Archive for the 'Science & Geeks' category

I found a few funny, interesting, or surprising glasses or vases that I wanted to share with you.

The first ones are coming with a request to drink responsibly:

A Cognac glass (Rikke Hagen)

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Photoshop CS4

Newsrooms are full of weird coincidences. For example, we just learned that  two products often presented as direct competition were launched this Fall. To my right, here is Adobe with its boxing champion, Photoshop, loaded up to version CS4. To my left, Linux and its community of free developpers pushing the challenger on the ring, version 2.6 of The Gimp.

I am still convinced that this is not an even fight (and Photoshop is favored by bookmakers, for those still doubting it) but both announces are interesting and should be reviewed shortly.

Photoshop CS4 is a new step forward based on the award-winning user interface that made it a best seller and on top-level performance. To this market reference product, Adobe adds the following image-edition-oriented features:

• Accelerated computation using the modern graphic cards coprocessor and the Windows 64 features (when available, of course), and many tools needed to support a 3rd dimension in graphics design (painting on top of 3Dmodels, 3D compositing, etc.)
• Several new tools
• Adobe Camera Raw v5 is improved again to include complementary tools applicabel to RAW photo files (local editing, gradual correction filters, etc.)
• Bridge CS4 is notably accelerated

The Gimp 2.6

On the other side, The Gimp is now available as version 2.6. Here again, improvements are notable, even if a little smaller:

• A number of improvements to the user interface (but I still thing that this is the weak point of this software program; Recommendation: Look into GimpShop which is a hack to The Gimp in order to make it appear similar to Photoshop)
• Improvements to the selection tool
• Improvements to the drawing brush
• 32-bit GEGL data management (perfectly adapted to keep maximum quality in 12- and 14-bit RAW files)

All this will probably start again comment wars supporting one or the other solution. But remember that The Gimp is simply free. On the contrary, Photoshop CS4 (even if getting the upgrade license and despite the many available options) will still be very expensive (Master Collection at $2,499).

Awesomely superb, “The Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala” is an illustrated book (download in PDF) by James Bateman that you can find in Botanicus.org wbe site of the Missouri Botanical Gardens.

Sometimes a fight outcome is difficult to forecast. Now, if you take an old lady and a (too) fast car. Guess who will be leaving the spot unharmed?

Link to YouTube

This is difficult to stop a big chunk of a plane like the Airbus A380. Let’s see what happens to brakes when tested at maximum braking stress.

YouTube video link

When a dSLR like the Sony Alpha 900 is presented as if it was a Hollywood movie, we get this result :

Windows tip

I recently had the problem of an application (DreamWeaver) which had hidden a Windows dialog box. When opening it, it was out of view. But how to drag it back? It appears that this is rather easy (if you know how).

First, you use your keyboard: Ctl-Space to open the system menu of the dialog box. You don’t see anything, but you can hit Enter to select the “Move” option of the menu. Your mouse pointer should have been brought to the dialog window.

Gently click on the left button and drag the window around, you have the window stuck and it should follow the mouse movements. This way, you can find and drag it back.

You never can hide anything from the keen eyes of the Internet photo lovers. The Sony Alpha 900 has been seen used with the Carl Zeiss 16-35mm f/2.8 lens.

Notice the small trapezoidal LCD screen on top of the camera body, the nice position of the drive and exposure buttons on top of the grip, nearly under the finger:

Source: DP via PB.

Google Chrome

How could we ignore the launch of Chrome, the new browser from Google? Every is babbling about it, everybody tried it (it can be downloaded here).

But after one test run, I believe that I should explain something. Yes, this is a marvellous browser because it takes most of the good things from FireFox, Opera or Safari (all IE competition). I immediately noticed:

• No space is lost in useless graphical waste, everything is concentrating on user display,
• The good tab management,
• The impressive performance,
• The name-completion in the address bar.

Some will also have noticed the more technical features like:

• The separation of applications running in different tabs,
• The very small footprint (including for the Javascript).

But, all this is hiding a very critical reality: Google did not even try to make a mere browser (it even lacks a simple RSS feed manager). They are more interested in doing more than Internet Explorer competiton. Much more.

Chrome (tasks)

The impressive advantage of this browser is elsewhere: it will fight against Microsoft applications allowing to work online in the best possible conditions. Chrome is nearly an Operating System competing with Windows. Yes, because where Windows offered a vehicle to sell Microsoft Office, Chrome will allow Google to develop a wider range of online tools in the path opened by the Desktop applications and GMail.

It will hurt Microsoft real bad. Chrome is obviously the best browser to support this approach. Rock solide, fast (very), reliable and able to support application crashes.

or how to ensure the best possible battery autonomy of an iPhone: 36 hours of operation.

As a matter of fact, the iPhone battery seems to be its weak point as it seems. But Guy Kawasaki explains us that -for the best part- it comes from some options that eat a lot of power (WiFi, BlueTooth and geo-localisation ) and they should not stay in full/permanent operating mode.

Simple, obvious, but useful to repeat.

Burj Dubai is the name of a Dubai construction zone current being modelled. It will host the most surprising series of buildings of astonishing proportions. The most obvious one is the Burj Dubai tower aiming for world record in the middle of 2009.

But there will be also this huge fountain which will be dwarfing the water jets of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I saw them perosnnaly, they are impressive, but the idea is to lead the way to a wholly different scale. I guess the noise will be impressive, too.

Sources: LuxuryLaunches.com & BurjDubaiSkyScrapper.

It is now official: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky will be available in our stores on September 5th (very soon, eh!)

This should be the reason to go through a last minute list of all the recent screenshots and videos displaying the best images of this FPS game coming from Russia.

• Interview videos (from VE3D)
• Screenshots (from VE3D)
• Trailer (from GameTrailers)
• Trailer in HD (from GameTrailers)

Last but not least, the official game web site essentially confirmed the specs of the game that we provided a few weeks ago already.