Tasting beers may seem simple to many: buy beer and drink it. However, there are an increasing number of people who understand that craft beers can be just as complex as some wines. Because so many brewers are starting to put more thought and effort into brewing beer, we as beer drinkers should also think more about what we taste when we drink beer.Just like tasting wine, there are a few steps that one must go through to fully appreciate what one is consuming. There are many aspects to beer that makes it what it is – appearance, aroma, flavor, and body – and a beer enthusiast should be able to identify many traits of a beer within these components.
The following four steps aren’t that difficult to implement and can make your beer drinking experience a million times better, especially if you like to drink craft beers. On the contrary, these steps could quite possibly make you hate your favorite macrobrewery’s best offerings.
Observe
There are a few things to note when looking at a freshly poured beer. It is very important to pay attention to a beer’s color, clarity, and head retention. Knowing these characteristics of a beer can give you a pretty good foreshadowing of what the beer will be like when you actually taste it.
Disturb
This is obviously the easiest step but nonetheless important. By gently swirling the beer you can disturb it just enough to allow its aromas to be amplified for a moment. Before swirling your beer make sure you have your nose ready to do some analyzing.
Inhale
Many people don’t think of beer as aromatic (except once you’ve had a few too many and you begin sweating) but a beer’s smell is actually pretty important. When inhaling pay attention to whether the beer’s aroma is sweet, floral, spicy, or otherwise – these aromas often hint at what types of malts, hops, and yeasts were used and how it was brewed.
Taste
Obviously tasting the beer is the most fun and first impressions usually mean a lot, so do your best to get the most out of this step. It is important to figure out what is flavoring your beer so take notice to whether the beer is sweet, bitter, or balanced – do this by intentionally forcing the beer over your taste buds. Within a beer’s balance one can typically identify many sub-characteristics. Don’t forget to note what type of feel or texture the beer has. Along with a beer’s overall taste, body is probably one of the only things most people seem to care about, for example: America’s obsession with “light†beers. Much like a beer’s aromatic characteristics, the different parts to a beer’s taste can also tell you much about the beer’s ingredients and how the beer was made.
Hopefully these beer tasting methods will help the next time you drink a beer. I know that when I was first told about them around a year and a half ago I started noticing so much more about my favorite beers and especially beers I was trying for the first time. Once you have started using these four steps, you will eventually be able to break down each step even further, identifying more and more small details about the beer you are tasting. Good luck on your next beer tasting adventure – make sure you put your new knowledge to good use! Cheers!
Source: http://www.cureforwhatalesyou.com/
A University of Tokyo technology genius has created a ‘living’ display screen that offers dimensional depth to the videos played on it. Images of Gears of War chainsaw guns coming through the screen at me immediately come to mind and I now have no desire for an HDTV if this is possible any time soon. Yoichiro Kawaguchi’ Gemotion screen pushes and pulls the depth of the screen surface using 72 air cylinders behind a flexible 39 x 24 inch screen. The video projections get processed as image data that tells the cylinders how to bring the show to life. Obviously a three-ish foot by 
Abstract photography is nothing new, and people constantly come up with new — or re-invent old — versions of photography techniques. One of the ones that is going like wild-fire (excuse the pun) around the interwebs at the moment is the art of photographing coloured smoke.The trend started with the highly talented Graham Jefferey, of 
The two key secrets to smoke photography is inverting the image, and using gray smoke. Say what now? How does that work? Well, Graham explains: “It’s quite a simple technique, really. All you need to concentrate on when you are taking the photos themselves, is getting good images of the smoke. The colours are generated digitally at a later stage.â€
While smoke in itself can be an interesting subject matter, Graham points out that in his photos, the smoke itself isn’t the subject matter, it is merely the tool used to create unusual photographs: “I am not trying to create pictures of smoke; I am trying to create pictures by using smokeâ€. This approach means that you have full creative licence to do what you want to manipulate the smoke as much as necessary — the only thing you have to worry about is getting an impressive final result.
When you are photographing, it is easiest to let the smoke rise on its own volition. Instead of trying to manipulate the incense stick, try wafting some motion into the air to disturb the even plume. Alternatively, you can try to create interesting shapes by making the plume turbulent: try introducing a ruler, an upturned spoon, or a sheet of paper into the plume to alter its shape and ‘feel’.
Personally, my best smoke photos were taken with a 2000W Bowen studio flash light with a humongous soft-box fitted on the front. I prefer this solution because the softbox gives even lighting, but it can be difficult to limit where the light goes, so the above-mentioned limitations of “no light on your background or camera lens†can get tricky. I find that if you put the softbox really close to the smoke, you can get excellent results. Having said that, my smoke photos aren’t nearly as good as Graham’s, and he uses a different approach: “For all practical purposes the light used to expose the image comes from one studio flash unit fitted with a snoot and placed at the side or behind the smoke. I realise that not everyone has one of these units, but an off camera flash gun fitted with or placed beside a baffle to protect the background from direct light works just as well.â€
Now that you’ve captured the photos, it’s time to take it to your digital darkroom. Crop your image to a composition that works for you, and then use levels or curves to adjust the contrast of your photos. You’ll want to make sure that the background is completely black (hold the alt key while adjusting the black-point levels slider in Photoshop, it gives you a preview of what you’re actually doing), so it turns into a pure white when you invert the image.
The best place to go for some inspiration are 