by coffee&brotein

Most HDTVs ship with default settings that are meant to look good in store showrooms, but they're not ideal in your home. Thankfully, with the right tools, calibrating an HDTV to your viewing style is easy, and you can do it in less than a half-hour.

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Since 2008 Hungarian/German graphic designer David Szakaly has been churning out some of the most dizzying, hypnotic and wholly original gifs on the web under the name Davidope. His blend of twisting organic forms, flashes of black and white, and forays into pulsing technicolor shapes have inspired legions of others to experiment with the medium, many of whom have been featured here on Colossal. It’s hard to determine the scale of Szakaly’s influence online, but a simple Google image search for “animated gif” brings up dozens of his images that have been shared around Tumblr hundreds of thousands of times.

Szakaly began experimenting with the vector animation program Macromedia Flash back in 1999 where he used the software to create presentations, banners, and other creatives for clients. It was nearly a decade later when he decided to dedicate more time to experimenting with motion graphics and found that Tumblr was a great platform to share his quirky gifs. While he still works in the corporate world on other digital projects, he has also found commercial success making animations for clients around the world. Though it’s his personal work that really stands out. If or when gifs end up on gallery walls, it will be hard to deny Szakaly’s role in getting them there.

It’s been a very news heavy couple of days, with much of the news being depressing or controversial at that. So if you need a break from all the Terry Richardsons and bankruptcies of the world, this stunning photo series by Czech photographer and graphic designer Lukas Holas should do the trick nicely.

Unfortunately, information about the series is extremely hard to come by, and our efforts to contact Mr. Holas directly have been for naught. The only real description the series has is the sentence “Animals are a matter of my heart…” which accompanies the wildly popular series on Holas Behance site and actually captures their essence quite well.

Additionally, we know from Trend Hunter that the photos were taken at a local zoo, and made to look like studio portraits in post by inserting a pure black background. Here’s a look at the entire series:

The beauty of these photographs is that the captive animals are, in a sense, set free of their enclosures. The photos might show a wild zebra or lion, and because there is no busy background to distract from the subject, all of the animals’ majestic details stand out in stark relief.

To see even more portraits from the series or if you’d like to purchase prints, head over to Holas Fine Arts America page by clicking here.

(via Trend Hunter)

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Image credits: Photographs by Lukas Holas

This is Marshmallow—the incredible Houdini cat who can escape any cell at a veterinary clinic in Marseille, France, just by unlocking the door. The veterinary calls him the "king of evasion."

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O cantor americano de rock Iggy Pop anunciou em seu Twitter a morte do colega Scott Asheton, ocorrida no sábado (15). Asheton tinha 64 anos e foi baterista dos Stooges, a banda que formou com Iggy em 1967 e que foi considerada a mais forte precursora do som punk. O quarteto original do Stooges tinha também o guitarrista Ron (1948-2009), irmão de Scott, e o baixista Dave Alexander (1947-1975). Assim, Iggy Pop, 66, é o único membro original da banda ainda vivo. Leia mais (03/16/2014 - 20h37)

We've known for a long time that the more impact we put on our bones, the stronger they get, but we haven't known how much that needs to happen. The New York Times points to a few studies that show just how much and how hard we need to jostle our bones to keep them healthy.

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In celebration of the new Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Joel Achenbach wrote a feature for Smithsonian about Carl Sagan's enduring impact on the popularization of science. Achenbach visited the recently-available Sagan archive at the Library of Congress and highlighted some great bits, including details of Sagan and astronomer Frank Drake's 1974 visit with bOING bOING patron saint Timothy Leary while Tim was incarcerated. Sagan had enjoyed Tim's excellent (and now scarce) book Terra II, a philosophical manual for space migration.

On April Fools’ Day, 1974, Sagan and the astronomer Frank Drake visited Leary at the state mental hospital in Vaca­ville, California, where Leary had been locked up on drug possession charges.

Drake, a frequent Sagan collaborator, was a pioneer in the search for radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations and was also known for the Drake Equation, which estimates the abundance of communicative aliens. Leary was a Harvard professor-turned-counterculture-guru who had become a proselytizer for the spiritual and mental benefits of hallucinogens. Lately, inspired by Sagan’s Cosmic Connection, he’d become obsessed with the idea of building a space ark to carry 300 carefully chosen people to another planet orbiting a distant star.

