Today Sammi Naughton posted a great link on Facebook, and this is quite fascinating!
“Ultra fascinating discovery. Wow, my mind is racing… Forget all previous theories (love that about science!). Stars have now been shown to be able to create complex organic materials — and they are literally everywhere.
For theologians, apparently if you let there be light, that light has a few ideas of its own — that may be the catalyst of a profound series of events. 😉 Both science and religion can expect to be pondering for a while with this one.
We are made of stardust? Is the universe itself a living thing? Wow, this finding could mean that there is an almost infinite range of possible life, throughout the universe…”
Onmonday there will be 7.000.000.000 people on the planet earth (and I guess a few out in space) according to United Nations Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Some facts (quote from worldometers.com):
World Population:
reached 6 billion in 1999
is predicted to reach 7 billion on October 31, 2011
has doubled in 40 years from 1959 (3 billion) to 1999 (6 billion)
is currently growing at a rate of around 1.15 % per year
growth rate reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it was at 2%
growth rate is currently declining and is projected to continue to decline in the coming years
average annual population change is currently estimated at over 77 million
world population will nearly stabilize at just above 10 billion persons after 2200
a tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history up to the year 1800 for world population to reach 1 billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years (1930), the third billion in less than 30 years (1959), the fourth billion in 15 years (1974), the fifth billion in 13 years (1987), the sixth billion in 12 years (1999) and the seventh billion in 12 years (2011). During the 20th century alone, the population in the world has grown from 1.65 billion to 6 billion.
I guess this blog post is as personal as it gets, but at the same time this blog is about “life in general” so I’ve decided to share some thoughts around a personal subject.
Since I’m going to Piteå in a short period of time; a trip that I’m really looking forward to, this will be the first time in winter since last christmas and I guess there will be memories from last years visit. Last christmas was a really odd one. My foster-brother, Ola, that lived with our family during my whole up-bringing passed away on the evening of the 23:rd of December.
This picture was taken the next morning, in the morning of Christmas eve. At that moment, when the picture was taken, we still hadn’t got the message.
The morning was really chilly and calm, and in many ways respectful of what we didn’t know at that stage. Now, 10 months later I guess this picture means a lot more than just trying out a new camera that was the main purpose for this picture.
My brother lived in the southern parts of Sweden, and I guess we hadn’t spoken nearly as much as we should’ve done, but last year (in 2010) that changed, and we had started to make some plans together. Not big plans, but nice small ones. Ola had been ill in the winter/spring of 2010, but we all thought that he now would fully recover. Our plans came to a sudden end during the christmas Holliday… Will never forget when my father answered the phone and I instantly could feel what’ve happened.
I’m really proud of my brother. He made a remarkable life journey both in his private life as in his carrier and in many ways he could be a role model for many others. When Ola was in the middle of “högstadiet” (between middle school and high school in US) his grades were really poor (around 1 in Swedish terms) and he struggled in many parts of life, and the future, to be honest didn’t look that great but one day my mother and Ola made a deal.
My mom asked
– Ola, do you want to stay home from school for two days?
and you can guess what the instant answer was? 🙂
– Of course!!”, he said with a big smile!
My mother replied:
– Ok, you can call in sick but you have to do one thing during the days you stay at home, and that is to study for the test that you will have a few days from now.
Ola thought that this deal was great! And I can imagine that it was a great feeling that a parent told you to call in sick… so he stayed home, listened to his KISS-albums, but he kept his promise, he studied!
When the test results came back Ola had the best score in his whole class, and he was proud, he suddenly felt as if he was as good as anyone else, and this wasn’t so hard! This was a big day of change for him in his school work, and I guess in his overall life. When he left high school he had 11 (I think it was out of 13 or 14) 5:s (grade A+ internationally) and the rest was 4:s (like grade A:s).
I have so many stories about Ola; like the first time when he was baby sitting for me and my sister and mixed cinnamon with cocoa and made us, in a strong bossy style, drink half a litre of that brew, not listening to our loud childish complaints. A horrifying moment at that time but afterwards a great laugh, and all about young minds.
After finishing school and he had left his national services behind, he then after a few years of work in the paving industry, started his own firm in the same branch. A firm that got really successful.
After some time he also met his wife and started a family. A family that I know he loved above all.
With love and respect
This song was performed by Ola Sigfridsson at the ceremony
“Who better to get natural lighting tips from than a three-time Travel Photographer of the Year award-winner? We’re at the studio of photographer Bob Holmes for today’s Marc Silber Show – Advancing Your Photography! He shares some techniques you can use to work with natural light and take better photos, no matter where your travels may take you”
This is a really good video. If you wan’t to get down to the goody stuff I think you can fast forward a minute or so.
