Archive for the 'Web sightings' category

On August 6th, 1945, Hiroshima was bombed with the first atomic weapon. U.S. serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces, found undevelopped films with many pictures that are available only this year. They are disturbing to say the less (I wanted to use one photo to illustrate this post, then decided against it). But they stand witness to the horror of war in general and atom bombs in particular.

Yawoot Hiroshima collection.

The newest fad about search engines is Cuil (say “cool”). It’s been created by people from Google and is set to replace Google (or is it?)

I tried it and I could not think of a reason to use it. The biggest problem is that it does not find anything useful. I may be a little egocentric, but I tried my name and I could not even find the roumazeilles.net web site in the first results. I know that a search engine is not supposed to replace typing correctly addresses, but I did not expect to find page after page of results pointing to ***old*** pages relating to my software development of 5 years ago. All these pages where not updated in the last half-decade… They are pretty much redundant and contain a lot of crap around download links.

The most regular web sites I work for, the papers I signed where really difficult to find in the stack of results while they are supposed to be the most pertinent information concerning my (not-so) important little person.

Furthermore, I learned that the servers crashed several times during the first day of operation.

I’d say: wait for the next implementation and stick to Google.

A martial arts adept knows how much you have to repeat the same basic exercise (a kata) before mastering free fight. This is the same with most pianists who need to practice long and often to get reflexes, natural grace.

So, why not the same for programmers?

Dave Thomas decided to create basic exercises for the software developer. To be practiced continuously with not constraint of environment or language. He called it the Code Kata.

I no longer write a lot about software programming (I no longer code by myself nowadays) but it was such a great idea, a flash of light so obvious and elegant that I needed to share with you. No programmer should avoid the regular exercise of Code Kata. Many companies should also force their own software developers to apply it.

Aube-Nature.com is a web site I tend to track nearly continuously because Cédric Girard tends to write interesting posts about nature photography. But I also caught a few posts with nice images of cats This goes farther than the usual “nice companion” photos.

I recommend heartily to check regularly Aube-Nature.com.

Sometimes, you hust have to understand the cryptic codes used around the world of airline travel. The companies are using them, probably not just for the sake of being incomprehensible, but the result is the same. I recently found the right place to look for this information, a web site to search for all airline-related codes:

I used it to find the meaning of the two-letter IATA code of the company name in a flight numbers (CZ3572 is a flight of China Southern Airlines and MU2511 is another flight from China Eastern Airlines) because an assistant had booked me electronic tickets forgetting to tell me which counter I should go to register on the following day.

Even better than going to Africa, you can have your own lion pet, cute lion cub at home.

Furry and reacting to its environment, this is really a cool robot toy.

http://www.gizoo.co.uk/Products/ToysGames/RadioControl/WowweeAliveLion.htm

£49.95 (about $100 USD or 75€) in pre-order.

Recenty, we looked at unusual swimming pools. Here comes an article about the most marvellous pools found around the world of luxury hotels.

If you liked my photos about Le Mans, you’re just in time to jump to Michelle Roohani’s web site. Excellent blogger, graphist and photographer, she has just posted a series of photos of Delahaye, Hispano Suiza, Kurtis 500, Bentley, Ferrari, Bugatti.

As you certainly already know if you follow regularly this web site, the Internet addresses will soon be depleted (all used). The end of the Internet world as we know it should be reached around 2011 or 2012. That is the reason why some companies are working to push out the most common Internet protocol (IPv4) and to make space for its successor (IPv6).

This is why, while the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) was preparing a night without IPv4 to reach the largest possible public, Google launched a version of its search engine reserved to IPv6: ipv6.google.com (If you are like almost everybody, you will not see anything at the end of the link).

Now, we all have to switch as soon as possible.

You can now start buying some of my photos at RedBubble. I sent them a few original artworks and it gives you access to some products like:

• Cards,
• Matted Prints,
• Laminated Prints,
• Mounted Prints,
• Canvas Prints,
• Framed Prints

Buy my photos at RedBubble

If you are a whisky lover, here are a few links you may appreciate:

• The Scotch Malt Whisky Guide, with an excellent little historic guide to whisky that is perfectly written for those who discover this strong alcohol.
• the web site of the Scotch Whisky Association if you want to share your passion with other amateurs.

But this is not enough for some people (real alcohol geeks). Wired discovered that true US amateurs are pushing sunday afternoon distillery in a country where moonshine is still prohibited. It’s quite easy, and the result is supposed to be very good.

A few images of extreme pools (via 13 really cool pools).

The next one is located at the top of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. It’s a small zone of complete quietness in the middle of furious liquid torrent.

For more about this strange location: Fogonazos.

For this last one, excentricity is in the photo itself. Not the pool.