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I can juggle a bunch of different things. I just tried with tissues. They suck. Get juggling scarves (available cheaper elsewhere, but I can't be bothered to find a reputable non-Amazon store.)

I've taught in the order of 20 people how to juggle balls, nobody taking over three hours to learn.

The pattern for teaching somebody to juggle 3 balls in cascade is this:

1. Train scarf juggling, using the below training pattern, up until you have control of juggling three scarves in the cascade.
   
2. Start again from the beginning, using balls/beanbags.
   
   For each step in the training sequence described below, practice until you can do ten "perfect" throws in a row. Juggling is about the throws, not the catches - the catches should be effortless. When you hold a scarf, you hold it from above, in the middle of the scarf, having the scarf hang down. Throws are movements and releases. Catches are grabbing the scarf from above. The throw movement for a scarf is essentially starting with your hand about hip height on the natural side, and moving the hand (w/scarf) over to be aligned with your opposite shoulder, and then dropping the scarf. When you hold a ball, you cup it resting on your hand, your upper arm hanging down from the shoulder and the lower arm pointing directly out (90 degree angle at the elbow). When you catch the ball, it is in an upwards open hand at the same level and position. When you throw a ball, throw from there to about to about eye height, going across to land in your other hand (which should not have to move much.)
   
   The scarf juggling is primarily to get a feel for the rhythm and gross movements of juggling the cascade (the standard 3-ball juggle); the precision tricks and very slow extension of counts described below are only necessary for balls, for the initial scarf training you can go forward as rapidly as you are able, just stepping back to learning the previous step better if a step seems hard. For ball juggling, I recommend being strict about the ten perfect rule, and re-test that on the previous step if you find any step hard to learn.
   
   The sequence:
   
   
3. Single object throw. Throw from your left hand to your right, then from your right to your left. Practice until you can do this "perfectly" (nothing you notice you can improve) ten times back & forth.
   
4. Left to right exchange. Start with an object in each hand. Throw the object in your left hand towards the right hand, when that object is at the top of its arch, throw the object in your right hand towards the left hand, catch with both hands, return to base position. Repeat until you can do ten "perfect" in a row.
   
5. Right to left exchange. As 2., but in reverse. Again, repeat until you can do ten perfect.
   
6. Interchange. Do one left to right exchange, stop, then one right to left exchange, stop, then one left to right exchange, stop, etc. This is essentially always starting with a particular ball rather than always starting with a particular hand. To ten perfect.
   
7. Left right left exchange. Start with an object in each hand. Throw the object in your left hand towards the right hand, when that object is at the top of its arch, throw the object in your right hand towards the left hand, then stop. This is essentially doing the two steps from point 4. but without a pause between them. To ten perfect.
   
8. Right left right exchange. As above, but starting with the right hand instead. Guess how many times you need to be able to do this perfectly.
   
9. Extend number of repeats, consistently leading with one ball. For each increase in count, make sure you can do it starting from either the left or the right hand. To be able to count both number of perfect repeats and length of a sequence, I like to use "A B C ... J" to count the number of perfects, and 1 to 10 to count the number of repeats I do.
   
10. You are now juggling but with a "hole" instead of a ball in your juggling pattern. Insert a ball there! Start with two objects in your left hand and one in your right. Throw first from the left hand, when that is at the top, from your left, when that is the top, from your right, then catch and stop. Repeat to ten perfect.
    
11. Extend from 1 to 10 and A to J on this too.
    
12. You are juggling!
    
    A problem some people have is that they "cheat" - they move around while doing their catches, thus not making their throws precise before trying to get on the next step in the training sequence. If you don't end up reliable with the sequence (ie, each step in the sequence feels like it is harder to master than the previous one), try mastering the previous one properly. I have two things I use to force people to do this:
    
    
13. Balance a book on your head while doing the throws. This force you to stand still.
    
14. Wear a blindfold. This force you to do precise throws.
    
    These techniques are usually not necessary for scarves - scarves are fairly tolerant - but they are fairly often necessary for balls. I'd try the book balancing first, and if that doesn't make you stable, try the blindfold, and if that doesn't either, try both at the same time.
    
    Another problem that some people have is that their pattern isn't flat - they're weaving back and forth at different distances from their body. I make people juggle with a wall right in front of them to make the pattern flat if their pattern isn't. (This is something I've only done for balls.)
    
