KWBaker

People who chose to live the gangster life during the early 20th century were cut from a rougher yet more refined cloth than the gangsters of today, and they always looked dapper no matter what they were doing.

The rackets were numerous, the risks immeasurable, but these outlaws chose to make a buck bruising, smuggling, shooting, stealing and strongarming knowing full well it might cost them their lives.

Looking back on these photos of Depression era mobsters you can see a sort of haunted look in their eyes, the only clue to their remaining humanity revealed in the one place they can't rebuild in stone.

See Striking Black And White Photos Show The Brutal Lives Of Gun-Toting Depression Era Mobs In America here

The Leica M Monochrom is special in the Leica lineup due to the fact that it lacks a color filter, which improves image quality and restricts the camera to shooting black and white. If you’d like a monochrome-only camera but don’t want to shell out $7,450 for the latest Leica M Monochrom, there are now converted Fujifilm cameras for a cheaper alternative.

No, Fujifilm hasn’t announced its own line of monochrome cameras. Instead, the cameras are being modified and offered for sale by a third-party company, MaxMax.com, which has been doing camera conversions since 1997 and monochrome conversions since 2009.

MaxMax.com says that after years of hearing customer requests, it has finally decided to convert Fujifilm’s highly regarded X-Trans cameras to monochrome ones by removing the color filter array in them.

Right now there are two converted models being offered for sale: the Fuji X-Pro1-M (a converted X-Pro1) and the Fuji X100S-M (a converted X100S).

“To convert a camera to monochrome, we take the camera apart, remove the sensor, remove the sensor coverglass which is epoxied to the ceramic package then use special equipment to remove about 5 microns from the surface of the sensor removing the microlenses and the Color Filter Array,” company president Dan Llewellyn tells PetaPixel. “This exposes the bare photodiodes so that all the pixels see the same light.”

Llewellyn says that this isn’t an easy conversion to do, and that you’ll basically need access to semiconductor fabrication equipment to try it yourself.

“The Fuji sensors are a particular pain to convert because the epoxy Fuji uses to hold the coverglass on is very strong,” Llewellyn says. “It is difficult to remove the coverglass without damaging the sensor.”

Llewellyn believes that his company’s Fuji “poor man’s Leica” alternatives may actually perform better than the Leica M Monochrom in some regards “because there is more engineering in the Fuji,” he says.

Here are some example monochrome photos captured with the two converted monochrome Fujifilm cameras (you can download their original RAW files here):

If you’re interested in buying one of these cheaper Monochrom alternatives, you can find the Fuji X-Pro1-M for $2,425 and the Fuji X100S-M for $2,600 from the MaxMax.com store. More converted Fujifilm models will also be added to the store later this year.

Starting this July, Dubai will introduce flying taxis to relieve road congestion.

...

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Our blog post, 'Sorry, Nobody Wants Your Parents' Stuff' hit a nerve. Here's what readers said and suggested about parental possessions.

Since last week's release of the new Michelin Guide France, people have been flocking to the Bouche à Oreille, on Route de la Chapelle in the small town of Bourges. Michelin gave the restaurant—a roadside diner specializing in inexpensive French staples, like €13 beef bourguignon—one of its coveted stars, a sign of quality and sophistication.

The problem? They've got the wrong Bouche à Oreille.

As The Local explains, the famed guide, published last week, meant to list a different restaurant, also named Bouche à Oreille. That one is on the Rue de la Chapelle in the South of France, and serves more rarified stuff—lobster tarts, veal sweetbreads, things like that. Michelin plans to correct the mistake.

In the meantime, the diner's owner, Veronique Jacquet, is tickled, but also a bit nervous. Her regulars are local workers, and she doesn't want them to get pushed out by the sudden influx of would-be tastemakers. "I'm starting to get snowed under," she told The Local. "We don't have a big area and we only have four hands." Sounds like the makings of a new culinary movement.

Every day, we track down a fleeting wonder—something amazing that’s only happening right now. Have a tip for us? Tell us about it! Send your temporary miracles to cara@atlasobscura.com.

