Common Sense and Whiskey

Friday Photo Quiz #60

The really odd landscape above is characteristic of a region in the eastern part of this Eurasian country.

Can you name the country? The region?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Cats!

The consistently interesting site Mongabay.com has a story, with photos from camera traps, called Photos: highest diversity of cats in the world discovered in threatened forest of India. If you're in for an adventure vacation, as we've just learned many people are, it ought to get you going. The site IndianTiger.org has a just-the-facts page on wild cats.

When we eventually get to track the Bengal Tiger I've already got the lodging picked out - we'll stay here.

(Photo from the Animals and Wildlife Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. You might also check out the South Africa Gallery. The wild cat in the photo is a cheetah, and the photo was taken on an afternoon game drive at the very nice Mkuze Falls Private Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal South Africa.)

Acropolis? Not Now

The good news: "the capital's chaotic traffic was quieter than usual." Otherwise, "A nationwide strike grounded flights, trains and ferries in Greece on Wednesday as thousands rallied in Athens to protest austerity plans aimed at wrenching Greece out of a debt crisis that has shaken the euro zone." - via Reuters.

And: "All but emergency flights to and from Greece were grounded and ferries were at a standstill. Monuments such as the Athens Acropolis shut down."

(Photo from the Greece Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

B&W HDR? Wednesday HDR #5

This article prompted me to experiment with turning one of my favorite HDRs to black and white. Here's the B&W result, with the color HDR after the jump, in case you'd like to A/B 'em.

If You Can't Do It Our Way, We'll Keep Your Airplanes

"Iran has warned that airlines will be banned from flying into its airspace, unless they use the term "Persian Gulf" on their in-flight monitors" instead of "Arabian Gulf," the BBC reports.

Airlines have "15 days to change the name to Persian Gulf on their in flight monitors."

And the BBC continues that "if the offence was repeated, foreign airliners would be grounded and refused permission to leave Iran."

Hey, maybe not all these airlines will notice the fifteen day deadline. Impounding a plane here or there might help restore Iran’s aging fleet of jetliners.

Safaris Are a Top Goal for that "Trip of a Lifetime"

We've waxed editorially about the overuse of the marketing words "of a lifetime" a couple of times. Now Alexia Nestora, who runs a blog called Voluntourism Gal, has published a study that gets past the marketing to have a look at what people really decide to do when they take what they describe as their trip of a lifetime.

Key finding: "70% of respondents said they are most interested in visiting natural and man-made wonders on a once-in-a-lifetime trip such as Machu Picchu, the Pyramids or Victoria Falls. Beyond that, 53% said they were very interested in going on safari...."

Also: "52% of respondents organized their lifetime trip independently, 18% join a tour group, and 16% use a travel agent to organize their trip."

Have a look at her summary, or download the whole report.

And while we're on about research, in a journal called Applied Research in Quality of Life, the study "Vacationers Happier, but Most not Happier After a Holiday" claims something confirmed travelers could have told you in the first place. As the New York times quotes the lead author of the study, “The practical lesson for an individual is that you derive most of your happiness from anticipating the holiday trip.” 

And, I'd add, from reliving the experience with your photos after the trip.

The study author has a tip most of us can probably agree with: “What you can do is try to increase that (your happiness) by taking more trips per year. If you have a two week holiday you can split it up and have two one week holidays. You could try to increase the anticipation effect by talking about it more and maybe discussing it online.”

*****

(Photo is an HDR of a tree climbing lion in the Ishasha Wilderness, Uganda, from EarthPhotos.com. See more in the Uganda Gallery and the Animals & Wildlife Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.)

Trip Planning Guide Blog

Drop by a new blog by Molly Ottersen and Virginia Saunders called Trip Planning Guide. I've listed it in Travel Tools, at right.

Let Me Google That For You

Let me Google that for you.

Friday Photo Quiz #59

You can organize a quick football match before your business at City Hall, on the right, in this capital city. Perhaps you recognize the skyline. If not, here's a clue: This city is also a republic, which lies within a hundred miles of the equator.

