Just to show that not everyone grows out of their Lego love, there are a number of Flickr groups that have been created to cater to the hobby. These are ten excellent ones out of the dozens, some of which will make you laugh out loud.

1. Lego Creations

Anything made from Lego products goes here, but you will be stunned by some of the works you will find. For example, a life-size robot found here, as well as much smaller projects that are still really cool. Anything Lego-based can be uploaded, so don’t be shy. Taking some time to go through the gallery and you won’t be disappointed.

2. Lego Outdoors

If you want something a little more adventurous, this group has it for you. They post photos of Lego scenes or items that have been placed outdoors or in an outdoor-like setting. Many users have provided fully staged scenes using Lego people, which is really fun to view. The only real rule is that it has to be outside so go crazy!

3. Lego Builders

Looking for something more technical? This group is for advanced builders who prefer to work on less whimsical, more elaborate things like buildings, ships, models and other products. They might be officially created models from instructions, or something generated purely from the builders imagination. For example, there is a small scale Coruscant from the “Star Wars” canon built here.

4. Lego System

You might remember the many space-based sets from Lego from the past, which are still created today. This group is dedicated to those set and everything that comes along with it. That means ships, solar systems and science fiction figures. All are applicable, as long as they are from an official Lego set.

5. Lego Train MOC’s

Trains are a major hobby for many, and Lego has released a number of sets dedicated to it. The pieces in this group are truly impressive, with central stations, full trains and more. They have a place to check out the best of their submissions here, and you won’t believe how detailed some of them are.

6. Lego Star Trek

Like “Star Trek”? Like Legos? Congratulations, you are like 90 percent of today’s modern geeks. If you have ever dreamed of creating a detailed replica of the USS Enterprise, you aren’t alone. There are a couple of those here, among other things, so you should definitely check it out.

7. Lego Landscape

Landscapes are always fun to make with Lego, because there are so many options for decoration – especially when it comes to the classic sets that have different styles of trees, plants and even blocks for mountains or bodies of water. The people in this group are great at getting creative with their landscapes, with some elaborate products coming from their work.

8. Lego and God

You might not have ever considered mixing religion and Lego before, and reading this now it might seem like a bit of an iffy concept. But once you have seen a small scale replica of the Vatican, you will have a hard time denying that the projects in their group are really cool – especially when you check out the “stained glass” windows.

9. Legos in the Real World

Whether they are sitting on a bench and watching the sunset or mowing the lawn, your Legos can take a small vacation in the real world. This group takes photos where your little plastic people or products are hanging around outside or in public buildings.

10. Lego Complaining

Sometimes you just don’t get what you bargained for with Lego. You might be frustrated with a project that just won’t work properly, or you bought a defective batch of blocks. Whatever the case, you can vent about it with photos of the issue here.

Conclusion

Lego is popular for a reason. If you find yourself loving the product and want to share that love with others of a like hobby, then pick up the camera and enjoy these ten groups.

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

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Personally, if I were to see someone walking by with any of these bags I’d have to stop and ask them where they got it. And I would probably honestly go there and buy something just to get the awesome shopping bag!

What do you think? Would you spend money on just about any product if it meant you’d take one of these bags home with you?

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While in the United Kingdom, Photographer, Dylan Winter caught this amazing flock of Starling’s in their yearly migration which is referred to as murmuration. This amazing sight can contain thousands of Starlings and the patterns they help create flawlessly in the sky is truly awe inspiring!

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But did you know that quite often they are fake? This is obvious from time to time, when little mistakes – or big ones – give it away. When that happens, you might be wondering how they went about making the fake ones in the first place. The answer to this is through tools that have been made to simulate these screenshots.

Here are five of the most popular tools for faking Facebook and Twitter wall posts, texts and even news stories.

Fake Convos

This is one of the easier fake Facebook convo/newsfeed generators available. It works by letting you log in using your existing Facebook account. You then browse through available profile images, such as Barack Obama, Snooki, Tiger Woods or Bart Simpson. Or, you can paste in a URL to get a photo from a web page. Then, you type in a comment and add it to the stream. You just keep adding while it creates a screenshot with each submission. The end result is very realistic.