“The world is not an illusion,” said Alfred Korzbyski, “it is an abstraction.” You may know Korzbyski for another famous maxim, “the map is not the territory.” Jorge Luis Borges took this idea to its most absurd lengths by imagining in his story “On Exactitude in Science” a map that corresponded in size and scale at every point with the territory. Borges, wrote Colin Marshall in a previous Open Culture post, “illustrated the idea that all maps are wrong by imagining the preposterousness of a truly correct one.”

That observation occurs in the context of a video from Vox that explains why it is mathematically impossible to create a completely accurate flat world map at any scale.

We must abstract; “the surface of a sphere cannot be represented as a plane without some form of distortion,” and so cartographers use a technique called “projection.” The design mapmakers have most popularly used dates to 1569, from a cylindrical projection by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator.

For either cultural or navigational reasons, this hugely distorted map inflates the size of Europe and North America and makes Greenland and Africa roughly the same size. A long overdue update, the Peters Projection from 1973, improved the Mercator’s accuracy, but at the cost of legibility and proportion.

But last year, architect and artist Hajime Narukawa of Keio University’s Graduate School of Media and Governance in Tokyo solved these problems with his AuthaGraph World Map, at the top, which won Japan’s Good Design Grand Award, beating out “over 1000 entries in a variety of categories,” writes Mental Floss. You can view it in a larger format here.

Instead of abstracting the globe into a cylinder, then a plane, as the Mercator Projection did, the AuthaGraph turns the earth into a tetrahedron, which then unfolds in any number of ways, as you can see further up, and “can be tessellated just like an MC Escher painting… much in the same way that we can traverse the planet without ever coming to an end.” Rather than one focal point—the North Atlantic in Mercator’s case—nearly any place around the earth can be at the center. Versions of the map are already being used in Japanese textbooks, and you can purchase a poster or buy a paper kit that allows you to unfold your own globe-to-tetrahedron-to-rectangle map (see above).

The video above from Ponder explains the AuthaGraph design, which is not—and could never be—100% mathematically accurate, but can, Narukawa writes, with “a further step” in its subdivisions “be officially called an equal-area map.” The concept was important to him because of the urgent relevance of globalist thinking. As he points out, writes Japanese design blog Spoon & Tamago, “A large bulk of the 20th century was dominated by an emphasis on East and West relations. But with issues like climate change, melting glaciers in Greenland and territorial sea claims, it’s time we establish a new view of the world.” Those in the centers of Eastern and Western power ignore the rest of the world at everyone’s peril. It may help to have a much more equitable way to visualize our shared planet.

 

via Mental Floss

Related Content:

Why Making Accurate World Maps Is Mathematically Impossible

Download 67,000 Historic Maps (in High Resolution) from the Wonderful David Rumsey Map Collection

Browse & Download 1,198 Free High Resolution Maps of U.S. National Parks

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

Japanese Designers May Have Created the Most Accurate Map of Our World: See the AuthaGraph is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Part off-roader and part pop-top camper, this 1966 Land Rover 109 Series IIA Dormobile has seen its fair share of adventure. Originally owned by big game hunter Herbert S. Veltmen,...

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From the mass-production Beetle to the most successful endurance race car ever produced, the company founded by Ferdinand Porsche has become synonymous with performance. The heart of any performance machine...

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Robert the Bruce was one of Scotland's national heroes, a warrior who successfully fought for Scottish independence. Ultimately it wasn't battle that killed Robert the Bruce, but a disease today believed to be leprosy. He died in 1329, just one month shy of his 55th birthday.

After the king's death his body and his organs were buried separately from each other, as was customary for monarchs at that time. His guts were buried where he died in Cardross, as the body was easier to embalm without them. His corpse went to Dunfermline Abbey with a massive funeral procession of knights in black robes, but not before his heart had been removed and embalmed separately. 

Robert had requested that his heart be taken on a tour of the Holy Land and presented before God at Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre before ultimately being buried at Melrose Abbey in Roxburghshire. The heart was given to Sir James Douglas in a metal urn to be worn on a necklace. However before Douglas and his company of knights could undertake the heart's holy tour, they were called to fight against the Moors attempting to take Spain—the heart went along with.