In this curiously emblematic meeting—which has been incompletely described in Sagan biographies but is now plain to see in the archives—Leary asked which star he should aim for. Sagan and Drake broke him the bad news: We don’t have the technology. All the stars are too far away. But true believers are not easily deterred. In a subsequent letter to Sagan, Leary reiterated his desire to “imprint the galactic point-of-view on the larval nervous system,” and said we just need fusion propulsion, longevity drugs and “exo-psychological and neuropolitical inspiration.”

“I am not impressed by your conclusions in these areas,” Leary wrote. “I sense a block in your neural-circuity[sic].”

Why Carl Sagan is Truly Irreplaceable

For the full text of the Sagan/Leary letters and analysis, check out Lisa Rein and Michael Horowitz's post at the Timothy Leary Archives: "Inner Space and Outer Space: Carl Sagan’s Letters to Timothy Leary (1974)"

To get you sufficiently pumped for the new Cosmos re-make, NASA has put together a stunning set of 43 cosmic images that are guaranteed to instill a sense of wonder and awe.

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Our favorite photographer of everything creepy and crawly under the sea, Alexander Semenov, recently released a number of incredible new photographs of worms, several of which may be completely unknown to science. Half of the photos were taken at the Lizard Island Research Station near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia during a 2-week conference on marine worms called polychaetes. Semenov photographed 222 different worm species which are now in the process of being studied and documented by scientists.

The other half of the photos were taken during Semenov’s normal course of work at the White Sea Biological Station in northern Russia where he’s head of the scientific divers team. We’ve previously featured the intrepid photographer’s work with jellyfish (part 2, part 3), and starfish.

Humans often act irrationally, making decisions—sometimes important ones—that contradict our best interests. This kind of irrational behavior is at the center of behavioral economics, and this free, online eight-week course by TED speaker, author, and Duke Professor Dan Ariely will introduce you to the topic.

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THIS RULES.

Says Betabrand founder Chris Lindland, "When you look beyond the ranks of the professionally beautiful, photography becomes a lot more fun."

betabrand.com

To find the women, the company sent out a casting call on social media; 60 Ph.D.s and doctoral candidates replied.

betabrand.com

betabrand.com

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“Memory Wound” is a visually striking memorial to the victims of the Utøya island massacre (part of the 2011 Norway terrorist attacks) that takes the form of an 11-foot-wide excavation cutting through a point of land near the island. The memorial, which was designed by Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg, is meant to resemble a wound or cut in the landscape. Visitors to the memorial will be able to walk to the edge of the excavation. Out of reach, on the far side of the excavation, will be the names of the 69 victims of the massacre. “Memory Wound” and Dahlberg’s proposal for a second memorial in Olso were both recently selected in a competition hosted by Public Art Norway (KORO). “Memory Wound” is scheduled for completion in 2015.

images via Jonas Dahlberg

via ArchDaily

Embora nunca tenha se falado tanto sobre vida saudável como hoje, é contraditório o aumento do número de pessoas sedentárias, que não gastam o que consomem. Em 2004,... - por Agência EFE

Below is a plot of per capita GPD (in log scale) against years since women received the right to vote for 42 countries. Is this cause, effect, both or neither? We all know correlation does not imply causation, but I see many (non statistical) arguments to support both cause and effect here. Happy International Women's Day ! 

The data is from here and here. I removed countries where women have had the right to vote for less than 20 years.

pd -What's with Switzerland?

update - R^2 and p-value added to graph

Las Tortugas Ninja son muy conocidas en todo el mundo. Por eso no debería sorprendernos ver esta exhibición de body painting.

A great big BAHFest update is coming very soon.

kc123 writes "Earlier this week, The Linux Foundation announced that it would be working with edX, a non-profit online learning site governed by Harvard and MIT, to make its "Introduction to Linux" course free and open to all. The Linux Foundation has long offered a wide variety of training courses through its website, but those can generally cost upwards of $2,000. This introductory class, which usually costs $2,400, will be the first from the Linux Foundation to run as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I just came across this cool old time-lapse video made by scientists from the US Geological Survey: The collapse of the crater floor of the Puʻu ʻŌʻō, one of the cones of the Kīlauea volcano in Hawaii.

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Netherlands-based artist Redmer Hoekstra draws fascinating composite illustrations that merge animals and everyday objects or machines, from a lizard with computer keyboard scales to an owl with books for wings. At times he even brings three or more forms together, as with a whale emerging from a submarine, the entirety of which has the appearance of a banana. Whether you regard the pieces as humorous or slightly disturbing, it’s hard to deny the ingenious way each creature is formed.

