Brooklyn based hotographer Tom Kirsch – better know by his nickname Motts – has assembled some amazing photos of abandoned hospitals, hotels, and prisons over on his site opacity.us. In many cases his photos are the last images taken before the buildings were demolished which makes them all the more interesting.

The two shots featured above are of the Sterling Hotel in Wilkes-Barre PA. The first photo was photographed in August of 2005. The black and white photo is from a 1908 postcard. The hotel was eventualy demolished in February 2007. 

To find out more about Motts, check out his about page.

Billionaire oilman, philanthropist T. Bone Pickens has a plan to wean us our dependence on energy imports. He plans on building the worlds largest wind farm. It’s a far more detailed plan than either presidential candidate has laid out. But then again, the best plans always rise from the private sector.

From Forbes:

At 80 the oilman and financier is healthy and having some of his best years in business. “Of all the taxes I’ve paid, 90% of them were after I was 70,” says Pickens, who forwarded $200 million of his capital gains to the U.S. Treasury last year. Worth $3 billion at last count, he’s still drilling for oil and buying water rights. His Mesa Energy in May bought 667 wind turbines from GE and has spent $2 billion so far developing a 4-gigawatt wind farm, the world’s biggest, in the Texas panhandle.

From Cleantechnica:

When one of Texas’s richest oil men bets big on wind energy, it gets attention. Yesterday NPR’s Living on Earth broadcast an interview with Mr. Pickens, who shared the salient facts about his planned wind project:

• It will be the largest in the world, he reckons, at 4,000 megawatts
• It will provide enough power for 1,300,000 homes
• It’s a $10 billion dollar project from which he plans a 15%-25% profit

Asked why he is investing in wind now, Pickens replied:

“For a number of years I’ve watched the wind turbines develop — and I feel like it’s time for it. I think that oil has peaked at 85 million barrels in the world. We’ve got to develop other forms of energy — wind, I think solar will be next, and I hope I’m still around to be in the solar deal.” (Pickens is 80 years old.

So Pickens has a plan. Sounds like a good one. I applaud this man for stepping up and doing something with his brain and his money.

You’ll be the envy of your colleagues with this handy-dandy invisi-bookshelf. The only downside is choosing which large book to destroy. I’m sure if you look hard, you can find one laying around the house. Of course you could always visit a second-hand bookstore for the base book.

Most posters these days are either tired or boring. So it’s refreshing to see some very unique retro inspired posters. Check ‘em out over at theposterlist.com. These babies are definitely worth the paper they’re printed on. Only $11 bucks! ($10.99 to be exact)

The folks over at madebysofa have built the best disc burning app that I’ve seen for for Mac OS X Leopard by far. It’s so innovative and simple is hard to believe no one has thought of it before. I downloaded a trial here, then after burning two discs, I bought it. 

Let’s start with the interface. Super clean + sexy. Black with white type with great icons and animations. For example, once you begin burning a disc, animated smoke flows out the top of the window. You can even set a preference so that you can blow into your microphone and affect the smoke. Little touches like that make Disco fun to use.

There is even an option to pull up an “Index” window which keeps a record of all of the discs you’ve burned and allows full search capabilities. Usually a secondary program is required.

Disco also includes “Spanning” which automatically divides files that are too big for one disc and would “span” across several discs. With Disco you can create a disc image from a set group of files. For you laptop burners, it can even detect physical motion to prevent coasters.

With a price of only $29.95, it’s well worth the effort. You will not be disappointed.