Noob

Do you want to trick your friends into thinking a piece of news is real? This is a generator that creates fake news pieces that can be customized by you. The screencap resembles a real news site, such as “The Bluffington Post,” using the same layout as The Huffington Post. There are different ads, links and videos added in to make it look more genuine. You can choose from a list of preset headlines, such as “Wins the 2011 X Games, Breaks Back” or “Sued for Illegally Downloading Music, Movies, Porn.”

The Wall Machine

This is another cool fake Facebook wall generator. It works by giving you a basic status message box. By clicking various parts of the box, you are able to customize it. This means changing the name, the status message and the person who ‘likes’ it, and adding additional comments. You can easily upload photos for the profile pictures, as well. The end result is indistinguishable from real Facebook screenshots.

iFakeText

This is a text generator that creates iPhone screeshots like you see on Damn You Auto Correct, or Parents Shouldn’t Text. You put the name of the other person in the Name section, then write it like the following.

Person Who’s Phone It Is: Message

Other Person: Message

It will create a real-looking iPhone screeshot that you can save or share. You can select either Verizon or AT&T as the provider. There is no watermark.

Fake Tweet Builder

You use this one to create a fake Twitter feed screenshot. Each person in the conversation is put in a list form, like this:

Jackie_Chan: I am going to be in the new live action Sesame Street movie!

ChrisTucker: @Jackie_Chan who you playing man?

Jackie_Chan: @ChrisTucker Big Bird!

Then you can customize things like the color, the Twitter ID inclusion, background images and more. If you don’t check the box to allow you to see the names, it will censor them. All pictures are automatically blurred, and it doesn’t allow you to upload your own, which is a little disappointing.

Conclusion

Making fake Twitter, Facebook, news or text screencaps is a lot of fun. It is also very easy, thanks to these brilliant tools that make it fast and simple to do anything you could possibly want.

What are some of your favorite fake screenshot tools? Let us know in the comments!

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So even though you’re bundling up to stay warm all winter, remember that you have to stay fit so you can either fit into that bikini – or get noticed by the ladies wearing one – next year!

Enjoy.

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There is no way to describe it, other than to have you take a look at it. So click the small image above, or use this link, and you’ll download the full 18,000 pixel wide version of the image.

Let me know what you think! I thought it was pretty cool.

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Stirring Coffee Cinemagraph

This is certainly a wonderful, if not explanatory, way of defining it. But what are they really? Simply put, they are the next generation on animated GIF images; moving pictures that help tell a small story in a single instant.

Elegant, expressive and all around amazing, Burg and Beck have truly taken these photos somewhere no one would have expected. They have now been elevated to an entirely new genre, which isolates sections of an image to create movement, either simple or complex.

Sources

It wasn’t until recently that these two really showcased their work. It all came to a head at this year’s New York Fashion Week, back in September. They took a number of photographs and created a gorgeous set of cinemagraphs that stand alone. They made a whole new form of art. All of their shots can be seen at their blog, From Me To You.

Stirring Coffee Cinemagraph

But what are some other places for finding examples of cinemagraph excellence? Check out these sites that will not only show off the best, but will also teach you how to make your own:

1. If we don’t, remember me.: a gallery of living movie stills, which has been updated since October 2010.

Horses in Snow Cinemagraph

2. Cinemagraph Group on Flickr: an ative user-generated source of Cinemagraph inspiration.

Reeds in Wind Cinemagraph

3. Tumbrl posts tagged as “Cinemagraph”.

Gum Chewing Cinemagraph

4. 30 Amazing Stanley Kubrick Cinemagraphs

30 Amazing Stanley Kubrick Cinemagraphs

Cinemagraph Tutorials

Cinemagraph Tutorial – This tutorial shows how to isolate certain obvious sections of the picture and create movement easily. The flowing of the hair and dress are breathtaking, as they look natural and believable. The photo itself is lovely, as is the effect. You could easily adapt the process in the guide to any picture.

