In honor of Edward Hopper’s birthday, we are revisiting a post originally published last year honoring the artist’s life and work.
Today is the birthday of painter and printmaker Edward Hopper. The artist who created “Nighthawks,” one of the most recognizable American paintings, would turn 131 if he were still miraculously alive today.
Goodreads users — like most passionate readers — are an opinionated bunch, so it’s rare for them to come to a consensus about any book. But there are some summer books that are indisputable slam-dunks for the beach, the plane, or inside next to the air-conditioner. The data-crunchers at Goodreads have named for us the seven summer books that seem to be taking off with their readers, judging from stellar ratings and comments. Click through to get some suggestions!
Do you happen to live in a country or geographical location where there is plenty of rain all year around? Of course, drizzles are fine and dandy, but when such rain is accompanied by heavy winds, it makes life a whole lot trickier, especially when you get around on foot a whole lot. The reason I say this is because, wind tends to play havoc with your umbrella, where strong winds especially will tend to make short work of some of the more flimsy umbrellas. The $79.95 Crowd Safe Wind Defying Umbrella is special in a sense where this is a patented umbrella that boasts of unique flexing blunt tips which will not get in the way of other pedestrians who are equally desperate to find some shelter.
This is different from standard issue umbrellas that have protruding metal tips, as it will tuck its tips safely within the scalloped edges of its canopy. Apart from that, these reinforced pouches will also do its bit to enable the umbrella to withstand wind, where it works in tandem with the floating, telescopic ribs and double struts, helping distribute tension across the entire 43″-diameter canopy, where it can mitigate inversion even in gusts that are measured up to 70mph. Made out from stormproof polyester, the lightweight stick umbrella boasts of a straight handle with a rubberized grip, and a convenient carrying strap.
[ Crowd Safe Wind Defying Umbrella copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
WASHINGTON — House Republicans feel growing pressure to steer firmly right on key issues, thanks to changes in primary-election politics that are complicating Congress’ ability to solve big problems.
Independent research supports the belief by these lawmakers that they owe their jobs to increasingly conservative activists, and that it’s safer than ever to veer right on many subjects rather than seek compromise with Democrats.
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More on House Republicans
Leo Tolstoy has nothing on Wall Street lobbyists.
The Russian novelist only wrote “War and Peace,” a 560,000-word novel. The lobbyists, in contrast, have helped turn the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into a 15 million word battleship anchor — 28 times as large as “War and Peace,” according to the Davis Polk law firm.
And the reform bill is only 39 percent complete! Yet it already contains 13,789 pages of rules and regulations (distinct from the original 848-page bill signed by President Obama on July 21, 2010).
Leap Motion isn’t convinced that a touchscreen is enough: instead, it wants you to start waving. While gesturing wildly at your electronics may bring to mind Jean Michel Jarre or trying to play a theramin, the Leap Motion controller is a whole new ball-game. Little larger than a packet of gum, the USB peripheral sits in front of your keyboard and tracks everything that moves in the space around it, with the theory being that reaching out and grabbing a virtual interface is a whole lot more natural than pushing a mouse around or even swiping at a touchscreen. Is the reality so clean-cut? Read on for the full SlashGear review.
Considering the amount of cleverness going on inside, the Leap Motion controller itself is relatively nondescript. Measuring 3 x 1.2 x 0.5 inches, the silver and black box is designed to sit in front of your keyboard, in-between where your wrists would normally be. A USB connection feeds out the left side, though if you’re prone to poor ergonomics while typing, you might find it gets in the way of your left wrist. Alternatively, you can put it above the keyboard (assuming you’re on a desktop machine) though you’ll have to reach a little further forward to work within the “sweet spot” of tracking.
That area is actually around 8 cubic feet, though it’s shaped more like a dome with the Leap Motion at its base than a cube. It extends roughly a foot off the desk, and around a foot and a half across, and is capable of tracking not only your hands, but each individual finger and in fact the movement of each joint.
So far, we’re talking about a pretty advanced Kinect, but where Leap Motion’s system differs from the camera-based system Microsoft’s Xbox 360 uses is in the accuracy. The controller may be tiny, but it can still track each finger’s movement to up to 1/100th of a millimeter, with a refresh rate of 290fps. That’s sufficient, the company promises, to track handwriting or sketching if you hold a pen or pencil above the controller, grabbing even the tiniest of flicks and flourishes.
Setup is straightforward. The box itself plugs into your computer – either a Windows 7 or 8 PC, or a Mac running OS X 10.7 Lion or above – with one of the two included USB cables, with Leap Motion bundling a 60-inch cord for those trying to reach a tower case under the desk, and a shorter 24-inch cord for those with a closer laptop.
The light on the front of the controller goes green, and then it’s a case of visiting Leap Motion’s online account page to download the driver software. There’s also a straightforward “Getting Started” video which walks through some of the possibilities, and then – when everything has installed – creating an account for Airspace, Leap Motion’s app download store.
Apps at that store are downloaded through the Airspace Home launcher, and there’ll be free and paid options to choose between. Prices for the paid apps range from $0.99 through to $99.99 (that getting you AeroMIDI, which does actually turn the Leap Motion controller into a Jean Michel Jarre-style MIDI motion controller that works with soft or hard synths), though $4.99 to $9.99 is more common. Not everything is available for both PC and Mac, and right now in total there are around 72 titles to choose from.