Sir James Douglas was killed in a surprise attack, but before the confronting his attackers he is said to have thrown the heart urn ahead of him and shouted, "Lead on brave heart, I'll follow thee." Robert the Bruce's heart was carried along with Douglas' remains back to Scotland. 

The heart was buried along with Douglas near Melrose Abbey. In 1920 it was exhumed, and then buried again without a marker. In 1996 during excavations of the abbey ruins the urn was discovered and confirmed to hold the heart of Robert the Bruce. His heart was finally interred within Melrose Abbey, almost 700 years after he had initially requested it.

All too often, life can feel like a dystopian novel. Endless wars engulfing the Middle East, a semi-zombified population glued to their Twitter feeds, a creeping state surveillance . . . you know the drill. But it’s one thing to say that life feels like a generic dystopia, and another entirely to buy a specific book and find the […]

The post 10 Dystopian Books You Need To Read To Understand Today’s America appeared first on Listverse.

Anyone who has had their pet go missing knows the heart-wrenching fear and sadness that is mixed with the small hope that their pet will reappear someday. In these 10 stories, the owners got their wishes. They were able to reunite with their lost pets several years after the animals went missing. Featured image credit: […]

The post 10 Incredible Pets That Returned Home After Years Of Being Lost appeared first on Listverse.

The PBS carpentry classic This Old House and Nick Offerman go together like two sides of a dovetail joint. So it's only fitting that host Kevin O'Connor made the trip...

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I’m a photographer in the Bahamas, which means I spend a lot of time on hot, humid beaches. If the glaring sun isn’t trying to kill you and your gear, the salt water is. In the rush of a wedding or event there’s no time to head back to the car so you’ve got to have some items on hand. These are the things that tend to be in my bag most of the time.

Rush MOAB 6 ($70)
This bag is the perfect size to carry all my normal gear without being bulky. The main compartment still surprises me with how much it can hold; I always seem to be able to stuff one more thing in. It has plenty of pockets that are easily accessible, it’s tough as nails and cheaper than most competitors at this quality level. MOLLE straps to add extras, including the Camelbak bottle pouch listed below.

Camelbak 90654 Max Gear Bottle Pouch ($19)
Fits the Rush MOAB perfectly and is great for extra space when I have to stuff the bag. It keeps the condensation from icy drinks from getting on my stuff and any drips run out of the drain hole in the bottom.

Rothco Nylon Paracord ($9)
Paracord and a few reliable knots have saved my butt more times than I can remember.

Arcteryx Squamish Hoody ($145)
Living in the tropics means cold fronts that turn a blazing day to a chilly night in a hurry, especially if you’re working long hours outside. A windbreaker is enough to protect against ocean breeze and light rain and the Arcteryx is one of the best-made pieces of clothing I own. Worth every penny.

Anker 6ft Nylon Braided USB Cable with Lightning Connector ($13)
There are two Anker products in my bag and more around my house. Great products that are usually priced lower than you’d expect. This cable is tough, charges at top-speed and is Apple MFi Certified.

Anker Astro 6700mAh Ultra-Compact Premium Portable Charger ($22)
No buttons and plenty of power. I never worry about my phone going dead because I’ve got this.

Bose SoundLink Color Bluetooth Speaker ($129)
When you’re trying to share a video with a few people it’s almost always the sound that gets in the way. This is the loudest, clearest speaker I’ve ever owned. I use it for hours a day. Auxiliary or bluetooth connection, easy switching between devices and 8 hours of battery life. It’s always loud enough. Also great for newlywed beach dances.

ChicoBag Original Reusable Shopping Tote ($25)
Pricey but tough, these are great to have when you need some extra carrying space. Useful for carrying food or consumables and then folding up and tossing in your bag.

Tide To Go Stain Remover Liquid ($10)
For that coffee spill on the way to a job or makeup on a wedding dress. I almost never use it, but boy when I do it’s a lifesaver.

Maxcraft 60184 3-in-1 Flex Lighted Magnetic/Claw Pick-Up Tool ($14)
Never fails to draw raised eyebrows. The magnet is super strong and the claw is responsive and agile. Two years ago I carried this thing 20 feet below in salt water and after some oil and love it’s still going strong. Essential when working on cars, computers or on anything with small parts.

