View allAll Photos Tagged Tools

I like to think of myself as a steel mill train aficionado, though one facet of the subject I've never managed to frame up before are ore trains - the start of the entire process. This is mostly because all of the steel plants near me have direct lake access - and thus receive most bulk materials by boat. There are quite a few ore trains that still run in the United States, especially in Minnesota and Northern Michigan - two regions I have yet to visit - but none directly around me. EXCEPT Canadian National's as needed runs from Minnesota down to the Gulf, U724 and empty counterpart U723.

 

These trains were the subject of a recent conversation I had with a buddy from up north, which reminded me that I had, in fact, caught one last winter on the IC. This is an empty northbound, rolling thru Pesotum, Il. I hadn't yet heard about these trains at the time, and initially mistook it for a unit stone train - evidently it's quite hard to distinguish the modern ore jenny from rock hoppers. Nevertheless, I attempted to chase it for the simple fact that it had neat rolling stock - but, already running out of light, that dream came to a swift end when, in Tolono (the next town north of here), the train would be stopped at the NS as the day met a swift end.

 

It was still a two hour drive home from here, and about 30 minutes into it we drove straight into a blizzard - heavy snow and winds, whiteout conditions, freezing highway. It was rough! It seemed like every time I visited the IC (which was quite frequently last winter) it would end driving into similar snowy conditions.

 

The CN still runs these ore trains, and I would absolutely KILL to do another one of my 100+ mile chases of one down (or up) the IC sometime this winter. But as 90% of all unit trains go, they run as needed, so I will need quite a bit of luck and then some...

 

An aside on the title, for those who care. I absolutely fell in love with the IC around this time last year - and from a photographic standpoint, the line really only works in dead-of-winter January gloom. Bark Psychosis' (my favorite music artist, as some of you may know) album Independency was playing on every single trip, and every track on the album shares a similar sort of vibe with the line. Tooled Up is the particular track I was listening to when I was editing this, take a listen if you can:

 

youtu.be/j3J_O7YJ7NE

I got asked what tools I use.

 

Pencil: stubble

Glue:glues

Toothpick: shaping

Red etching tool: I use this for pretty much everything. I paint stubble and shape lines.

Brushes: I have these super fine brushes which I use a ton. I use the yellow one most

This little TOOL gets me through my day. As a Type 2 diabetic I need my glucose meter to make sure I stay healthy. A poke (or 3) a day keeps the doctor away!

 

Thanks in advance for all that have and are stopping by .... I am enjoying looking at your images, but injured tendon in right hand means I'm not supposed to be typing. Shhh ... don't tell my doc!

 

Macro Mondays: Tools and Utensils

ODC: Close Up

Tools and Utensils - (Macro Mondays)

Lowlands 2007

 

just a capture of the moment..sharing my everyday life with ya;) it was such a fantastic concert!

  

found on the Logging Museum walk in Algonquin

Polaroid SX70 SonarAutofocus + Impossible Project Color Film for SX-70

Founder's Museum & Pioneer Village

 

Don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without explicit permission.

© All rights reserved

  

#AbFav_WOOD_

#AbFav_PHOTOSTORY

 

Each specialty has its own special tools, which must have been conceived and made out of experience?

Bettering the tools all the time for the job?

Here, two specialists, Willem Vermandere and his woodcuts and Vincent Flachet, a luthier...

 

We had the honour to visit their workplace.

 

With love to you and thank you for ALL your faves and comments, M, (* _ *)

 

And for more: www.indigo2photography.com

IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN (BY LAW!!!) TO USE ANY OF MY image or TEXT on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved

 

tools, woodcut, luthier, instruments, wood, design, studio, day, chisels, colour, horizontal, "Nikon D7000", "magda indigo"

Week 43/52, 2016

 

This week’s theme for my 52 project is “Tools of the Trade.” One of my other hobbies is making espresso drinks, which I do almost every day. These are a couple of the items I use to make espresso. I grind coffee into the portafilter shown on the right and then tamp it down using the tamper on the left. Although the items are sitting on an orange towel, I decided it worked better in B&W.

Tools for pairing

 

Strobist info:

Radio triggers.

Three lights: Kick light with white reflector. Main light with mini softbox. Fill light with honeycomb grid.

Stylized in Capture One Pro 8.

 

In Explore: May 12th, 2016

Exposition 9h30 env

 

Lunette TS 86/464 Quadruplet APO astrographe

Réducteur Televue x0.80

Focale 371mm à F 4.3

Monture EQ6 Pro

Autoguidage Lunette Orion 50mm Guide Scope 163mm

Camera Starshoot Autoguider

Imageur ZWO ASI2600MM Pro

Roue à FiltreZWO 7*36MM

Filtre Baader L, R, V, B ,S2, Ha et O3

 

Sky Quality 19.95

Magnitude CLASS 5 Bortle

  

SGP SEQUENCE GENERATOR PRO, SIRIL et UWE ASTRO TOOLS

I grated some colored chalks to get a colored powder. I put it on the brushes and threw them ..

 

(Flash and LED light)

Minolta Dynax 7

Minolta 28 - 105 f3.5-4.5

Ilford Delta 400 +1

DD-X 1:4 10:30

Flickr Lounge ~ Tools

 

Hipstamatic App on iPhone with Jane Lens & Kodot XGrizzled Film

 

Thank you to everyone who pauses long enough to look at my photo. All comments and Faves are very much appreciated

Experimenting on my macro bellows with Jupiter 8 lens attached.

 

Art in the Pearl, Portland, Oregon

Leica M3, 50mm

Tri-X in Rodinal

Scanned w/Nikon Coolscan V

Inside an old style tool shop. This is how I remember them as a child .

