A British stuntman is still in one piece following what is thought to be the first safely executed skydive without using a parachute. According to BBC News, Gary Connery, 42, wore a wingsuit to complete the jump, in which he reached speeds upwards of 125 km/h before landing in a pile of 18,600 cardboard boxes in Oxfordshire, in southeastern England. Connery, who has appeared as a stuntman in films such as Die Another Day and Batman Begins, jumped from a helicopter at a height of 730 metres and was equipped with a parachute but it was not deployed. The stunt flight took less than one minute to complete. Continue reading →

Sir Jonathan Ive kneels to be knighted by the Princess Royal at Buckingham Palace. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA The Apple designer Sir Jonathan Ive has spoken of the "thrilling" moment when he was knighted by the Princess Royal at Buckingham Palace.The 45-year-old, who is senior vice-president of industrial design at Apple, flew to Britain from the US with his wife and eight-year-old twin sons to receive the honour."It has been wonderful. It was really thrilling and particularly humbling," he said after being made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) for services to design and enterprise.Ive, who was born in Chingford, north-east London, is credited withdesigning some of the best-loved gadgets of the modern age, including the iPhone, iPod, iMac and iPad.He ... Continue reading →

Schiebel's CAMCOPTER® S-100 UAS integrated with CINEFLEX® is the ultimate gyro-stabilized solution for aerial cinematography. The CINEFLEX® is a multi-axis coordinated gimbal control system that provides layered isolation, steering, and fine correctional movements to stabilize a wide selection of precision optics to a sub-pixel level. The S-100 navigates via pre-programmed GPS waypoints or is operated with a pilot control unit. Missions are planned and controlled via a simple point-and-click graphical user interface. The pair of these two high advanced systems gives us the ability to capture fully stabilized high quality images with ease. like us on facebook at:facebook.com/brainfarmcinema for more info visit us atbrainfarmcinema.comsnaprollmedia.com Continue reading →

A "Kardashian" as a unit of measure for attentionMAY 22 2012 Ethan Zuckerman proposes measuring attention with a unit of measure called a Kardashian. One Kardashian is equal to the amount of worldwide media attention that Kim Kardashian gets in a day. I choose the Kardashian as a unit both because I like the mitteleuropean feel of the term -- like the Ohm or the Roentgen -- and because Kardashian is an exemplar of attention disconnected from merit, talent or reason. The Kardashian mentions how much attention is paid, not how much attention is deserved, so naming the unit after someone who is famous for being famous seems appropriate. Should the unit be adopted, I would hope that future scholars will calculate Kardashians using whatever ... Continue reading →