Seems like a nice way to ring out the year: The crew at Bright Bricks (“The UK’s only LEGO Certified Professional”–who knew there were such things?) has put together the world’s largest Lego Christmas tree. Check out a nice set of photos, or just the little vid below:

Kind of puts the “creep” back into “crepuscular.”

Check out more photos and details.

“Isaac Newton just pooped his pants.” Oh my. (Or, as Core77 puts it, “Electromagnets Now Powerful Enough to Repel Good Taste.”) So, now this happens:

I’ll be sure to try one with my un-backed-up hard drive.

“Hello, my name is John, and I practice unprotected computing…” (“Hello, John.”)

Until I upgraded my Mac to Lion, I was a rigorous user of Time Machine: I’d plug in a Drobo at work, and I’d connect to a Time Capsule at home. It paid off when my hard drive died & my bacon was saved.

Ever since moving to Lion, though, I’ve been unable to back up. Connecting to either backup produces a “Preparing to back up” cycle that can last for hours or even days. It’s unusable to the point that I think I should just wipe the backups and start fresh.

Here’s where more problems ensue, however:

• Deleting the backup from the Drobo was incredibly slow, to the point that I reformatted the drives and thus somehow rendered them inoperable (!). I need to carve out time to work with Drobo tech support, but I haven’t been able yet.
• I can’t wipe my Time Capsule (which contains other data), and due to space constraints, I can’t start a new Time Machine backup without trashing the first. I fear the process taking more hours or days.
• Okay, fine–for now I’ll just buy a new, fresh, cheap hard drive. Without doing research (!), I grabbed a big Seagate 2TB USB 3.0 drive. “No prob,” I figured, “this thing should be USB 2.0-compatible and more future-proof.” Now, however…
• After reformatting the drive, Time Machine backups continuously fail. Things seems to go great for tens or even hundreds of GB of data–then simply stall out forever. This has happened several times, always at different points, even across reformatting.
• Okay, fine–forget Time Machine, let’s do Carbon Copy Cloner. Unfortunately, even after reformatting (again) per CCC’s instructions, the backup failed ~66GB in. Given the TM failures, I’m not inclined to try again.

So, here’s what I’m wondering:

• Is there something wrong with the data on my Mac–something that would cause old backups to stall & new ones to fail?  And if so, is there a diagnostic I can run to find & hopefully fix the problem?
• Is there something screwy with Mac OS support for USB 3.0 devices?
• Is there something screwy with this particular drive?

My Google-fu has failed to provide a solution, so thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide.

Wherever you are, and whatever holidays you may celebrate this time of year, I wish you great peace and happiness. Thanks for reading & for making it possible for me to do this fascinating, occasionally frustrating, often greatly rewarding job.

All the best to you and yours, now and in 2012,
J. (+M & the Micronaxx)

At Christmas (or almost), here’s something awfully sweet:

Of the shoot the groom’s co-conspirators write,

We went to venue a day before to scout the place, discuss how to hide those cameras and look at how to be invisible.

On that day, we were all dressed in black. Talked using walkies. Used wine bottles, glasses, cutleries, vases and flowers as cover. We sat around the restaurant as guests but with our cameras on. And yes, we achieved total invisibility. Audrey walked into the restaurant, sat with her friends and never noticed us.

Not until the prime time when Tim revealed himself with meme place cards that was part of his proposal. That was when all the cameras (all 4 in total) started rolling.

The bride shares an after-action play-by-play on her blog.

As Towelie might say, “I have no idea what’s goin’ on right now…” I kinda like it, though.

Read more about these guys here. [Via Bill Roberts]

Think we’ve beaten the tilt-shift faux miniature thing entirely into the ground yet? Me neither! Here’s another fun one:

[Via]

Check it out:

Students are invited to compete in 13 categories, including Game Design and Development, as well as Application Development and Mobile Design. Since the ADAA competition began in 2001, nearly 25,000 students from 73 countries have been involved; in 2011, a record 4,600 entries were submitted.

Free to enter and open to students, faculty and staff of higher education institutions worldwide, the 2012 ADAA will be judged by a panel of international design experts in three independent judging sessions. Submission deadlines are January 27, April 27, and June 22, 2012.

Semifinalists will be announced after each judging session, providing participants with early visibility into their competition status. In October, finalists will be invited to attend the ADAA awards ceremony in Los Angeles, Calif., where winners will be announced and awarded Adobe software and cash prizes.

[Via]

Bryan O’Neil Hughes provides a 2-minute overview:

Starts tonight at 6:30pm at Adobe San Francisco (see details):

In this presentation, master photographer Harold Davis explains his complete digital workflow starting with his digital photography techniques. He shows how he uses multi-RAW processing and hand-HDR with layering to enhance original photos.

Along the way, Harold will demonstrate how he uses the LAB color space to improve imagery and create special color effects.

Finally, Harold will discuss how his images are prepared for publication and archived in the books he packages for major publishers, including Focal Press.

There will be ample time for Q&A, so please bring your questions for Harold to this presentation.