passenger kicked off plane
[the age] Hiccup at 35,000 feet upsets holiday in the sun
The pilot diverted the charter plane and dumped the troublesome holidaymaker 500 kilometres from his destination on a barren volcanic island off the west coast of Africa.
It seems the passenger was swearing, being abusive and starting to get violent while drunk. So the pilot landed on an island and “frogmarched” him off the plane.
A good reason to not get drunk while flying.
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modern day pirates
[the age] The good pirates of the Southern Ocean
The Southern Ocean, specifically the area formally known as the Australian Antarctic Territory, now rivals the 17th-century Caribbean for the reported acts of piracy during the past two weeks.
Amazing- an article that talks about piracy today, and the word mp3 isn’t mentioned at all.
Written by the captain of the Farley Mowat, a Greenpeace boat chasing down Japanese whaling ships south of Australia.
A good article for food for thought, even if you don’t agree with Greenpeace’s “eco-terroist” methods.
I have been following this story casually through The Age Newspaper, and this is my favourite quote from the whole issue: paraphrased by me
Scientific research? What- that they taste good with soy sauce?
An interesting movement to observe.
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snowboarding gear
[the age] Snow sports set for upgrade
Protective helmets now sport cozy ear pads with speakers connected to your digital music player. Durable wristwatches can count your calories and measure your rate of descent. And easy-to-use helmet-fixed camcorders can capture every twist and turn of your best run – or tumble.
Some pretty cool stuff, but unfortunatly no pictures. Kind of strange since Melbourne (Australia) just hit record high temperatures for the month of December- which is summer, remember.
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the importance of blogging.
[Place of Stuff] How Important Is Blogging?
The “blogs will take over the world” predicition has never eventuated. Ray wonders how important blogs are anyway. It’s a good post, so I won’t rehash what he says here, you can read it for yourself over there.
I will add though- my blog is important to me, and that’s all that matters.
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GPS and Galileo
[the age] Galileo takes global navigation sky-high
EUROPE’S most expensive space gamble began in earnest when a rocket streaked across the skies over Kazakhstan to help build a satellite navigation system.
GPS is the new hot acronym of our times. When The USA decided to allow civilians a similar accuracy from GPS (global positioning system) as the military, a whole new market took off.
There are affordable handheld gps units, and whole new sports, such as geocaching and confluence locating .
However, the biggest impact GPS has had on the world of “grownup” people has been mapping systems for cars. Dubbed the hottest Christmas present by BBC news, these computer based systems tell you where you are, and also what turns to take to get to where you’re going.
How it works
There are satellites in space beaming a radio signal down to earth in bursts constantly. The GPS receiver picks up these signals from several satellites, and timing the frequency of the signal, works out exactly where you are, down to a couple of metres.
There is a problem with this system though- all the satellites where placed and owned by the USA. This is no problem at the moment, when the US is being relatively friendly, but Europe was concerned about the need to follow US demands, especially since GPS is a crucial tool in the secretive world of intelligence and the military.
But the GPS service offers civilians less precision than for military or intelligence purposes, and it is controlled by the US military, which has the power to degrade or switch off the signal.
The collection of countries that forms Europe has a chance to be a global power, in a world dominated by the United States. To do this, they need their own global positioning system, and this is where Galileo comes in, “a highly accurate civilian system”.
Europe is standing on it’s own two feet, and will eventually put 30 satellites in the sky to aid in accurate civilian activities.
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green farmers
[the age] Farmers reap the benefits of green innovation
These farmers, … have banded together to reduce salinity — in the process recasting themselves as cutting-edge environmentalists. And the results are impressive.
Environmentally friendly farming practices? The key to the success of this operation is group cooperation, “short-term pain is long-term gain.” The farmers aren’t being selfish as they realize they need to look at the bigger picture and what is actually best for their own farms and those around them.
Salination is a big problem in Australia, as the removal of the native greenery and the introduction of wheat and other european crops meant that the deep underground salt was drawn up to the surface, causing the soil to be barren and many farmers to walk off their land in the 1930′s.
It is a little ironic when farmers find that the best thing for their profits is environmentally friendlyness.
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click the title for home “standard”
I’m curious, what do you think of the blogging standard of having the blog title (this one’s is creativehedgehog) go back to the index page for the blog?
Many blogging software(s) seem to have this built in as a default, but some bloggers don’t follow this standard, and their titles are there for purely informational and decorative purposes.
I don’t think that there is anything wrong with having or not having a link in the title, but what is your take on so-called blogging standards?
As always, please feel free to drop a comment in the box.
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mini hack: make images look good
A long time ago, Brad asked how Hari had got text to wrap around images. This is cool, and makes your site look more like a traditional paper publication, but the text has a nasty habit of smushing itself right up to the images.
I was thinking about this, and I realized that ANY html element can be styled using css stylesheets (or inpage css), not just the more obvious text-related elements (such as h1, p, etc.) so, I added this code to my stylesheet:
Hopefully this will be of some use all you bloggers out there.
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recycled trees for vaccine
[the age] Christmas trees fight bird flu
A Canadian drug maker has found a use for 500,000 discarded Christmas trees, announcing plans to extract a key ingredient in the manufacture of avian influenza antiviral drugs from their needles.
Instead of junking or wood-chipping the live Christmas trees at the end of this holiday season, the acid needed to make tamiflu will be extracted.
Tamiflu is the antiviral drug that governments are stockpiling in case of a bird-flu pandemic. This avian influenza is passed from animals to other animals, and from animals to humans who are in close contact with them. The big fear is that the time is ripe for another flu pandemic (not unlike the global flu epidemic in 1918) if bird-flu mutates so it can be passed from person to person.
The price of the acid has shot up, because the chinese evergreen tree that the acid is harvested from is slowgrowing, with it’s fruit only being harvested two months of the year, as demand outstrips supply.
To turn in your tree for acid extraction would be a civic duty, but I wonder if there will be an economic incentive, like aluminium can collection. This will be an incentive for governments to develop recycling infastructure.
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mystery meat and rss icons
John at freshblog has
mentioned that with the new standard RSS icons, People should really put the word feed next to the icon, so that we don’t end up with Mystery Meat navigation.
What is Mystery Meat Navigation?
The term originates from school lunchrooms, where the dish of the day could have been mystery meat denoting a most-likely bad tasting unidentified meat, probably from the bottom of the freezer. You have no idea what it is until you try it.
The same concept applies to Mystery Meat navigation, where you don’t know what the icon-ified link means until you click on it. This is unfriendly to the user, as they don’t want to venture into unknown territory. You actually might lose visitors if your site is not easy to use.
At the moment, the best way to not commit this webdesign crime is to include text next to the icon telling users what it is, but I plan to try my hand at making some webpage buttons myself.