Forthe last few days I’ve been staying at home with a terrible cold (second in a month time – guess I’ll better start putting clothes on when I’m going out). Here in Sweden the winter is slowly arriving and in the northern part it’s already there.
On the “other side” of winter you have; spring.
This photo was taken during a short vacation in Spain with some friends. We had played golf in the morning and having lunch before our next round in the afternoon. Suddenly a bird landed on our table and starting eating bread, and since the table was sharp as a mirror I thought it could be a nice photo if I could grab the bird when it flew away.
So I put my camera on “speed-shooting”, set my focus on the table and waited just a few seconds. …And I got him!
As this blog continue to grow it get’s harder to find all the material so I’ve started a little reorganisation that I hope can help. I’ve added some new categories like Photography -> tips & tricks, to keep all those links together. At some points I also post in Swedish and that material is found under, exactly, Swedish 🙂
I will be all set with the new system later on tonight.
This is one of the coolest flying machines I’ve ever seen. Can think of so many situations when this could be helpful, but I guess the military will be first in using it, as always.
In a few weeks time I will visit my home town, Piteå for a family visit. These occasions are always a great get away from my daily business. In Piteå everything goes in half the pace and you take more time to think and reflect while you’re there.
This visit I will also do a photo project with a time lapse of Piteå river. Keep your fingers crossed for great weather.
This is a pic I took in Piteå during my summer holiday.
Hope you have a great finish of your weekend
(c) Pedro Hansson - pic taken in Piteå during the summer of 2011
As some of you have found out I’m a quite heavy user of using my phone as a camera, but this was a true surprise. Seamus McGarvey, the man behind the movie “The Avengers” now reveals that some shots in the movie actually was made with… an Iphone!
Ok, this is a little evil and childish but I can’t help laughing every time I see it! It’s not necessary to understand the language to understand the video… 🙂
Previously I’ve posted a pic from the castle where we stayed one year ago. The occasion was some close friends wedding, and what a wedding it was! This photo is taken just outside the castle towards the lake.
I need to go back there sometime and relieve the atmosphere! Can really recommend Ireland if you haven’t been there yet!
(c) Pedro Hansson - Ireland 2010 - Nikon D5100 (Focal length: 58 mm; f/6.3; 1/160)(c) Pedro Hansson - THE Couple one day before the wedding - Nikon D5100(c) Pedro Hansson - Groom and Best man on their way to the Castle
After a busy weekend where I almost haven’t had the time to hardly sit down, Sunday was all the opposite. Took a walk at one of Stockholms Castles, Drottningsholms Slott. Unfortunately in the amazing weather I forgot my DSLR, but I took a number of pictures anyway with my phone.
Hope you all have a great ending of this (at least in Sweden) beautiful weekend!
(c) Pedro Hansson - Drottningholms Slott - Stockholm
My idea behind this photo was to portrait the difference between the different stages in life – the two girls eating, and the woman and the man sitting on the bench – are in.
I tried to use a different composition where I kept the pole as a separator between the two couples.
(c) Pedro Hansson - Picture taken in Stockholm on 17:th of September 2011. Works better in full screen mode.
Maybe you have tried to capture a golf swing or fast flying object with your mobile cam. I guess you sometimes missed that opportunity due to the (compared to your DSLR) slow camera.
Burst mode is an app that takes multiple shots and you can then choose which one’s you wanna save. Quite handy sometimes.
The app used to cost $2 but now it’s free (for a limited time?). A little app to try out during your weekend walk? (Btw, do you notice the slight optical illusion on the right pic?)
The last few days this blog has been almost all about iPhone and the new iOS5, and almost nothing about photography so I guess it’s time to go back to normal again.
Winter is soon here in Sweden and today we almost had 0 degrees celsius when I woke up. So I thought a picture from a few months ago would help to keep us warm.
This pic is from an amazing summer night in early August. The night was warm, the sky was blue and the sounds from people cheering and toasting was all there. In short, a perfect summer night.
So, the first 24 hours with the new iOS is coming to an end. At first it seemed to be a lot of struggling but I must say it’s an impressive upgrade! At one hand you hardly can’t see the difference, but on the other hand it’s so much functionality bundled together with your everyday use of the phone that I think it’s hard to go back to the old version.
The main benefits in my opinion so far:
iCloud is far better than I thought. When it was released I almost compared it to Dropbox, but this is so much more. To get all your pictures directly into Aperture on your Mac and at the same time get them in your iPad and so on is amazing! This actually makes my old iPad come to better use (since it doesn’t have a cam), and I guess iCloud is the best feature all over.
The drop down panel is also really good. I used to have a couple of Androids before and this feature is probably the one that I missed the most. You can move faster to the things that happens in your communication with others.
iMessage seems really neat. Works perfectly. On the other hand it almost feels like a clone to “What’s app”.
