A year in the life of a Norwegian forest (time lapse video)

by Kent Wien on

In 2005, Eirik Solheim shot a still picture of his back yard in Norway every day for an entire year. He aligned the pictures together and created a beautiful time lapse. Since his 2005 version, he’s managed to do a higher resolution movie in 2008 and finally, during all of last year, he put together time lapse that uses video clips.

Eirik chose the amazing Canon 5D Mark II for this experiment and I think it turned out even better than his still image versions, because he used the HD video function of the 5D Mark II.

Eirik explains the 2009 project:

This time I recorded 30 second video clips each time. My idea was that it would be possible to dissolve between the videos to get the same kind of time lapse effect, but this time with motion all the way. Snow falling, wind blowing etc.
2009 is over and I have now put all the clips I recorded through the year into a couple of videos. I recorded clips with a 15mm fisheye, a 24mm wide angle and a 50mm lens. I’ve made three different versions.

If Eirik shot thirty-second scenes once a week for a year, he likely ended up with 8GB of video per version, for a total of 24GB of footage. He then had to align and process each clip to correct for the fisheye distortion and edited it all together, with some smooth transitions between each scene. Some serious work.

The results really show off the sounds and the sights from the four seasons in Norway. His efforts took a lot of work and they’re well worth the recognition he’s getting. And as if this wasn’t enough, Eirik also provides a tutorial, complete with video on how to do your own time lapse movie on his award winning blog. Give him a digg if you enjoy it.

Winter weather doesn’t deter amorous Brits

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Next time you’re stuck in a London hotel, with snow falling and few options for getting out on the town, order a little entertainment to your room. It will make you authentically British … if you take the latest survey by IllicitEncounter.com at face value. The website, which helps married people find a little action on the side, revealed that its traffic increased on Wednesday morning, as a winter storm tore through Hampshire, Berkshire and the West Country. To help people get a little secret sex, IllicitEncounters.com has even had to bring on temp staffers.

According to Sara Hartley, a spokesperson fro the site, “In light of these figures, I’d be interested to see how much work those ‘working from home’ have actually done.” She continues, “Perhaps these wives and husbands have just been waiting for a time when they could join, away from the eyes of their work colleagues and, most importantly, their partners…”

IllicitEncounters.com has more than 350,000 members in Britain, so if you’re lonely in London on a wintry day, maybe you should skip that walk by Buckingham Palace and enjoy a little takeout.

[Photo by Je@n via Flickr]

Has the Loch Ness Monster gone extinct?

by Sean McLachlan on

Things aren’t going well in Scotland. Last year was the worst year on record for sightings of the Loch Ness Monster. A documentary studied the possibility that Nessie has gone extinct, and even the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club is worried.

Only one “dependable” sighting, by a local man back in June, shows there might be life in the old critter yet, but if that’s a false alarm, where does that leave us? Locals around Loch Ness are worried last year’s poor showing may affect tourist numbers. In the United States, liberals are saying Nessie died of shame from being called a “monster” instead of the more politically correct term “evidence-challenged endangered species”. Conservatives claim Nessie was the first victim of the death panels set up by Obama’s America-hating, terrorist-loving national health care.

The number of sightings has been going down for a few years, so the creature or creatures may very well be dying out. Is it gone for good? Unless AOL coughs up a few million to equip me with sonar equipment and a submarine, I really can’t say.

Whatever happened to Nessie, take heart. There are plenty of lake monsters to go around. There’s a Nessie-like creature in Minnesota, one in Lake Champlain, and others scattered around the world. There’s even another Scottish beastie in Loch Morar, which was the subject of a recent investigation by blogger Tom Gates. He took the amazing photo shown here. Believe it or not it’s actually a fake, made with a little Nessie model and some basil, and should serve as a warning to serious cryptozoologists that common household items can be used to construct a photo that can fool even the experts.

I, for one, don’t think Nessie will ever die. Despite having walked on the Moon and plumbed the depths of the ocean, we as a species love a mystery, and will always need creatures like Nessie, Bigfoot, the Mothman, and Raw Head and Bloody Bones until we ourselves go extinct.%Gallery-13474%

Go easy on the pedal in St Gallen

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Imagine you’re behind the wheel of a red Ferrari Testarossa. You have nothing but open road in front of you in St Gallen, Switzerland. You’re rich. You’re in Europe. Maybe you’ve got a hottie riding shotgun and whispering incredibly absurd things in your ear. It’s impossible to believe you wouldn’t push the pedal to the floor and send your life (and hers) into overdrive. This thrill wouldn’t come cheap, if you take a recent speeding ticket at face value. Swiss police nailed a millionaire gunning through a village in his Testarossa at a mere 100 kmph with a fine for $290,000.

According to a Reuters report, “The accused ignored elementary traffic rules with a powerful vehicle out of a pure desire for speed.” He’s said to have hit up to 137 kmph out on country roads. With a fortune of more than $20 million, though, his fine shouldn’t hurt all that much.

The previous record for a Swiss speeding ticket was just over $100,000, given to a Porsche driver in 2008, after he’d committed several traffic offenses.

[Photo by Steve Brandon via Flickr]

British climber rescues himself, heads straight to the pub

by Kraig Becker on

A British climber earned legendary status earlier this week when he managed to not only drag himself down the mountain on a broken leg, but then elected to make his first stop at the local pub upon reaching civilization.

According to U.K. newspaper the Daily Mail, 44-year old Sean Moore was climbing on the 11,423 foot tall Mulhacen peak in Spain’s Sierra Navada mountains on Sunday when he fell, breaking his leg in the process. He then spent the next two nights alone on the mountain, with high winds, sub-zero temperatures, and heavy snow falling around him, before he decided to hobble down the mountain on his broken leg. Upon reaching the town of Granada, he wandered into a local bar, where the patrons immediately alerted the local authorities.

Moore’s wife had reported him missing on Sunday when he failed to return from Mulhacen, the tallest peak in mainland Spain. On Monday, search and rescue teams went to work on the mountain, but their efforts were hampered by the poor weather conditions. They began to fear the worst before the Brit turned up in the local pub.

At last report, Moore was still in the hospital in Granada, having been treated for exposure and recovering from surgery on his damaged leg. His injuries are described as non-life threatening however and he is said to be recovering nicely. There is no word on whether or not he had a drink in the pub while he waited for the ambulance.%Gallery-67351%