Dean Ornish talks about simple, low-tech and low-cost ways to take advantage of the body’s natural desire to heal itself.

Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.

Speaking at the 2007 EG conference, “renegade lunch lady” Ann Cooper talks about the coming revolution in the way kids eat at school — local, sustainable, seasonal and even educational food.

In this fiery and funny talk, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what’s wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it’s putting the entire planet at risk.

We all know the arguments that being vegetarian is better for the environment and for the animals — but in a carnivorous culture, it can be hard to make the change. Graham Hill has a powerful, pragmatic suggestion: Be a weekday veg.

William Li presents a new way to think about treating cancer and other diseases: anti-angiogenesis, preventing the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial first (and best) step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that cut off the supply lines and beat cancer at its own game.

Taken with the Nikon D5000 and Tamron 18-270mm on a tripod. Image was merged with 2 exposures and manipulated with Photoshop and iPhoto.

Link to Facebook Gallery: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=115686&id=675773015
Link to Qik video: http://qik.com/video/3088877

This site is using the premium virtual server package from GoDaddy.com. It seems to be rather slow compared to a year ago, but I don’t have any metrics to back that up. I think that their virtual load-balancing currently causes severe variability in performance. Here is some data from a recent speed test. Is this good?

Load times for http://michaelmacal.com/blog from http://WebWait.com during non-peak weekend time (Sat @ 8:45pm):

Average: 8.16s. Median: 3.97s. StdDev: 4.935s. From 30 calls.
[1] 6.78s
[2] 4.85s
[3] 7.38s
[4] 3.25s
[5] 8.66s
[6] 10.76s
[7] 6.19s
[8] 11.92s
[9] 20.14s
[10] 24.95s
[11] 10.09s
[12] 7.99s
[13] 3.38s
[14] 3.24s
[15] 7.19s
[16] 13.63s
[17] 3.52s
[18] 4.18s
[19] 3.63s
[20] 4.14s
[21] 5.41s
[22] 4.93s
[23] 14.38s
[24] 4.64s
[25] 3.01s
[26] 7.10s
[27] 3.29s
[28] 4.59s
[29] 5.28s
[30] 3.04s

Pano

Casa Mar Condos, Siesta Key, Florida on 7/3/2009 at 4:50 PM.
Nikon Coolpix S210 with Magnetic Fisheye Lens.
Click here for 360×180 Equirectangular image.
Click here to download Quicktime VR.

Taken with 8 shots horizontal, 1 up, 1 down. Had a real issue aligning bottom photo, major flaws and cleanup in Photoshop.

Pano

East Fork Cabins #6, Greer Arizona on 9/7/2009 at 4:36 PM.
Nikon Coolpix S210 with Magnetic Fisheye Lens.
Click here for 360×180 Equirectangular image.
Click here to download Quicktime VR.

Taken with 7 shots horizontal, 2 up, 2 down. Best result so far with slight cleanup in Photoshop.

If you are an iPhone user and would like to see the panoramas from this site in action, you can use either of the means below:

1) You can manually copy the link and paste into it’s URL section of the PangeaVR app.

Link: http://michaelmacal.com/Pano/PangeaVRPortfolio.xml

2) You can search for the Portfolio “Michael Macal’s Amateur Portfolio”.

Pano

New York New York Excalibur Bridge, Las Vegas. 7/19/2009 @ 1:35 PM.
Nikon Coolpix S210 with Magnetic Fisheye Lens.
Click here for 360×180 Equirectangular image.
Click here to download Quicktime VR.

Taken with 6 shots horizontal, 1 up, 1 down. Due to moving the camera lens’s center point, there was a noticeable parallax issue that had to be cleaned up in Photoshop.

D5000 Test

Nikon D5000 Video Test. Video, 720P 24f @10mbit, 134.9MB, runtime: 1:51

Camera Tested: Nikon D5000 DSLR + Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC LD Aspherical IF Macro Zoom Lens.

Lens Settings: AF, VC

Post Processing: iMovie ‘09 with Image Stabilization from 101%-109%.