expressões "Jogos Olímpicos" e "Jogos Paraolímpicos".

O termo "olimpíadas" é privativo do COB pela lei 9.615 de 1998 (art. 15, parág. 2o). Porém, é dito explicitamente "permitida a utilização destas últimas quando se tratar de eventos vinculados ao desporto educacional e de participação" (na redação dada pela lei 9.981 de 2000)*

Em 20092010, o COB tentou tirar do ar uma propagandapublicidade de supermercado que falava em "olimpíadas", mas a Justiça rejeitou a demanda.

Os organizadores das "olimpíadas acadêmicas" poderiam levar o caso aos tribunais com boas chances de vitória. Mas isso custa dinheiro, coisa que eles, no geral, não têm. Porém, como o MEC organiza alguns, há espaço para a essa sanha insana do COB ser podada.

Ou um acordo que eu acharia justo: ok, o COB fica com a exclusividade do temo "olimpíada", porém deixa de receber as verbas públicas (o seu, o meu e o nosso dinheirinho suado) que o sustenta.

*Upideite(04/out/2012): adido a esta data.