Leatherman Piranha 2 Pocket Tool ($19)
Mostly for when I travel or don’t have something more substantial. It manages to fit a lot into a small space.

Leatherman Wave Multi-Tool ($90)
Great for boat trips and emergency fix-its. It has the smaller screwdrivers I need for fidgety photo screws when I’m on a job as well as tough pliers and cutting tools for heavier work.

Leatherman Bit Driver Extension ($18)
I don’t get much use out of this, but it’s in the photo so here it is.

Rite in the Rain All-Weather Top-Spiral Notebook ($6)
It’s super frustrating to have an important note rendered useless because it got wet or torn or smudged. I can stuff one of these notes in a pocket and never worry that it’ll be illegible later.

Tweezerman Mini Slant Tweezer ($12)
Splinters strike at the worst moments. These are precise and responsive.

Small Round Silver Metal Tins 1 oz ($7)
I never tire of opening and closing these things and there’s no space wasted on mechanisms.

Burt’s Bees 100% Natural Moisturizing Lip Balm ($10)
In weather that regularly tops 90 degrees dry lips can be torturous. One stick lasts me about a year unless I lose it.

Zeiss Pre-Moistened Lens Cleaning Wipes ($15)
These are most often used on camera lenses, but are great for phone screens and glasses.

Clubman Pinaud Styptic Pencil ($4)
A cut is never fun, but on the road a bloody cut can exhaust band-aid supplies and stain everything. After using this I can be sure one bandage is enough. Also much better than toilet paper for shaving cuts.

Apple iPad Mini 2 with WiFi 32GB Silver ($215) with Lifeproof case ($108)
The mini is the perfect size to stuff in the back pocket of the Rush MOAB and I never worry about it in the Lifeproof case. It’s fallen into dishwater and off countless tables. The cover didn’t hold up as well, but it still works as a stand.

Costa Del Mar Ballast Polarized Sunglasses ($95)
Takes the glare out of the water and reveals a ton of colors that get washed out by the ever-present sunshine. The lightest, most comfortable shades I’ve owned with plenty of space for people with longer eyelashes (a problem with lots of other brands).

-- Dominic Duncombe

Maybe you started your first job or maybe you gave up the freelance life for full-time employment. Whatever your scenario, if you find yourself filling out a W-4 for the first time, you may be a touch confused by all the fields, worksheets, and forms. Yes, the IRS can make things confusing. Let’s take it one step at a…

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While there might be hundreds of effective ideas for making money online, these 25 core methods will allow you to earn some extra cash no matter what your skill level might be.

Most job seekers use a strategy that works only rarely. Here's what you should do instead.

Are you just entering the workforce or a new job with your existing company as a project manager? We learn a lot in college and with programs for this position. However, many parts of being a project manager are learned along the way and through experience. If you are taking on a project manager role for the first time, here are just five project management tips to help you get started. 1. Use the Right Tools Picking the right project management tools is extremely important. These applications will become your best friends throughout the lives of your projects. If you are...

Read the full article: The 5 Best Project Management Tips for Beginners

Recording quality audio all comes down to preventing major problems from the start. This guide, from NPR’s Rob Byers and NPR audio engineers, will help you avoid recording problems, as well as fix editing and mixing problems.

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I love audiobooks because they’re such a great life hack. You can read, learn, consume knowledge, without actually reading anything at all. You can also do it anywhere: walking the dog, washing the dishes, working out, or when you’re commuting to work. When many of us think about audiobooks, the first thing that springs to mind is Audible. It’s a great service but at around $15 a book, it can be a bit expensive. Instead try downloading DRM-free and out-of-copyright audiobooks, then transfer them to the apps listed below and you’re good to go. Why an Audiobook App? Your first instinct might be to just play...

Read the full article: Top 3 Apps for Listening to DRM-Free Audiobooks on iPhone

Science News for Students (blog)

Warm petals may attract chilly bees Science News for Students (blog) Its field data suggest that blooms with two-toned petals may attract bees by providing a warm spot to rest their chilly bums. Among these flowers, the most common form — or morph — has five light-purple petals arranged in a ring. But some of these ...

