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(Link to images from the surface of Mars.)

Coming in from Pasadena, California - 10 months and 400 million miles away from Earth, the Phoenix Lander has successfully made contact with the Martian surface.

The lander had absolutely no hiccups during the landing. NASA's technicians were well prepared for, and even expecting problems to occur.

Concerns over at California may be that the mission went a little too perfect for NASA's liking. Two months prior to the launch, they crippled the lander to ensure a hampered landing, yet there were no issues at all. The worst problem to arise? The lander was a quarter-degree off axis.

"There's some definite wizardy afoot." - Claims JPL project manager Barry Goldstein. "We think one of our team members may have betrayed us and enchanted the lander pre-launch.".

"We are look to prepare ritual to rid lander of protective guardian or space-angel who make home in lander in dramatic and glorious depth of space." - Khalux Ing!ble, board-certified hex specialist. "Hail Loki!", he clumsily added after several minutes.

"The signal was never lost." - Chimes in spacecraft manager Ed Sedivy. "It was a near perfect landing. We had endlessly prepared for a blackout or even mission failure.".

Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate Ed Weiler commented on the near-flawless mission with:

"We have sent our best scientists to scour the plains of Africa in search of a powerful shaman. We need someone whose rituals can penetrate the most-excellent abyss of space.

We can't afford to send a human to Mars for at least another 20-25 years, so it is necessary the unholy medicine man is able to perform his rituals from here.

It is imperative we cast whatever unworldly spirit is most-undoubtedly preserving the lander to the depths of hell, to ensure the success of a mission failure.

We have a fully trained team which has simulated everything that could possibly go wrong, right down to God himself placing an impenetrable barrier around Earth. We intend to use it.".

The Phoenix Lander team chose not to discuss the matter any further and left the conference room in a huff, after flipping over a few tables in rage and making wasted attempts at picking up a bolted-down chair.

Wired's Mars lander page.

First images from the surface of Mars.

Youtube video of the original mission breakdown.

Pre-land news article from Newkerela.com.

He dumped his girlfriend.

I have a game hub called "TSL". A while ago, people were asking what it stood for. Right now, the game is in beta-testing. It has been in development for a long time and it's release is long overdue. Fortunately, it is readily nearing public release.

I am going to reveal what TSL stands for.

Watch this video to find out:



Visit the youtube page and read the description to find out even more.

You know what really sucks? You need to resize an image, maybe because you regret taking the image at such a low resolution, but stretching it creates artifacts or induces horrible stretching/squashing. Well, that kind of crap is for the 1990's to deal with.

There's a content-aware image resizing method which employs techniques that allow for a much better alternative to cropping or scaling images. It removes unnecessary pixels when you shrink the image (landscape, background, grass etc.), preserving important content, and it adds pixels when you enlarge it, allowing for the image to be expanded past it's original size. Of course, there are precautions to prevent it from removing important pixels of features such as text or faces.

Images will also resize on the fly when you adjust window size. There won't be embedded images sticking out like sore thumbs when the rest of the layout adjusts itself. It will be much more seamless. This means you won't be looking at the bottom corner of a large image on a hand-held device.

It's how you expect images to act when you resize them in the first place. No more stretching.

Link to the article for additional insight.

Instead of reading a description of how it functions, here's a video which provides an in-depth introduction to how it works.

EXTREME NERD VOICE WARNING



When this enters mainstream usage, BYOND needs to take advantage of it with interfaces.

You see how the video demonstrates the possibility for quick image manipulation?

No more spending an hour in Photoshop to remove someone from an image .

I am wearing sunglasses 24/7 in an attempt to be cool.

Even while I sleep, man.