Merci à Pierrick.

Windows 7 official wallpapers

Look at the full set of the Windows 7 wallpapers. This is the upcoming version of Windows (after Windows Vista, it seems that Microsoft intends to switch back to a numbering scheme). Most of them may be colourful, but with very smooth surfaces where your icons will be appearing quite neatly and they offer a nice contrast.

Fresh Impact Crater Formed between February 2005 and July 2005
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

So, I was quite interested when I stumbled upon the collection of pictures taken by the HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera installed on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter). Shooting photos of Mars surface, this photo camera brings extraordinary color images that provide nice patterns to be used as background for your Windows desktop (or even Linux or Mac desktop) and can be renewed quite regularly: Their catalog is available on the University of Arizona web site.

Furthermore, they provide an enormous resolution for their images which is a very good way to extract any size you may need for your extra-high-resolution background or to cover your 2- or 3-LCD display. Or even more. If you feel that there own selection of wallpapers is not enough:

• 800×600
• 1024×768
• 1152×864
• 1280×960
• 1440×1080
• 1600×1200
• 1920×1440
• 2048×1536
• 2560×1600

You can still stick to the original size (JPEG-2000 format images range between 0.5GB and 3GB).

And the good news is that there is no copyright restrictions, so you could do pretty much what you want with them: Really free desktop wallpapers.

Charlie Sorrel wrote a piece of article for Wired.com, titled “Gallery of Sawn-In-Half Cameras” that I intensely recommend reading.

Water cutting machine

Now, if seeing them is not enough for you, I suggest that you cut a few of your lenses. The most difficult part is obviously to saw, cut and hack these fragile devices. You need a very powerful and precise saw. I found one at Mainly Metals, a company offering cutting equipment (I no longer can name them “saw”) providing water jet machining.

They cut metal, glass, stone, plastics, wood, with a high-power jet of water filled fine-grain garnet. And, this is environment-friendly!

PETER DECONINCK/AFP/Getty Images

Update on 24-June: It appears that after some time and media pressure, Kimberley admitted that this was not a mere issue of misunderstanding between the tattooist and her. Frightened by her father reaction to her stars, she tried to explain that it was not her fault. But she actually requested 56 stars from the beginning. So, she was lying…

Let’s contribute to the improvement of knowledge and culture in the Human race: This year, let’s read English novels of the highest quality. They may come from the old United Kingdom or from the newly liberated colonies of North America. Quality is always here.

The 100 Greatest English-Language Novels of the 20th Century

Here is the beginning of the list. Which ones did you actually read?

1. (1922) Ulysses James Joyce
2. (1925) The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. (1916) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
4. (1955) Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
5. (1932) Brave New World Aldous Huxley
6. (1929) The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
7. (1961) Catch-22 Joseph Heller
8. (1940) Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler
9. (1913) Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence
10. (1939) The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
11. (1947) Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
12. (1903) The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler
13. (1949) Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
14. (1934) I, Claudius Robert Graves
15. (1927) To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
16. (1925) An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser
17. (1940) The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
18. (1969) Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
19. (1952) Invisible Man Ralph Ellison

Gabriela Ungureanu / Anne-Elisabeth Halpern - Schubert

Schubert Concert on Sunday 24 May 2009 @ 12h30.

…or up to the point of sacrificing chocolate for the sake of pure art?

No fish for 1st of April!
These are bunnies.

Thanks to the Canadians of the National Film Board of Canada. They give us feature-length movies, documentaries, animated short movies. Everything, of the best quality, at the best price: Free.

Macrocercus ararauna - Blue and yellow maccaw

But there are also interesting modern parrots. Go and watch the videos and photos from the Perroquet project from fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø. Did I say impressive?

Brain in MRI

Source: ScienceBlogs/Corpus Callosum & PLOS biology.

Copyright (C) Peter Nowacki

Peter’s web site.

Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera (Beau Daniels & Alan Daniels)

Cut-away dog (Beau Daniels)

American car (David Kimble)

Kodak DCT Canon EOS Digital SLR Camera (Kevin Husley)

Ear cutaway (Medecine net)

General Motors engine

Spitfire Mk I (Century Imaging)

How a theatre is air conditionned (Frank Soltesz, Saturday Evening Post, March 1951)

Great Wall of China (circa 1570)

Noah's Ark (David Deal)

Source: Google

Article 1 

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 at Palais de Chaillot, Paris (France). So, tomorrow, this important milestone for Human Rights will be 60-year old. Of course, many people are denied their rights for plenty of reasons.

But this is a fight of every day, this is our fight, a fight to make the world better, a place where every Human Being can live free.

Seth Brau decided to celebrate this 60th anniversary by creating a video where it injected more life in these words, with animated graphics (View in larger size/higher-def here: www.humanrightsactioncenter.org. Created by Seth Brau, Produced by Amy Poncher, Music by Rumspringa courtesy Cantora Records):

Apophysis - Copyright (C) Stacey Whaley

In most cases, when people follow this path, the result is quite predictable and there are a few compulsory forms (like the Mandelbrot set) that pop in the pictures. Please, check the admirable result of the example above. Stacey is able to create something that is clearly fractal and simultaneously bringing all the personal content that is the mark of the true artist.

Check all her work in http://intergalacticart.blogspot.com/, even if the updates are too few for our pleasure.

Source: Baekdal.com.

• dozens of nature-oriented images (including some cartoons) on UsingMac.com;
• ligthning and storms (15 images).

Downright spectacular.

On the image on the left, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has been converted to black and white (A), using color data and textures from a similar image (B), the algorithm built a color image again (C) not too far from the original (D).

Analyzing this work, I’d say that part of the differences between the result (C) and the original (D) come from the quality of the conversion to Black & White which led to an image quite hard (a bit more contrast than needed).

Impressive result on photos, you can expect to see it applied to moving images (and movies).

Source: Futura-Science.