MPJ

Smartphones in this touchscreen form are not among us for a very long time. Even though before the year of 2007 the origin of app based mobile phones existed within variety of BlackBerry brand models and prototypes in Nokia and NTT DoCoMo labs, only after capacitive touchscreen matured enough to be industrialized and embedded into popular handheld devices, the smartphone revolution started to be really interesting and competitive. Today, after only a decade the smartphone market is one of the most valuable on the planet and apps stores reached the limit of 2 million per platform. There are literally zillion of apps out there and browsing the apps libraries became the real effort. Anyhow, today and after dozen of years after first touchscreen smartphones (LG Prada and iPhone) hit the stores, Viktor and I decided to film/write about dozen of apps that are little bit unusual and extraordinary compared to those that are used on daily basis by most of us. To start with, let's fi...

Most of the popular digital and DSLR cameras are perfectly equipped for macro photos. Taking a great photo by zooming to the scene not farther than 20-30 centimeters is a little effort and requires only clicking the shutter button and leaving all the technicalities to the camera's automated software. Even the cheap lenses can do that without a problem. While ago I collected some of those photos and wrote a little about macro photography and how to record all the close objects not very distant from our nose. But, can we do closer than that? Can we take a photo of an object like top of the pencil, as close as couple of millimeters away from the lens, for example, like the one in this photo: Dot-sized larvae of cricket or grasshopper invading our balcony flowerpot Well, not with a consumer camera, not without specialized optics. However, "augmenting" our smartphones to do the magic is just a little effort. And yes, I took above photo with only my smartphone, addi...

I have an old friend who couple of years ago made a decision to radically change his way of life. What he did is almost unreal for the rest of us. He simply stopped eating food we are all familiar with and instead he eats only fruits, vegetables and various grains and nuts. All that in its raw and natural form without any cooking, baking or frying. Of course as a practical man (he is a math teacher in my wife's school) he didn't do this over night and instead used methodical approach so his switch from "ordinary" food to this final stage of the most strict vegetarian diet possible lasted couple of years in order to adapt his organism better and to avoid potential dangers on the way. Contrary to other vegetarians I know he didn't do this because of some illness or because his organism is not capable of digesting meat and thermally processed food. Instead this was an act of free will and strong belief that he is doing a good thing. I strongly admire him for this and...

Starting with this post I would like to introduce something new to the blog. Something different and yet written in a similar fashion compared to my previous stories. This would be a new thread dedicated to science only with my own narration, style and write up. When I started with the blog year ago all I wanted is to have a place where I could be able to write my public thoughts, something that could give random reader a good description of me and my view to the world and beyond. That goes to both random readers, either one living in present day or the one reading this from some different point in future time. But now with this post I am trying to expand the blog a little bit further. I am still doing it off work and in my spare time but nevertheless it is always fun and inspirational for me. CMS Particle Detector The idea for the new thread I got after my post about human relations, genographic projects and conversation with my dear Facebook friend Beth Perry Steger. Genealo...