A pretty awesome looking what if.

The folks at Instagram have detailed The Technology behind Hyperlapse. Hyperlapse is the technology for smoothing out (though it’s much more than that) time lapse videos.

Hyperlapses are a special kind of time lapse where the camera is also moving. Capturing hyperlapses has traditionally been a laborious process that involves meticulous planning, a variety of camera mounts and professional video editing software. With Hyperlapse, our goal was to simplify this process. We landed on a single record button and a post-capture screen where you select the playback rate. To achieve fluid camera motion we incorporated a video stabilization algorithm called Cinema (which is already used in Video on Instagram) into Hyperlapse.

Video of unmanned SpaceX rocket self-destructing shortly after takeoff

This past Friday, SpaceX launched an unmanned, reusable Falcon 9R rocket (the successor to the Grasshopper) in McGregor, Texas. The rocket self-destructed shortly into its ascent.

The most fascinating part of the video is a) it’s only 40 seconds long, and knowing what’s going to happen but not when is interesting, and b) it really looks like something out of a movie. Wait, no this is real life, movies look like something out of real life!

World-Renowned Japanese Swordsman Brings ‘Fruit Ninja’ to Real Life (again)… not much more to say about this.

This ‘The Star Wars That I Used To Know’ - Gotye ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ Parody is absolutely amazing.

Good news for iTunes podcasters: Adam Carolla just beat patent trolls Personal Audio.

Good news today for iTunes podcasters: Adam Carolla has won in his fight against patent trolls Personal Audio after more than a year of litigation. The outcome likely means that the patent troll will cut its losses with suing other podcasters, something it has been threatening to do with others in the community throughout the case with Carolla.

Hopefully this buries those guys.

Watch The First 8 Minutes Of The Anti-D&D Movie Or Your Soul Is Doomed

Jack Chick’s notorious comic tract Dark Dungeons taught us all that playing Dungeons & Dragons will ruin your life and condemn your soul to hell. Now that comic is a movie all about the satanic pleasures of RPGs.

Hilarious.

I must say that the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Ferguson is absolutely bloody fantastic, and completely terrifying.

I honestly thought people were overreacting a bit, but after watching this, I must say I have come around in my thinking a bit. What a complete cluster-fuck brought on by a bunch of dickheads (the mayor, police, etc).

Photos imagine life of ‘Everyday Astronaut’

“I think at one point or another, every kid dreams of being an astronaut,” Tim Dodd says. “As a kid, I loved space. I had space sheets and space shuttle Legos. It’s just something that came back to me as an adult.” Now, the 29-year-old photographer from Cedar Falls, Iowa, shares his out-of-this-world passion in his hilarious photo series “Everyday Astronaut.”

“What can’t you do with a spacesuit. Truer words were never spoken!

This is pretty cool. It’s a project to use GPS and a mini-camera to find out Where Your Cat Goes. Some of the information (as well as the cat that randomly (it seemed) went to a strange house far outside their usual prowling area) is pretty interesting.

The last sitting is a great bit about photographer Bert Stern and a photo session with Marilyn Monroe. Absolutely fascinating read.

He then looked at his subject and was surprised. Monroe had a scar. She’d had a gall bladder operation six weeks before. He remembered Liz Taylor had been marked as well  a long tracheotomy scar along her throat. He recalled Diana Vreeland telling him, “I think there’s nothing duller than a smooth, perfect-skinned woman. A woman is beautiful by her scars.” He didn’t buy it when Vreeland said those words, but here he was with a half-naked Marilyn Monroe. How could argue with that opinion now?

Slimmer, reversible next-gen USB Type-C now ready for PCs & mobile.

Following an announcement back in December and some renders that popped up a few months back, today the USB 3.0 Promoter Group announced the next-generation USB “Type-C” connector is now ready for production. That means that PC and smartphone manufacturers can now adopt the standard, which the Promoter Group describes as “the final piece in developing a single-cable solution” for the industry.

Looks good, only thing that worries me is it looks like it’s got the super thin “tongue” in the middle, which means it’s still gone one of the downsides of current USB devices with it potentially being fiddly or prone to breaking. I know a lot of people don’t like the stuff the Apple does, but the lightning cable has similar benefits (reversible, small, etc) without the middle tongue. Time will tell I guess.

My wish: Use art to turn the world inside out is a fantastic TED Talk by a street photographer and artist in France. it takes a bit to get going, but what he’s doing is amazing.

Big thanks to Zack Arias and his post on DedPxl where he links to the Inside Out Project.

As a note, you can see some of the images through google maps right now.

Civilians in Abandoned McDonald’s Seize Control of Wandering Space Satellite. Really the title says it all. Geeks + a bit of money + a bit of gear = control of a NASA satellite from 1978.

For the first time in history, an independent crew is taking control of a NASA satellite and running a crowdfunded mission. They’re doing it all from a makeshift mission control center in an abandoned McDonald’s in Mountain View, California, using old radio parts from eBay and a salvaged flat screen TV.

Definitely go through the website, it’s a Chrome Experiment, so it’s super slick and sexy, but also has a lot of decent info and videos about the whole adventure.

Awesome Celebration of Light (the fireworks in Vancouver) video.

Great trailer for The Theory of Everything, a biopic about Stephen Hawking’s young days.

Some of this trailer seems to sell a pretty typical biopic. But the team of James Marsh and these two leads inspires a lot of confidence, and it is almost impossible to fail to be moved by Hawking’s story. The love celebrated here, however, wasn’t as eternal as the trailer would like us to think, and it’s that selective vision that makes it feel perhaps too optimistic. Because the film is based on Jane Hawking’s memoir, I’m curious to see how far the film really goes.

Looks pretty amazing.

3D Object Manipulation in a Single Photograph using Stock 3D Models is a bit complex, but it’s still pretty awesome. Definitely watch the video at the bottom of the post to get an idea about what they’re talking about.

Photo-editing software restricts the control of objects in a photograph to the 2D image plane. We present a method that enables users to perform the full range of 3D manipulations, including scaling, rotation, translation, and nonrigid deformations, to an object in a photograph.

After lots of rumors, the Pentax Q-S1 has finally been officially announced. Looks like a sexy little camera.

The Q-S1 features an impressive 40 stylish colour combinations. A 12.4 megapixel, back-illuminated CMOS sensor promises to deliver high-quality images for the photographer in you. Creativity is certainly not compromised in the PENTAX Q series latest installment. Users will be able to use Bokeh Control to produce SLR-like bokeh effects with ease, as well as Smart Effects Modes to add the desired filter effects with the simple turn of a dial. The combination of a well-conceived design and great operability makes the PENTAX Q-S1 an ideal everyday camera for photographers of all levels.