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Remember this amazing travel mug shaped like a camera lens that Canon handed out to press at the Olympics? Well, now you can pre-order one for yourself for a mere $30 CAD.

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Canon Lens Thermos Now Available for Preorder [Awesome Things]

Those press covering the Olympics sure do have a plum life. They bundle off to Vancouver for 16 days of watching ice-skaters embarrassing themselves , and ruthless Russian bobsledders showing their dark sides. Oh, and they get lens-shaped thermoses. The story goes that a Microsoft employee by the name of Josh Weisberg wandered into the Canon press tent at the Olympic Press Center, and got given a 70-200mm Canon L-series lens

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Greatest Swag In The History of Swagginess: The Canon Lens Thermos [Swag]

Olympic finishes always look close, but when these fractions of a second are charted in audio, you really conceptualize the nearly nonexistent margin between the top of a podium and the bottom of a scotch bottle. Just listen: [ NYTimes ]

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The Sound of Olympic Gold Isn’t So Different From Olympic 14th Place [Data]

Sports Illustrated photographer David Klutho is wielding two Nikon D700s bolted together like a double-neck guitar at the Olympics, except his rig is designed to take 3D photos , not bust out sweet guitar solos. [ Russ Beinder /Flickr]

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This Is How You Shoot Some 3D Photos [Image Cache]

During the Winter Olympics, we’ve seen more than our share of athletic action sequences—complex motions broken into stills. For this week’s Shooting Challenge , you’ll be recreating the effect in the real world (or anywhere else you like). The Challenge Shoot an action sequence of any sort. The Method You’ll want to set your camera on a tripod and shoot in burst mode with a minimum of 3-5FPS

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Shooting Challenge: Action Sequence Photography [Photography]

Over at Beyond Binary , Ina Fried’s got a fascinating profile of Omega Timing , the company that’s been managing event timing at the Olympics for over 70 years. Counting seconds now is somehow totally different than it was in 1936. Take the methods for timing skiers: Less than a century ago, the timing of downhill skiing required someone at the top and bottom of the run, each with a stopwatch synchronized to the time of day. Every few skiers, the timer at the top would send down a piece of paper with the start times of the last few skiers and then some math would ensue, eventually resulting in the time of the run being calculated

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Timing the Olympics, Over Time [Sports]

Well, if you’re sent by Getty Images , the standard issue kit contains: two Nikon D3ses, 24-70mm lens, 400mm lens, 500/600mm lens, 1.4x teleconverter, batteries and memory cards. And you get to haul all that up a mountain! Basically, all of this stuff, plus two of those giant cameras up there. But on top of all the layers of clothing you have to wear, and you have to stand in place for hours and hours. What a blast! [ Pocket Lint ]

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How Much Camera Gear Does an Olympics Photographer Have to Haul Up a Bigass Mountain? [Digital Cameras]

Tonight’s the Men’s Olympics Snowboarding Halfpipe event. Have you heard of Shaun White’s personal superpipe in which he compressed the training equivalent of years into a day, mastering insane new tricks that I can’t even wrap my brain around? The 550-foot long half pipe is located 7 miles from Silverton, which is built around Silverton mountain: a ski resort with the most advanced terrain of any resort in America, with no groomed runs, and only one lift chair

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The Secret Snowboarding Superpipe [Snowboarding]

The 2010 Olympics start tonight! And while I might not be so excited about curling, I’m looking forward to updates and athlete profiles on my iPhone. NBC’s free Olympics app also has a social component, ideal for trash-talking Norwegian lugers. There are also updated medal counts, video (US-only), and sport-by-sport forecasts. The focus is predominantly on American competitors, so apologies in advance to international readers. Otherwise, though, if you’re an Olympics junkie or nationalist smack-talker, it’s definitely worth a download. [ iTunes via IntoMobile ]

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NBC Olympics App Hits Just In Time to Track Hot Biathlon Action [Apps]