Steve Huff:

At the end of the day the LX100 did not inspire me enough to want to really get out there and shoot with it. I wish I could have tested the Leica version because while it is the same camera, it is made in a different factory to higher standards and includes better extras (warranty, accessories, software) while looking nicer.

The entire review could be summarized in one word: meh. The LX100 is a decent camera but at that price, you can do better.

His logic is sound:

Part of the reason standing desks seemed so unintuitive to me at first was because I associate standing with a kind of temporariness — you stand when you’re doing something like talking on a pay phone, or waiting for the ATM, not while you’re settling into a major task. But that sense of temporariness may be the genius of it, if it can help a person get down to work more assertively.

Put another way, sitting is a highly passive state, perfectly suited for self-entertainment or other effortless activities, and perhaps not so well suited for focused work. I suspect that standing makes a person less inclined to play and more inclined to work. I can easily spend four hours in a chair doing one hour of work and three hours of not-work. But there’s no way I’m going to spend four hours standing just to spend most of it dicking around.

Russian photographer Maksim Zavialov has a great Instagram series of “photographs within photographs”. Really cool stuff through the magic of composition.

Great infographic by the BBC showing the temperature scale of the universe, from Absolute Zero to Planck Temperature. Amazing.

Believe it or not, it’s already been five years since the iPad was introduced. Stephen Hackett shows some side-by-side shots of the original iPad and the current iPad Air two.

Five years. Time really does fly when you’re having fun.

Architect Barbara Appolloni has designed one of the most fascinating apartments I’ve ever seen. It’s positively tiny, measuring only 24 square meters (258.3 square feet), but it includes all features traditionally found in average-sized apartments:

Like the game “Lego”, everything fits perfectly creating a meticulous system of pieces designed to contain the specific features of a home. Different opening mechanisms create a universe that transforms the scene according to the hour of day.

The closet, kitchen, dining table and even washroom door are all hidden by the walls. The bench can be used as a seat and an exterior access ladder. A wheel system allows to pull out the double bed housed under the floor of the balcony. An external staircase connects the ground floor with the terrace, where a bath and a large wooden couch are placed. The magnificent views of the city complete the comfort of the home.

The only “minor” quibble: it’s located on a fifth floor — with no elevator. Check out the video below to see the design in action, as well as the previous state of the building. It’s such a huge difference it’s hard to believe:

Just amazing.

Today’s xkcd:

On May 13th, The Phantom Menace will have come out closer to Return of the Jedi than to the present.

Not cool, xkcd. Not cool.

Speaking of finding your thing, Alastair Humphreys wrote a great article on how he managed to turn his passion for adventure into an actual job. This is great advice for anyone trying to make a living doing what they love. If you’re considering something like this, you will probably recognize much of yourself in these points:

• I love almost every aspect of what I do.
• I love being self- employed: the freedom and the responsibility and the pressure.
• I think I’m probably now un-employable.
• I love being creative.
• I appreciate that building a profile helps generate exciting opportunities. (And I have come to accept -though not enjoy- the weird world of relentless self-promotion that being a career adventurer requires. I remain uncomfortable with people praising me more than I deserve, and I continue to get very angry and upset with the inevitable haters that your self-promotion will attract.)

Via Kottke, who adds a couple insightful comments you should definitely check out.

The word “work”, as we commonly use it, often carries incredibly negative connotations. When your work doesn’t inspire you, it’s hard to find the silver lining — particularly on a Monday morning. But does it have to be that way? Matt invites us to look for the thing that doesn’t feel like work to us:

When you’re doing that thing, you can’t wait to get to work. Evenings are continuations. Weekends are more opportunities to fashion great works. Holidays are a change of scenery, without the final day being tinged with sadness and dread, before you return to your life’s work.

Compensation is a welcome bonus, for something you’d be doing regardless. Retirement is unthinkable - why would I ever stop?

Nailed it. There’s a great sense of relief in knowing you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. The thing that fits, as Matt wrote. It’s intoxicating. Analog Senses is that thing for me, and now I can’t believe it took me so long to figure it out.

Graham Spencer, MacStories:

I wasn’t sure exactly where it would lead, but last month I asked on Twitter for independent developers to @ reply me and say hi. Amplified by retweets by Federico and many others, I got dozens and dozens of replies, ultimately totalling just under 200 responses. That’s both a pretty huge number (trust me, it was a time consuming process documenting them all) and also incredibly tiny (there are around 250,000 active developers and over a million apps for sale).

What a great idea. If you want to help support indie app development — and you totally should — remember to check this list the next time you’re in the market for a new app.