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snowflake

snowflakes!!!

Child

A few years ago, I was in charge of my five-year-old niece for the day.  As is often the case with five-year-olds, I was about to get a whole lot more than I bargained for. 

I needed to run to the office for a minute--I was then the CEO of Virtual Shopping Inc., an early e-commerce player later sold to Europe's Wallenberg Group--so I told her to get in the car.  As we walked to the garage, she looked down at the carpet and asked me how carpet is made.  I knew there were big machines that sewed it, or something like that, but I didn't know much more.  She was clearly disappointed.

When we got to the car, she tapped on the window and asked me how to make glass.  I explained that it involved fire and sand.  She looked at me like I was crazy.  I was losing, two-zip.  To a kindergartner.

When we got to the office, my niece did what all kids her age do.  She questionedeverything.  "What is that thing?  Why do you have two of those?  What does that guy do?  Why is that girl on the phone all the time?"

Seaside

The islands are the main characteristic of Greece’s morphology and an integral part of the country’s culture and tradition. Greek sovereign land includes 6,000 islands and islets scattered in the Aegean and Ionian Seas, of which only 227 islands are inhabited. This is a truly unique phenomenon for the European continent.

The Greek Archipelago takes up 7,500 km of the country’s total 16,000 km coastline, offering a highly diversified landscape: beaches stretching over many kilometers, sheltered bays and coves, sandy beaches with sand-dunes, pebble beaches, coastal caves with steep rocks and dark colored sand typical of volcanic soil and coastal wetlands.

Lamborghini

Manufacturing magnate Ferruccio Lamborghini founded Automobili Ferruccio Lamborghini S.p.A. in 1963 with the objective of producing a refined grand touring car to compete with offerings from established marques such as Ferrari. The company's first models were released in the mid-1960s and were noted for their refinement, power and comfort. Lamborghini gained wide acclaim in 1966 for the Miura sports coupé, which established rear mid-engine, rear wheel drive as the standard layout for high-performance cars of the era.

Lamborghini grew rapidly during its first decade, but hard times befell the company when sales plunged in the wake of the 1973 worldwide financial downturn and the 1973 oil crisis. The firm's ownership changed three times after 1973, including a bankruptcy in 1978, before Chrysler Corporation took control in 1987. Unable to operate Lamborghini profitably, Chrysler sold Lamborghini to Malaysian investment group Mycom Setdco and Indonesian group V'Power Corporation in 1994. Lack of success continued through the 1990s, until Mycom Setdco and V'Power sold Lamborghini to the AUDI AG subsidiary of Volkswagen Group on 27 July 1998. Audi's ownership marked the beginning of a period of stability and increased productivity for Lamborghini. Sales increased nearly tenfold over the course of the 2000s, peaking with record sales in 2007 and 2008. The world financial crisis in the late 2000s negatively affected all luxury car makers worldwide, and caused Lamborghini's sales to drop nearly 50 percent.

Camping

Home away from home, that is what a tent is. Tents come in a variety of shapes and sizes, flashy colors and shiny zippers. Don't let all this fool you, it is still a tent. Sizes are based according to how many people they sleep: 2-man, 3-man, 4-man and 6-man (no these are not sexist comments, that is the industry standard). If the tent is made by a reputable company, then it will usually be able to sleep what it says it can. Some tent companies overrate their tents and a 3 person tent ends up being a 2 person.

You may hear tents categorized as 3 season or 4 season. A three season tent is generally made for camping in warmer months, spring through fall. A 4 season tent is made to go camping year round, even in the winter. The main difference in the two is that 4 season tents are made of heavier material which keeps the inside of the tent warmer. In the heat of summer in the southern US, you would much prefer a 3 season tent than a 4 season.

Sky Lanterns

A sky lantern, also known as Kongming lantern or Chinese lantern, is a small hot air balloon made of paper, with an opening at the bottom where a small fire is suspended. It can be viewed as an airborne version of the paper lantern that is traditionally associated with some East Asian cultures.

In Asia and elsewhere, sky lanterns have been traditionally made for centuries, to be launched for play or as part of festivities. In recent years there has been growing concern about their potential to cause crop or building fires and harm animals that may eat their remains. Several countries have banned them for that reason.^[1]

Backpacking

Backpacking is a form of low-cost, independent international travel. It includes the use of a backpack or other luggage that is easily carried for long distances or long periods of time; the use of public transport; inexpensive lodging such as youth hostels; a longer duration to the trip when compared with conventional vacations; and an interest in meeting the locals as well as seeing the sights. It is typically associated with young adults, who generally have fewer obligations and thus more time to travel. They also have less money to spend on hotels or private vehicles. It may include wilderness adventures or be limited to travel within settled areas.

