Last Day WWP

by Erik Olsen on

I posted a few days ago about the
beginning of the World Wide Pano project, one
of my favorite panoramic photography events of the year…of which there are some four….one each equinox and
solstice. Well today is the last day to shoot ffor the event. So if you want to participate and haven’t got out there
yet, well, go.

Each event has a particular theme, which can be interpreted by photographers however they
wish. This year’s theme is Borders. I’ve got my own pano shot and am building it now, and I’m rather giddily excited to
see what others come up with. Needless to say,  if I’d really had a nice travel budget I could have done a whole
assortment of cool things, but being that I work a full time job, well, t’wasn’t in the cards.

Anyway, this
is an immensely cool project and I hope you check it out, if not contribute. I’ll post again when the current theme
goes live with all the new photos from around the world.

Blogging From Antarctica

by Erik Olsen on

Boing Boing has a post on some of
the folks who are blogging from stations in Antarctica, and they note that some 60 scientists and technicians and
regular guys are doing it. They feign some surprise that such a large number of folks would actively blog from such a
forbidden place. But especially because it is winter, it makes sense. I mean, tell me what else these folks have to do
with their lives?

The one blog among a few that I checked out that I quite liked was the one by Phil Jacobsen. I went to college with a guy named Phil Jacobsen, but I searched
through the pictures here and it doesn’t seem to be the same fella. Anyway, you have to fancy what this says
about the state of the world today…or rather the “smallness” of it due to the Internet.

Geography Name Game

by Dave (Blogsmith Old) on

Last week Terry Riley at Tripso posted this creative bit about vocation vacations. His list of locations and matching vocations is catchy and fun, inspired by Site 59’s work-themed travel packages.

As Labor Day comes to a close and many of us prepare to head back to work tomorrow, I decided to try and find just a few more places with vocation-like names, this time venturing outside the states to see what I could find that matched up with English language words for certain jobs. Some of these are a stretch, I’ll admit, but it’s as creative as I could get on my day off! If you think of any more, please add them in the comments below.

R&B Musician – Seoul, S. Korea

Soap Maker – Ivory Coast

Wine Maker – Cork, Ireland

Doctor or Nurse – Medicine Hat, Canada

Sandwich Maker – Delhi, India

Cheese Maker – Munster, Germany or Cheddar, England

Map Maker – Atlas Mountains (Africa)

Chef – Cook Islands, New Zealand

Travel Agent – Tours, France

Diver – Plunge, Lithuania

Hair Dresser – Perm, Russia

Gymnast – Split, Croatia

Body Builder – Pecs, Hungary

Worldview Widget

by Erik Olsen on

Mac users who have the new Tiger OS installed are probably aware of one of the new OS’s great new features: Dashboard, which lets you keep a series of little apps called Widgets right up front for immediate use. Upon installation, some of the widgets are installed as defaults, like a clock, a calculator (very useful) and a stock ticker.

But at the Apple site you can also download various widgets to enhance your collection and improve productivity. For travelers and folks who are just generally interested in the rest of the world, there is an interesting widget called the WORLDview widget that I just installed. It is quite useful for me, as I try to find information about various countries I might be blogging about. The widget displays all the countries in the world, and gives you the country map, the national flag, country coordinates, the capital and the continent. It’s pretty cool, if a bit limited. I’d love to see them incorporate news links for each country, so that if you click on, say Finland, you might get a quick dose of news about the country. But even as is, it is quite cool.