Lousy way of making tea, though.

Blimey. Using multi-point motion-tracking to unwrap a texture map, which you can then modify before re-applying to the source image.

Back in the mists of 2006, I blogged about how one outcome of increasing use of high-definition video might be greater demand for post-production rotoscoping techniques to smooth out actors’ wrinkles. Looks like I might have been right.

Look, folks: if you’re going to get all nit-picky about grammar, make sure you check your facts. The OED isn’t free, of course, and the edition I have to hand is one of the crappy one. But pick any other online dictionary and you’ll find that ‘medal’ can be a verb. Here’s the American Heritage Dictionary on my Mac, for example:

medal | ˈmedl |
noun
a metal disk with an inscription or design, made to commemorate an event or awarded as a distinction to someone such as a soldier, athlete, or scholar.

verb ( medaled | ˈmɛdld |, medaling | ˈmɛdlɪŋ |; also chiefly Brit. medalled, medalling) [ intrans. ]
earn a medal, esp. in an athletic contest : Norwegian athletes medaled in 12 of the 14 events

Yes, I was surprised too. But it’s not bad English just because we haven’t had the chance to use it very often.

Broad beans rock.

These aren’t the broad beans I’m eating tonight. These are broad beans from two years ago. They wouldn’t be as nice as the ones I’m about to scoff. Not by now. Though they were nice at the time.

I’m sorry. I may have become monosyllabic. I’m salivating at the thought of broad beans. They have a strange effect on me.

Broad. Beans.

Broad beans.

Yum.

Utterly, utterly amazing. Also scary, in a ‘pictures lying to me’ sort of way. Well worth a look.

(via Chairman Gruber)

Amazing Flickr photoset from photographer Eric Lafforgue, from a holiday in North Korea in April this year.

Firstly, the breathlessly monotone narration. But hey, the guy isn’t paid to be a presenter.

No, what really gets me is the flickering. Even with colour compensation (which is very neatly done, incidentally), the edge flickering makes my eyes go funny. Perhaps it’s not as bad if you’re using the software rather watching dodgy YouTube video of it, but still… bleurgh. I think I may have to have a lie down.

“Among the subjects showing increases were the sciences with entries for chemistry up 3.5%, biology up 2.7% and physics up 2.3%.”

Hurrah!

But hang on. The Joint Council for Qualification’s bizarrely-90s website (it has an entry tunnel?! Is this a reflection on the falling take-up of ICT courses?) links to this PDF, the press release. Which notes:

“With a record 827,737 grades published for A-level this year (805,657 in 2007) … “

That’s a 2.7% increase in entries. So… are science entries actually up proportionately, or up overall, or …. what?

Sure enough, the Telegraph’s full tabulation of the data — which, incidentally, I can’t find at the JCQ’s site — reveals that science entries are fairly precisely static as a proportion of the total. They’re up, but only by about the same degree that entries are anyway.

This is a marked improvement over declining numbers, which we’ve seen through recent years. But it’s not really the increase in take-up we’re working towards.

Not yet.

Recommended.

Forget whatever Alicia Keys and Mick Hucknell (or whoever) are doing, this rocks.

[oooooh, OK. It’s by Adam & Joe. That explains why it rocks.]