    Finally, a common problem is looking too much at what you're juggling. I have people fix their eyes forward; if you want to have some support from your eyes, juggle in front of a mirror rather than fixating your eyes down and looking at what you are juggling.
    
    Hope that helps - if you run into any kind of problem, feel free to ask - I probably have more techniques for working around problems, these were just the ones that came off the top of my head. I also have reasons for why to do each of the things described.

he is saying both sort of. life has no meaning, but meaning isn't found within the struggle exactly, rather we exist in between the struggle and we create our own meaning. we are free, we have only to realize that the rules don't apply.

I can give you some advice for reading existentialism and also some places to start.

just curious, tho, how old are you?

there's several ways to approach reading philosophy.

method 1:
when reading philosophy of any kind you can get bogged down in the references and footnotes. when I was just starting out I would get so overwhelmed by things I didn't understand I would give up. don't give up. and don't worry about what you don't understand, just keep reading and see what you get out of it.

method 2:
BEFORE you read a book, read the Wikipedia page on it. back in the day I had to collect Coppleston's history of philosophy volumes to read commentary, but now it's online. so before you read, do some quick background reading so you know a) where the author is coming from/their general point of view/any important details about their life that pertain to understanding the book B) the author's main argument in the book - this will help you pick out his argument and understand it better.

3) some tips: a) read for pleasure. don't feel bad if you hate a book and just can't read it or make sense of it. sometimes later it makes more sense, but it's ok to hate a writer even if everyone else says they're amazing b) read with a pen or pencil in hand - underline things you like, write "I disagree" if you do, sometimes I even write "LOL" if it made me laugh and related to that B) take some notes as you go along whatever you think is important.. a sentence, a point, I use notes to restate in my own words the argument I just read... it helps me get it better and I have a reference in my own lingo that makes sense to me

where to start I would start with two books:

1. Donald Palmer "does the center hold? an intro to western philosophy"
   Amazon price ~2$
   
   get this book if you get no others!
   
   http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0073535753/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1462783700&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=does+the+center+hold&dpPl=1&dpID=51hxbBbmgzL&ref=plSrch
   
   
   2.Walter Kaufmann "existentialism: from Dostoyevsky to Sartre"
   Amazon price 11$
   
   http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0452009308/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1462783302&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=walter+kaufmann&dpPl=1&dpID=41lkh1kWkeL&ref=plSrch
   
   after that, depends on what you want to learn, but after the above I would read "Notes from Underground" by Dostoyevsky
   
   then maybe: JD Salinger "Catcher in the Rye"
   
   this was how I learned... after those two I went back chronologically and read Plato(he's foundational and easy enough to grasp), Kierkegaard, Dostoyesky, Camus and Sartre, then I started skipping around once I had a foundation.
   
   with existentialism the important thing to remember is that it isn't an exact philosophy. it was at first a reaction against exact philosophies with prescriptive definitions to how we should live. existentialism, rather, is a shared angst (Wikipedia Kierkegaard Angst) about life, an anxiety in the face of the meaninglessness of life. life has no meaning. now what? if life has no meaning, then all the rules are arbitrary, and you are truly free. free to do and be whatever you want.
   
   good luck on your quest, it's a worthy one.
   
   and my last piece of advice is this: there's no hurry... if a book takes you a year to digest, that's fine! if another takes you a week, ok! another might require 2 months. don't rush, digest the argument and internalize it.
   
   and I'm around on Reddit all the time if you have questions. and don't let philosophy snobs tells you you have to blah blah blah... philosophy should be accessible to all, otherwise it's a stupid endeavor.
   
   again.. good luck.
   

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 camera module replacement

I just replaced the wifi module in my wife's Note 2.. The Logic Board (aka- motherboard) in mine.. and then had to finally find a replacement for (b/c the connector ripped the male contact off of the logic board inside of the wire's female connector and I couldn't get it out.. super tiny shit) and install the USB/Cell Antenna cable in my Note 2.. With the tools, patience, PARTS lol, and instructions, you don't need a new phone as often as you'd think ;)

Total cost.. About $50 for all of those parts on ebay and ifixit-(which is expensive, but it's quick and reliable.. the bad cable I got was from them, and they replaced it free w/o a return of the faulty one) The tools aren't that much either.. ifixit has their stuff overpriced.. just find them elsewhere.. then, just watch a lot of videos, and go slow.