I spend most of my day on a computer. When I’m not working I spend my spare time programming or blogging. When I take a break I spend it looking at my phone. One of the problems with all this time spent looking at screens is the amount of digital clutter these habits have created in my life.

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While you can experience a safari in unimaginable luxury if you have the cash, there are ways for the rest of us to take a gander at the beasts of our childhood dreams without breaking the bank.

Like many who become enamored with the work (and life) of Hunter S. Thompson, my own fascination began in the early 90s around the age of fifteen. And like many, the initial attraction had more to do with the outsize caricature of the man and his exploits than his prowess behind his IBM Selectric. And […]

The DxO ONE is Cool, But is It Worth the Price Tag?

If you haven’t seen or heard of the DxO ONE, you must have been living under a rock the last couple of years.

This little gizmo came out in 2015 to much fanfare, and it’s quickly gained a reputation for being a solid camera that brings DSLR quality in a positively tiny package.

It can stand alone as a camera, or better still, iPhone users can attach it to their phone, which then becomes a giant HD touchscreen for the ONE.

The question still remains - is this awesome little gadget worth the price tag of $500?

Let’s find out.

Image Quality

For such a small camera (more on its size later), the ONE takes surprisingly good photos. You can shoot in both JPEG and RAW, giving you access to the larger file size for more robust post-processing.

Inspecting JPEG images, you’ll find colors that are more or less true to form and details that are crisp and sharp. RAW files are naturally less impressive in their unprocessed form, but throwing the images into a program like Photoshop can help you generate a quality of image that’s on par with many entry-level full-sized DSLRs.

That image quality is a consequence of the ONE’s one-inch, 20.2-megapixel BSI-CMOS sensor. Paired with a six-element aspherical lens with an equivalent focal length of 32mm, you have a camera that produces good results in the wide-angle and normal spectrums. See actual sample images in the video below from DxO:

The lens diaphragm has six blades that have an adjustable aperture from f/1.8 to f/11. Combined with a standard ISO range of 100-12800 (expandable to 51200), the ONE offers incredible possibilities for low-light shooting and creating close-ups with buttery smooth bokeh.

For even better results, the ONE has SuperRAW support, which is specifically designed for shooting with a very high ISO or in extremely low-light conditions. Essentially, the camera takes a burst of four images which are then combined into a single RAW file. Advanced processing techniques reduce noise to create a final image that retains far more color and detail.

The verdict: The DxO one can’t compete with the likes of a top-end DSLR or mirrorless camera the image quality department. However, it’s no slouch either. The quality of the images is far beyond what one would expect in such a small package.

Size

One thing that full-sized cameras don’t have going for them (especially full frame models) is their bulky size.

Though there are plenty of APS-C and mirrorless options that come in a smaller package, it’s hard to beat the DxO ONE’s petite frame.

At just 3.81 ounces and measuring a sparse 2.64 x 1.89 x 0.98 inches, it’s no stretch to say that you can carry this camera in your pocket quite easily.

That’s nice for photographers that are constantly on the move or traveling, but don’t want to pack a heavy DSLR around all day or rely just on their smartphone to capture photos.

There’s a reason why DxO bills it as a “pro style camera, miniaturized.”

The verdict: The DxO ONE’s size is a winner.

User Experience

Whether you’re an amateur that needs to rely on the ONE’s auto shooting modes or an enthusiast or professional that needs to manipulate the camera’s settings manually, you’ll find that the controls for the camera are smart and intuitive, and easy to use as well.

A major complaint of DxO ONE users is it’s rather delicate connection to an iPhone.

The only thing holding the two together is the lighting port, which, though capable of holding the connection well, still doesn’t inspire much confidence to shoot with both hands on the body of the ONE.

Instead, most ONE shooters find themselves having to hold both the ONE and their phone in the hopes of minimizing the possibility of damage to the lighting port.

That’s not to say that the ONE has a reputation for damaging the port, but with all its weight on that single spot, it can strike fear into you pretty quick.

