Cheap Fisheye!

Lomo fisheye camera
W00t! If these are as cheap as I think they are ($50) then I might buy some of these for Christmas gifts. I can see one of these being an ideal addition to my camera bag. I used to make fisheye photos with my Nikon 950/4500 and the Nikon FC-E8 fisheye lens but now that I use my D70 all the time I’m losing out on the old 178 degree field of view. I loved this lens, I’m working on an adapter to screw it on to a nifty lens my brother just gave me (Tamron AF 28-105)
If you have never shot with an ultra wide lens before you have not lived… It opens up an whole new world. So have a look at the gallery photos on the Lomo site and see what you think. One of these cameras are small enough to fit in a camera bag on your next trip.

Here are some specs:

* Size: 4.25″ (10.5cm) x 2.5″ (6cm) x 2.5″ (6cm)
* Weight: 0.5lb (0.23kg)
* Format: all 35mm (color negative, slide, b&w)
* Field of Vision: 170 degrees
* Approximate focal length: 10mm
* Fixed Aperture: f/8
* Fixed Speed: 1/100
* Electronic Flash powered by one “AA” battery
* Film can be processed at any 35mm lab, supermarket, drug store, swapmeet, etc.

THE LOMOGRAPHIC FISHEYE CAMERA – THE WORLD’S FIRST FISHEYE COMPACT CAMERA

Think Before You Click!

Latest news in the world of spy/adware:
Alternative browser spyware infects IE

Some useful citizen has created an installer that will nail IE with spyware, even if a surfer is using Firefox (or another alternative browser) or has blocked access to the malicious site in IE beforehand. The technique allows a raft of spyware to be served up to Windows users in spite of any security measures that might be in place.
Christopher Boyd, a security researchers at Vitalsecurity.org, said the malware installer was capable of working on a range of browsers with native Java support. “The spyware installer is a Java applet powered by the Sun Java Runtime Environment, which allows them to whack most browsers out there, including Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape and others. In the original test, only Opera and Netcaptor didn’t fall for the install but Daniel Veditz, who is the head of Mozilla security, has since confirmed to me that this will also work in Opera and Netcaptor,” he explained.

Well hell… Just remember folks, if you get a message while surfing that tells you to install software and you don’t know what it is DON’T CLICK ON IT! You don’t pull the trigger to see if a gun is loaded do you?
If you have any problems give me a yell and I’ll help you sort things out.
admin(at)teamdroid.com (remove the ‘()’ to email me)

Remember Cuba?

Workers paradise my ass…

Pressure cookers and rice steamers, essential tools of the Cuban kitchen, are the new weapons in Fidel Castro’s latest battle to reassert control over the nation’s economy… During a 5 hour speech broadcast on state TV, Castro said 100,000 pressure cookers would be made available each month an announcement that underscored the communist country’s continued retreat toward greater political and economic centralism…. Cuba now can consider raising some government salaries, which Castro said now average about 300 Cuban pesos a month, or about $11. He also said there are plans to build 100,000 new homes this year.

Castro announces widespread distribution of pressure cookers in move to reassert control

Temperature Inside Collapsing Bubble Four Times That Of Sun

Someone must have done this experiment with deuterium oxide by now. I don’t know that any results would be of much use for energy production, because any serious heat would vaporize the medium. Ironically, it seems like a fusion powered space heater would be easier to make than a useful energy device even if some significant level of fusion could be produced. That is far from certain, of course. They always talk about the surface of the sun, but the surface is frigid compared to the core where fusion takes place.
-Greg

Using a technique employed by astronomers to determine stellar surface temperatures, chemists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have measured the temperature inside a single, acoustically driven collapsing bubble.

Temperature Inside Collapsing Bubble Four Times That Of Sun
Thank you agent Greg for this information.

Robot Greeters


I like real booth babes myself, but this is pretty neat. It is only a matter of time until some fast food chain will start useing these to take the customers orders. It should be an improvement for the most part.

Aichi’s information booth worker Actroid, developed by Japanese firms Kokoro and Advanced Media, looks like a Japanese woman in her 20s and understands 40,000 phrases each in Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean.

The humanoid with realistic eyeballs, eyelashes and moving lips gestures and puts on facial expressions suitable for the more than 2,000 types of answers it can give.

The robot may refuse to answer to sensitive questions for “privacy reasons,” making an X with her arms and bowing.

She also has a sense of irony. When asked if she is a robot, she says, “Y.e.s, I. a.m. a. r.o.b.o.t” in a disconnected voice and moves about clumsily. A moment later, she says “Just kidding” and starts a natural flow of movements.

Robots to offer warm welcome at Japan’s World Expo

Discovered on Gizmodo