Archive for February, 2008

Try and find some really straight lines!

Illusion created by Akiyoshi Kitaoka.

The Cormorant is clearly a bird easy to find anywhere you can find some water. In Pantanal, the Neotropic Cormorant lives along rivers and is easily seen spreading its wings in the sun while not diving for fishes.

Click on the thumbnail image to enlarge it

Neotropic Cormorant (Phalacrocorax brasilianus, Cormoran vigua). Brazil, 2007.

When it comes to saving animals from extinction, many efforts are needed. Some of them seem very interesting to me. This is the case of the Northern Jaguar Project. They try to protect a large piece of land in Northern Occidental Mexico in order to ensure a large zone where jaguars could survive in a region that is considered as the nothern-most habitat of the jaguar.

They buy large pieces of land from ranches to help a group of around 120 jaguars live in a more confortable manner out of reach of most poachers and human expansion.

Actually, you can help them buy one acre (1/2 hectare or 4000 square meters) of ranch land for $49 in their Save-a-Spot for Jaguars program.

Click on the thumbnail image to enlarge it

Saffron Finch (Sicalis flaveola, Sicale bouton-d’or). Brazil, 2007.

Its construction may be challenged by some of the historical information, but it’s fun to look at.

The PDF file format is a little gem invented by Adobe that brought the enormous advantage of a portable file format able to display a document on nearly any kind of display and computer. Unfortunately, the Adobe PDF format and free player are not exempt from problems and this generated a wealth of applications worth knowing to support all your needs around the PDF format.

Here are the best ones solving what were problems (until now):

• PDF documents cannot be modified. Wrong! With the help of PDF Hammer (an online free tool suite), you can perform basic edits like: add, remove, re-arrange one of more pages from one or more PDF files.



• PDF forms cannot be modified. Wrong! Actually, if you use PDFescape (online), you’ll be able to fill PDF forms and make minor modifications to the document.
• PDF documents cannot be restored back to plain text. Wrong! Thanks to free PDF Text online, you can just copy-and-paste text from the PDF file you want. It can even preserve the bookmarks and font of the original file.
• PDF documents are always long to load. Wrong! Actually, it is a problem of the Adobe PDF reader. Despite being free, it became so bloated that it takes days (Ok, I’m prone to exageration) to open and load the first file. The solution is simply to use a free alternative PDF reader like PDF-XChange viewer.
• Opening PDF files on the web is slow. Right, but…, if you are the webmaster, you can use PdfMeNot to transform your PDF files into Flash media that will be easier to handle on your web site.

In a Pantanal fazenda, inside the room, we could find those information signs. In addition to the most usual “Do not disturb” and “make the room”, we could notice the most unusual “Please remove little frog from bathroom”.

As a matter of fact, the little guy was waiting in the shower.

Brazil, 2007.

Scientific thought is a marvellous achievement that accelerated a lot in the last millenium. This graphic timeline will give you access to this recent history.

A lot of information to assimilate.

Click on the thumbnail image to enlarge it

Vulture (in flight). Brazil, 2007.

When you’re searching for the best mid-range graphics card (200€ or $200, with the usual conversion rate for computer-software dollar), it is often difficult to find one’s way. This is why a big graphics cards comparison like the one from The Tech Report is more than welcome.

But if you want to run for the result, you can also ask Tom’s Hardware and look at their best gaming graphics card for your budget.

Click on the thumbnail image to enlarge it

Yellow-rumped Cacique (Cacicus cela, Cassique à cul-jaune). Brazil, 2007.

Click on the thumbnail image to enlarge it

Backlit tree. Brazil, 2007.