Work has kept me from my sporadic blogging; it's downright nonexistent now. So here's a list of a ton of things that I've bookmarked over the past few months.

First: TMBG ARE OK! Hell yeah, they are.

The images that won the 10th annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest are as inspiring as they are humbling. Last year's solar eclipse:

After denials, equivocations, delaying tactics, and general lameness, Google finally admitted that their maps project violated the privacy of private citizens when drive-by cars "casually scooped up passwords, e-mail and other personal information from unsuspecting computer users." Privacy is not a lost cause. Customers, make demands of your service providers.

David Ranta was finally freed from his prison term for a crime he didn't commit. He had a heart attack within days of his release. Let's hope he survives and find some semblance of a life outside of prison, and that someone is held accountable for this miscarriage of justice.

Quantum computing feels a lot like cold fusion of the 1980's--promising, but forever beyond reach. Maybe that's about to change? I'll wait to see the results, thanks.

I read some interesting history on Leland Stanford and some egalitarian ideas he had late in his life (after the death of his 16-year-old son). I find it so interesting that the most ruthless captains of industry often find compassion so late in life, and often after some personal tragedy. The parallel between conservative fathers changing their thoughts on gay marriage only after one of their own children is counted amongst the discriminated should not be lost on us.

I've been thinking a lot about personal data backup, lately. I'm using Bitcasa and CrashPlan, and ran across a very cool article show how to run CrashPlan on Synology hardware. Going to be implementing this later in 2013.

The Metabones Speed Booster will be my next purchase for my E-Mount NEX7.

Chinese hacking has been in the news a lot these past months. It's serious, but so is the militarization of the Internet. Both are a huge threat to us all.

I have absolutely no love for Monster, but the story of how the Beats empire basically hosed them completely makes me have enmity for the entire industry. I wish people actually understood how to make great audio devices, and consumers new how to pick them. Beats is jewelry. Cool, very slick, very clever jewelry.

I don't know if they ever found out what the hell this was on Mars.

As a father, I find the competition to get kids into the best-best-best school program exhausting, and I'm not even doing it yet. Articles about child prep classes for four-year-olds is insane. My god. Where will our childhoods go?

Here's some nice informal conversational Japanese for you to practice.

Dubstep is mainstream, love it or hate it. Here's how it got here.

Nocera goes off on the IPO market and the games the underwriters play to screw their "clients". Infuriating. Wall Street, when will you return to providing value to capital markets, I wonder?

All the cool optical illusions you remember, and lots you've never seen before. Visual cortex, we own you.

And finally, some watch updates:

1. Bronze is getting popular. I like it. Here's a relatively inexpensive mechanical watch in the B-uhr style with a beautiful bronze case and crown Harry Winston 3D Tourbillon is a yawnfest. Sorry.
2. However, the new Cartier mystery movement watches are awesome.
3. And yet nothing comes even close to the new Spacecraft by Romain Jerome. One part 1965 Mustang dashboard, one part dilithium crystal, and one part mechanical wristwatch. Brilliant!

To be decoded with this:

I think it's odd how prevalent camera lenses are, and yet how mysterious their manufacturing is (and even more so their design). I'll post some design stuff in the future, but this Discovery Channel video on how lenses are made is fascinating, if a little light on details:

F1's back in the states. It's the only way this could ever happen:

Congrats to McLaren. Championship goes down to the wire in Brazil next Sunday!

This video was posted last week and then taken down...I'm so glad it's back. Thanks to Robin for the link. A beautiful video portrait of a very special road car.

MotorHEAD モーターヘッド // Racing In The street : Group C Porsche 962 from Maiham-Media.com on Vimeo.

I've been bitching for a while about high frequency trading. Too much responsiveness in a market makes it unstable, and HFT does nothing to benefit the companies for which the capital market was originally created. Glad to see the topic is getting some press. Let's hope some regulation of this practice happens before the next market gyration does even more damage.

Vincent Laforet, Mr. HDDSLR grabs a Red EPIC and an 800mm lens for some breathtaking video of Endeavour's last flight:

Shuttle Endeavour: A piece of space history flies by in slow motion from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

So awesome.

In the wake of the recent spate of shootings, I found this Slate article interesting as it suggests that body armor is the next wave in gun-related crimes. It remains to be seen if the events in Aurora signal the start of a disturbing trend.

'100' (from 0 to 100 years in 150 seconds) from Filmersblog on Vimeo.