This is pretty spectacular. Actual video footage of a solar flare erupting on the surface of the sun. Turn the res up to 720p or higher on full screen.
via @jedrichards
*See update at the end of this post*
Having read several favourable reviews I signed up for a Bitcasa account yesterday. The desktop app for OS X looks good and works well. The user-experience is not entirely dissimilar to Dropbox in that you have a special folder which is then synchronised to their cloud storage. However the the Bitcasa drive is a mounted network drive, so doesn't take up space on your hard disk, whereas the Dropbox folder is local.
"Infinite storage" sounded appealing and they're running a $69.99 offer for a year, so I went for it.
However... I'm now finding it incredibly slow to upload files. Speedtest.net tells me the upload bandwidth of my internet connection is 13Mbps, or ~1.88 MB/s. Bitcasa (mirroring a folder through the app) is just about sustaining 190KB/s which means it's using only around 1/10th of my available bandwidth.
Dropbox by comparison on the same machine and connection manages around 750KB/s, which is about 4 times as fast.
I've tried to get some help from them but at the moment it's like talking to a brick wall. 24 hours on they've still failed to respond to two support tickets I raised, nor have they replied to my nudge on Twitter. And there are at least a couple of threads in their community forum filling up with comments from what sound like extremely dissatisfied customers - such as this one.
I hope it's just teething trouble and they sort this out, but the apparent stony silence from the company doesn't bode well to me. As one forum user commented (here):
"The bottom line is it came out of beta too early and we're paying the price now."
Surely the first and most important thing to do is talk to their new paying customers. When people part with their cash they want service!
Update - 23 Feb
Last night I received a reply from Bitcasa on Twitter:
@_ade We're currently working on catching up on support tickets. We'll definitely take a look into your tickets.
— BitcasaSupport (@BitcasaSupport) February 22, 2013
Also, they've responded to my ticket and have commented (and apologised) in a number of the forum threads, such as this one:
"We definitely are inundated with tickets, and are working very hard to respond to everyone as quickly as we can, in order to best address everyone's help needs."
It sounds as though they've had a huge influx of users and that's taking its toll on both customer support and the system itself. Plus there are seemingly a few bugs in the software that need ironing out. From their explanations, due to their protocol the data transfer rate is affected by the ping time to the server. They're using Amazon Web Services so are currently restricted to US, Japan and Ireland data centres.
Being in the UK I'm getting a ~30ms ping time to eu1.api.bitcasa.com, which is pretty good, and my Bitcasa upload speed seems to have vastly improved overnight without me having changed anything. I'm now getting around 800KB/sec according to their app, which is not too bad. I hope it stays that way.
I'm sure they will get things sorted out but, as ever, customer support is key. If things are going wrong 24 hours without a response can feel like a long time for a paying customer. Even to acknowledge that there's a problem and to say "we're working on it" goes a long way in these situations.
I'm biassed because he's my brother, but this solo piano sketch by Al Scott is rather lovely:
The architectural photography of Michael Wolf is most impressive, particularly his photos of high-rise blocks in Hong Kong.
Someone has posted a good selection of his work here at imgur, though they're better presented on his on website.
You can find up-to-date Wolf exhibition listings, over 270 of his works, and exclusive articles here at Artsy.
Vantage point is key with this style of photography. You need to get to a decent height in order to shoot as square on as possible. When I went to Hong Kong I was similarly fascinated by those beautifully bleak apartment blocks. Unfortunately I didn't have the means or the planning to get above street level:
...except for a few decent-ish attempts from Hong Kong park, Victoria Peak and various other vantage points:
Frustratingly I bought a 200mm lens specifically to shoot architecture with but it rarely gets used.
Thanks to Francois for sharing the link:
Welcome to Hong Kong imgur.com/a/ixxhg Beautiful? Sad? Both? /cc @neajj @davegorman
— Francois Jordaan (@fjordaan) February 3, 2013
Catbook Air #PromiseToStopPostingCatVids vine.co/v/b5UAu3qKD1v
— Ade Rowbotham (@_ade) January 25, 2013
Checking out Vine
The clock in the station I commute from each morning was for a few weeks displaying the wrong time. I think it was about five minutes fast. And then they stuck a handwritten Out Of Order notice over it, which remained for a further two weeks, until they finally took it away, presumably to have its network interface replaced or its firmware flashed or something along those lines. Three weeks hence it has still not been reinstalled.
I can't help think that with an older clock someone could have simply gone up a ladder and pushed the minute hand back by five minutes and that would have been the end of the matter.
Are we becoming too dependent on high-level technical systems?
Most people, when asked about how they would like to eventually die, say they would like to die peacefully and in their sleep. Though, apparently, what most people don't realise is that dying peacefully and painlessly generally implies having a massive stroke or heart attack.
At odds with this, when asked what life-saving medical interventions they would be willing to have performed on them – such as CPR, ventilation, use of a feeding tube and so on – most people say they would be open to any or all of the interventions available. Except, that is, for doctors – because they know that the reality of these interventions is far less rosy than most of us imagine them to be.
This episode of the Radiolab podcast covers this bleak but important topic. I found it to be somewhat unsettling, but I'm glad I now know what I do; it's good to be informed. Life is not like in the movies.
http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2013/jan/15/bitter-end/
I'm not a huge fan of Gervais – and in places he's merely quoting Dawkins back to himself – but I'm with them both on the whole "G" issue.
I'm not afraid of heights particularly, but this is quite unsettling.
Free climbing tower worker's helmet cam:
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