The photos in Deborah Bay?s new photo series, The Big Bang, show otherworldly close-ups of bullets lodged in panels of plexiglass. For Bay, they recall images of nebulae and Big Bang explosions, but they are also blunt reminders of a bullet?s destructive force.

?Photography?s roots are so based in realism and I like to take it the other way,? says Bay. ?I make an effort to take you into another place that is not quite so real, or maybe real in it?s own way. I aim to give you some food for thought.?

To get the close-up shots, Bay uses a macro lens and sometimes has to combine multiple images of the same bullet hole in order to get enough depth of field. The colors you see come from minerals in the gunpowder, or from colored lights and gels she uses in her studio.

Bay, a Houston-based fine-art photographer, first had the idea for the series when she came across a bulletproof plexiglass display in a local store. She photographed the example, but wanted her own plates to take back to her studio.

After a little research, she came across a public safety officer training class at the Houston Community College. They agreed to give her their plexiglass plates and she?s been photographing them since last June.

She originally toyed around with the idea of firing the gun herself but quickly learned guns were not for her.

?I?m not a good aim,? she says, ?I barely hit the target.?

Though The Big Bang isn?t meant to be a commentary on gun culture, it?s difficult not to view the images in the context of the frequent national reports of gun violence in the U.S.

?When you think about the impact of the bullet hitting an animal or a person or whatever it?s intended to hit ? there is just the push and pull in the pictures of the beauty versus the horror,? she says.

Bay says she was surprised to learn over the course of the project that there are 51 million guns in Texas, or two guns for every man, woman and child. ?It does give one pause,? she says.

Much of Bay?s work is conceptual and this is not the first time she?s created a project that involves a bit of social analysis. In an earlier project called Fringes of Cyberia, Bay shot miniature figurines wandering around old circuit boards (selections from the series are included at the end of the gallery above). In that project she uses the upright parts of the circuit boards to create a type of dystopian architecture and plays off the world of technology named in the series? title.

It's been clear for some time now that demand for Linux skills is increasing, and back in February a report from the Linux Foundation and careers site Dice.com suggested that a new level of urgency was taking hold in employers' search for that talent.

Confirming that suggestion, new data from Dice suggests that demand for Linux skills has reached a new high this month.

Specifically, the number of Linux job postings reached a new peak on April 2, Dice spokeswoman Rachel Ceccarelli told me this week, with a full 12,007 postings.

That's an increase of 17 percent from last year, Ceccarelli said.

Opportunities Abound

Since that data is from 10 days ago, I went ahead and did a search of my own on the term ?Linux? on Dice. The number of results was down slightly from that April 2 figure--I got 11,817 on Thursday--but it was still close.

There were also a number of pretty intriguing ads listed, including a Linux Systems Engineer for Rackspace, a FreeBSD and Linux Systems Administrator for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a Red Hat Linux Engineer for Costco, and a Red Hat Linux System Administrator for IBM.

Other recent listings have been for Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Google, and Warner Brothers, Ceccarelli tells me.

A Job Seeker's Market

What this all means, of course, is that if you've already got Linux skills and experience, you're in a good position for landing a Linux job--or upgrading to a better one. With so many companies actively pursuing Linux professionals, employers are paying higher salaries and more bonuses as well as offering flexible work schedules and additional training, the Linux Foundation report suggested.

If you don't already have those skills, however, consider some of the many ways to acquire them, including online education and even programs like one launching at the Linux Professional Institute this summer targeting newcomers to the free and open source operating system.

Katherine Noyes has been an ardent geek ever since she first conquered Pyramid of Doom on an ancient TRS-80. Today she covers business and tech in all its forms, with an emphasis on Linux and open source software. You can also find her on Google+ and Twitter.

Hunt's brass 'dress pin' has evolved into the commonplace safety pin we know today. Courtesy Haragayato

1849: A New York inventor receives a patent for the spring safety pin. He invented it because he needed some cash and was able to sell the rights within hours. Parents and babies have been spared blood and screams ever since.

Walter Hunt was an inventor who didn?t know how to seize the market. He began inventing when still a teenager and received a patent for a machine to spin flax in 1826.

Hunt also invented a gong for fire engines, a forest saw and a stove to burn hard coal, as well as a knife sharpener, a streetcar bell, synthetic stone, road-sweeping machinery, bicycle improvements, ice plows and paper collars for shirts. He invented an advanced sewing machine, but feared it would throw seamstresses out of work. By the time he applied for a patent, others had beaten him to the punch (?a stitch in time ??).

So, when Hunt owed a friend $15 (about $355 in today?s money) one day in 1849, he decided to just invent something. Here was a man who lived by his wits.

Hunt took an 8-inch length of brass wire, coiled it in the center, and shielded the clasp at one end. He called it a ?dress pin? and within three hours sold the rights to his invention for $400 (about $9,500 today).

Clasp pins existed before, but Hunt?s innovation utilized a single piece of metal (for easier fabrication), implementing a spring instead of a hinge, and combining the spring with a clasp. His patent application promised there would be no danger of ?bending the pin, or wounding the fingers.?

1849 was a relatively good year for Hunt. He also invented the first repeating rifle (a precursor of the Winchester) in 1849. And he beat Charles Rowley, who got a British patent for a safety pin on Oct. 12 that year.

New York?s Museum of Modern Art has an 1849 Hunt safety pin in its collection.

(Source: Today in Science History, other sites)

This article first appeared on Wired.com April 10, 2008.

By Karen Haslam, Macworld-U.K.   

The Mac world is hoping to see new MacBook Pros when Intel releases the first wave of its next-generation Ivy Bridge processors next week, but we may be disappointed. However, our disappointment may be short-lived if Apple instead launches new iMacs, using what Intel CEO Paul Otellini describes as Ivy Bridge chips with quad-core processors that are headed for desktop computers.

