These photographs come from Mike Hollingshead, a storm chaser in Nebraska:
Mike Hollingshead - Storm Photographs
Mike Hollingshead - Storm Photographs
I’ve just spent an entire hour clicking through the photography on his site, not knowing whether to be more amazed at Earth’s capability to produce weather like this, or man’s ability to capture such absolutely stunning imagery of it.
Paris 26 Gigapixels took 2,346 pictures of Paris from atop the tower of Saint Sulpice and stitched them together into a 354,159 x 75,570 pixel panorama of the city. Pan and zoom at your leisure.
Like in Google Earth, the zoom feature is blurry at first. Give it a second to crisp up and you’ll be absolutely astonished at how much detail is there. Zoom to the absolute far reaches of the image and you’ll still be able to see individual people walking around.
Special challenge: find the bright green “3:14π” sign and identify what the adjacent shop most likely sells.
(via Kottke)
The JetBlue blog is a mixture of press releases, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, corporate culture, and occasional bragging. It won some major points on February 11th, when JetBlue canceled its flights in the Northeast in advance of the latest big storm to hit the region.
With the forecast calling for icy conditions throughout the day, we decided to cancel flights rather than wait-and-see with our customers in the airports. Why? Because on the suckiness scale, getting a call that your flight is canceled while you’re still at home, at a hotel, or at your family or friend’s house is a lot better than getting up early, going to the airport and waiting for hours with the possibility of flight cancellation to come. Still sucks. Just a little less.
I liked in particular this explanation for why aircraft are out of position at the beginning of the day:
That would work if we could park aircraft overnight in the cities affected by weather, but we try to avoid that. Ice would build up on the wings overnight and it would take hours to deice all of the aircraft we normally start the day with at New York’s JFK, let alone Boston, Washington’s Dulles and the Mid-Atlantic cities. So we put those planes in warmer weather ports for the night to get them to the frozen North first thing in the morning the day after the storm, then start the operation from that point.
I love logistical challenges like this, and I’d probably enjoy figuring out how to reposition aircraft in this manner to have the least impact on operations. I don’t envy the planners who have to endure (albeit indirectly) the ire of stranded travelers who are entirely too willing to blame their airline for the weather, though.
Jim Denevan carves enormous art pieces in the sand of deserts and beaches. On a canvas that nature is prepared to wipe clean with wind or water the moment it’s been filled, he creates artwork so large it can only be appreciated from the air (at least in a lot of cases).
One basic example is this pattern on a beach with a tiny person poised in the center:
Other pieces are abstract, simple, or just daunting. My favorite has to be this one.
Google’s “auto complete” recommendations are getting increasingly absurd, even if they do conform perfectly to real people’s searches.
Today, when I wanted to find a good place to sell my 12-channel audio mixer, I started my search with the word “sell” and Google jumped in with a few ideas for what I might need.
Things People Sell Online
Naturally, “sell textbooks online” and “selling on eBay” are popular search choices. “Sell gold” has also gained popularity recently, to the point that airports and train stations in Germany have vending machines selling gold wafers.
“Sell WoW account” is a bit surprising (perhaps World of Warcraft is losing popularity as people can no longer afford the monthly fee), but it’s “selling virginity” that’s most striking.
Some careful, “strictly business” research suggests much of this searching is related to Natalie Dylan (a pseudonym), a Sacramento State graduate student who last year auctioned her virginity, having allegedly gotten bids up to $3.8 million. Fox News is, of course, outraged.
Local CBS affiliate KOVR-TV quoted Dennis Hof, owner of the Bunny Ranch where the auction will be held, as saying:
Natalie is a very smart girl. All she wants to do is get her master’s degree in family and marriage counseling and be a psychologist. She’s selling her virginity to accomplish that.
Adding a punchline at this point would only spoil the pure beauty of that statement.
I’ve always felt that the only thing missing from the world was a house made entirely out of legos.
A couple years ago, I went with a friend to Wildcat Mountain in New Hampshire, which offers visitors the unusual opportunity to leap from a mountaintop, suspended from a zip line, soar through thin air (and in my case, a stiff breeze) down the mountain, and then bounce off a tension spring at the bottom. Staff at the time said everyone reaching the bottom laughs aloud upon hitting that spring, and we were no exception.
I notice, however, that the residents of Los Pinos, Columbia aren’t laughing when they invoke a similar zip line suspended 1,200 feet over a river as part of their daily commute.
(via Kottke)
The only thing that could possibly make Hulu better has just arrived: Hulu Desktop! (Yes, it comes in Mac.)
I love that the only menu option in the entire application is “Fullscreen.”
On the other hand, I’m somewhat disturbed by this sentence, which appears in the license agreement exactly as written here (including the capitalization):
THE HULU SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS, LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES, OR OTHER EQUIPMENT IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE HULU SOFTWARE COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE
Unfortunately, I moonlight as an controller for nuclear-powered aircraft carrying patients on artificial respirators, so I’ll really have to limit my usage to only one or two shows per shift.
This has to be the best job in the world:
We stopped by the giant piano the last time I visited FAO Schwarz with my girlfriend, but quite apart from being unable to play a rhapsody of any nationality on a piano of ordinary size, we refrained from trying upon seeing the line of patiently-waiting children, who surely deserve to act child-like more than adults do.
Plus, I imagine if I’d tried, there stood a reasonable chance I would also have had to leave alone.
I detest “fast food” (even having never seen Super Size Me) so Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality is particularly interesting to me. The site shows side-by-side pictures of how food looks in advertisements and how the same food looks in reality. Absolutely nobody will be surprised to learn there’s a difference. In fact, I was rather surprised a couple pairs look so similar. Wendy’s Chicken Club might even look a bit better in reality with its melted cheese than in the advertisement.
I’m delighted to see that the only entries that look acceptable in reality are from the two establishments I might consider actually eating (including Subway, where I now eat regularly).
(via Lifehacker)
