"Filming the bouncing toad was very challenging; the remote mountain plateau is one mile high and 26 square miles in area, whilst the toad is one inch long and very elusive. The tarantulas which prey on them are also very hard to find. To give the crew the best chance of finding and filming them, the expert on these creatures came on the shoot. He searched for a week before the crew's arrival to find both species and a location where they could come together and where the toad would demonstrate its bouncing-ball method of escape. This allowed the cameraman to set up his slow-motion camera in the right place. The scientist was able to ensure that the toad was never in danger of being harmed by the tarantula as a result of us filming them. The technique was a total success - the toad tucked its legs in, rolled and bounced, allowing the crew to film its method of escape in slow-motion detail."

"A Jesus Christ lizard running on water is so fast that a human would have to run at 65 miles per hour to achieve the same trick. The speed makes it an enormous challenge to film. After consulting with a scientist at Harvard University who has made a ground-breaking study of the lizard's water sprint, the crew decided that as well as filming the behaviour at normal frame rates they would attempt to capture the close up details of the lizard's run with a slow-motion camera filming at 2000 frames per second (i.e. slowed down by 80 times).

It's very hard to predict exactly where and when a lizard will run, what's more it's all so quick that once the lizard is spotted it's gone in a blur! Learning from the scientist's observation methods was essential and as a result it was decided to film the details of the sprint would need some degree of control to ensure that the crew had some idea of where and when the lizard would run. They travelled to Belize, home of the lizard, to work with local animal experts who had some lizards in natural forest enclosures. If, and when, these lizards decided to run, they always ran along the same stretch of water, where the cameraman could station his camera.

The key to success was using the latest digital slow-motion camera that continuously records into a memory buffer, so that when the cameraman hits the trigger button he downloads the action that took place a second or so before that moment. Whenever a lizard sprinted past the cameraman over the water the cameraman hit the trigger, desperately trying to keep the lizard in the frame and in focus. The final end result of this was stunning, slow motion shots of the lizards, with every drop of water visible as they sprinted through the surface."

OK, we don't actually have any notes on how this was shot. But the macro shot of water beading up on the gecko's hydrophobic skin is gorgeous.

The above clips are from Episode 2: Reptiles and Amphibians. The series is playing now on BBC One.

Entropy is the big topic in the whole "end of the universe" reasearch. Basically there's speculation about whether there is such a thing as a maximum level of entropy, a point at which all molecular motion (and therefor life) will stop. The concept is thought of as "heat death" and these researchers want to know when it might happen.

In order to even attempt to estimate the end of life, they need to quantify the level of disorder in the universe , which isn't exactly an easy task. So, it's no surprise that previous estimates were a tiny bit off:

An analysis by Chas Egan of the Australian National University in Canberra and Charles Lineweaver of the University of New South Wales in Sydney indicates that the collective entropy of all the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies is about 100 times higher than previously calculated. Because supermassive black holes are the largest contributor to cosmic entropy, the finding suggests that the entropy of the universe is also about 100 times larger than previous estimates.

Researchers still can't know if their new calculations are truly more accurate than prior estimates. What they can know is that no one accounted for supermassive black holes during the last number crunching. Wonder if a Muse song inspired someone to remember it this time. [US News via Pop Sci]

Fortunately, as data has gotten richer—high definition video, for instance, storage has gotten cheaper. Which makes this kind of life archive not just possible, but really, inevitable. What would your chart look like? [Wired via BBG]

"Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30, I was out."

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did."

"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

"Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something–your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up, so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma–which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called “The Whole Earth Catalog,” which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of “The Whole Earth Catalog,” and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

— Stanford University commencement address, June 12, 2005

It's the 25th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh, but Steve Jobs' eyes are dry. At the company headquarters in Silicon Valley, where he was presenting a set of new laptops to the press last October, I mentioned the birthday to him. Jobs recoiled at any suggestion of nostalgia. "I don't think about that," he said. "When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, 'Get it away!' and I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you'll be crushed. You have to look forward."

—From Steve Levy's 25th Anniversary story in Wired

"And, you know, I think of most things in life as either a Bob Dylan or a Beatles song, but there’s that one line in that one Beatles song, “you and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.” And that’s clearly true here."
— As said to Bill Gates at All Things D, D5 Conference, May 31st 2007

[Wired]

There are certainly a few clever ideas, as we see in the first shot of a cooking space promising to be 1/3 the size of modern stoves. The pots and pans double as serving dishes, and while we don't quite understand how one stirs the food, it certainly appears to be a clean way to cook.
But most of the plans focus on integration. You know, stick a waffle iron and a toaster right into the counter top—which makes sense until you realize that those appliances just eat into drawer space or raise the cooking surface by several inches.

