Archive for the 'shortpost' Category

Kite-flying can kill you

“The country’s [Pakistan] Supreme Court banned kite-flying in 2005, objecting to the number of deaths and injuries caused by the sport. In February of that year, Reuters reported that 19 people were killed and 200 injured.” Toronto has banned kite flying in two parks due to safety. Who knew flying kites was so dangerous?

The Waterbed

Damn, I had no idea. I had one of these but was only a kid and all the advertising must have gone over my head. It was a great bed.

What happened to Modrobes?

Modrobes pants were the ‘must have’ item in the late 1990′s. Everyone had them. I had them. I still have them — my first and only pair have a small rip from a bike chain that has never expanded over the past 11 years. This article from The Toronto Star examines Modrobes fall at the hands of cheap imports and changing consumer habits, and their recent rise from the ashes. Despite what the article says I think their problem might also have stemmed from that fact that their clothes were too well made. I mean c’mon, 11 years and counting!

We suck at estimating risk

Humans are really bad at estimating risk as explained in the article ‘Spillonomics: Underestimating Risk‘. The oil companies aren’t to blame, we are.

The problem with digital magazines

The problem with digital magazines is that they are just PDF’s of the print edition, and this makes them very difficult to read. I can’t flip to page 122 to finish an article, and when a graphic spans over two pages I can’t easily read it to understand it. Magazines need to be fundamentally redesigned if they truly want to go digital.

Get growing

It’s spring time, go play in the dirt and grow something.

Shot by Canon

Sounds like the upcoming season finale of House was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II. Crazy.

Pack that pack

Spring and summer are nearly here, so take a minute and refresh yourself on packing that backpack. [via lifehacker]

Google does Whistler

Those guys at Google will do anything. In honour of the 2010 Olympic Games they outfitted a snowmobile with their street-view rig and drove it up and down Whistler Mountain creating maps of the ski runs. Pretty neat.

Canon Cameras

Canon has released their new crop of cameras. There is some interesting updates, but sadly they seem to have cranked the MP up to 14. Will have to see how this affects the noise and overall image quality. It is nice to see they finally have 720p video with a stereo microphone. It would be nice if they could have started the lens a little wider open than 28mm, but with 14x optical zoom it could be an interesting look.

Another interesting announcement is their updated d-SLR the T2i. Less than a year ago they released the T1i to replace the XSi. With entry level d-SLR’s like this, it’s hard to figure out why anyone (other than the top of the top photographers) would need anything more. the T2i offers 1080p video, 18MP and a whole heap of other internal enhancements.