This one seemed to be missed by most people, although the asteroid was relatively small it did come pretty damn close to hitting us.

It is 14,000km above the planet’s surface, meaning it will fly inside the Clark Belt of satellites. The asteroid, named 2012KT42, is 3-10m wide and is believed to be of no danger to Earth.

The Astronomy blog “Associazione friulana di astronomia e meterologia”has a great post with far, far too much detail including this map of the path of 2012KT42.

Having been to the Grand Canyon, it’s definitely one of my favourite places, nothing like been made to feel like a tiny dot on the planet. Timothy O’Sullivan went there in the 1860s and managed to take some amazing photos, most of them a lot better than anything I could take now with my DSLR.

Photographer Timothy O’Sullivan was working as a military photographer, for Lt. George Montague Wheeler’s U.S. Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian. O’Sullivan joined a number of expeditions organized by the federal government to help document the new frontiers in the American West. The teams were composed of soldiers, scientists, artists, and photographers, and tasked with discovering the best ways to take advantage of the region’s untapped natural resources.

This photo is my favourite, heaps more in the article on The Atlantic.

I’ve watched the occasional UFC fight and although there are some great punches and kicks thrown, there’s a little too much rolling around on the ground for my liking. From the start there was plenty of that in this fight between Cain Velasquez and Antonio Silva in UFC 146, then a cut to the head of Silva made things get really, really bloody (click the image for the video).

For those unaware of what the prisoner’s dilema is, do some reading.

Then watch this video of a British game show called “Golden Balls” where they play a single-shot version of the prisoner’s dilemma in which the two players’ choices can result in a large cash prize being awarded to both of them, neither of them, or just one of them.

This is almost a triple mind-fuck. The bald guy calling the other guy an idiot doesn’t really reflect well on him when everything comes to a close. You sir, got played.

(Source: Boing Boing)

You’ve gotta give points to the towns in Wales for trying to create unique selling points to get the tourists rolling on through. There’s the bookshelf house, the longest place name in the world and now this.

Everything of interest in Monmouth has a plaque with a QR code linking to it’s corresponding Wikipedia entry. The video and the article explain all…

This is what 1,800 images played back in a minute look like. The milkyway over Lake Tekapo in the South Island of New Zealand. Stunning.

Earlier in the month I read a great article on The Verge about how much the mobile payments industry was a mess.

As Visa, Mastercard, and others race to become the dominant player in mobile payments, consumers must sit in the stands and wait.

It’s still is a mess and I long for the day when I can pay for my coffee/lunch with my phone, there’s at least 30 seconds of my time wasted putting a card into a machine and typing a pin. TIme is money people.

Awesome news today from Vend, a New Zealand company revolutionising point-of-sale software. They’ve teamed up with Paypal and basically what it means is this:

For PayPal enabled Vend businesses, checkout couldn’t be easier. Customers simply locate your store in the local tab of the PayPal iPhone app, and ‘check in’ to your business. Vend notifies you of any checked-in customers and automatically syncs to your customer database, for easy access to sales history and customer management. When they are ready to pay, just confirm them by name and photo, and you’re done. No handing over of cards. No cash. No QR codes or NFC. Just instant payment for items between PayPal accounts.

Sounds like my kind of system. Bring it on Vend/Paypal, the world is ready.

I’m currently doing Paleo (and loving it) which means I’m eating a lot of meat, and going out of my way to get good quality stuff too. After watching documentaries like Food Inc, it’s hard to just pick up whatever meat is the cheapest and not thinking about where it comes from to get on your plate.

So I like the idea that start-up AgLocal has. It’s often a bit of a mission to find good quality meat, or to look past the marketing spin on the packets and see where something has really come from.

The mobile-based app functions as a network to benefit three sides of the carnivorous human food chain. Consumers will be able to browse for local farms to order meat, which independent distributors will deliver to grocery stores, where individual buyers will claim their order.

Love it. It’s still very early days, but I think it’s a concept that other markets could take note of, especially NZ which has heaps of people passionate about organic food. Take notes people!

My G+ feed is crammed with some pretty amazing eclipse photos but this one takes the cake. Some background and more photos.

Skygazers around the world excitedly gathered outside to watch the rare annular eclipse, which produces a ‘ring of fire’ around the sun, when it swept across Asia and the western United States on Sunday evening.

(Source: plus.google.com)

I love high FPS slow-motion video. I also love New Zealand. So this video, shot with this camera, made me a tad home sick.