Tag » photography

Amazing bird shots

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Today I bring you some amazing bird-shots, courtesy of my friend Diede. The first set includes the photo above, and comes from Andrew Zuckerman’s Bird book. The second set is all about kingfishers from National Geographic:

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Eli Burakian’s nature shots

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Eli Burakian has some beautiful nature shots on his site, many of them from around Dartmouth (where we both went to college). I particularly recommend his abstract gallery. Thanks Will for the recommendation!

Dust storm

These dust storm pictures from The Big Picture blog are stunning. This Flickr gallery also has a bunch of great shots. San Francisco looks like this most days, but unfortunately our fog is a dull grey.

99 colorful ballons

I’m certainly not the first to post these picture, but this balloon launch is AWESOME:

The largest mass ascent of hot air balloons took place recently at the biennial Lorraine Mondial Air Ballons rally in Chambley, France. Pilots from around the world lifted off in 329 balloons on 26 July.

Walter Iooss

Walter Iooss

This collection of pictures by Walter Iooss is just full of great shots (via Signal vs. Noise).

Clark Little

Clark Little has some great photographs of waves. Thanks to Tom Tunguz for the link.

Retail rainbows

It’s been a while since I posted a picture, so here are is a matching pair.

Rainbow Shirts

Rainbow Books

Both of these were taken in stores in San Francisco. I can’t remember where I found the books, but the shirts are from American Rag Cie, where you can find awesome second-hand clothes from the seventies.

Long-exposure of a Roomba’s path

My friend Noah links to this awesome long-exposure shot of a Roomba’s path.

This illustrates nicely the design insight that made the Roomba successful. Electrolux has a competing robotic vacuum, the Trilobite. It has a sophisticated on-board computer to optimize its path through a room. And yet, at close to $2000, its more of a design demo than a viable commercial product.

iRobot on the other hand (the makers of the Roomba) realized that it wasn’t a big deal if the robot was inefficient. They made a “dumb” robot, that worked its way haphazardly around the room. And by doing so, they got the price down to a couple of hundred dollars.

Guess who was more successful? The Trilobite might be a better vacuum, but the Roomba offers better value. Which reminds me; I need to use my Roomba for more than party entertainment (sadly, I haven’t been too impressed by its performance…).