Friday 21 April 2017

6x6

squeeze-box: Dear Leader finally delivers an enjoyable performance

venzone: an Italian hamlet rebuilt after being devastated by a recent earthquake declared most beautiful in the country

brick & mortar: complimentary to the retail apocalypse, urban centres are seeking relief from bustling mail order services

teach a man to fish: neurosurgeon visiting Tanzania trained a non-medical doctor how to operate on the brain, who in turn taught others, beginning to alleviate a critical shortage—via Super Punch

bespoke: tyre company soon to produce airless wheels for bicycles and other vehicular applications

pale blue dot: as a parting shot as the space probe prepares for its grand finale, Cassini captured an image of the Earth in between Saturn’s rings 

Sunday 11 September 2016

fahrradtour: baderland

H and I took a little bike trip from Bad Karma, our fair city, through Bad Kissingen to Bad Bocklet to have a drink and rest for a minute before heading back in the twelfth century palace, Schloss Aschach.
Biking along the flood plain of the Frรคnkische Saale, a tributary of the River Main, we got to see Bad Kissingen from a new point of view and saw sites that we didn’t know where there, like a regional airport, mainly for hobby-gliders, and this fascinating Salien, a saltern—that is an installation constructed for extracting salt by evaporation, and has been in operation since before the year 800.
It was a pleasant day and not too hot but the blast of cool, salty air emanating from the was more amazing than the best, optimised air-conditioning system.
A bit further on, we passed the bore-fountain (Bohrbrunnen) called Luitpoldsprudel. Named after the Bavarian Prince-Regent of the early 1900s, it produced naturally carbonated water (Sprudel) for decades.

Thursday 29 November 2012

velocipede or internet for robots

It’s a daily ritual to check on visitor statistics and always interesting to see “traffic” from exotic places or unusual inquiries that still managed to be filled—sometimes in creative and unexpected ways.
Sometimes, however, one is baited by spammy websites, that are just dragnet operations to get reciprocal attention. I am not quite certain how this recursive architecture, which is a pretty common thing and I suppose a large fraction of the gearbox of gauges, demographics and yields underlying what human pick, choose and settle on. These pings and soundings, I guess, are very different and I wonder if it’s a functional aspect of the system for such undercurrents to mimic the behaviours of authentic guests and hosts. What kind of evil-genius or impersonal routine marshals these gremlins and how is efficiency rated when it comes to counterfeiting interest and popularity? Usually such activity is obvious and I have learned to ignore it—not returning the visit. Over the past few weeks, however, I have received a barrage of highly specific calling-cards. First there was spike in visitors from Kazakhstan followed by various former-Soviet republics, but then the funny thing was all the websites were for their respective cycling associations and clubs. The sites themselves were all highly specific, organized and above-board and not at all spammy. It was like they were all just real proud of their websites, which were all different in terms of design, language and navigation and with genuine substance. While I don’t know what exactly redirected traffic, it was a strange coming together (flash mob) of company.