Can you name the country?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

Real Life Spy Drama

This is compelling reading. It happened here.

Trans-Siberian Railroad: The Urals to Irkutsk

No need to leave home. Google Russia has posted (in English) the entire six day, 5752-mile Trans-Siberian railway journey. As the Guardian writes, "You can choose different sounds to accompany it: the rumble of wheels, sugary Russian pop tunes, or the evocative playing of a balalaika. Alternatively, you can listen to readings of Russian classics (in Russian) of Leo Tolstoy's 1,400-page War and Peace or Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls.

"Along the way are Russia's most picturesque vistas: Siberian rivers, the elegantly curving Lake Baikal, and the hazy Barguzin mountains. There is also a lot of steppe."

Which presents a great opportunity for us to share the story of part of our trip in 2001. Hope you enjoy it.

The kiosk, alongside a tram stop, was just big enough to be a walk-in affair, not big enough for four, let alone our steamy tensome.  The boys in front argued over what beer and candy to order one each of. I motioned for six litre-sized bottles way up high on a shelf, consternation rippling through the mottled impatience behind me.

In a few hours Mirja and I would climb aboard the Trans-Siberian railroad to Ulan Bataar, Mongolia.  We’d be a week en route, so we needed stuff. In a snap, though, I calculated we could get everything else at the train station.  Six litres of water is heavy.

In the United States, today was Labor Day. On the edge of Siberia, autumn held full sway. E-kat's denizens plodded cold and damp in an insistent, heavy shower. A lot of the older folks wore long coats. The rain beset.

Passing the afternoon waiting to climb aboard the train, a cheerful Novosti TV story captioned “Dagestan” showed pictures of exploded railroad track.

Wednesday HDR #4: Two More Realistic HDRs

Last time we looked at two HDRs that were obviously pretty heavily processed. Here are two that benefit from combining multiple exposures while retaining more realism, mostly by dialing down "strength" and using maximum "light smoothing" in Photomatix Pro.

Sydney skyline from Watson's Bay.

Downtown Sydney from above.

See the whole HDR Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Two new HDR Photos in "Full HDR."

It's been a lot of fun experimenting with High Dynamic Range photography over the past year, learning when photos benefit most from retaining a realistic look and when it's more fun to go "full HDR." Here are two examples of the latter:

 Ladies in a raft, Hoi An, Vietnam.

The Singapore Skyline.

See the whole HDR Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. Next, we'll look at a couple of much more realistic HDRs from Australia.

On Hotels: Why People Stay Where They Do

Everybody knows what they like. Everybody has their own approach to where to stay on the road.

Compare this gentle rant against high-end hotel properties with this list of favorite high-end properties. What we have here are two writers headed in different directions.

But I agree with both.

We've all got our stories on the anti-expensive-hotel side. In December, 2006 the hotel just outside the O. R. Tambo International terminal at Johannesburg (which was not then an InterContinental Hotel as it is now) charged us for every last beer, orange drink and tonic water in the minibar. All of them.

That was because we cleared all of them out and placed them in the cabinet beside the minibar so that we could store food we brought back from their restaurant. When it was time to go we reassembled the minibar, but it was one of those pressure-sensitive models which charges you for anything that's lifted from its assigned place.

Of course we were adamant that that wasn't right and would not stand, and it didn't. But we had to send a member of the front desk staff up to confirm all their Pepsis were in place, all momentum came to a screeching halt for fifteen minutes at checkout, and the ill will transformed what had been a pleasant enough stay to an experience I'm still writing about today. Just far, far too mercenary.

Friday Photo Quiz #58

The building in the foreground is the Foreign Ministry, on Republic Square in the capital city of the country in this week's photo quiz. The population of this entire tiny country is less than that of Pyongyang, North Korea or Montreal, Canada.

Can you name the country?

The answer is after the jump.

