The Netherlands is a rather densely populated area, in particular where I live.
Parking problems abound, so how to park your car a bit out of the way ?
During a walk in the centre of The Hague I found this sight :
The creativity of the Dutch.
Oh, the slanting parking in relation to the lines is not that un-common 😉
At a festival in Copenhagen I got to take the picture below rather early in the morning, waiting for sunrise.
The instrument they are playing is called a lur, and they are always played in pairs, as on this picture. The instrument, a simple form of horn, originate in the Bronze age of the Norse culture, and only a few have been found.
If it looks familiar, some of you may have seen it on Danish butter packages (brand mark : “Lurpak”). Also in Copenhagen you can find a statue of Lurblæserne (Lur Blowers). In this case I saw some real life ancient instruments being played.
Playing the Lur
Since the 5th and final season of Fringe starts airing soon, I have been following the re-watch podcasts by The Fringe Podcast‘s Summer re-watch, re- watched all 4 current seasons.
I was pleased to see that a lot of the apparent “throw-away” lines and plots actually are paying off, sometimes after 3 – 4 years.
This is the kind of story I like. It rewards patience and has some wonderful characters and character development.
I particularly like John Noble’s portrayal of Walter Bishop. He never fails to deliver perfectly, this old scientist with a heavy conscience.
Anna Torv gets to show her range in playing several versions of herself, and does it convincingly.
Given the episode 4.19 glimpse into the future of the story I am very excited to see what the 5th season will bring, as I suspect it will complete its mythology.
No – this is not advertising for Linux (though it could have been, vaguely)
A trip to the zoo in Copenhagen a few years ago with a group of photographers produced a fair amount of good pictures for me. This is one of them.
Lively penguins playing in the water.
Other photos from the same trip later . . .
This one I discovered after taking the photo, and checking it out.
I found this rear end of a car “sticking out” from the wall, so took the pic.
At home I found the true irony of it.
Take a look at the “number plate” and then compare with the brand. Yes – I had to laugh.
Low Budget
At a large convention like Fedcon you are likely to find a lot of people having built models (sometimes full size) of science fiction icons.
R2D2 rolling around among participants of Fedcon
It is quite amazing how much attention to detail there is. The guy with the remote control told me that he built the whole thing – except for the dome that was machine made. Well done !
The other thing found rolling around was a Dalek from Doctor Who :
This week’s photo was taken at the Fedcon in Düsseldorf, Germany in May this year.
A very entertaining actor, he suddenly left the stage and walked among the audience.
When he passed right by me I was quick enough with the camera to catch this picture :
Jonathan Frakes walking among the audience.
The colours come from the stage lighting, I like the mood of the picture.
As an experiment it may be worth trying to convert this picture to black/white.
in 2011 I went with a group to China. Near Wenzhou there is a beautiful mountain area with a Buddhist temple in a cave.
On the way up we came by this view :
The Waters of Yangdang
Yes – the colours are what we saw.
Enjoy !
In 2010 I became aware of a group in Denmark Copenhagen Suborbitals.
The group is building rockets, rather big ones, no New Year’s fireworks.
Given the size of their vehicles they could not get permission to launch from land (Denmark is a small country, and has no large deserted areas). What did they do ? Easy ! If you can not launch from land, then it must be from the sea.
In the summer 2010 I went to the presentation of their Mark 1 sea launch platform, named Sputnik. It was set to sea carrying the rocket, using a crane. This is one of the better pictures I got from the presentation.
The Mark 1 of the platform is not self powered, so they used another self made project for propulsion of the platform, yes, it is a submarine you see on the picture.
The rocket itself is 9m (30ft) tall and 60cm (2ft) diameter.
The first launch attempt later in the year failed. The count went down to 0 and – nothing happened. Well, the pyrotechnics went off as expected, but the rocket stayed in place. The failure was due to a frozen valve for the liquid oxygen.
They learned a lot about procedure and tech from the failure, and one year later, June 2011 a modified rocket and launch platform (this time self propelled) were used. Counting down to 0 and – nothing happened. After a look at the telemetry it was found that the launch signal had not arrived, and 10 – 15 minutes later another attempt was made, and off it went. I do not have pictures from that event, since only active members of the group were allowed in the area. They did, however publish a press kit on the website.
Their criterion for success was that the rocket lifted itself above the platform, the flight went up to about 2km when the flight was aborted from the ground, in order to stay within the designated area.
The rocket had no active steering and veered off like a missile. The “payload” was recovered, but not the engine stage. More on this project later.
Last year I went to China, spending about 4 weeks on the trip – some of them will appear in my “A-Photo-a-Week” project. This left very little time to read the Hugo nominees.
This year I have stayed home – well gone to a few conventions, so I had a bit more time to read.
So – I took the supporting membership to the Chicon 7/Worldcon 2012, so I could vote.
I got a limited amount of reading done, but voted what I could :
Best Novel :
A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
Best Novellette :
The Copenhagen Interpretation by Paul Cornell
Best Short Story :
The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu
Best Dramatic presentation, long form :
A Game of Thrones TV series
Best Dramatic presentation, short form :
Doctor Who : The Doctor’s Wife written by Neil Gaiman.