Speaking in a quarterly earnings call with investors recently, Otellini revealed that the bulk of the soon to ship Ivy Bridge chips are quad-core processors headed for desktop computers.

"The first versions of Ivy Bridge that we're shipping are quad cores, and then bulk of those are going into desktops," Otellini said, according to Seeking Alpha's transcript of the call.

Apple could be set to introduce new iMacs using Intel's new Ivy Bridge processor. Reports suggest that Apple will offer anti-reflective displays on a redesigned iMac when it launches.

The first batch of Ivy Bridge processors will be followed by a second launch of dual-core chips that will be headed to "mainstream notebooks," according to Otellini.

Apple fans hoping for new Ivy Bridge powered MacBook Pros may note Otellini's use of the word "mainstream" as a possible clue that Apple may still ship its laptop with the first batch of chips.

The redesigned MacBook Pro could look more like Apple's MacBook Air, and optical drives and traditional hard disk drives could be scrapped altogether, in favour of solid-state drives (SSDs). This would enable the MacBook Pro to be thinner than the current line-up. There is also speculation that Apple may put high-res "Retina Display" equivalents inside its future laptops.

As for the Mac Pro, that Mac was last upgraded in July 2010, when Apple announced models with up to 12 processing cores based on Intel's Xeon server chips. Mac Pro users now want the models upgraded to Intel's recently announced Xeon E5-2600 chips to keep up with the increased horsepower required for tasks like video editing. This week would have been a good time for such an announcement as the NAB show is currently running in Las Vegas.

A company that designed touch-screen technology in the mid-'90s for use in video displays for museum exhibits and the like has sued Apple, saying the iPad, iPhone, and other devices infringe on one of its patents.

Villanova, Penn.-based Flatworld Interactives filed a lawsuit yesterday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California saying that Apple infringed on U.S. Patent No. RE 43,318, which, according to a release from Flatworld law firm Hagens Berman, "includes claims to touch-screen based systems that allow users to manipulate images using gestures, such as selecting an image by touching it, and flicking images off of the screen."

The suit claims that with devices such as the iPhone, the iPad, the iPod Touch, the iPod Nano, the MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air, Apple has been knowingly violating the patent.

"Reading Flatworld's patent is like reading the description of gesture-recognition features of any of the accused products on Apple's Web site," Steve Berman, Hagens Berman's managing partner, is quoted as saying in the release. "It is clear that Flatworld owns technology that Apple has used to drive billions of dollars in infringing sales."

Flatworld is seeking an injunction against continued infringement, along with damages.

The company was founded by a professor of cognitive science and digital design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, who first developed gesture-recognition touch screens to make interacting with computers more intuitive for kids, the release says.

Apple declined to comment on pending litigation.

Update, 1:18 p.m. PT: Notes Apple's "no comment."

Addidoku is new puzzle game that has some similarities to Sudoku, but is also very different. In each level, you are presented with a several numbers set in a broken up grid. The goal is to group the numbers so that they add up according to the rules of the game. Each number can only be in one group and each puzzle has only one solution.

So what exactly are these rules? Well, in each group of numbers, all of the numbers (except for the biggest number) must add up to the biggest number. For example, the numbers 3, 2, 6, 1, form a group because the sum of 3, 2, and 1 is 6. You can also pair numbers, like two 5?s, because 5 equals 5. The numbers 4, 3, 5 do not form a valid group because 4 plus 3 does not equal 5.

Only numbers that are adjacent to each other can form a group. This means that if a number is diagonal to your group or separated from your group by a space, it cannot be added to your group.

That?s it! The rules are simple, but the levels are challenging. Even though they?re challenging, they?re completely doable which makes the game extremely addicting. Because each level can be completed in a reasonable amount of time, you are always willing to play ?just one more?.

The Good

• Challenging
• Addictive
• 60 puzzles for free
• 140 additional puzzles available as in-app purchase

The Bad

The Conclusion

Addidoku is such a fun and addicting puzzle game! The object is both familiar and unique at the same time. It?s also challenging ? something I find essential in a good puzzle game. It took a lot of self control to pry my hands off my iPhone to write this review.

Now excuse me while I play ?just one more level? of Addidoku.

By Kevin Lee, PCWorld    Apr 21, 2012 11:00 AM

[Photo: William Finucane via Mad Science]Whenever you dream, you go into a world completely of your own imagination?s creation. In most cases, you don?t know when you are dreaming, but when you do, it becomes something known as a lucid dream, which leads to a whole other ?god-level? of dream control.

There are ways to psychologically train yourself to recognize when you are dreaming. But for those of us who are less mentally trained, William Finucane of the Revolt Lab has shared a way to build a pair of goggles that will help you trigger a lucid dream whenever you want.

The build consists of a pair of safety goggles with some red LEDs that shine light on your eyes. The lights are connected to an ATtiny85 microcontroller and an Arduino board that?s been programmed to start blinking the lights every 10 minutes after a two-hour delay.

The idea is that the system will start blinking the lights once you've gone into Rapid Eye Movement sleep where dream activity is more likely. The lights will, theoretically, catch your attention without fully wake you up, and then you will know that you?re dreaming.

In a lucid dream, you supposedly can take full control of your dream world. So you can climb a vertical hill, get attacked by a waitress holding two trays who starts spinning like a toy top of doom (I?ve had some weird dreams?), turn the world on its head like Ellen Page did in the movie Inception, or act out whatever fantasies you have.

Be sure to check out the full build of Finucane?s Lucid Dreaming Goggles on Mad Science.

What would you want to do in a lucid dream? Leave a comment or dream diary entry.

[Mad Science via Hack a Day]

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