Thoughts

Are camera guns a lost art?

A little while back, photos of a camera gun made the rounds on all the cool blogs, and people everywhere thought they were new and exciting. How easily we forget… Camera guns — analog cameras and film cameras mounted to gun barrels or provided with pistol grips — were more common in the 60s and 70s than we might think today.

I watched an episode of Columbo last night, entitled “The Greenhouse Jungle”, released 10/15/72 (almost 37 years ago) and in it, Columbo’s assistant pulled out a camera gun that looked even better than the stuff making the rounds these days.

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As he explained in the episode, the device was a “camera-mounted starlight scope”, used “quite a bit at Berkeley for night work”. camera-gun-columbo-episode-2

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Since I can find no modern camera guns, I’m tempted to call them a lost art, perhaps yet another victim of a PC society where everyone’s afraid of everything.

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I think the inspiration for camera guns came from the portable video cameras equipped with a pistol grip, sold around the same time period. They looked like this.

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These last two images came from a site called Atomic Rocket, where they have a whole page dedicated to futuristic sidearms.

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Lists

Condensed Knowledge – October 11, 2009

This is a summary of articles I read and found interesting during this past week. The list is shared from among my feed subscriptions. I only share a certain number of articles in each of these posts, so if you’d like to see more, visit my full Google Shared Items list.

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Thoughts

Now in top 75K websites on the internet

I took a look at my Quantcast stats today, and got a nice surprise. After hovering around the 100K rank for some time, I’m now ranked in the top 75K websites on the web. I do hope the trend continues along the same route, to the point where I can announce that I’m in the top 50K websites and so forth.

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Why do I reveal this information? Because I believe in transparency, and I’ve been fairly open about my site’s performance from the get-go. (See this post from 2006, or this post from 2007 for a couple of examples.) I started using Quantcast to track the ranking of my site in 2008, and ever since then, I posted a little button in my sidebar that you can always click on to see my live stats.

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By the way, let me take this opportunity to invite serious, legitimate companies who want to gain exposure to a worldwide audience to get in touch with me. The details are here.

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Thoughts

Turning trash into usable products

Ann Wizer from XSProject Foundation (as in “excess”) is making custom-designed bags and other products from non-recyclable plastic waste found in Indonesia and the Philippines. She buys the raw materials from trash pickers, whom she pays at above-market rates, and, using trained artisans, creates beautiful products from trash that would be clogging landfills, streets and waterways in those countries.

Through its work, the Foundation is protecting the environment, reducing poverty, and teaching locals how to sustain themselves through the work of their own hands. The end results are beautiful, as you can from the photos and the embedded video below. The cause is noble, the work is noble, the means are innovative, sustainable and ennobling, and so I think Ms. Wizer and her XSProject Foundation deserve our applause for the wonderful work they’re doing.

Embedded video from CNN
Turning trash into usable products (CNN)

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* I would have linked to their online catalog of products, but at the time of writing this, it seems to be down.

Images used courtesy of XSProject Foundation.

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Thoughts

Vivaldi's Four Seasons on the accordeon

A teen plays a segment of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons so masterfully on his accordeon, that his video, uploaded to YouTube, is bound to go viral. Unfortunately no credit is given to him in the video or in the video’s description. Does anyone know who he is? He plays incredibly well for his age.

And now, for something completely random and very weird…

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