Archive for April, 2008

Found on Tretrapod Zoology, a series of articles about prehistoric felines among which one can find big cats like lions, pumas, jaguars, cougars, cheetahs or leopards on continents where they totally disappeared later.

• Europe, where the sabre-tooths, lions and leopards are
• Pumas of South Africa, cheetahs of France, jaguars of England

Download from CBS Movie information from IMDB.org

Star Trek nearly defined what a SciFi TV series is or should be. Of course, there is something slightly ridiculous to the coloured pajamas used by the actors to convince the spectator that they are in the far future with advanced technology. But despite all its drawbacks, Star Trek is still a must-see for all lovers of Science Fiction.

Starship Enterprise

Most people lost count of the number seasons aired for Star Trek (after the initial series, there were long-living extensions like Voyager, Enterprise, The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine) but CBS decided to offer free access to the first season on its web site: Star Trek: The original season. It was aired from September 8, 1966.

Synopsis

The story is set in the 23rd century. We follow the adventures of the crew of starship Enterprise under the lead of Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), his First Officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy, his logic and his pointed ears), and his Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley). Exploring deep space, they meet a number of aliens, exotic civilizations and various adventures.

Many will remember the memorable “Beam me up, Scotty!” used by Captain James T. Kirk to call a teleportation back to the spaceship.

The Florida panther or Puma concolor coryi (a subspecies of the cougar or Puma concolor) is critically endangered according to UICM. This beautiful feline is now quite difficult to find with a population on only 100 individuals after the introduction in 1995 of eight female pumas from Texas.

Melanie Culver of the University of Arizona and Philip Hedrick of Arizona State University compared DNA samples taken from museum specimens from the 19th century with samples from the 1980s. The conclusion of the study shows that the population fell down to only 6 individuals (including one female only).

It confirms that the hybridization with the Texas pumas was probably the last solution available to save the population.

Source: Animal Conservation.

OK! If it was not enough to expect a couple of major announcements from Canon and Sony for the tough market of high-end digital cameras, there is another competitor appearing in the image.

According to Amateur Photographer, Samsung is preparing a Full Frame D-SLR camera to compete with Canon EOS 5D (or future 5D Mk II), with Nikon D3, with future Sony Alpha 900. We know that Samsung has a very good technology (shared with Pentax) and that the high-end market is calling for Full Frame sensors.

Nothing is certain, and we will probably have to wait until 2009, but things are moving fast in Korea too.

To start a week of feline news on Roumazeilles.net, I offer you a National Geographic video of a new born asiatic lion is shown in the Japanese zoo of Yokohama.

Everybody keeps hearing that those buildings built in Abu Dhabi are the most extraordinary ones because the architects have huge amounts of money flowing to build them. But, actually, it’s a world wide competition to create the most astonishing sky-scrappers and buildings. Here are my best finds in this huge category:

Vertical urban farm

Imagined by the environmentalist researchers of Columbia University. More details [PDF].

Cubes piled in Singapour

More than 1000 flats for Singapour. Office for Metropolitan Architecture.
(more…)

Some soul searching and information collecting leads me to say that -contrary to what I could have suggested here before- there is no Sony Alpha 500 in preparation. It seems that this was rather a name imagined for the now-existing Sony Alpha 350.

Some people have been telling me: “You blog! That must take a lot of time and you must be there each and every day”.

Don’t worry, I may post something on Roumazeilles.net every day, but it does not mean that I am in front of the keyboard every day. Far from it. I am using one small advantage of WordPress (the software package supporting my web site). I can write posts and schedule them for future publication.

That way, I have no limit to my inspiration. For example, I have currently scheduled weekly posts about optical illusions for the coming 6 months, a full week of feline-related news (daily posts next week), a full week of daily videos titled “when XXXXX get bored” in a couple of months.

When you build millions of small metal cans, you need awesome technology.

Some GNU/Linux lovers like to optimize their Linux kernel with many recompilations. This is not absolutely needed, but a quite common hobby there. However, it is quite difficult to do correctly. Tips for successful Kernel Recompilation in Linux by bobcares.com.

As surprising as it may be, I needed to inform you about one little bit of rumour that is currently appearing on the Internet: The next ‘flagship‘ digital SLR camera (hig-end camera based on a Full Frame 15- or 20-MP sensor) from Sony could well not be called Alpha 900 as expected by nearly everybody but rather Alpha 500. I don’t really believe it, but you never know…

The other possibility is that the Sony Alpha 500 is another new mid-to-high end camera product that nobody’s seen yet (a successor to the Alpha 700, already?) but it would be the source of some confusing thoughts. To be checked in the future.