Another consequence of the lighting port connection is that the ONE can feel a bit unstable. Its weight, though small, is far heavier than any iPhone, and that weight can even cause it to become detached from the phone.

The verdict: Though the controls are intuitive, the experience of holding the camera with your phone leaves something to be desired.

Wi-Fi Remote Control

A really cool feature of the ONE is that it can be used wirelessly, which frees you up for all kinds of fun photography pursuits.

The ONE simply connects using Wi-Fi, and you can seize control of it by using your iPhone. Change the camera settings, start and stop video recording, and even move your photos and videos to your iPhone wirelessly.

Even better, when it’s wirelessly connected, you can still use your iPhone as a viewfinder, enabling you to move around the camera as needed without missing out on what you’re photographing. Using the remote feature also takes care of the issue of gingerly holding the ONE and your iPhone at the same time.

The verdict: The Wi-Fi remote feature isn’t just cool, it’s highly functional too.

Battery Life

Unfortunately, there are two issues with the battery life of the ONE.

For starters, it’s onboard battery only lasts for a couple of hours, so if you have a long day of shooting planned, you’d better take along another camera. The battery isn’t removable either, so it’s not like you can bring an extra along.

Exacerbating the issue is that it plugs into the very port on your iPhone that’s needed for charging, so if you’re approaching a drained battery, your only choice is to stop shooting and charge your phone by removing the ONE from the lighting port.

That doesn’t make for a very photo-filled day.

The verdict: The DxO ONE’s battery is a bit of a dud.

Support Accessories

There are a wealth of programs and accessories that extend the usefulness of the ONE and make it an even more robust tool.

For example, you can use the DxO Connect software to preview and process RAW and SuperRAW files. DxO OpticsPro for Photos is another option that gives Mac users a dedicated extension pack for processing RAW, SuperRAW, and JPEG images. Add OpticsPro for total control over the conversion parameters that are used, and add some style to your images with the DxO FilmPack for an analog look.

Other accessories include an outdoor shell to protect the camera from the elements (shown in the video from DxO above), a variety of filters including a polarizer and a couple of NDs, stands, and carrying cases.

The verdict: There’s plenty of add-ons that give the ONE greater functionality, but they come at a price.

The Price

The biggest bugaboo with the DxO ONE is definitely the price.

At $500, it enters the realm of entry-level DSLRs where its competitors offer a better range of tools and features for similar money.

That means that consumers will have to choose between a DSLR with more capabilities, but that is heavier and won’t fit in your pocket, and the ONE which is light, easy to use, and has some pretty cool features that give it expanded capabilities.

Is the DxO ONE a replacement for your DSLR? No.

Could it be someday? Definitely!

The newest DxO One has improved features over the original that get it closer to taking on full-fledged DSLRs. Perhaps with the next iteration, it’ll start pulling more people away from traditional cameras. But before that happens, the price will likely need to drop and some of its quirky features (like the poor battery life) will need to be addressed.

Nevertheless, the ONE is an incredible camera that has a lot of fans, including Geoffrey A. Fowler of the Wall Street Journal:

The verdict: The DxO ONE is a great little camera that’s fun to use and would be a nice complement to your existing camera gear and ideal for iPhone only shooters that want expanded capabilities. But it’s not quite ready to take on the big boys as a DSLR replacement.

---

In her remote corner of Iceland, photographer Marzena Skubatz makes her home in a sheep farm and weather station.

She has no mobile phone reception, and her food arrives by boat. As a vegetarian in a community whose main source of food is meat and fish, she survives mostly on sweet potatoes and salad. When the wintertime draws to a close, she sees the animals birth their young.

“It is a quiet place surrounded by the sea,” the artist says. She lives for part of the year in Germany, but something always brings her back to Iceland.

Two thirds of Icelandic the population lives in Reykjavik and its surroundings, Skubatz explains, but her personal Iceland is not the Iceland in the tourist books. It’s out of the way, and life on the farm is strenuous and demanding, especially in the summer. “We do not run any touristic businesses,” she explains, “There is no time for that.”