GUI-enhancement. It seems like GUI-enhancements have been made all over. It’s really subtle if you don’t think about it, but the typefaces in the messaging and some symbols have changed face and it actually looks a little bit more modern.
Finally get rid of the cable to connect to iTunes. This is one of the features that have been the most hard to understand. Finally you can drop that cable and just download things “over air”.
On the negative side I can think of two main things to complain (a little) about:
The upgrade was a little bit frustrating (in Apple-terms) due to all icons loosing their old structure, even though I’m one of those that find pleasure in trying things out
A little lack of performance. At first it seemed like a big drop, and after some hours I couldn’t see any drop at all but I think there is a little bit more lagging.
Since I’m not a pilot (and never will be) I can hardly understand how they can land in these conditions, I’ve always been fascinated by cross-wind landings. There are numerous videos out there with scenes from some really amazing landings and this is a good collection (if you turn the music off).
Day after upgrading to Apple iOS5; my experiences so far:
The phone still feels a little bit laagy. especially when I’m in app store (and if you’ve read my previous post you know that I’ve visited app store like 300 times already. If I would’ve owned a 3GS I would’ve waited for some more information on the performance.
My apps haven’t returned so I still have to manually reinstall them from app store. A time-consuming task to say the least. UPDATE: I’ve found a way around this. Just launch iTunes at your computer and sync the programs once more. I lost all my folders so all the apps are just hanging around but at least I don’t need to manually install every single one through iCloud.
iCloud feels even better than yesterday. The experience to take a pic with the phone and seconds after see it in Aperture is amazing
Upgrading my iMac to the new Lion 10.7.2 went really easy. The only problem I’ve got was a duplication of my calendars. That was easy resolved with just deleting one copy under preferences
After the first 12 hours after upgrading my conclusion it that I would’ve waited a few days to upgrade if I wasn’t REALLY interested in just get some experience with the new iOS and I didn’t mind struggling a bit to get there. I still haven’t succeeded in upgrading my iPad (still get an error message at the end of the upgrade process). I guess I will end up deleting it and then reinstall from my backup. UPDATE: Earlier this morning I finally (3:rd attempt) got things to work (maybe this was due to installing the Lion upgrade before?!) and it works great. The problem with the apps, like I had on the iPhone I’ve on the iPad aswell. Apart from that everything now works fine and I also think that the performance is back.
Image Stream (Bildström in Swedish) in iOS5 - Image transferred by Image Stream after screen shot from my iPhone
Tonightwas the night when the final release of iOS5 was about to be released. With a cup of coffee in my hand I eagerly waited for the upgrade to reveal itself in iTunes, and suddenly, there it was.
I’m a quite heavy user so my phone is stuffed with things, so I was prepared for a pretty long, timewise, upgrade. After a little more than 1 hour I was finished.
My initial reactions so far:
– I notice a slight decrease in speed performance due to the heavier OS but I’m not sure yet whether this is because I still have a lot of things to handle before everything’s up or if it just me searching for differences
– The upgrade process was pretty sleek, no bigger worries but on my iPad I’m actually still struggling. Keeps getting an upgrade error. But as always with Apple products it’s just to start all over again
– iCloud really feels like a bigger thing than I initially thought it would be. It’s actually pretty nice to have all your photos (for instance) instantly uploaded to your iPad and iMac when you have taken them
– I’ve always had some problems with “me.com” but now when the services are all pulled together, it seems like those problems have been resolved with the iCloud-solution
– The biggest problem I’ve had so far is that a large portion of my 400 app’s (yes I know it’s a little bit weird) doesn’t get installed so I need to manually press the “iCloud”-button to install those that aren’t there already. With the iCloud-button i mean the service that Apple released during the summer where all your apps are synced between your iTunes-account, your phone and iPad. Quite neat and it works perfectly. Even though the service works perfectly it’s quite time consuming to enter that button, go to the screen where the icon is, go back to iTunes and click the next one.. and do this for all my apps.
– The new reminder-app seems really good at first glance. Haven’t for obvious reasons been able to try it so much yet.
If you’ve upgraded and wan’t to share your thought’s I’m really curious about how things went.
(c) Pedro Hansson - Picture of Slussen in Stockholm - Photo date 2011-09-17
When I was in my late teens one of my favourite artists was Richard Marx. Today I stumbled over some new songs from him. Corny, yes! But it sure reminds me about “those days back then”…
This looks truly amazing! Adobe demonstrates a new function for deblurring a blurred image, in the next release of Adobe Photoshop. Think about all the pictures you’ve taken that now can be saved. This looks really interesting!
If you’re into Nature Photography maybe this competition can be something for you. If you aren’t interested in competing you’ll probably like this site anyway.. there are some truly amazing pics there (scroll down a bit on the linked page).
Saarimner.com 