This is a fantastic article with pretty much everything you need to know, whether you’re just starting out or attempting to master the craft.

I particularly loved this bit:

Shooting film is easy, fun and inexpensive — exactly like riding a bicycle. Both take practice at first, and once learned, you’ll never forget. Like riding a bike, film is easy to shoot. By comparison, shooting digital is like trying to pilot the Space Shuttle: immensely complex, with a zillion potential ways to make one wrong move that lead to complete disaster, it’s easy to forget the myriad of details without a long checklist, and it’s different every time — or goes obsolete, as has the space shuttle! Film just goes, while the shuttle program was cancelled back in 2011. So much for digital.

I love shooting film, and I’m learning new things every time I pick up the camera and press the shutter release. It’s photography as it’s meant to be.

Nasa has released the first high-definition view of the Andromeda galaxy as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope:

Stunning. Click or tap on the image for the full size, which is a must. Via The Loop.

UPDATE: Jason Kottke shares more information about this image, and another equally stunning one. These are the Pillars of Creation:

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” indeed.

Wonderful short essay by Matt Gemmell, on whether fictional stories really matter:

For me, stories are empathic projections. They reflect and propagate our hopes and fears. They fuel our desires, and sometimes our ambitions. Most importantly of all, they fire our emotions - they let us feel as deeply as we can. We’re emotional creatures, whose acts are guided by passion much more than reason. It’s vital that we know how to feel.

So well said. I love fiction, and some of the most important lessons in my life I learned from the stories I read as a kid, as a teenager and yes, as an adult. These stories matter to me deeply, personally.

We absolutely need more stories, and more people like Matt, brave enough to tell them. If you want to do your part, here’s how you can help.

I can’t wait to read Matt’s upcoming novel. I don’t know the details or the story, but I know it will matter to many people, including myself.

Stunning time-lapse footage of aurora borealis as seen from the International Space Station. So cool:

Excellent and thorough guide by Jason Snell on how to rip DVDs and Blu-ray discs on the Mac. I’ve always wondered about this, because I didn’t know there was a Mac-compatible Blu-ray player out there. Turns out there is at least one, and it’s pretty affordable.

Fantastic essay by Ben Brooks on the natural compulsion we as nerds feel to find and own the best:

And so I, and fellow nerds, find new macros, new apps, new tools, new systems. We have a never ending need to find the best, whether that is tools, or processes we want them both. We can’t settle until we’ve reached a point where we know we’ve reached peak zen because what we own, or how we do something, is subjective seen by us as the best.

I’m writing this on an iPad Air, but I know there is an iPad Air 2 and I know it is better. I want it, but cannot afford it. But it’s better and knowing that kills me a little inside, however at the same time I recognize that I have the best I can afford and it is only in that realization which I can take comfort and move on.

I’m not impervious to this feeling, and battle it every time I look at my 6-and-a-half-year-old iMac. It’s only a fraction of a second, but it happens. Every. Single. Time. Sometimes it takes quite a bit of effort to be able to distance yourself from the need to have the best, but I have found it’s entirely possible.

There’s also some measure of personal satisfaction in getting the most out of your beloved, albeit outdated tools. To squeeze the last bit of functionality out of them before eventually replacing them. I know I don’t have the best Mac right now, but that’s OK, because there was this one time, not that long ago, when I did. And I still remember what that felt like. Just as I know that one day, not that far from now, I will feel it again.

Because, let’s not kid ourselves, when my iMac finally kicks the bucket, I’m definitely getting the best Mac I can buy. It’s the circle of life, after all.

Lisa Winter, IFLS:

While Philae initially landed on the target landing site, the harpoons meant to secure it to the surface failed, and it bounced twice before coming to rest (albeit tilted slightly) on the shady edge of a cliff.

This location was problematic, as it meant that Philae would not receive enough sunlight to recharge its solar panels. After about 60 hours of transmitting data about Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Philae’s battery ran out and the probe went to sleep. There had initially been some optimism that the probe might wake back up as the 67P/C-G gets closer to the sun next summer, but there’s just one problem: nobody knows where the heck it is.

Man, that sucks. I sympathize with the guys at the European Space Agency; I lose my keys all the time and it is not fun.

Solid recommendations all around by the Huffington Post. So far I’ve been to 14 out of the 50 cities. Not bad, but clearly I have room for improvement. Via The Loop.

Great review by Josh Ginter, as ever. Small, slim messenger bags are my preferred way to carry my everyday gear — a 13” MacBook Pro, a notebook and a pen, among other things — and the Mamba Slim Courier seems ideal for the task:

The shoulder strap has a nice shoulder pad that is comfortable for long periods of bag carrying. Again, the shoulder pad is made of the same material as the rest of the bag, so durability isn’t in question. The shoulder pad is folded around the strap and secured by two snap-buttons, so if you become tired of the shoulder pad, it isn’t difficult to remove.

The shoulder strap is arguably the single most important feature of a messenger bag, and one of the most difficult to do well. The ability to slide the shoulder pad along the strap, for example, is absolutely critical to the functionality of the bag. It’s remarkable just how many manufacturers get this wrong. I’m very conscious about this particular feature when browsing for messenger bags, and I’m glad to see they nailed it here.

Cabel Sasser, on the Panic blog:

We’ve well-documented our struggles with Coda 2.5, Sandboxing, and the Mac App Store — first a warning in 2012, then this year when 2.5 shipped. Apple tried their best but realistically speaking we simply would have had to cut numerous Coda features, like the Terminal, MySQL local access, editing files as root, and more. To be honest, I was pretty nervous to be pulling Coda from the Mac App Store. But when we finally did it, I felt an incredible, almost indescribable sense of relief — mostly because as we began to wrap up bug fix releases, we were able to immediately post them to our customers within minutes of qualifying them. My god. That’s how it should be. There’s just no other way to put it — that’s how you treat your customers well, by reacting quickly and having total control over your destiny. To not be beholden to someone else to do our job feels just fantastic. (Also to not pay someone 30% in exchange for frequent stress is a fine deal.)

I’m happy to see removing Coda from the Mac App Store didn’t really hurt their sales. The Mac App Store is a fantastic way for developers to reach a wider audience but understandably, it’s not for everyone. Panic is a unique company, and it makes all the sense in the world for their apps to be sold independently through their own distribution channel.

Via 512 Pixels.