Archive for the 'Web sightings' category

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.

I am quite found of any tool that allow to search inside the contents of images on the web. One such tool is Multicolr Search Lab Flickr set. I really like it because it is able to look for images based on their colors. But not only that. Today they include a lot more images since they collected 10 millions Creative Commons images from Flickr.com.

Multicolr Search Labs

It was an impressive tool, it’s now a useful tool.

Stepper motors are nearly everywhere. this is marvellous for happy hobbyists. Even better, you can find them (and extract them from) a large number of devices that are easy to hack like old floppy disk drives, hard discs. For those of you who would ike to know more and keep an eye on the technology, I suggest that followiung reading:

• Control of Stepping Motors – A Tutorial by Douglas W. Jones
• How to use disk drive stepper-motors by Tomi Engdahl
• Stepper Motor Control by tigoe
• Arduino Stepper Library (software)

Source: Jason Striegel.

If you have the heart of an adventurer, you may be interested to know that Ijust put in beta-test some new websites that I am working on.

• YLovePhoto.com (site specializing in digital photography)
• YLoveBigCats.com (about felines and other big cats)
• YLoveIllusions.com (optical illusions)
• YWantVisits.com (SEO, traffic optimisation and web site revenue maximization)

Your opinion will be welcome, but -remember- this is beta-test. So, it is full of bugs, problems, issues and don’t come back and complain if your significant other dumps you because of it.

Note: Most (if not all) of the photo-related news here will be applied to YLovePhoto.com as soon as I feel free with this new web site.

I created on RedBubble a calendar (for 2009) that I think should be interesting for people in love with all kinds of artistic alterations.

Images taken from the Paris metropolitan railway (le Métro) in a station under heavy repair. It brought images from the past (probably 20 years ago or more) through the remains of previous decors and acts of cultural vandalism that easily make me think of the slogans of the “Mai 68″ near-revolution in the streets of Paris.

Even shooting the photos seemed out-this-world: Silently and slowly walking the station with another photographer (we did not even exchange a word), while the people around us were waiting for their train trying not to notice the flash lights. It could not have been a more troubling experience, going from an unstuck paper to a poor paint job or a hasty writing between dirty white tiles.

This is difficult to stop a big chunk of a plane like the Airbus A380. Let’s see what happens to brakes when tested at maximum braking stress.

YouTube video link

A personal video that you may not have seen before. Shocking as ever even 7 years after the event.

Google Chrome

How could we ignore the launch of Chrome, the new browser from Google? Every is babbling about it, everybody tried it (it can be downloaded here).

But after one test run, I believe that I should explain something. Yes, this is a marvellous browser because it takes most of the good things from FireFox, Opera or Safari (all IE competition). I immediately noticed:

• No space is lost in useless graphical waste, everything is concentrating on user display,
• The good tab management,
• The impressive performance,
• The name-completion in the address bar.

Some will also have noticed the more technical features like:

• The separation of applications running in different tabs,
• The very small footprint (including for the Javascript).

But, all this is hiding a very critical reality: Google did not even try to make a mere browser (it even lacks a simple RSS feed manager). They are more interested in doing more than Internet Explorer competiton. Much more.

Chrome (tasks)

The impressive advantage of this browser is elsewhere: it will fight against Microsoft applications allowing to work online in the best possible conditions. Chrome is nearly an Operating System competing with Windows. Yes, because where Windows offered a vehicle to sell Microsoft Office, Chrome will allow Google to develop a wider range of online tools in the path opened by the Desktop applications and GMail.

It will hurt Microsoft real bad. Chrome is obviously the best browser to support this approach. Rock solide, fast (very), reliable and able to support application crashes.

This is right that many people feel obliged to use Photoshop to manage their photo images. But in most cases, nearly any other tool would be as good. I think first about the excellent IrfanView which is free and does a lot of digital photo management.

But it is also true that if you really want to use all of the xtensive feature set of Photoshop or if you appreaciate its rich interface (defintely well-thought with the user in mind), The Gimp will not be enough for your photographer needs. Here comes the a really surprising software program: Pixlr.

It essentially took the Photoshop interface ideas (really VERY similar to Photoshop), it is a software application written by Ola Sevandersson to be used online (but still in beta status). Nothing to download, free (as in free beer), legal, operating damn well.

What is also notable is that it is available with an interface customized in different languages (including English, of course, and 10 others.

Totally approved.

Burj Dubai is the name of a Dubai construction zone current being modelled. It will host the most surprising series of buildings of astonishing proportions. The most obvious one is the Burj Dubai tower aiming for world record in the middle of 2009.

But there will be also this huge fountain which will be dwarfing the water jets of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I saw them perosnnaly, they are impressive, but the idea is to lead the way to a wholly different scale. I guess the noise will be impressive, too.

Sources: LuxuryLaunches.com & BurjDubaiSkyScrapper.