Still, I could look at future concepts from the 1940s all day long. See lots more shots by hitting the links. [Dwell and Paleo-Future via bbGadgets]

Now scientists are calling for the probe to be sent sailing through the plume and over the moon in detail to look for complex carbon molecules that may indicate the presence of life in the ocean using its Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer. The argument runs that abundant life living in the ocean should produce molecules like methane which could then be detected: scientists have already built a test chamber at NASA's Ames Research Center to try to simulate the conditions on Enceladus and calculate what kinds of gasses may be expected.

It's a long shot, but it may provide useful data before NASA sends more probes to the gas giants in the next decade. And you never know, we may find out we're not alone. [New Scientist]

1. Turn down the LCD. The new iPhone's screen is brighter, but you shouldn't be running this thing at full heat if you want to save battery power. I keep mine at 10% brightness. Change this under Settings -> Brightness.

2. Wi-Fi new network scanning off or Wi-Fi off. While you're not checking data for more than a few seconds at a time, I'd turn off Wi-Fi and in general, I'd turn off Wi-Fi scanning. It uses less power than EDGE or 3G but when you're not using your network connection, you might as well shut it down. Change this under Settings -> Wi-Fi. Same goes for Bluetooth.

3. Toggle off 3G till ready. Here's something I wish Apple had automatically managed. I use 3G for browsing, YouTube, app store purchases when not around a computer, or during important calls. For all other uses, including email, weather checking and Twitter, etc, I use EDGE. This setting is under Settings -> General -> Network.

4. Turn off Vibrate in Games. Playing a game with vibrate happening frequently is an unnecessary battery suck. If you can turn it off, turn it off.

5. Limit use of A-GPS tracking. GPS tracking is still pretty useless after you've gained your bearings, since there isn't a turn by turn navigation mode for driving. I exit out of maps once I've got the directions in my mind, and if I lose myself again, I just start maps up once more.

6. Buy Apps and Songs in iTunes. You can buy songs over Wi-Fi or Apps over 3G, but that doesn't mean you should. I'd recommend buying Apps at your computer if you can help it, and syncing them to your iPhone instead. As an added bonus, you'll be picking up a charge while you're tethered to your computer.

7. Set the Autolock to 1-minute. The iPhone's autolock is good at shutting off the screen if you forget to when placing it in a pocket, purse or just tossing it on a table after a call. I set mine to the most aggressive, 1-minute, but there are times where I set it to 2-minutes. This setting is under Settings -> General -> Autolock.

8. Use programs with 3D less often. Not surprisingly, I've noticed that when I play games rendering 3D, battery life drops. Using the graphics chips more intensely will crank up power usage, but maybe the drain is also because of the nature of gaming: Unlike email or browsing, gaming is a full-time, full attention endeavor that also keeps the CPU, GPU and LCD going full-time. (I'd like to think this is a more useful tip than "don't use your iPhone" but maybe it's not something you can avoid if you're a gaming addict.)

9. Set Push to Off, and Set Fetch Time. Push email isn't that useful for me because I know I'm getting emails all day long and that I have to be checking all the time. Push does use more juice than the fetch mode, which checks for calendar, contact and email syncing at set intervals of 15 minutes to an hour. I set mine to 1 hour unless I'm out of the office. If you seldom update your contacts and calendars, you might even be better off syncing by cable to iTunes, while you pick up a charge.

10. Stay Juiced. If you're at computer or in a car, you should try to use a cigarette adapter or USB cable to pick up a few minutes of charge. Every bit helps!

These tips also apply to a first generation iPhone running OS 2.0.

Good theory, but the floors of each compartment are open, so it'll spill its coolness every time you crack the fridge. Another efficiency factor here: Smaller compartments mean isolated exposure to warm air when you're digging for an ice cream sandwich in one place and leaving the rest of the compartments closed. But micro containers could be a tough call when, say, storing a 15-pound turkey. Neat, but maybe just too weird to install at home. [Norcool via Treehugger]

For video, there's going to be a 4 hour battery life (not sure if this is wireless on or off). These Zune numbers aren't impressive, but they are around the same as the 30GB iPod Model which has 14 hours of music and 3.5 hours of video. So it seems the Zune's needs a bigger battery to match the 30GB iPod in terms of usage (thanks to its larger screen), which contributes to the Zune's bulk. – Jason Chen

Battery Life [Zune Insider]

Anyway, what have we seen so far?