Windmill, originally uploaded by puny_paula.
Today’s tag search was ‘windmill’. With everyone talking about wind farms and renewable energy, it’s easy to forget that harnessing wind power is something we have been doing for millennia. Windmills themselves are at least a thousand years old.
Wilderness of Glacier & Snow Lake, originally uploaded by Heartkins.
Sheer, midnight blue beauty. Nice quote below from someone who’s stood where this picture was taken from.
The following from wiki:
Snow Lake, or Lukpe Lawo, is a high-altitude glacial basin in the Karakoram mountain range in the Northern Areas of Pakistan. Martin Conway, the first foreign visitor, gave Snow Lake the name in 1892. Conway described Snow Lake as “beyond all comparison the finest view of mountains it has ever been my lot to behold, nor do I believe the world can hold a finer.”[1] Snow Lake is very difficult to reach, however, and only about 200 people manage to reach it per year.[2] In 1899, the husband-wife team of William Hunter Workman and Fanny Bullock Workman came and speculated that Snow Lake might be an ice-cap like those in the polar regions, from which glaciers flowed out in all directions, and estimated its total size at 300 square miles (116 square kilometers).
Sisterhood of the Travelling Socks by Dyxie.
Nice pic, nice story.
Author provides following notes:
d.rex started a group called SOTTS. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Socks. Dave, the wunderkind of Flickr, took the first photo with the socks and then passed them to the beautiful Amber. From there, Amber sent the socks to the fabulous Maia who walked them over to bun in the oven Cherron who finally took them over to the gorgeous Chrissy. Chrissy decided to send them off to me. Joy! So this is my contribution to the group. Dyxie style. I couldn’t wear the socks because of my gigantoid tattoo that is still healing. And plus, I have really fat legs. So there. I hope I didn’t embarrass the group too horribly bad.
Lovely work indeed. See previous pic for what the author was up to before this shoot.
Hot n Sour Feast by !!sahrizvi!!
Wonderfully evocative – love the colours.
According to the author:
While waiting for the sunset at the beach for my shoot, I saw an old man selling hot n sour corns at a small kiosk. I just saw this exact arrangement which has amazing colors and wonderful mix of textures. It was almost at the ground level so I framed it as it is from the top, hand-held, and uploaded here without any cropping. The dressing for the roasted hot corns consist of ground red peppers mixed with table salt, and a bit of squeezing lemon on it, of course 🙂
A beautiful shot of the author’s son, Ocean. Nothing is as perfectly serene as the face of a sleeping child – and this pic captures that serenity better than any I have seen.
Just Two Phonies, originally uploaded by pinkyhonor.
Photo Cap:
Ruth & Earl Pinegar’s prize-winning costume at the Mad Art Ball of the Portland Art Directors Club. 11/23/1959. Photographer: Frank Sterrett. (I think pinkyhonor did some retouching and tidying up to make it more presentable).
So, after much hype, the iPhone finally goes on sale in the US today. It will be very interesting to see how it does. I have spoken to one or two tech-savvy people and it seems the jury is still out. Having an internal battery (as with the iPod) is one complaint. Another relates to the fact that proper Web browsing isn’t really feasible without 3G. And in the States, users are forced to sign a two-year contract with an AT&T network that is not reknowned for its speed.
If you are already sick of all the iHype surrounding the iPhone, you might want to look at ‘Five Reasons Not to Buy an iPhone‘ , plus an article discussing the absurdity of ‘technolust’ in the aftermath of the iPhone’s release in the States.
There may well be some issues but, personally, I think it’s a really lovely piece of work. From a design perspective, Apple has literally re-invented the mobile phone. I would still say it’s more evolutionary than revolutionary but, nevertheless, it seems to me to be the most impressive single leap in mobile phone design since the Nokia Cityman in 1987 – the world’s first hand-held mobile phone (click here for a pic).
Apple has created a device that, at a single stroke, makes all of its rivals – including ‘smart phones’ like the Blackberry – seem somehow ‘last millennium’. The iPhone’s software is seamless, the look and feel is right, it has a wonderfully intuitive touch-screen interface, it automatically connects to WiFi networks, it’s an iPod, it has a peach of a Web browser – the list just goes on and on.
It does make you wonder what the competition has been doing for the last 3 years. Apple has entered a new, highly competitive marketplace and now appears to be significantly ahead of the game. Apple is selling the future whilst everyone else is stuck in the past. No wonder the suits at Sony are punch drunk!
It’s easy to forget just how far mobile phones have come in 20 years. Back in the late-1980s, the batteries ran down almost as soon as you started talking, and the devices were so big that you needed specially designed coats to carry them around in. The Nokia Cityman, for example, was about the size of a brick and weighed 800 Grams – pretty much like carrying a kilo bag of rice around in your pocket, with an aerial poking out of the top. It makes one wonder what these devices will be capable of in another 20 years. I think the iPhone provides us with the first clear pointer.
Most of the people I know in the UK don’t really know what an iPhone is yet – the news has of course reached the digerati but not everyone else. For this reason, I thought it might be worth including a couple of links to some online material, for people who want a taste of what’s to come:
The new iPhone ads – to get a quick flavour.
Apple’s CEO going into a lot of detail about the iPhone, really good if you can get over that ‘Silicon Valley preaching to the converted self-congratulatory management guru rhetoric thing’. I recommend it though if you have 30 mins to burn at work and really want to know what this device is all about.
For us poor souls in Europe, we’ll be lucky if the iPhone is in the shops in time for Christmas. I’ve been avoiding mobile phone upgrades like the plague but I can already feel myself succumbing…
Little Mermaid, originally uploaded by Nidriel.
Larger here.
Today’s tag search was ‘smile’. I wanted something light-hearted and thought this was a really nice, warm shot – by a mother of her daughter.
For a more artistically challenging smile pic, go here.
Árbol de Moisés, originally uploaded by Solasaga.
Larger here.
An incredible pic. Dials into the realm of Jungian archetypes and symbolism.
Fall of an Empire, originally uploaded by Tous les noms sont déjà pris… pfff….
Larger here.
Tony Blair finally departed from British politics yesterday, moving onto more important things; re-inventing himself as a roving ambassador-cum-diplomat-cum-international statesman. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how he saw himself when he was PM. He has become the new Middle East Envoy for the rather jazzy-sounding ‘Quartet’ – USA on drums, EU on double bass, UN on the fiddle and Russia blowing up a storm.
Israel is onside but I’d personally be amazed if Blair is able to achieve anything historic. Despite his charm and political credibility, it’s no secret that, for the arab world, he is just about as unconvincing a peace envoy as it is possible to be – saving George Bush himself.
Or, as Joan Rivers recently put it:
Making Tony Blair a Middle East peace envoy is like putting Mel Gibson in charge of a Holocaust museum.
Here’s more on this story from the beeb.
Picture Post 