This is a new Edge conversation with Mark D Pagel.

A tiny number of ideas can go a long way, as we’ve seen. And the Internet makes that more and more likely. What’s happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we’re being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet. We’re being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by. (Show me more…)

I have been thinking rather long what to do with the extra Christmas money – and here is my choice.

These are two Kickstarter projects: The first one is from South Africa, a project on Bicycle Portraits but even more important a project by SF photographer Raul Guerrero, The Disposable Project in Tanzania ( we in Gröbenzell already have some good connections to Matema in Tanzania ).

(Show me more…)

A German newspaper ( Ärztezeitung ) reports that vitamin D deficiency apparently increases all-time death rate.

Ein Mangel an Vitamin D erhöht offenbar die Sterberate.
Eine Studie in den USA hat ergeben, dass 70 Prozent der knapp 11.000 untersuchten Erwachsenen einen Vitamin-D-Mangel hatten.
Das Sterberisiko war in dieser Gruppe dreimal so hoch wie bei Personen ohne einen Mangel an dem Sonnenvitamin.

Looking at the original paper it appears (Show me more…)

For our next Christmas party I need a photobooth and have been playing around with various packages in particular as Lightroom 3 now uses also employs some remote tethering.

In the end, however, I came up with a rather simple setup using a Macbook that’s connected to the Nikon via USB and fired by the standard Apple remote. The Macbook will remain be closed for this evening (using InsomniaX) while the picture will be immediately visible on an attached large Thunderbolt display.

This needed some little programming, creating a CMD+R action in Remote Buddy (20€) to trigger Sofortbild (free from the Appstore) that is running in full screen mode (CMD+F). That’s it, just beautiful.

I recommend to disable all keys on the Apple Remote and allow only CMD+R ….

Jeder kann knipsen. Auch ein Automat. Aber nicht jeder kann beobachten. Photographieren ist nur insofern Kunst, als sich seiner die Kunst des Beobachtens
bedient. (Dürenmatt)