Cinemagraph Tutorial

How to make a Cinemagraph with Photoshop and After Effects – This article has a video embedded in the text that shows you the entire process of creating your own cinemagraph. It is created for Photoshop and After Effects, and while it is simple to follow, it helps if you have some experience working with these two programs, especially in tandem.

Cinemagraph/Subtle GIF Tutorial – This is a basic GIF, which uses a somewhat different process than the others. But this tutorial has taken the more subtle approach, trying to create movement so small that at first you might not catch it. The picture itself is beautiful, and a perfect example of how you don’t need much to create a great effect.

Girl in Grass Cinemagraph

How To Make Your Own Cinemagraphs: A New Take on GIFs – This tutorial takes an example from Jaime Beck and uses it to provide a walkthrough. They show how layers in Photoshop can be used to easily follow the same process for any image. Their own is an escalator, which can be made to move with repeated layering of rapidly taken images in real life.

What are your own examples of your favorite cinemagraphs? Let us know in the comments.

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Spammers have been attacking blogs for a very long time and targeting image and media file attachment pages. If you wonder what I mean by that, click on the thumbnail image above. You’ll see that it takes you to a page with a bigger embedded version of the image. Normally, those pages allow you to leave comments (you’ll notice that here on OMB it doesn’t).

Comment Spam on Images

I have been getting hammered with comment spam on images and was looking for a solution for some time, until finally today I came across the Disable Comments plugin.

This video demonstrates the seriousness of the spam comment problem with regards to images. As you can see, the vast majority of spam comments are on image only pages of the site.

5 minutes later, my site was impervious to comment spam on images because this beautiful plugin disable comments on ALL media across the website!

The Hard Way

Now, if you know what you’re doing and you’d rather do it by hand you can run the following MySQL query using PHPMyAdmin or whatever way you like:
UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status="closed";

But I don’t know why you’d want to do that when the plugin takes care of it for you automatically. Give it a try and enjoy your new spam free image pages plus your faster website since this will deter spammers and decrease the load on your server.

Frankly, I don’t understand why the WP core development team hasn’t added this as a basic feature yet. It would also ease the pain on the Akismet anti-spam service dramatically.

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Sony Center Roof

The following is a collection of HDR, or High Dynamic Range, photos that I took. If you’d like to know how this works, you should go read my friend Trey’s HDR tutorial. That will explain everything.

Enjoy!!!

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What we end up with is probably the single biggest collection of license plates on a page anywhere on the Internet! Hopefully it won’t:

1. Crash the webserver trying to serve up a billion things to every single visitor
2. Choke your web browser, trying to download all the thumbnails on the page!

As usual, you can click through on any of the thumbnails to see the full size version of the image.

Hey, by the way, if you enjoy the post do me a favor and share it on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. I sure would appreciate it!

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Here is my favorite and since it’s appropriate for a desktop wallpaper I’m making it available for anyone who wants it. Enjoy! (Just click through to the larger versions of the image, then right click on it and tell your browser to set it as the desktop wallpaper.)

A Light Themed McIntosh Power Meter

McIntosh Power Meter

Here is the full sized version.

A Dark Themed McIntosh Power Meter

McIntosh Power Meter

Here is the full sized version.

Oh and in case you’re in the mood for more desktop wallpapers, I have them here.

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True, true.

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Once a year they also happen to put on a little something we like to call a “Swimsuit Pageant”, and more importantly some people show up to these little shindigs sporting cameras of immense proportions. Thus ensuring that the rest of us can see what goes on at the Hooter’s Swimsuit Pageant!

The Hooters Swimsuit Pictures

Here now, in no particular order (well, maybe alphabetical) are just a boatload of pictures of hot Hooter’s girls in bikinis.

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If you aren’t familiar with Trey’s Work, he’s one of the World’s greatest photographers, and the one who brings you this awesome HDR Tutorial. You should really go check out his work over at StuckInCustoms.com and enjoy the eye candy. He puts out some of the most amazing photos you’ll ever see!

