Look! I'm world famous!

A while back, a guy on Flickr asked me if he could use one of my photos for a Jazz Festival they were holding, called The Upton Blues Festival which they are holding in the UK. The guy wasn't the first to ask me about, this, and I said the same thing that I always say when people ask: Sure, go ahead as long as I get attribution and a copy of the final product. While the guy wasn't the first to ask, he is the first to actually return a finished product to me, which you can see here:



This is the original photo, taken from my Flickr photostream:



The guy chose this photo because last year the area that the festival was held was devastated by flooding, and this is their comeback year, which made the broken piano appropriate. Thanks to the Upton Blues Festival for appreciating my work, and for actually returning something to me!

Rock On

At first, this image seems impossible, and screams of someone with photoshop skills pulling a fast one on the internet.



Of course, if that were the case, then it really wouldn't have much of a place here on my blog. Rather this is the art of a man named Bill Dan, who goes around balancing rocks on each other. Be sure to check out his videos too -- they will make a believer out of you!

Thor Music

A solid-state Tesla coil with a primary running at its resonant frequency in the 41 KHz range. That is modulated from the control unit in order to generate the tones. The high voltage sparks make the noise. Every cycle of the music is a burst of sparks at 41 KHz, triggered by digital circuitry at the end of a "long" piece of fiber optics.

This Tesla coil was built and is owned by Steve Ward, who is an EE student at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.