Dongmyo Flea Market, Seoul, Korea

   

Ink & Household Paint

 

Hua Zhibing

 

[1]

 

华智冰(Hua Zhibing) is an advanced robot with a certain degree of learning ability, developed by Tsinghua University in China. She has the face of an innocent girl, a little bit cartoonish in today's world, but not exaggerated at all. At least on the TV screen, it looks like a real person. I think if you don't get closer enough to it, you might not be able to recognize it as a robot when walking on the Tsinghua campus and seeing it from a distance. It is said that now it is living on the Tsinghua campus. Every day it walks on the campus, walks into the classroom buildings or libraries, and sits with its classmates to study. For boys in Tsinghua, its presence might be torturing.

 

Hua is its last name, also an ancient name for China, which reflects the limitations of our traditional thinking. This Hua Zhibing should belong to humankind, instead of being a tool for national patriotism in a certain country. However, I am afraid that X Zhibing in any country today is simply a tool of national interest. This is some sadness in our community with a shared future. Zhi is a word representing wisdom, and Bing, I think is taken from phase “冰清玉洁”, a Chinese idiom to portray the beauty of young women, or from the poem,” 藐姑射之山,有神人居焉,肌肤若冰雪,淖约若处子” by famous philosopher Zhuangzi to describe a goddess. Well, the character Bing itself is a word for ice or the freezing and cold state.

 

[2]

 

It's hard to say if we are more like human beings since Hua shows up on the Tsinghua campus, or we become less like human beings after she is among us.

 

Currently, compared to our human beings, Hua's learning ability is extremely low. However, we need to consider the fact that it has taken billions of years for life to evolve into highly intelligent homo sapiens, while the history of AI is barely 200 years. Even within this short timeframe, Hua has already acquired advanced abilities that humans can never compete against, such as calculating and data searching. No one can read all the information on the Internet, but Hua is capable. So, when we talked with her about the Internet, it was Hua who seemed effortless at reading every single picture and article on the Internet, but we were feeble doing so.

Humans’ natural language is literary and relies on an individual’s imagination, association, and interpretation. Therefore, humans can seldom fully understand each other. After natural language, humans have developed the language of mathematics which has sped up their progression into scientific rationality.

 

Hua Zhibing uses the language of mathematics to communicate, therefore, she and her peers can understand each other fully and instantly. Once there is a technical breakthrough in her learning ability, the human experience and knowledge accumulated through 100,000 years can be transferred into Hua Zhibing shortly. In turn, whatever she masters can be transferred completely and instantly to her next generation, second or third Hua Zhibing.

Once possessing all the human skills, these machines will quickly surpass humans, making the latter lose their ability to compete with them forever.

 

[3]

 

This round of AI Revolution aims at developing robots capable to do what all humans can do and even do better. Along the way, it will continually cut down job opportunities without creating additional permanent new jobs.

 

At a certain point of this journey, a fixed structural unemployed population will emerge, which means that this group of people will have no job opportunities throughout their lives. However, from the age of agriculture, the meaning and value of human existence lie in their jobs. By then, the definition of Man has to be changed. Who am I? This ancient philosophical question today still demands us to answer because who I am is fundamentally defined and shaped by us.

 

[4]

 

In human society, mankind is not simply equal to home sapiens nor a pure organism, but a compound workstation composed of Homo sapiens, software(consciousness), and tools to complete self-reinforcing goals. In this case, every student walking on the Tsinghua campus, even every workstation (human) is a predecessor to Hua Zhibing.

 

Compared to the lengthy evolution on Earth, the human portion takes place extremely fast due to the rapid evolution of software and tool, rather than the pure evolution of organisms.

 

Currently, the robots start to acquire some intelligence in the process that humans transfer and instill knowledge to them. In the long run, they will gain their independence, complete their own evolution, and ultimately become a new species. In short, humankind is simply a link in the chain of evolution.

And now, life is in the process of evolving from organism to machorganism (machine + organism).

 

[5]

 

Inorganic life, when fully developed, will have greater evolutionary advantages over organic ones, such as broader ability and adaptability for survival and expansion. Organic life cannot survive the tough living conditions on most planets, but machines can do much better in outer space. Nowadays the plan to emigrate to Mars sounds good but also reveals a mixture of human spirits and commercial interests, such as adventurousness, ambitiousness, national expansion, and big business opportunities. There is a possibility that humans don’t have to emigrate to Mars because AI is born, who will carry on the unstoppable mission to explore and expand to outer space, starting another cosmic journey.

 

Spreading genes is not the sole goal of life. The nature of organic life is spreading genes, but there are two more fundamental properties of life: spreading a concept, that is, self-driven self-replication, and spreading the changes in the process of replication.

 

These two properties will inevitably lead to the continuous progress and expansion of self-replication, which tends to become more complicated. Broadly speaking, this is the nature of Life.

 

[6]

 

As AI technology is full-fledged, the mission of human evolution is about to end, and humans will diminish gradually from the once greatest show on earth. Along the way to exit, what can comfort our souls, or meet the unique spiritual needs that our humans have, or fulfill the deep yearnings in our consciousness, may rely on art more than science. By then, art might inevitably experience a rebirth, and its revival will no longer carry on the illusion that modern art would wake up, heal, and transform the society and mankind; instead, it will return to its beginning when art was first born out of primitiveness, purity, and innocence. In the meantime, art also must be very modern.

 

[7]

 

Many years ago, since humans started to use tools and create art, we have gradually believed we are human. But, who am I?

 

We're Here! : Garden Tools

 

Running out of ideas for your 365 project? Join We're Here!

 

Found in my Grandpa's desk. No idea what it was for. He was a rice farmer, but this tool and its box seemed lightly used so it might not be related. Any idea?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

1 2 3 5 7 ••• 79 80