The first app most people will try is probably Touchless, available in versions for both platforms, and which effectively turns your hand into a mouse. Moving your hand in the space above the controller moves the mouse on-screen; stabbing a finger forward is a click, while swiping with multiple fingers extended works for scrolling. You can also pinch-zoom, again in mid-air, and there are different levels of precision to choose between – depending on how adept you are – which prioritize either precision, speed, or a combination of both.
It does take a little getting used to, but not much, and soon we were swiping, snatching at icons, flicking webpages around, and generally treating our Mac like it was a prop from Minority Report. We had best results when navigating through the browser, music playlists, or image galleries; it works in more precision-oriented apps like Photoshop, but it’ll take a little longer for our muscle-memory to retrain from a more traditional mouse or trackpad for those purposes.
The rest of the apps range from music players, through simple utilities like a movement-tracking biometric security lock, through art programs, to games, which dominate the Airspace store. There are also some science titles, including dissecting a virtual frog with your fingers. Integration with Google Earth and Nokia’s HERE Maps has also been included, so you can gesture through landscapes for instance.
It’s the sort of thing that works better when shown on video than in text, so we’ve picked out some of the highlights in each category to show you exactly what sort of movements are involved.
Used to be, a keyboard and mouse was enough. Now touch is the big new theme in computing, even though not every company agrees that it makes as much sense on the desktop as it does on, say, a tablet or smartphone. Apple is a notorious hold-out, but even with various PC manufacturers putting touchscreens on Windows 8 machines, there’s still plenty of models sold without.
In many ways, reaching out and stroking your computer’s display really isn’t ergonomic. There are often times when the minimal hand-movement of flicking between keyboard and mouse/trackpad is far more efficient. Scrolling through webpages and articles, meanwhile, is a more natural home for touch, but again the usability of holding a hand out to do the navigating is questionable.
Leap Motion’s system won’t quite address that – you’re still holding out your hand for extended periods, even if it’s not to reach all the way to the display – but with a broader area of activity than two-dimensional touch it feels less of a chore over extended periods. Again, even with Touchless we found some apps were more Leap Motion-friendly than others, but the ergonomics of flicking a hand over your work-area in general are far more flexible.
How useful Leap Motion’s controller is depends on whether you try to use it as a mouse-replacement or as an addition to your desktop. We’d argue that, in this early iteration at least, the latter makes more sense: there were times we quickly went back to using our existing peripherals, but equally there were moments when casually gesturing through the browser or Google Earth felt far more natural using our hands.
At $79, the Leap Motion controller is roughly the same price as a high-end peripheral like a gaming mouse. That seems on the reasonable side to us, assuming developer interest continues and we see not only more titles in the Airspace store, but more standalone apps and games integrate with the high-precision tracking. Eventually, we can envisage a time when Leap Motion’s technology is simply built into your laptop or keyboard; until then, eighty bucks is a low-cost way of bringing some sci-fi magic to your desktop.
Leap Motion Controller Review – Airspace and Apps is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Ever since Leap Motion teased
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When the Leap Motion controller was revealed to the world, it brought with it the promise of a new and unique computer user experience. And, ever since we first got to see what the Leap Motion controller could do — grant folks the ability to interact with a computer by waving their fingers and fists — we’ve wanted one of our own to test out. Well, our wish was granted: we’ve gotten to spend several days with the controller and a suite of apps built to work with it. Does the device really usher in a new age of computing? Is it worth $80 of your hard-earned cash? Patience, dear reader, all will be revealed in our review.
Gallery: Leap Motion controller review
Filed under: Peripherals
Gateway may live in the shadow of its parent company Acer, but it’s getting the spotlight today with refreshed versions of its entry-level PCs. New versions of its 15.6-inch and 17.3-inch NE Series laptops are slimmer than their ancestors, carry Kabini-based AMD A4 and A6 processors and offer up to 1TB of storage. Desktops remain largely the same on the outside, but there’s a few welcome tweaks on the inside. Although the small SX Series isn’t radically different, regular DX Series towers now have the option of a Haswell-era Intel Core i5 alongside recent AMD A-series chips; there’s also a new entry-level version of the One ZX all-in-one that puts a 3GHz Pentium behind the 21.5-inch LCD. Gateway is now shipping the two NE portables at baseline prices of $380 (15.6-inch) and $450 (17.3-inch), while the DX, SX and One Z lines respectively start at $298, $398 and $530. A KX Series of desktop displays is shipping at the same time, starting at $99 for a 19.5-inch screen.
Gallery: Gateway NE series (2013)
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, AMD, Intel, Acer
Source: Gateway (1), (2), (3)
In a speech later today, David Cameron will announce that, by the end of this year, all new UK broadband accounts will have adult content filters activated by default. Such restrictions will only be removed if the account-holder specifically requests it. Meanwhile, around 20 million users already connected will be presented with an “unavoidable decision” concerning adult content, and public WiFi providers must advertise if they utilize filters or not. Cameron also wants to outlaw “extreme pornography,” unify police forces’ regional databases and request that the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center draws up a “blacklist” of search terms to prevent people from searching for outlawed images online. Legislation will be introduced towards the end of the year to codify the changes, and ISPs not considered to be doing enough will be forced into action.
Via: The Guardian
Source: No. 10.gov
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