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Ignoring men altogether at the moment, lets talk about women tattoos. Hot? or Not?

Here’s a collection of beautiful and artistic tattoos on women. Each seems to have been tastefully executed and from an artistic perspective the imagery is nice. The question is, can you see the woman behind the tattoo? What does the tattoo say about each of these women. And more importantly, does it matter why the woman’s tattoo is there (for example, some of these tattoos memorialize loved ones lost)?

Women Tattoo Pictures

From yo!sarrian:

Woman Japanese Back Tattoo

Tattooed Woman on Bed

From David J. Photo

Hot Blond with Arm Tattoo

From Alex Piechta:

Beautiful Woman with Arm Tattoos

Hot Chick with Tattoos

Click to View…

Rather than crippling your browser with a bunch of full sized images, just select a thumbnail to view the medium sized image. If you still want a larger version you can click on the medium sized version and you’ll get the biggest version I found. Enjoy!

Do you have a tattoo to share? Drop a link in the comments or email me a photo to john AT OneMansBlog dot com and I’ll add it to the collection.

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Dancing Kick to the Nuts Fail Picture

Lets all just own up to the fact that we LOVE to laugh at other people’s embarrassment and pain, Ok? I mean it doesn’t explain why these Japanese guys volunteer to be hit in the balls on a gameshow, but it explains why we love to watch their pain!

And speaking of funny, painful Japanese game shows, there was never an equal to MXC Most Extreme Elimination! Oh God, it kills me. But when you watch those videos all you want is to see people wipe out!

But I digress…. Today we’re here to get our fill of FAIL Pictures, right? Well, let’s get it on! Be warned, even 101 thumbnails will bog your browser down, so give it a few minutes for all the images to load, then choose any thumbnail to view the full sized version of the FAIL photo.

Have you got more Pictures o’ Fail? Leave a comment below and let’s see em!

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Features such as tagging, groups, friend networks, and timestamps enrich each image with social and temporal context. Here are five visualizations that use Flickr’s meta information to highlight the unseen patterns behind all of those beautiful pictures.

1. Tagged Color

If an image is tagged “summer,” what colors do you expect? What images come to mind with the word “magenta?” What colors are people compelled to photograph? Christian Giordano’s Tagged Color visualization explores these questions and more. By mapping the user-supplied color field data and the most popular correlating tags, this visualization shows fascinating trends in the obsession with color.

As you’d expect, “winter” retrieves a palette of blues, grays, and ebony; friendly purple correlates well with other colors; green’s the most-tagged color; and lonely cyan is always reported correctly, but doesn’t correlate well to any particular photo subject. Even in this age of RGB, the sky is blue on Flickr.

2.  The Tag Galaxy

Like Tagged Color, Tag Galaxy uses a visualization to show relationships between tags. Here, the user picks any word to be the center of the universe. That word becomes a sun in its own solar system; Flickr’s favorite associated tags become planets.

For example, when Apple is the sun, its system includes a small, close planet labeled “Fruit” that is highly correlated with “Apple.” It also has a larger, more distant planet labeled “Macbook,” illustrating a larger set of photos with less correlation.

3. Flickr Graph

What about Flickr friends? Marcos Wescamp’s attraction-repulsion visualization of a user’s friends is prettier than reading a list and more insightful, too. This visualization highlights cliques within a user’s friend list, and features skeleton-key buddies who seem to follow the user through multiple circles of associations.

The most interconnected and open users don’t have circles of friends so much as a large interconnected mass of companions, sharing photos and friendships.

4. Visualizing the Processing Flickr Group

“Processing” is a programming language for creators of visualizations. Andreas Koberle used this language to create a visualization of the relationships between all the members of the Processing group on Flickr.

The image is literally a circle of friends, and the friendliest of the bunch form very obvious fountains of connections. The image is appropriately titled “everyone knows everyone from Flickr.”