Did you know? you can use 2x magnifying lenses held at just the right distances from each other to create a MUCH more powerful magnification? I use a set of Helping Hands (not the best design btw) and then use a smaller magnifying glass held by one of the alligator clips held infront of the larger one to make a laymans microscope..

Here's an example of how I have mine setup.. This is an old RadioShack version that I paid waaaaay too much for back before I used the net lol.. Like $40?? I think ughh.. Pretty sure there's better for less now.

Shit.. I just reread what your issue was and it's the Vibration lmao.. I'm sorry, bit tipsy but I'm leaving all of that above. Did you try this?

aw geez, most stuff I've used to learn Houdini must be obsolete by now.

There is this more or less up-to-date introductory tutorial. I haven't watched it, but it doesn't seem to dwell too much into the procedural nature of the software, which is the most important aspect of Houdini.

I'd recommend first to watch the first chapters of these old free lessons. while it is obsolete, it will give you basic notions of how Houdini works.

I started with this book, which patiently explains the basics with awesome easy to follow examples. I think most of its examples still work but you'd need to skip dynamics and particles as it changed a lot since 2005.

But be ready to fall into a rabbit hole, the possibilities are limitless and it is get easy to get overwhelmed and lost. The best thing is to know what you want to know/do and specialize rather than trying to master everything Houdini is able to do.

Oh yeah, and since I seem to have written a couple other essays here, let me talk about the "how I learnt" part.

1. I was obsessed with cartoons when I was a kid. Watched a lot of them, read everything I could get my hands on about animation history and methods, drew a lot of flipbooks in the corners of my sketchbooks and notebooks.
   
2. I started analyzing cartoons by single-stepping the VCR. This was the eighties. It's a lot easier now.
   
3. I got a copy of the Preston Blair book and started trying to make sense of what he was saying in it.
   
4. I managed to cobble together a horrible, awkward animation toolchain involving drawing stuff on paper, a slow-scan-digitizer hooked up to a huge, clunky video camera, and two different software packages on my Amiga. I made all of one 30-second short with that.
   
5. I went to animation school, where they had a much better pencil-test rig that I could start to learn stuff on. Did a bunch of walk cycles. Walk cycles are really useful - they teach you a lot about the basic procedure of animating, and they're short things that you can crank out pretty quickly. Did other things too of course. Never did a personal short, I kinda regret that wasn't part of the curriculum at my school.
   
6. I started working in the industry and got regular critique from people better than me.
   
7. I burnt out and left animation to go live cheaply and draw my own comics instead. (THIS STEP IS OPTIONAL)
   
   So yeah, watch lots of well-animated cartoons, single-step them and think about what they're doing. Watch and analyze video too! Animate, critique your own work, find people to critique it, critique their work, learn to detach your own ego from your work so all this criticism doesn't leave you a sobbing/angry mess. Find keyframes from masters, try inbetweening them, compare to the actual inbetweens. Get involved in group projects.
   
   Flash really really tends to encourage a stiff paper-doll style of animation rather than providing useful tools to help you crank out the drawings. I've seen people do amazing things to work around it - a while back Pringle gave me a tour of the character setups he did for "Foster's" and my eyes popped out of my sockets - but it's a hell of a lot of work that requires arcane knowledge of Flash. Like I said, fool with Toon Boom or TVPaint instead. Or maybe
   
   Animating is a LOT EASIER than it used to be, you can buy a cheap Wacom tablet for less than a hundred bucks and get software for a few hundred more, or for nothing if you're willing to compromise your morals, and have animation capabilities I could only dream of when I was a kid.
   
   I mentioned the Preston Blair book above; it's still a major classic. I also highly recommend The Animator's Survival Kit; it's equally thorough. Both belong in any aspiring animator's library; what they teach you will help a ton in analyzing animation and making your own.
   
   AND ALSO.
   
   Here is a collection of the various exercises John Kricfalusi has given on his blog. THEY ARE AWESOME. He's bitched about being an unofficial school for the industry in the past, for good reason - he knows his stuff, and is passionate about passing it on. I learnt a lot hanging around his studio. You could do a lot worse than to start going down the list of drawing and animation exercises; they'll give you the mental tools to make stuff believably 3D.