The photographer spent her childhood on a farm in Poland, and in some ways, her arrival in Iceland has been a homecoming away from home. She grows sad when she goes for extended periods of time without contact with animals.

She carries with her the memory of the day an infant whale passed beneath her little fishing boat, its pale white underside exposed. “I think she was playing with us,” Skubatz writes, “It was a very emotional experience that I will never forget.”

Winter in Iceland is bitterly cold, and summer is wild and fickle. As of the time of this writing, Skubatz is once again en route to Iceland, where she leaves a piece of herself every time she goes.

Follow Skubatz on Instagram.

 

All images © Marzena Skubatz

The post Visions of Iceland from a Remote Sheep Farm appeared first on Feature Shoot.

Christopher Bickford

Legends of the Sandbar

Legends of the Sandbar is an homage to the surf culture of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, written and photographed by Christopher Bickford. It is an ode to the wild and wooly weather of the Banks, their shape-shifting sandscapes, their salt-battered architecture, and the commitment of a waterlogged band of misfits to a life lived on the fringes of American civilization. It is a portrait of a place, a people, and a passion, a drama set upon a wayward string of earth dangling on the edge of the continental shelf. It bears testimony to the raw beauty of lives lived close to the edge, the kinetic artistry of surfing in a challenging aquatic environment, and the ragged glory of a boondock community tuned to the savage power of the storm-tossed Atlantic Ocean.

The book version of Legends of the Sandbar, a culmination of 8 years of work, is available now for pre-sales. in addition to roughly 200 photographs, it includes 15 written pieces ranging from oral history to geology, meteorology, and memoir. The final version goes to print in Italy in March. Follow me on Instagram @chrisbickford to get an inside look at the printing process. Pre-orders are extremely helpful to offset printing costs. Advance buyers who order before March 1 will all be listed in the book as sponsors.

Purchase your copy here: www.legendsofthesandbar.com/shop

 

 

Bio

Christopher Bickford is is a photographer and writer currently based on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. His work has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, the New York Times, Outside Magazine, Time Magazine, Surfline, Milepost Magazine, Outer Banks Magazine. His work has been syndicated in publications worldwide, including Sawasdee (Thailand) The Bomb (South Africa), Photo (Brazil) and Vision (China). He is currently represented by the National Geographic Creative agency.

 

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Christopher Bickford

Though YouTube remains the premier video site on the web, you probably don’t think much about customizing it. But whether you’re a casual user or watch online videos every day, there are all sorts of ways to tweak YouTube.

A major category of these are special YouTube URLs. Let’s look at some YouTube URL tricks to help you get more out of the service.

1. Link to Any Part of a Video

Typically, when you copy a link to a YouTube video, it starts from the beginning. If you want to show someone just a bit of a video or skip a lengthy intro, you can append a time stamp to the URL to start it at that time.

You can do this in a couple of ways. By manually adding &t=YmXXs to the end of a video URL, you’ll set it to start Y minutes and XX seconds into the video. You can omit minutes, or use only seconds, such as 90s for a minute and a half. So this video:

youtube.com/watch?v=7RWI3-8N_-Y

Can be shared 90 seconds in using this URL:

youtube.com/watch?v=7RWI3-8N_-Y&t=1m30s

If you don’t want to use the manual method, pause the video at the time you’d like to share it at, then right-click and choose Copy video URL at current time.

2. Loop a Video Infinitely

YouTube is a great place for listening to music, especially video game soundtracks for studying. If you’re into a song and want to listen to it over and over, you can add repeater after youtube in the URL. This will open the video at YouTubeRepeater.com, which loops the video for you.

So change this URL:

youtube.com/watch?v=oeb5LdAyLC8

To this to loop it:

youtuberepeater.com/watch?v=oeb5LdAyLC8

You can tweak the playback using the options below the video if you want to start or end at different points. To do this without changing the URL, just right-click any YouTube video and toggle Loop on.

3. Bypass Age Restrictions

YouTube has age restrictions on certain videos that are flagged as containing mature content. Whether you don’t have a YouTube account or don’t feel like signing in to watch one, you can perform a little trick to bypass the sign-in.

