Archive for the 'Web sightings' category

We knew that Ryan Air was an Irish airline able to bring air fares to a very low level. They use all tricks at their disposition to spend as little money as possible. But sometimes they go too far and their latest ideas give a bad press to the whole low-cost airline industry which were merely having you pay for your lunch in the plane (and, after all, why not pay your own soda like in any convenient pub on the ground?) Here are some of their latest brillant proposals (sometimes already in place):

• They tried to tell that there should be no valuables (sunglasses in the trial case) in the checked-in luggage. A judge corrected this.
• It appears that on several trips, buying a round-trip is more expensive that buying two one-way tickets. Always check!
• Ryan Air want to fine passengers caught with a hand luggage over the weight limit (checked-in luggage has to be paid for).
• Ryan Air proposes to charge passengers to use the in-plane toilets. Your flight would better be on-time if you don’t have small change, or will they accept credit cards…

News reaches a British sub and a French sub regardnig the satellite collision last week.

UserFriendly.org

*Snort* American and Russian dorks.

I nearly rolled on the floor laughing with this one. But, generally speaking, UserFriendly.org is one hell of a good comics web site.

You’d believe that our planet is in love. It can be read on its face (on its surface) merely under the form of pretty hearts nicely drawn.

Heart Reef, Australia

9 other cases. Superb!

I recently met a couple of fine underwater movies. One shows a dive to find a nautilus at great depths; The second shows a phosphorescent amalgam of abyss animals. Always a source of great surprises.

Image NASA

Is it the crisis, the recession or what? People would like you to think that you can now get a private jet for nearly nothing.

• Jumpjet is trying to make it more affordable than many business trip tickets
• Aviation told us about microjets, like those from Eclipse Aviation intended to make it more affordable than any time before.
• Lunajets wants you to fly like a Very Rich Person (VRP is so much better than VIP) but for prices between €990 per seat and €12,500 for a full cabin. You get to search for the best flight for you.
• Same thing with Last Minute Jet Charters which offers a good search engine for your private jet.
• ElleJet Aviation Services is explictly selling seats available on what they call “empty legs” (trips returning the plane with no passenger, but where you could be booked; A little like those young student who cross the USA in rental cars that they bring back to base for a small fee).

Sure, GM sold all its 5 private jets after the December news fiasco. But did they depress the private jet market, too? Is it really so cheap?

In our short series of “How do you make…”, here is the industrial manuacturing of terrestrial globes How would you do it? The same way as described here?

Note: I said globe, not blog…

It seems that there will be plenty of people to be present during the inauguration of Barrack Obama. Needless to say, most people will not even have a hint about what happens on stage, if they are located as suggested in the following map:

Kudos to Tom Toles.

According to the Guardian, change was long overdue. 8 years of Democrat presidency in Washington was much too much. Now that Al Gore is leaving the oval office, it’s time to go to more serious stuff.

You can appreciate it if you read the first paragraph:

No one thought Al Gore would be a loveable president, but, after eight years in the White House, he has gotten truly tiresome. The droning voice, the purchase of an eco-friendly robot dog, the campaign for carbon-free diamonds – all these things were hard to take, and he has been way too smug about reversing global warming. I think we’ve gone too far in the opposite direction, especially in light of the glacier that recently crushed Wasilla.

Go to the Guardian for the rest…

If you want to build a web site, or a better web site, I am starting a series of short small ideas about how to improve a web site or a blog with small tasks. One idea, one improvement per week. This is in the “easy idea” category of my other web site: Y Want Visits.

This is time to start your own blog in order to earn some revenue protecting you against the current recession.

Dogs, like many other pets, are subject to much interest and present a lot of particular behaviours that can be formed by proper training. So, today, I want you to meet two of my Internet friends of very different behaviours:

• The dog who could not stop having fun with snow
• the product of the most sophisticated pet training: The perfectly obedient dog

Both in video.

Even more when you unload a tank rail car. If you let the hot gazes cool down into the tank, here what can happen. Always check the security valves, or be ready to pay the price: $22,000 to $80,000 used (but usable).

Copyright (C) Peter Nowacki

Peter’s web site.

This technique is used to demonstrate clearly the operation of a technical product by showing it as if parts were cut away to reveal the internals. This leads to quite a large choice of nice drawings. I collected some of them for your pleasure. They can be gorgeous when the graphic designer is a real artist:

Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera (Beau Daniels & Alan Daniels)

Cut-away dog (Beau Daniels)

American car (David Kimble)

Kodak DCT Canon EOS Digital SLR Camera (Kevin Husley)

Ear cutaway (Medecine net)

General Motors engine

Spitfire Mk I (Century Imaging)

How a theatre is air conditionned (Frank Soltesz, Saturday Evening Post, March 1951)

Great Wall of China (circa 1570)

Noah's Ark (David Deal)

Source: Google

It depends on the cook, but if you have real difficulties with your own cooking style, you may find an excuse. Next time you fail, just say “Oh! I was trying one of jamesoff.net random recipes“. JamesOff is a systems engineer in the South West of England who created a Random Recipe Generator. Merely reload the page to get another recipe.

You probably remember the impressive unloading of an excavator from a truck, without using a crane or even a ramp:

But here come some more, a lot more, fun with cars, trucks, excavators and other big chunks of mechanics.

Starting with a 15-ton Caterpillar playing along.

But should the Caterpillar stay on the ground? No, and this is what Dark Roasted Blend shows us:

But unloading an excavator seems much easier than unloading a car from a truck:

This means that you must be ready to repair your new car in all conditions. And some people really mean it. Here is the story of this rally race team. They had their car stopped by a broken throttle cable. So, in this case, what would you do? Abandon the race? Not these guys. One of them steps under the hood (!) and will handle the throttle from there to the end of the race.

So, this is the crisis, you are not ready to these extreme measures and you still need to buy a car, I advise all of us to chase a really carbon-emission-free truck (from a well-known battery provider):

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 at Palais de Chaillot, Paris (France). So, tomorrow, this important milestone for Human Rights will be 60-year old. Of course, many people are denied their rights for plenty of reasons.

But this is a fight of every day, this is our fight, a fight to make the world better, a place where every Human Being can live free.

Seth Brau decided to celebrate this 60th anniversary by creating a video where it injected more life in these words, with animated graphics (View in larger size/higher-def here: www.humanrightsactioncenter.org. Created by Seth Brau, Produced by Amy Poncher, Music by Rumspringa courtesy Cantora Records):

I collected a long list of tutorials (mostly in English) on my other photo website: Tutorials for Photoshop and The GIMP.