Found this on YouTube… pretty cool. It’s a 3D reconstruction (looks suspiciously like something out of a flight sim video game) of that US Airways flight that underwent several bird hits and subsequently went into the Potomac River in New York on 15 Jan 09.
Archive for November, 2009
Great post from David Pogue in yesterday’s New York Times. Basically, the US Phone companies are making money hand over fist with those “minimum charges” every time you accidentally connect to the ‘net with your cell phone. Not too much of a stretch to imagine Rogers, Telus and good old Ma Bell doing the same…
Heavy Metal Photos
Nov 12
Last week I attended a concert at Scotiabank place. The headline act was none other than Metallica, one of the best, if not *the best* thrash metal bands around today.
I wouldn’t call myself a diehard Metallica fan. I’ve been aware of their music for some time, but never really listened in detail. My girlfriend, on the other hand… she’s a huge fan. When we first started dating, she told me, in no uncertain terms, that if Metallica were ever to come anywhere close to Ottawa for a concert, we were going; that’s it, that’s all. Toronto, Montreal, New York, anywhere.
Luckily, they came to Ottawa.
Because she’s a Metallica Club Fan member, we were able to score good seats, mostly because members were able to purchase seats a week or so ahead of anyone else. Even then, I was seated at the computer at 09:55, waiting until the password would be revealed at 10:00 so I could hit “buy” as quickly as possible. So we ended up with front row seats.
Then she goes and enters the contest to win a backstage pass to meet the band… and she actually wins. One ticket only; I was SOL.
But the coolest thing was, I brought my camera along to the show.
I’m pretty proud of this camera; a Panasonic DM-FZ18; 8 Mega Pixels and 18x Optical zoom. It’s pretty sweet.
I ended up taking 480 pictures during the show (just of Metallica; no pics of the opening acts. Volbeat was pretty good, but Lamb of God kinda sucked, in my opinion… but I digress).
480 pics. That’s the equivalent of 20 rolls of film (for those of you that remember film…) At some points, I was taking 4 or 5 pictures per minute.
Now, about 160 of the pics turned out pretty good. For example:
That works out to a ratio of 1:3 for good pics vs. pics taken. Not bad, but that’s what digital photography is all about. Since you don’t have to pay for film, nor do you have to load and reload (Metallica reference there) the film itself, Digital lends itself to snapping as many pics as you can, and working out later which ones are keepers. The rest you can just delete.
I put the good pics on my Flickr page. Feel free to check them out, and let me know what you think of them.
Cheers!
