Most of the people interviewed by Newsradio 880 noted that it sounded very much like thunder – although one resident said the noise was so loud it shook his house – another Mt Kisco resident reported seeing a shooting-star like streak across the sky over the weekend.

Seismologists, the military, NASA, and other experts all report nothing in the area which should have caused such a sound.

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: Second Unidentified ‘Boom’ Reported in Rockland County

Thanks to the magic of video processing, old, shaky, handheld archival video can now be digitally stabilized as if the camera was on a tripod.

The latest famous video to be re-released in stabilized form is this old bigfoot video. Frankly, I think he looked a little more scary in the original – stabilized, his gait and glancing mannerism seem much more human-like (almost slacker-like). He looks like some middle-aged guy checking for witnesses before entering an adult video store.

I would expect a feral human to have a more animal-like gait. Also, I would expect a bigfoot to be much more concerned about a human encounter, and wouldn’t turn its back on the cameraman so casually. I’m sticking to ‘dude in a gorilla suit’.

The Kennedy assassination Zapruder film was also digitally stabilized – but its no less disturbing and horrific as the original.

via BoingBoing

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: Bigfoot Video Stabilized

Today, that article was a story at The Wall Street Journal about how ‘Splurging Is Good For Your Health’.

Note: My wife can stop reading at this point.

In the article, a report entitled ‘When Virtue Is A Vice‘ published in the Harvard Business Review is discussed. The report examines short and long term regret based on people’s spending decisions.

Briefly, the report suggests that extravagant spending is more likely to result in short-term regret which fades over the long term, while withholding from such purchases results in long term regret.

(I want to point out that I sent an email to the WSJ protesting the headline – the source article does not discuss the health effects of spending whatsoever)

Now, let’s discuss this interesting theory of how being frugal can result in long-term regret.

One of the examples given are of college students and how they choose to use their time over spring break.

In the long term, students who chose to work or not travel on spring break experienced a long-term regret.

I, for one, agree totally with this analysis, as not only do I regret working over spring break in college, but I regret working during college PERIOD. If I were to do it over, I would have begged, borrowed, and stolen to avoid working a single day of college. I would have learned so much more instead of just getting by, and I would have been able to socialize more as well – I did not realize at the time how singular my college experience would be in either regard – I just wanted to ‘get through it’.

At the time, I felt a great deal of self-satisfaction knowing that I was putting myself through college without any grants or other large gifts. Now, years later, that means relatively nothing to me – it was a once in a lifetime experience, and I should have lived it to its fullest, and not compromised – not then.

In my experience, it is extremely important that you recognize times in your life when you need to finance living well. As Joel Goodsen says:

“Sometimes you just have to say, ‘What The f*ck?’”

Truer words were never spoken.

Similarly, I have never been a good vacation planner – I always piggybacked on the plans of others, and spent much vacation time just goofing off and saving money – I regret that.

I don’t necessarily agree with spending extravagantly generally has this effect, but when it comes to stuff like vacation and free time, I agree 100%.

In fact, two of the most unaffordable trips I have ever taken, both of which threw me into the two biggest piles of debt in my life, were also two of the most important experiences of my life – and one led me to relocate and a much more rewarding career. It was, indeed, life-defining.

So, when it comes to living frugally or living well, I lean towards living well.

Living well begets living well to a large degree, I think – and some seem to be in agreement with me that one day, when are dead, the stories of how we saved will be unknown and the stories of how we spent will be remembered fondly and shared among our survivors.

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: Wall Street Journal Says Splurging Is Good For Your Health

The FZ18 was hard to resist – its a VERY hot camera, Amazon ran out of stock and has been rotating through its 3rd-party camera stores for fulfillment. Why so hot? Because it has this ridiculously long 18x zoom lens made by Leica – the finest lens maker out there. It zooms from a wideangle 28mm to an incredible 504mm telephoto. Plus it has full manual capability like an SLR and even RAW image format – but only about $300!!

But on with the tips…

Chances are, most of the photos on your hard drive were taken during two times of the year – summer, and over winter holidays.

Here are some tips for making sure you take some great photos this summer.

