optimiced | en

Although I am no big fan of Steve Jobs from Apple, I do like Pixar a lot (Apple, too, but to a lesser degree;-), and the stories he tells us, are certainly worth watching …and understanding.

University of North Texas (UNT) student John Bramblitt paints beautiful works of art in vivid colors, despite the fact that he’s been blind for years.

See the videoreport, dedicated to John Bramblitt (flash youtube video):

Amazing man, amazing spirit! :-)

Note: The video is uploaded to Youtube by the Texas Country Reporter.

Jerôme Murat - just watch, and look beyond the technique…

Impressive!

PS Who said I cannot write short posts? :-p

Lately I wanted to say a couple of words about the comet McNaught. What decided me finally was this extraordinary photo, published on the 12th of February on the APOD website (click the thumbnail to see it in its original size). The shot was taken in New Zealand, at the end of January. You can also see part of the Milky Way - our home:)

This comet was called by many “the most photogenic comet of our time” и “the great comet of 2007″, and not without a reason.

Now the comet moves away from the Sun and the Earth, but it still can be seen in the Southern hemisphere. Not a long ago was published a photo in which the tail of the comet stretched on almost the whole Southern sky - its lenghth was 150 million kilometres, or approx. 1 astronomical unit (AU)!

You should also see one incredible montage from 3 photographs of the photographer Antti Kemppainen!

Enough about Space for today… Now I go to the window - it’s true that the comet cannot be seen anymore from our latitude, but I can at least wave to it with my hand, right? :-)

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Note: The Astronomy Picture of the Day, supported by NASA, is a very valuable resource - on this website every day is published one photograph or image/illustraion of our Universe, together with a short explanation by a professional astronomer. Some photos, especially those made by the Hubble telescope, littereally can take your breath away with its beauty and depth… and they make you realise, how small we are, people:-) I visit it often - there’s always something to see and discover:-)

There’s a video and you should watch it.

Better with sound.

Better with sound on your THX-certified sound system, volume to the max:-)

(If you don’t happen to own such a system, err… Then use whatever sound system is available around;-)

The intro video (currently, the only video available to watch at the Minuscule.tv website) is great. I enjoyed it a lot - it was fun, fast-paced and beautifully drawn. The technique the guys and girls from Minuscule/Futurikon (Thomas Szabo, Hélène Giraud) use is quite unusual - they use a mix of real footage and 3D animation, plus real-life sound, very suitably selected.

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