Glowing Cities under a Nighttime sky

Sometimes I see something online and just have to share it. 

While browsing around the Guardian website today, which is easily one of the best websites around, I came across this linking to a Flickr video.

People often muse about the “magic” of travel, but rarely is it captured in real terms. In a video that has been viewed over 25,000 times on image and video hosting site Flickr, Amsterdam-based architect and amateur photographer James Leng might just have nailed it.

Finding himself on a half empty flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco, Leng mounted his camera on an improvised “stabilizer mound” made up of his bags, pillows and blankets, and shot the view from his window at regular intervals. The resulting timelapse video is spectacular.

Under the original video, Leng explains what he had caught:

“I noticed that the lights from cities were making the clouds glow. Really spectacular and ethereal – it was really seeing the impact of urban environments from a different perspective. Each glow or squiggle represents one town or city.

“We were around the midwest at the beginning of the clip, and there were fewer cities once we hit the rockies. The bridge at the end is the San Mateo bridge.”

In a cascade of comments that have appeared since the video was uploaded on 17 December 2008, viewers have logged their appreciation. “The stars are actually the bit I find most interesting: seeing cities whoosh by like that, while the stars in the background remain mostly still reminds you who’s really moving out there” says one. Another simply notes “Absolutely wonderful, it captures the beauty and serenity of flying. It makes me want to hop on a plane and watch the world go by.”

The Superbowl, 5 Live and Twitter

Taken by jdebner on Flickr.

Superbowl XLIII took place last night. If you have the slighest interest in American football (or if you are indeed American) you’ll know that already.  I hold a bit of an interest. Not enough to watch the whole season prior to the event, but enough to sit down and pay attention for one night a year.

I eventually opted to listen to the commentary on BBC Radio 5 Live, while lying in bed. What I like about 5 Live is that they are fully aware that a lot of the people listening will be regular listeners who may not fully ‘get’ American football, but hold a bit of an interest (I was pretty much target audience then).  They explain it in layman’s terms (again, I was target audience).

The best bit… next door were having some sort of Superbowl party, with a few folk round for drinks and watching it on the telly.  Radio audio is always slightly ahead of telly audio, so I got to hear what was happening in the Superbowl, and then get their boisterious reactions 5 seconds later.

What was also fun was listening in my ears while watching the continuous stream of comments regarding the Superbowl on Twitter.

I’ve spoken about Twitter before. It’s a what’s called a “microblogging” service. You have 140 characters to say whatever you want, and your ‘followers’ then get to read what you are saying (or tweeting as it is known).  Its popularity over the last month or two has risen consisderably after the media have picked up on Twitter’s famous users such as Stephen Fry and Barack Obama.  I’ve had an account with Twitter for year and a bit now. At first I thought it was a bit daft, who’d want to read what other people were eating for lunch?  But over the last month or so I have really begun to understand its potential.

I understood it as soon as I had discovered the Twitter search facility.  As the name may suggest, it allows you to search Tweets based on certain rules.  You could search for all the Tweets coming out of Aberdeen. You can also search by subject, like what I was doing last night, searching bythe  subject ‘Superbowl‘.

So now not only was I listening to the Superbowl and hearing the thoughts of the commentators, I was also listening to the Superbowl and getting instant reaction on the game from thousands of people around the globe.  Every touch down and fumble of the game, somebody had something to say.  The Twitterverse were massive fans of the half time show with Bruce Springsteen, me included!

What was also fascinating to watch was the continous stream of tweets about the snow which is hitting the UK at the moment.  People in London commenting on the status of their street, how Boris had cancelled all the buses and the tweets as people slowly realised they weren’t going to make it to work.  Despite being 1,000 miles away in a snowless Aberdeen, I almost felt I was a part of it.

I know next time something, god forbid, major happens I’ll be logging on to Twitter so get a better understanding of what’s going on.

It even lets me know what minor celebrity Richard Bacon had for lunch, a vegetable biryani if you’re interested.

David (or @drl if you have Twitter)

Barack Obama as a Tag Cloud

tag cloud of obama's speech by emilychang on flickr

Saw this on Flickr earlier and was impressed by it. It’s a tag cloud of Barack Obama’s speech from earlier today.

For those of you who don’t know what a Tag Cloud is, the most used words from the speech appear, and the more often the word was said the bigger the font size. Unsurprisingly one of the most common word is “nation”.

David

Woolworths

I took a visit to Woolworths today, possibly for the last time.  I didn’t buy anything, I left after 3 minutes, stressed by the number of shoppers all trying to get their hands on a bargain.

The cue for the tills was long. Very long. Stretching all the way round the store.  I felt a little sorry for all the staff, working like slaves only to lose their jobs. Then it struck me.

Could it be a conspiracy? A brilliant marketing ploy by Woolworths?  Announce you are having a massive closing down sale, cut all your slightly higher than average prices down, sell lots of goods.  Seems like a pretty good plan to me.

Still didn’t convince me to start my Christmas shopping though.