The definition of a backpacker has evolved as travelers from different cultures and regions participate. A 2007 paper said "backpackers constituted a heterogeneous group with respect to the diversity of rationales and meanings attached to their travel experiences. They also displayed a common commitment to a non-institutionalised form of travel, which was central to their self-identification as backpackers."^[1] Backpacking as a lifestyle and as a business has grown considerably in the 2000s as a result of low-cost airlines and hostels or budget accommodations in many parts of the world.^[2]

San Francisco.

San francisco. Or is this New York or Chicago or Boston? I think it's San Francisco, there's Golden Gate in the background.

Dream Island

Dream Island is an island lying 0.7 km (0.43 mi) south-east of Cape Monaco, off the south-west coast of Anvers Island in Wylie Bay, in the Palmer Archipelago of Antarctica. It was surveyed by the British Naval Hydrographic Survey Unit in 1956-1957 and named by the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee for its natural features including a cave and, in summer, a small waterfall, withmossy patches and grass. It lies about 10 km north-west of the United States' Palmer Station.

aquapark

On a scorching day in the Med is there anything more fun than hurling yourself down a giant slide into a swimming pool below?

From May each year, water parks everywhere come alive to cool the continent's holidaymakers down. Here's ten across Europe that you shouldn't miss...

Caneva World, Italy Shattering the peace on the banks of Lake Garda is Caneva World, a double whammy of theme park fun. Battle through the throngs of Italian teenagers to the wet end of the park, Aqua Paradise, which is brimming with scream-inducing rides and slides. Biggest splash Stukas. The steepest slides in the park. Cross your arms and plummet feet-first down a 32-metre drop.

Love

On Intimacy

I have to live on my own or else I melt.

It’s not just a question of shutting a door, it’s a psychological, womb thing. 

It’s not that I don’t want you, it’s that I’m afraid of wanting only you, of finding there’s nothing left of me.

So excuse it as a part of my general fucked-upness.

~ ‘Essays in Love’, Alain de Botton

blurred

Motion blur retains some information about motion, based on which motion may be recovered from blurred images. This is a difficult problem, as the situations of motion blur can be quite complicated, such as they may be space variant, nonlinear, and local. This paper addresses a very challenging problem: can we recover motion blindly from a single motion-blurred image?
There are mainly three contributions in our work

• Motion blur constraint: a major contribution of this paper is a new finding of an elegant motion blur constraint. Exhibiting a very similar mathematical form as the optical flow constraint, this linear constraint applies locally to pixels in the image. An illustration example is shown in Fig. 1.
• Space-variant motion blur estimation: a number of challenging problems can be addressed under a unified framework, including:
  • Motion blur estimation with a global parametric form, such as affine and rotational motion blur,
  • Multiple motion blur patterns estimation and segmentation,
  • Nonparametric motion blur field estimation.
• Applications:
  • Space-variant motion deblurring with a modified Richardson-Lucy algorithm,
  • Blur/motion synthesis.

coca cola

Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in every country except Cuba and North Korea. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply asCoke (a registered trademark of The Coca-Cola Company in the United States since March 27, 1944). Originally intended as a patent medicine when it was invented in the late 19th century by John Pemberton, Coca-Cola was bought out by businessman Asa Griggs Candler, whose marketing tactics led Coke to its dominance of the world soft-drink market throughout the 20th century.

The company produces concentrate, which is then sold to licensed Coca-Cola bottlers throughout the world. The bottlers, who hold territorially exclusive contracts with the company, produce finished product in cans and bottles from the concentrate in combination with filtered water and sweeteners. The bottlers then sell, distribute and merchandise Coca-Cola to retail stores and vending machines. Such bottlers include Coca-Cola Enterprises, which is the largest single Coca-Cola bottler in North America and western Europe. The Coca-Cola Company also sells concentrate for soda fountains to major restaurants and food service distributors.

random

In Germany, Angela Merkel has given her reaction to the resignation of Pope Benedict, who was born Joseph Ratzinger in Bavaria in 1927. Merkel thanked the pope for his work as head of the Catholic church,Kate Connolly reports from Berlin, and said his decision to resign was to be given "the absolute highest respect".

Benedict, she said, "is and remains one of the most important religious thinkers of our time". She added that if he was too weak to fulfil his duties, that had to be respected. "In an age like ours when people live ever longer, many people will understand that even the pope has to come to terms with the burdens of ageing."