Jason Thibeault's Blog: From My Pen, page 14

Nature in Slo-Mo

Posted in Tumblog

Slow-motion photography (6,000 frames per second) can create some fascinating displays of nature that may be impossible to really appreciate at their natural speed. Case in point? The frog below snacking on a tasty cricket.

Originally posted 2011-07-29 11:41:23.

Putting Software to Practical Use

Posted in HumanTechnology

Although we use software everyday, for writing documents and building presentations and playing games, there’s another side of software that we rarely see: pharmaceutical drug selection, credit card processing, security and fraud detection at the bank. What many people don’t realize, and perhaps take for granted, is that software is around us all the time, running the systems that we use every day. That’s what makes it so great when some of this software can come out...

Maybe Paper Isn’t As Dead As We Think it Is?

Posted in Tumblog

Just when you thought paper is on it’s way out, displaced by the all-mighty tablet, someone slips you a note under the door.

Originally posted 2013-03-18 09:39:13.

The Haunting Photography of Haikyo

Posted in Tumblog

In case you don’t know what Haikyo is, it’s photography of abandoned buildings, architecture, and objects. Some of it is truly mesmerizing, like the Royal House in Japan. Others, like abandoned housing tracts in Ireland, haunting. And the most recent, where Google StreetView cruised through an entire abandoned town next to the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. Regardless, each of these old places has a story to tell hidden within the picture, within the photographer’s composi...

Might Video Games Be Really Bad?

Posted in EducationHuman

There has been a long debate about the supposed ill effects of video games. In fact, studies have surfaced over the years linking such. For example, in a 2007 Iowa State University study,

The book’s first study found that even exposure to cartoonish children’s violent video games had the same short-term effects on increasing aggressive behavior as the more graphic teen (T-rated) violent games. The study tested 161 9- to 12-year-olds, and 354 college students. Each parti...

Mapware

Posted in Technology

I have come up with a new term. Mapware (or Mapplications). This term describes the use of geo-spatial or location-based data mashed with interactive features and other content to create a consumer offering. There is some pretty awesome mapware out there already (i’ll post some links soon) but I believe the best is yet to come.

Image courtesy of mashable.com.

Originally posted 2011-06-01 20:56:17.

Pictures to Commemorate History

Posted in Tumblog

Whether you are a believer in evolution or not, the Scopes Monkey trial was a historical point in American education, basically severing the connection between organized religion and the classroom.

The Smithsonian has published a gallery of photos taken of that trial (1925) which provide a very nostalgic look at a very charged event:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/sets/72157607580371997/with/2898281349/

Originally posted 2011-07-12 23:09:00.

How-Tos: Books on Amazon Kindle? No Prob. Turn them into EPUB and Read Them Anywhere!

Posted in

If you are like me, an e-book worm (or just a book worm in general who likes to one-click purchase e-books), you have e-books spread all over the place. Well, at least I did. I used to buy from B&N, Sony, Amazon, and Apple. I’ve since consolidated. I only purchase books from Amazon. Why? Kindle makes it easy to read. I have Kindle software on all my devices (iPhone, iPad, Macbook) and my kids have it installed on their devices (Nexus One, Galaxy Tab II, etc.). They are all connected...

The Google Glass Promise: An Integrated Computing Experience

Posted in FoVCHumanTechnology

With Google delivering its Glass product to the 8000 selected “Google Explorers” (no, I was not one of them so I write this with a twinge of bitterness) we are soon to be forced to deal with “glassholes:” those people who have made Google Glass a part of their daily lives. But before you dismiss them as just that, glassholes, you should understand what Glass really portends and how it fundamentally changes the way computing is integrated into our lives. Before I j...

Photo: Just How Small Are We…

Posted in Tumblog

Thinking about how big the Statue of Liberty is and how small it looks in the picture from National Geographic below, makes you realize just how massively tall this lightning bolt is and how, in the presence of nature, we are insignificant. Very sublime. Lots of other great pics too in the Flash slideshow through the link.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/visions-of-earth/visions-earth-2011

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Originally posted 2011-08-25 12:27:02.