Alastair Humphreys goes to Barcelona:

Jessica Benko, The New York Times:

Norway banned capital punishment for civilians in 1902, and life sentences were abolished in 1981. But Norwegian prisons operated much like their American counterparts until 1998. That was the year Norway’s Ministry of Justice reassessed the Correctional Service’s goals and methods, putting the explicit focus on rehabilitating prisoners through education, job training and therapy. A second wave of change in 2007 made a priority of reintegration, with a special emphasis on helping inmates find housing and work with a steady income before they are even released. Halden was the first prison built after this overhaul, and so rehabilitation became the underpinning of its design process. Every aspect of the facility was designed to ease psychological pressures, mitigate conflict and minimize interpersonal friction. Hence the blueberry forest.

Norway understands that the point of incarceration has to go beyond mere punishment. Rehabilitation is the true test of a nation’s prison system. Via Kottke.

Jordan Steele:

The Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II is a very worthy successor to the original ground-breaking E-M5. Olympus has improved a great many things on the camera, including the direct controls, the viewfinder, the rear screen, the autofocus, the image stabilizer and more, while adding very interesting and useful new features such as Wi-Fi or the most-talked about feature, the High Resolution mode. This mode really does break new ground, allowing for 40 (JPEG) or 64 (RAW) Megapixel images for static scenes. It’s most definitely not a gimmick feature, and with a static scene and a solid tripod, will yield truly high-resolution images with good glass.

I really enjoy Jordan’s reviews, but they’re usually terrible for my wallet.

It looks good:

I can’t wait to see Christoph Waltz in this movie. Also, I’m happy to see they didn’t completely forget about Mr. White from Casino Royale and Skyfall.

Interesting review by Mathieu Gasquet of MirrorLessons. It may look like he’s not overly enthusiastic about the camera, but that’s perhaps because of the huge expectations the Leica name invariably sets.

The new Leica T appears to be a very competent camera system, priced way over its current performance level. But then again, that’s what Leica has always been so I guess, in a way, it makes sense.

Rishabh R. Dassani:

Standing as a default behavior choice doesn’t work for a variety of reasons:

The first and the most important reason standing doesn’t work is because it isn’t productive. Standing and working at the same time affects overall performance because you’re focusing on two things. Having to distribute your cognitive capacities between standing and working nullifies the benefits you might get from standing alone because only part of your mental resources are going toward your work, thus making you less productive in the end.

I don’t know if I agree with that but until today, I had seen plenty of posts about how great standing desks are and not one post with an opposing view. It’s always good to hear both sides of an argument, particularly when scientific studies on the matter are not conclusive.

Now we’re getting somewhere. I’m really liking how thorough and efficient the new workflow is. And he’s still not done:

All of this (including the points in Part 1) can be made into a Lightroom preset and Photoshop Action, with the only routine user intervention being the selection of a grey point in step 1 and pressing “Auto” in step 3. The (huge) benefit to this is that you can quickly preview the positive (but uncorrected) images before proceeding with the full conversion, which itself is only 2-3 clicks away.

My target, however, is to remove even this much intervention.

You have my undivided attention, sir.

Messy Nessy Chic:

The briefcase was found three decades after the affair took place, abandoned in a German apartment and later sold at auction. The contents of the suitcase, an extraordinary collection of found materials that chronicled the adulterous relationship between a businessman and his secretary in the late 1960s and 70s, are now on display for all to see at an art gallery in New York.

Exposed to our own voyeurism, the exhibition invites us to discover an archive consisting of hundreds of photographs of the same woman, identified only as “Margret S,” posing in hotel rooms and enjoying secret getaways.

Next time somebody complains to you about how social networks and the Internet are destroying privacy and marriages, just point them towards this article.

New York Magazine has compiled a fantastic scrapbook of the city that never sleeps, at the time when everybody else is doing just that. It’s impossible to highlight just one passage from this stunning piece, so just take my word for it and go read the whole thing.

Via Kottke.

The Oatmeal being The Oatmeal. So great.