The U-2 was an amazing airplane.

At cruising altitude of 70,000 feet (over 13 miles) nothing else in the world at the time could even get close to touching it. When the US started using the U-2 to fly over the USSR the Russians were able to track the flights, but even their highest performance jets and surface to air missiles were unable to take out the U-2. Russia spent a considerable amount of time and money working on a way to stop these flights. For 4 full years the US was able to photograph any part of Russia with amazing resolution before the Soviets managed to shoot one of the planes down with their newly developed SA-2 missiles. According to people who worked on the U-2 program around 90% of US intelligence information for those 4 years was provided by the U-2.

I highly recommend Skunk Works by Ben Rich. He worked on the U-2, SR-71, F-117A, and several other top secret aircraft. His book is probably the best I've ever read. https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486248583&sr=8-1&keywords=skunk+works

Sure, first of all, all Nepalese aren't Sherpas. Sherpas are an ethnic group originating from the high valleys of eastern Nepal and Tibet. The main region where they live is the Khumbu valley (close to Everest) among a couple of other valleys, although they are spread throughout Nepal, Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan. Due to their natural higher red blood cell count (when you acclimatise your red blood cell count increases, so your blood can transport more oxygen throughout your body), they were hired to help out with early expeditions throughout the Himalayas back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And it has stayed that way. They are quite wealthy compared to many other Nepalese, but still earn coffee money compared to the western expedition leaders and guides. And it really varies between guiding companies what they get paid and how they are treated, but in general most big companies (Jagged Globe, Altitude Junkies, Himex, IMG, etc) these days really take care of their Sherpas. The Sherpas are highly regarded by most western climbers, because without them there are no chance in hell that they would be able to do all these high altitude climbs. Sherpas are simply an amazing people.
Now the problem is that many Asian companies (Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese) doesn't treat their Sherpas as good, and many times disregard helping out setting up routes etc. I think this might have changed at least at Everest, where it is mandatory (I think) to pay the Ice Doctors that set up the route through the Khumbu Icefall and further up the mountain. But I don't know if this has changed in the rest of the Himalayas the last couple of years or not though, as most of the diaries I've read about this are usually close or older than a decade now (and to be honest, all have been from western climbers).
The biggest problem is not the climbers though (that many times ends up being very close friends with the Sherpas), but the Nepalese government that is completely corrupt. Climbers have to pay a quite high fee to be able to climb the mountain at all, think it is around $10k. This money rarely gets reinvested in Nepal or goes towards better rights for the guiding Sherpas. So part of the rebellion wasn't really about the climbers but towards the government. It is also a big tragedy when a Sherpa dies because he leaves behind a family that no longer will have an income. They get a very small amount from the government that won't last long. I think better life insurance was one of the things they demanded. Luckily there are foundations like The Juniper Fund run be famous mountaineer Melissa Arnot Reid, that helps families that has lost a member of the family.
So to end this comment, never trust a news paper when they write about this stuff. The journalists are rarely mountaineers, have rarely even been in the Himalayas or talked with Sherpas, are often bias and in general don't know a fucking thing about the subject. This is specially true for the plethora of know it all columnists etc. I can really recommend reading Mark Horrell's dairy The Everest Politics Show which is about the tragedy of 2014, this is a first person account as he was there trying to climb Lhotse (which shares base camp with Everest) at the time. He was even on his way up to the Icefall when it happened. I can also recommend his book, Seven steps from Snowdon to Everest if you are at all interested in mountaineering or trekking.

because refrigerators are designed to keep food cold, not make food cold. obviously, we keep food in a fridge to slow the growth of harmful bacteria. putting hot food into a refrigerator won't cool the food down quickly enough, and it could possibly spend too much time in what's known as the "danger zone" (41-140°F or 5-60°C), the temperature at which harmful bacteria grows the fastest. in addition, putting hot food into a cold fridge raises the temperature of the fridge as it gives off heat. you could potentially bring the air, and thus the rest of the food, in the fridge above a safe temp.

that being said, this advice is more for large amounts of very hot food (crock pots, pots of chili/soup/stock, roasts, etc.). a properly functioning modern refrigerator could definitely handle cooling down half of a pizza, especially considering pizza usually sits out for quite some time before it is put into a fridge.

if you have food where this is a concern, however, the best way to cool food down is using an ice bath (fill a large bowl/pot/your sink half full with ice, then cover the ice with water to get a 50/50 ice/water mix. submerge your food in the ice bath as best you can). of course, this is cumbersome and unnecessary for most foods, so separating the food into smaller portions before storing in the fridge/freezer works too. the restaurant industry uses what are evidently called cold paddles, (though i've always heard the term "ice wands") which are large plastic water bottles that are filled then frozen, then used to stir hot food until it cools.