Hoekstra has more work over on Behance and you can pick up postcards, prints and other things in his shop.

A exemplo dos vizinhos Chile, Colômbia e Uruguai, a Argentina também pode em breve descriminalizar o porte de drogas para consumo próprio. É o que prevê o anteprojeto de lei de reforma do Código Penal argentino, que está nas mãos da presidente Cristina Kirchner. O atual está em vigor desde 1921. Elaborado por uma comissão que inclui o magistrado da Suprema Corte de Justiça Eugenio Zaffaroni e membros de diferentes partidos da oposição, como a UCR (União Cívica Radical) e o PRO (Proposta Republicana), o anteprojeto causa polêmica por sugerir importantes alterações. Leia mais (03/06/2014 - 02h02)

A Miramax anunciou nesta quinta-feira (6) que a série "Um Drink no Inferno", inspirada na obra de Robert Rodriguez, será transmitida pela Netflix no Brasil, a partir... - por André Fernandes

A L’Occitane en Provence é um exemplo clássico de como mensagens bem direcionadas são capazes de chamar a atenção das pessoas sem aborrecê-las. Em 2011, o grupo francês... - por IBM

Photo courtesy Dominic Dähncke

While shooting on the Canary Islands late last year, photographer Dominic Dähncke snapped this jaw-dropping shot of clouds flowing over a mountain range on La Palma Island. The photographer shares via 1X:

This photograph was taken in the mountains of “Cumbre Nueva”, in the part west of La Palma, one of the most beautiful island of the Canary Islands, in Spain. To capture cloud’s movement I have set my camera speed to 70 seconds, using a ND filter to minimize the entry of light in camera sensor.

You can see more of Dähncke’s landscape photography over on Flickr.

You can learn the basics of lock picking from a GIF , but for a more nuanced look at the techniques required to actually get a lock open without the key, check out NightHawkInLight's latest tutorial where he uses nothing but a pair of strategically bent hairpins in the process.

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Searching YouTube playlists in the latest mps-youtube

• added prompt to mux audio on m4v download;
• faster opening of audio streams;
• added "pls <query>" command to search for YouTube playlists;
• added "pl <playlist url>" command to open YouTube playlist url;
• added "dlurl <YouTube url>" command for directly downloading a YouTube video;
• added "playurl <YouTube url>" command for directly playing a YouTube video;
• added "url <YouTube url>" command for retrieving a specific YouTube video;
• added "i<number>" for YouTube playlist information display;
• added stream url preloading for first item of opened YouTube playlists
• same playlist file is now shared between Python2.7+ and Python3+ (was separate);
• list user uploads using "user <username>";
• other changes and many bug fixes.

YouTube playlist loaded in mps-youtube

Install mps-youtube

sudo apt-get install python-pip

2. Then install mps-youtube using pip:

sudo pip install mps-youtube

sudo apt-get install mplayer

To upgrade mps-youtube, use this command:

sudo pip install mps-youtube --upgrade

Arch Linux users can install mps-youtube via AUR.

Usage

Start mps-youtube by typing the following command in a terminal:

mpsyt

pls <query>

You can see all the available commands by typing "h" in the mpsyt shell.

While at the NYC 3D Printshow we took a close look at an incredible 3D print that you could print yourself at home. 

It’s the In Bloom Dress by XYZ Workshop, a “fully 100% 3D Printed piece that was not only wearable but had qualities of movement within it.”

The dress is composed of 106 separately 3D printed panels that are linked together. It’s printed with Ultimaker’s PLA Flex that permits some wearer flexibility beyond the linkages between panels. 

Here’s the really interesting part: all pieces were produced on an Ultimaker personal 3D printer. Statistically, the 106 panels took some 265 hours and 15 mins to produce, using just under 1kg of material. In other words, this could be made for as little as USD$60!

We believe this is a breakthrough. Most previous large 3D printed fashion elements involved production on expensive commercial 3D printers, sometimes costing literally tens of thousands of dollars per outfit. Now, it appears you can attempt the same thing on your home 3D printer. 

If only you had the 3D model. 

But you might. According to XYZ Workshop: 

We are currently working with Ultimaker to make the digital files of our dress available to the public, to encourage more “makers” to play and push the boundaries of personal 3D Printing and 3D fashion.

Right on! 

Via XYZ Workshop