Once in a while I plan to do somewhat of a bullet list of things I am enjoying a lot lately, with no particular format or theme. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do.
- Viva Radio a great Internet radio player owned by American Apparel and based in Brooklyn. Users can either listen online in a browser, or download a flash based desktop application. Various DJs and contributors have their own stations, which air live on certain nights during hourly shows, or are archived and available to be listened to at any time. Radio is streamed and all track information is available. This is one of the largest and diverse collections of music available in radio form, and is something I love to listen to to discover music I haven't heard or just to enjoy while working on projects or getting ready for bed.
Viva Radio - Mode Depesche a magazine from Köln, Germany, published by Heimat-Keoln specifically devoted to photography, fashion and a lack of convention or firm advertising of any sort. each issue contains the work of 4-5 different teams of photographers and industry teams in sections and showcases great, experimental, fashionable work, and generally include poster size prints of a few selected photographs from the magazine, which are a really nice treat.. A little back story here, I have kind of gone on a bit of a quest for test issues of magazines that interest me. I sent a couple hundred E-mails to magazines from around the world, mostly in Europe in the themes of design, fashion, photography and the like, expressing my possible interest in subscribing and hope for a free trial issue. I have received close to 20 so far, I am not so sure many more will come, but Mode Depesche was certainly one of my favourites.
Mode Depesche - Adidas Tunit F50.9 Soccer Cleats Adidas have pretty much made all my dreams come true. I have always been a loyal Nike cleat wearer, but have always been disillusioned with the idea of spending 200 dollars on a pair, being stuck with the same colour, knowing if any part of the pair breaks, from the studs, the upper, the seams, then it would be time to buy a new pair. With the Tunit system, players have complete control over all the parts, and purchase interchangeable studs for different ground situations (hard, soft, firm), a chassis (essentially the support and firm element underneath the foot inside the shoe), sock liner inserts, and my personal favourite part, the upper, which has holes in the bottom, come in dozens of different designs and colours (including every team participating in the 2008 European cup). When all the pieces come together to make a pair of cleats, and each part is easily replaceable, the conservative spender will feel much better about replacing parts and not just the entire shoe, and for 25-80 dollars a piece, the various uppers allow the fashion forward, individualist footballer an array of options to match home and away uniforms, different teams, or just make a statement with the brightest, best looking cleats on the pitch. I will definitely be buying a set with 3-4 different uppers.
Adidas Soccer
- Taboo for Firefox A really innovative and useful new take on bookmarking, and one of the only reasons I don't like safari (for not having it). I am not so sure id use firefox at all if it were not for Taboo. With two small buttons on the navigational menu, bookmark a page, and view all the bookmarks. When the bookmark, or 'Taboo' button is pressed, a screenshot and link information for the current page is taken and stored, no need to edit names, place in specific folders, or provide any further information. Use the open button and see the Taboos you've saved in thumbnail form, hover over any to see a larger version of the screenshot, click on it and travel to the page. What is really useful about this is that Taboo remembers what portion of the screen you were on when saving a Taboo, so if you are busy reading an article, and need to go, or restart, and need to read the rest later and want to pick up where you left off, no problem. I really enjoy using this when I am surfing blogs, looking at design portfolios and other really resourceful sites. It allows me to quickly judge whether or not id enjoy reading further into a site, saving it for later, and going on to other pages on my cyclical adventures. It is especially helpful to those visual learners who remember layouts and images better than URLs, blog names or artists names to reference a web page. this is a very highly recommended tool, its a free plug in, so try it today! Safari, please make something like this!
Taboo - Canon 5D Mark II I can not say enough about the new professional upgrade to the wildly popular Canon 5D digital SLR. My affection for it's lore is so strong that this part of this post is just a preface to the next post that will be completely dedicated towards it. Forget what you keep hearing about the Nikon D90 which is being deceivingly advertised as being 'the first Digital SLR to shoot HD video'. Its true, to an extent. Just in case you don't know, HD comes in different resolutions, and 1080p is the industry peak, when one purchases a HDTV they look for 1080p, because if its something like 960, or lower, its much poorer quality. The Nikon D90 shoots 720p HD, which is far inferior to the image quality and resolution of the full 1080p HD video shot on Canon's 5D Mark II, not to mention that the Canon shoots 21MP as opposed to only 12.3 for the Nikon. The Nikon's ISO range is only 100-6400, whereas the Canon ranges from 50-25000. Granted the Nikon is about half the price of the Canon, but believe me, if you are serious about photography and cinematography in one camera, and you require the up most image quality, your choice is utterly clear. Much more to come in my next post, completely devoted to my future wife, the Canon 5D Mark II.
Canon 5D Mark II
No comments:
Post a Comment