Tag Archives: video

Cool Stuff

Exploding-whale day: the 45th anniversary

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Today, reportedly, is the 45th anniversary of the famous exploding whale. The event was documented in this KATU television report, in 1970: The announcer summarized, firsthand, the fallout: “However, everyone on the scene was covered with small particle of dead whale.” Now, people have built an entire business, or at least a web site, on…

Source: Exploding-whale day: the 45th anniversary

The Exploding whale video was the first video I ever watched on the internet, some 20 years ago. It perfectly captures many elements of what the internet is. A thing that’s educational, bizarre, a bit gross, and a cultural flash point all at once.

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Star Trek, Star Wars (and more) Cinematic Space Compilation

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screenshot_145A wonderful 6 minute compilation of visually stunning clips from 35 amazing films, from 1968 to 2014, including Star Trek, Star Wars, Aliens, Interstellar, Gravity and Guardians of the Galaxy.

This short film by Russian Video Editor Max Shishkin features music by Hans Zimmer (“Mountains” from the Interstellar Soundtrack); Lyrics (“Do not go gentle into that good night”) by Dylan Thomas; and Voice by Anthony Hopkins.

via Star Trek, Star Wars (and more) Cinematic Space Compilation.

Totally amazing remix of space scenes from various films. A testament to imagination, ambition, and special effects. I’ll admit I’ve been jonesing for some new good space Sci Fi TV after watching through Babylon 5 again recently. Hopefully the recent management shuffle at SyFy will help.

Science

New Cosmos

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“The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our contemplations of the Cosmos stir us. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“It’s time to get going again.”

― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos a Space Time Odyssey

Tonight, a new Cosmos series premieres on Fox. Ever since I heard about this project 2 years ago, I’ve been eagerly awaiting it’s premier. And we are finally here.

The trailer itself gives me goose bumps. Watch the trailer above, and then watch the show. I’m sure it will not disappoint.

OpenStack

How an Idea becomes a Commit in OpenStack

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My talk from the OpenStack summit is now up on youtube, where I walked people through the process of getting your idea into OpenStack. A big part of the explanation is what’s going on behind the scenes with code reviews and our continuous integration system.

I’m hoping it pulls away some of the mystery of the process, and provides a more gentle on ramp to everything for new contributors. I’ll probably be giving some version of this again at future events, so feedback (here or on youtube) is appreciated.

Software

Refactoring LibreOffice

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The FOSDEM 2013 talks are up now, and this one of LibreOffice Refactoring really hit an interesting mark. The LibreOffice team has been aggressively rebuilding a culture of rapid change as a road to quality, bringing in a test and test automation culture, and leaving nearly no parts of the code as sacred.

It’s interesting that LibreOffice seems to be doing a much better job than OpenOffice at removing technical debt. I think we’re already seeing the effect of that cultural split, and I expect that in the future this is going to get far more obvious.

I can’t wait to get the Android remote working for future presentations. Will be a lot of fun to drive my presentations that way.

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Irene

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I got to see this at Christmas, and it brought tears to my eyes. It was put together by one of the high school students in Rochester, and used as part of his application to college. An incredible piece of work, and really gives you a sense of what was going on up there when Hurricane Irene completely cut off these towns from the rest of the world.