Wandering the Web

Here are a few of the more interesting things I’ve run across lately.

• Is it weird to watch a 10 minute video of bullets being fired into various [inert] substances? If so, color me weird. But there’s something fascinating about a 1 million frame per second slo-mo movie. Did you catch that? 1 MILLION FPS. Amazing. Be sure to watch to the end if you’re a shotgun fan. [Via Neatorama]

• Photoshop on an iPhone sounds like an awkward combination, but Adobe has managed to reduce its flagship image editor down to the bare essentials, and make it easy and fun to use. If you have an iPhone, you can download Photoshop.com Mobile for free from the App Store. It’s not a speed demon, but it will permit a fair amount of creative processing on your photos. It also allows you to upload those photos to a personalized Photoshop.com account (2gb of storage for free). [Via MacWorld]
  Here’s a before-and-after comparison of a photo I took at Barnes & Noble this evening, and touched up with the new app.

• The Blair Witch Project gave me nightmares. Here’s another low-budget sleeper film that some are saying is even more intense. Don’t know that I’m up to it, assuming it ever comes to Midland.
• Adam Baldwin is NOT related to those other Baldwin actor guys. He was one of the best things about Firefly and Serenity, but his dumb-as-a-stump act was most certainly just that, as his essay on the pitiful excuse for a human known as Roman Polanski and those who excuse or rationalize his perverted and felonious behavior could easily qualify for publication in any academic journal.
• If this video doesn’t tug at your heart, you need an iFibrillator.

• World’s thinnest speakers. The imagination soars. I’m thinking of a media room that’s wallpapered with them. Gives new meaning to surround sound.
• Boing Boing isn’t the only media giant dealing with font-related woes. NBC’s getting sued for allegedly using unlicensed fonts in shows like The Jay Leno Show, Saturday Night Live, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. My guess is that fonts are perhaps the most routinely abused intellectual properties in existence, but it’s pretty rare to see such a high-profile example. This is really no different than stealing music or movies, and I’m happy to see the font bureau taking action to protect its rights.
• Ever wonder where funny paper characters go to die? Here’s what happened to four of them. I can’t shake the mental picture of Charles Schulz as an axe murderer.
• I know you’re dying to know: I don’t blame Obama for the Nobel Prize fiasco. He didn’t (to my knowledge) seek the nomination, and he displayed some [entirely justified] humility in his reaction to receiving it. Doesn’t mean I think he deserves it, but given some of the yahoos that have gotten it in the past, the Swedes could have done worse. And, in the end, it’s just an award, really no different than an Oscar or Emmy or anything else handed out for political reasons that are partially obscured by other rationalizations. The joke’s really on those who take such things seriously. [This means you, John Gruber. How dare you judge with such sweeping generalizations?]