The Life & Times of a Transistor Geek

todaysdocument:

Plan of One Tower for the East River Bridge, 1867

When it opened on May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world.   Designed and built by German-born John A. Roebling and his son, Washington A. Roebling, the bridge connected New York and Brooklyn. The remarkable design used Roebling’s patented system of steel wire cable construction. Its graceful limestone and granite towers, pictured here, took 5 years to build.

(Source: research.archives.gov)

strle:

We’re looking for creative, enthusiastic, and entrepreneurial brand strategists to join our sales team and help supercharge brand excitement for Tumblr. You’ll help us cultivate dedicated sponsorships that fit organically within the Tumblr ecosystem, collaborating with sponsors to develop ambitious, innovative ideas that align with their marketing strategies.

transitmaps:

How the WMATA Rush+ Maps Are Printed

Many thanks to Matt Johnson for telling me about this amazing photoset on Flickr that details the process involved in printing the new Rush+ station maps for Washington, DC’s Metro system. Click through to see the whole set!

Even as an experienced graphic designer, I was amazed to see that the maps are screen printed - each colour on the map is printed one after the other, each using a separate screen with its own spot colour ink. With a map as complex as this, that means that there are a whopping twelve different colours to print! These being: river blue, park green, National Mall green, Blue Line, Orange Line, Yellow Line, Green Line, Red Line, Silver Line, District/County border grey, Beltway grey, and finally, black.

I would have thought with the advances in digital printing and stochastic (micro) screening, that these could be produced digitally in one step instead of twelve, but maybe these are special long-lasting UV inks that will withstand many years of use without fading - an important consideration for station maps! In any case, these photos are a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at a process that many people may not even think about.

EDIT: A tweet from a Metro representative confirms that there are THIRTEEN colours used in the printing: 4 greys (Silver Line, Beltway grey, county border grey, and icon grey), 3 greens (parks, Mall, Green Line), 2 Blues (river, Blue Line), Black, Red, Yellow and Orange.

OH MY GOD! I <3 <3 <3 this more than that time I met Bieber.

laughingsquid:

Incredible Photo of a Cat and a Praying Mantis

There’s a message about bravery here, and standing up.

catthew:

maddieonthings:

Maddie visits the Flat Iron

Yay! Maddie in NYC. Congrats on Good Morning America, Theron! :] 

Born in BK

(Source: contextfreepatentart)

ilovecharts:

futurejournalismproject:

Chrome overtakes Internet Explorer as the Web’s most popular browser

Filed under that didn’t take long. Chrome’s first public, stable release was in December 2008. The first version of Internet Explorer, 1995.

In 2002-2003, IE controlled about 95% of the browser market.

More info via The Next Web.

Image via StatCounter.

But, what about all that snazzy rebranding and Tumblring IE did?!

Waterfall at the Japanese Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

@NY Transit Museum in BK

smcdermott:

Posted an ad to reddit today.  r/programming and r/webdev.  It’ll run through the weekend. Quoting Wesley Willis at the end there was to be emphatic.

Downvoted for reblogging original post.

(via adaptable)

Court St R

captphunkosis:

Tonight just got awesome.

Oh em gee. When I was a wee little bit, Jem came on right after Thundercats. It was how I knew it was time to leave for school.

jtotheizzoe:

Phineas Gage’s Connectome

In 1848, railroad worker Phineas Gage had a 3.5-foot, 13 pound tamping iron blown through the front of his skull in a construction accident. Hell of a way to start your Wednesday (yes, I checked). He survived.

The story of Phineas Gage is now the stuff of legend, taught to first-year neuroscience students around the world. How did this man survive a rod through the frontal lobe? Doctors that wrote of him later spoke of extreme behavioral changes, a man who was “. . . fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows”.

Unfortunately, the legend of Phineas Gage’s post-injury brain is largely exaggerated, or at least based on rather thin evidence. But still, he was still a changed man, even if not in the extreme ways his legend suggests.

UCLA’s Jack Van Horn has reconstructed a model of Phineas Gage’s connectome. In the image above, the lower left image shows the “connectogram” of 110 healthy right-handed males, the major highways and byways between brain regions (the brain stem is at 6 o’clock, left and right hemispheres at 9 and 3 o’clock). The lower right image shows the connections that were likely disrupted by the iron spike through Gage’s frontal lobe.

Mo Costandi has a great write-up that you should check out. We now have a map of the damage to Gage’s brain. But do we really know any more about his supposed behavioral changes? Thanks to the exaggerations and sideshow mentality of those who studied hm while alive, likely not.

BONUS: Be sure to check out Robert Krulwich and Carl Zimmer moderating this debate on how much stock we should put in the connectome.

(via Neurophilosophy blog)

(via potoman)

soupsoup:

thesochillnetwork:

you know what’s cool…

via ProducerMatthew

(via brooklynmutt)