Take a YouTube URL for a restricted video like this:

youtube.com/watch?v=wvZ6nB3cl1w

Simply append gen in front of youtube as shown here:

genyoutube.com/watch?v=wvZ6nB3cl1w

The video will open on a new page that features no age restriction.

4. Skip a Certain Amount of the Intro

Similar to the trick that lets you pick the start time, you can also choose to skip a certain number of seconds at the start of the video. You can’t specify minutes with this one, so use 90 (seconds) for a minute and a half.

So, to skip the first 30 seconds of this video:

youtube.com/watch?v=uA0nSkSxA3E

Add &start=30 to the end of the URL and get this:

youtube.com/watch?v=uA0nSkSxA3E&start=30

This is similar to the timing one but is a bit faster to type and doesn’t require you to remember a certain time stamp.

5. Download YouTube Videos

If you’d like to download a YouTube video for your own records, there’s a URL shortcut that easily lets you do so.

Before the youtube.com in the URL, type pwn to jump to a service that will let you download the video in a variety of formats.

So this URL:

youtube.com/watch?v=kFIsoq63lwo

Can be downloaded by changing the URL to this:

pwnyoutube.com/watch?v=kFIsoq63lwo

Remember to play fair; don’t download copyrighted YouTube videos like music. If this trick doesn’t work or ends up breaking, note that there are several other websites for downloading videos.

6. Check Out YouTube TV

YouTube TV is an interface designed for smart TVs and apps on consoles. It’s still YouTube, but with less clutter and a few shortcuts that are easier for remotes. You probably won’t want to make this your main YouTube interface, but it’s worth checking out for a cleaner look.

Just visit this URL to try it:

youtube.com/tv

7. Jump Straight to Your Subscriptions

As hard as it tries, many times the suggestions offered by YouTube aren’t useful. Whether your recommendations are filled with strange content or the home page contains videos you don’t care about, you can set a better YouTube landing page.

When you’re signed in, try changing your YouTube bookmark from the main site to your subscriptions page using this URL:

youtube.com/feed/subscriptions  

This lets you see the newest videos from channels you subscribe to, so you don’t miss any of their new content. Thus, you’re in control of what you see instead of YouTube deciding for you.

8. Grab the Thumbnail of Any Video

It’s common when searching Google for images to see pictures from YouTube videos, usually titled maxresdefault.

You can actually view a high-quality thumbnail for any YouTube video (if it has one) by visiting the following URL:

img.youtube.com/vi/[VideoID]/maxresdefault.jpg  

Replace the [VideoID] with the text after the v= at the end of a YouTube video. So to view the thumbnail for this video:

youtube.com/watch?v=YMbm_SFJugQ

Visit this link:

img.youtube.com/vi/YMbm_SFJugQ/maxresdefault.jpg

9. Make a GIF from a Video

Found a YouTube video that has a GIF-worthy moment? You can easily create an animated GIF from any part of a video by adding gif before the YouTube link.

So to edit this video into a GIF:

youtube.com/watch?v=gy1B3agGNxw

Change the URL to this:

gifyoutube.com/watch?v=gy1B3agGNxw

You’ll be brought to gifs.com, where you can add a variety of effects and crop the GIF to your liking. Once done, share the GIF to social networks with an easy link or download it for safekeeping.

Note that exceptionally long videos won’t work with this service.

10. Mash Up YouTube Videos

This one isn’t a true URL hack, as you can’t visit it right from YouTube. However, it still uses YouTube URLs, so we’re including it. Visit YouTubeDoubler and you can add two YouTube URLs to mix together. You can choose to start either video at a certain time to help them sync up.

Whether you see how two songs sound when played at the same time or want to add some funny background music to a clip, have a look and see what you can create!

Start Having Fun with YouTube

These tricks will let you get even more out of YouTube. Some are built into YouTube itself, while others rely on outside services. It’s possible that any of these could stop working in the future, so your mileage may vary as time passes.

For more like this, check out the best tools to make YouTube even better.

Image Credit: Bloomicon/Shutterstock

Read the full article: 10 YouTube URL Tricks You Should Know About