1. Try to get your subject to fill the frame. If you don’t care about the stuff surrounding your subject, get the subject to fill the full frame. If possible, do this by moving closer to the subject rather than using the zoom – in general, zoom pictures don’t come out as well.
2. Avoid using flash when you can. Your camera will probably trigger the flash liberally, to insure your subject is well lit, but a flash picture almost always ruins the mood of the scene. Most cameras let you turn off the flash, even in auto mode. On the down side, not using the flash can result in a blurry picture, so hold the camera very still or rest it on a table or against a wall if you can. Stabilization features help, but do not solve, this problem. Sometimes it is hard to tell in the LCD if the picture was blurred, so always take a flash shot as well for insurance. Also, keep in mind that not using flash will normally result in the camera choosing a high-ISO speed, which will add noise to your photo.
3. Lean to use some basic post-processing techniques. If your subject didn’t fill the frame, use an image processing program to crop the picture so it does. Try sharpening the photo and see if it looks better. Also try boosting the contrast and saturation a bit. I always try these 4 simple tools on pictures I use on StationStops to help photos look better, but rarely use any others. Don’t overdo any of them – be conservative and you will get better results.
4. Always have a spare battery, charger, lens cleaning kit, and plenty of storage media. Storage media is getting really cheap, even for many-megapixel cameras, so there is little excuse to not have plenty of gigabytes on hand. If your camera battery dies, you want to be able swap it, not charge it. Nothing is worse than getting stuck with a dirty lens and no cleaning kit – also make sure you inspect the lens regularly – sometimes a dirty lens isnt so obvious in the LCD, but is when you view the photos on a PC.
5. Use a photo-sharing service like Flickr rather than emailing photos. Emailing photos is very old-school, and very inefficient. By using a photo sharing site such as Flickr, you have an off-site backup of your photos, and your friends and family can access all of them at will and even order prints. If you have a big batch and a slow connection, just start the upload before going to bed!

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: 5 Summer Photography Tips

I am one of those fools who bought an XBox HD-DVD drive add-on. If you haven’t heard, HD-DVD is dead, so its currently a paperweight.

Eventually, I will probably buy a Playstation 3, as it is a great Blu-Ray player and the same price as most standalone Blu-Ray players, so – might as well get the video game functionality too.

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: Today’s A Good Day To Go Blu-Ray

We could all learn some lessons in multitasking from this power commuter.

Not really all that sfw, much like the pole dancing video I shamelessly posted last month.

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: Woman Changes Clothes On Subway (video)

In addition to an unattributed internet video of the entire landing (below), photographer Lars Tretau captured stunning close-in photographs from a different angle which can be found here and here.

Winds were gusting up to 60 MPH at Hamburg airport during the landing attempt thanks to a European cyclone known as ‘Emma‘, which has already taken over a dozen lives in Germany in separate incidents.

The plane landed safely on its second attempt on a different runway after circling for about 10-15 minutes.

The pilot, only identified as “Oliver A.” 39, said in a statement:

“As we were about to touch down, a gust of wind pressed the left wing towards the ground, We pulled up immediately. A maneuver we practice in training very often.”

Lufthansa spokesman Wolfgang Weber added “the pilots reacted in an extremely professional manner…” , adding that many of the passengers “...did not handle it well…some were near tears.”

“It is hard to describe — it went very quickly” passenger Hansi Kuepper said on n-tv television. He said there was silence on board for several minutes after the incident.

Flight LH 044 originated in Munich and was co-piloted by “Maxi J.”, 24.

None of the 137 souls on board were injured. Amazingly, the plane was repaired and put back into service the next day.

You will notice that upon approach, the aircraft is lined up 30-45° to the runway – this is a deliberate pilot technique for landing in crosswind. Just prior to touchdown, the plane is straighted out, with the hopes that at this point ground effect will make better control possible.

The reason for this is that airplanes are designed to be stable in that face of wind, so if there is crosswind, the pilot wants to try to face the aircraft into the wind to maximize the effectiveness of the control surfaces.

In the video, as he turns the plane at the last moment for touchdown, the crosswinds severely tip the plane, and the left wing crashes into the ground. The pilot’s decision at this point is crucial – he slams the throttle to full power and gets back in the air, which is known as a go-around.

Originally appeared on: StationStops - Metro-North Train Schedules and NYC Commuting Blog See the original post here: Breaking Video: Amazing Footage of Lufthansa A320 Wing Crashing Into Runway In Hamburg