Well, I believe that quantum physics indicates that the space in which we exist is in fact four-dimensional (including time), so the likelihood that we're in fact a dot on a higher-dimensional Mona Lisa is pretty small. Our universe may be 10-dimensional overall, but six of those dimensions split off from our four-dimensional space when energy density dropped shortly after the big bang and are currently curled up in an infinitesimal ball. One hypothesis is that, if you raise energy levels high enough, the 10 dimensions will unify again and the gravitational force will unify with the electromagnetic forces.

For a fantastic explanation of all this, check out Hyperspace by Michio Kaku - it's a book about quantum physics and crazy higher-dimensional stuff, written for people who don't know anything about physics, that reads like a novel.

Great explanation, thanks!!
It really helped a lot. I'm also looking for some good lens for panoramic views (like at the top of a mountain or something), as well as a fisheye lens (don't judge). The two I'm looking at are adapters for a 20mm prime lens I think.

I'm wondering your thoughts on them?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00U7HQSNE/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468604998&sr=8-1&pi=SX200_QL40&keywords=fisheye+lens+sony&dpPl=1&dpID=41pUm0Gsw7L&ref=plSrch

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00U7HQSLQ/ref=pd_aw_fbt_421_img_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=C7Q6T3AANK2NC45ZDZBQ

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00B20OYUO/ref=pd_aw_fbt_421_img_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=C7Q6T3AANK2NC45ZDZBQ

In Moksha: Aldous Huxley's Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience, Huxley talks about the different "visionary arts" and he specifically names Van Gogh as someone whose art is definitely visionary in nature. Whether it was induced via ingestion of hallucinogenic substances or some other form of transcendence, though, is still on the table. Perhaps someone else has more enlightenment on the subject?

1. Theoretically, with the right lens, since yours are interchangable.
   
   
2. It depends on what lens you're using, if you got the standard 14-42mm lens that most of the kits come with, that has a maximum aperture of f/3.5 at 14mm, which is not great, but not bad. Not enough to take very low-light photos like this.
   
   
3. You'll need a new lens, if so. You can use Panasonic and Olympus lenses, but Panasonic ones are a usually a better choice for Panasonic cameras since Panasonic relies on the lenses to do stabilization, while Olympus relies on the bodies to do stabilization. As such, Panasonic lenses have stabilization, while Olympus do not.
   
   You'll want to look for a Panasonic lens with a large aperture, and low focal length (<=50mm, f/2 or lower). A good candidate is the Panasonic Leica 25mm. On your camera, it would have an equivalent 50mm focal length, with an f/1.4 aperture. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like you have too much choice for low focal length, high-aperture lenses, so that Panasonic is probably your best bet.

There is a really good book called Talent is Overrated which basically talks about this. It says even in the case of prodigies, they still needed the practice. The difference was their ceiling may be higher if they are 'naturally gifted' which is only a select few. However, the main factor to success came down to a brute amount of time spent practicing. I would recommend the read!

Yes, there is a book, which I'm happily plugging as the author of said book :) (and the creator of the pieces in the photos, too.)

Really good read: Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed

He's top o' the list of my engineer heros, right along side Burt Rutan.

Have two picture books illustrated by him - "Imagine a Day" and "Imagine a Night" My son and I loved them as bedtime books - lots to look at and dream about.
Edit: http://www.amazon.com/Imagine-Night-Sarah-L-Thomson/dp/0689852185

The artist is Rob Gonsalves. If you like his stuff there are at least three books available with his paintings set to poems by Sarah L. Thomson.

"Imagine a Day", "Imagine a Night", and "Imagine a Place".

e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Imagine-Night-Sarah-L-Thomson/dp/0689852185