5. The Geotagger’s World Atlas

When you’re in Paris, where do you go in a day? How much ground do you cover in a week? How many other tourists have traveled your same path?

Eric Fisher’s Geotagger’s World Atlas shows an eerie temporal ghost city, as told through the timestamps and geotags of tourist’s photos. Paths of travelers, extrapolated from their photos, map out popular city destinations; locals-only neighborhoods fade into white, unrecorded.

Thanks to these and other visualizations, Flickr has become more than an Internet photo album; it stores a snapshot of the relationships and perceptions that shape human life.

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I took some photos of the event, though my camera is not really set up for this kind of work, so they aren’t great. But here is a little overview of what I saw. The individual pictures are later in this post.

Stages of the Lunar Eclipse

The Lunar Eclipse Video

However, I did set up my camera to take a little video, and then compressed it down so you could watch a little of what was going on.

The Lunar Eclipse Photos

I also took photos of the lunar eclipse for a couple of hours in like 1 minute intervals, and here are some photos of what that looked like.

If you took or saw any other good photos of the eclipse please let me know! I’d love to see and share them with everyone!

UPDATE: Here are some of the photos from a Flickr collection that everyone took. Some are really nice!!!

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According to the Griffith Observatory:

It is also the highest in the sky that a totally eclipsed Moon has appeared from Los Angeles in 1,591 years and it will not be this high again for at least another millennium.

NASA chimes in:

The entire event is visible from North America and western South America. Observers along South America’s east coast miss the late stages of the eclipse because they occur after moonset. Likewise much of Europe and Africa experience moonset while the eclipse is in progress. Only northern Scandinavians can catch the entire event from Europe. For observers in eastern Asia the Moon rises in eclipse. None of the eclipse is visible from south and east Africa, the Middle East or South Asia.

MrEclipse.com offered a little explanation of what is going on, though that site is currently down:

One of the great things about lunar eclipses is that they are completely safe to view with the naked eye. No special filters are required to protect your eyes like those used for solar eclipses. You don’t even need a telescope to watch the eclipse although a good pair of binoculars will help.

An eclipse of the Moon can only take place at Full Moon, and only if the Moon passes through some portion of Earth’s shadow. The shadow is actually composed of two cone-shaped parts, one nested inside the other. The outer shadow or penumbra is a zone where Earth blocks some (but not all) of the Sun’s rays. In contrast, the inner shadow or umbra is a region where Earth blocks all direct sunlight from reaching the Moon

Total Eclipse of December 21, 2010

So, if you want to go out and take a look at one of the greatest eclipses you’ll ever see, the following schedule lets you know when to keep an eye out for it. Keep in mind that North Americans will not have another opportunity to see a total lunar eclipse until April 15, 2014!

• The major phases of the eclipse occur as follows (all times are GMT or Greenwich Mean Time).
• The partial eclipse commences with first umbral contact at 06:33 GMT. Totality begins at 07:41 GMT and lasts until 08:53 GMT.
• The partial phases end at 10:01 GMT.

Here are a gallery of photos over on Flickr that will give you an idea of what you might see if you check out the Lunar Eclipse. If you take any photos of it drop me a comment to your Flickr link and I’ll add them to the gallery.

Have fun!

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• Fourth largest airport in the world by land area.
• Third busiest as measured by aircraft movement.
• Eighth busiest in terms of passenger transport.
• So big it has its own post office, ZIP code, and public services.

And Virgin clearly understands the signifigance of reaching into the DFW metroplex with its 6.5 million plus residents. So much so that Sir Richard Branson himself was present for the opening, and he brought along a surprise guest to entertain the attendees – Willie Nelson!

We’re glad to have Virgin enter the market, and I’m looking forward to seeing them open up more routes. After LAX comes San Francisco, where I tend to travel to often. The question remains, how will they get me to switch from American where I have elite status to Virgin where I’ll be treated like everyone else because I can’t fly to all the different destinations AA can take me.

Time will tell.

Anyway, I took a bunch of photos at the event, and here are a few.

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