A good weekend to all from Common Sense and Whiskey & EarthPhotos.com.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)

About That Ethiopian Airlines Flight

So far, nobody mainstream is buying into the Israeli web site Debkafile's report that Ethiopian Airline crash off Beirut was an act of Al-Qaeda terror. Search "ethiopian airlines terrorism al qaeda" and you'll find no one but DebkaFile and mostly conservative bloggers who echo the story.

Debkafile cites "western security agencies in the middle east" as suspecting al Qaeda

"planners picked on the Ethiopian flight for more than one reason apart from the date: They had been tipped off that a group of French undercover agents, including Maria Sanchez Pietton, wife of the French ambassador to Beirut, and top Hizballah operatives, including secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, would be aboard.

Mme Pietton lost her life in the crash, while the Hizballah travelers were saved by switching to another flight at the last minute."

Explosive charges (if I may), but Debkafile can tend to the hysterical. Wikipedia quotes Yediot Achronot's investigative reporter Ronen Bergman writing that "the site relies on information from sources with an agenda, such as neo-conservative elements of the US Republican Party, "whose worldview is that the situation is bad and is only going to get worse," and that Israeli intelligence officials do not consider even 10 percent of the site's content to be reliable."

Photo from the Ethiopia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

Iran's Revolution Anniversary Tomorrow - Resources

Iran bears watching. Tomorrow, 11 February, is the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. There are reported to be mass arrests taking place in advance of planned demonstrations.

The supreme leader has promised to make some news. “The nation will stun the world on the 22nd of Bahman,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proclaimed to the Air Force division of the Iranian Army on Sunday. The 22nd of Bahman in the Persian calendar is tomorrow, 11 February.

Should there be trouble, here is a ready list of news sources that were useful during last June's election protests:

- niacINsight - Blog of the National Iranian American Council
- Nico Pitney at Huffington Post - was all over the story, live-blogging last summer.
- Andrew Sullivan - ditto, for the Atlantic.
- The Lede - ditto, for the New York Times.
- Kodoom - Persian news aggregator.
- IranElection - Twitter feed from last summer, still active.
- BBC Persian Service - Live stream.
- Rooz Online - Reformist news site.

Wednesday HDR #3

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range photography, a technique in which multiple exposures are combined to produce a greater range between the lightest and darkest parts of a photo than in standard digital photography. The most popular software for creating HDR images is PhotoMatix, a $99 download for Macs and PCs.

This HDR photo was taken in rural Uganda. This man stopped to walk his bicycle across a particularly bad patch of road near a general store where we had stopped for a drink.

See a larger, higher-res version of this picture at this link, more HDR photography in the HDR Gallery, and nearly 300 photos from Uganda in the Uganda Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

New St. Helena Island Photos

Several new photos today in the St. Helena Gallery at EarthPhotos.com. Among them are several of Jonathan, who some say is the world's oldest animal. Others are landscapes from way up above Georgetown, the capital, including this one:

THE QUESTION, and How to Answer It

“How was your trip?”

I guess it’s meant with the best intentions. But, how to answer?

Do they really want to know?

If it comes from somebody you talk with regularly, it could be just a way to say, hey, we haven’t talked in a few weeks, and it would be strange to pick up where we left off without acknowledging your absence.

If the fact that you’ve just returned from the wildest, darkest jungles of Borneo doesn’t spark enough imagination to prompt a trip-specific question like “Eewww, what about all the leeches!?,” then “How was your trip?” may simply be answered, “Fine.”

That’s what I do anymore. Not literally give a one-word answer, but just reply with something breezy like, “Oh, great. It was a grand and sprawling adventure.” And if THAT doesn’t generate a follow-up question, they don’t want to know.

For the longest time I made the mistake of thinking people did want to know. I was so proud of our having traveled over the Himalayas from Kathmandu to Lhasa that I was insufferable bursting to share all the noodle slurping thrills.

But some people just don’t care. Others think you’re kind of weird going off all that way.

There will be some who steer you away with a non-sequitur like “My uncle spent six years in China.” These people are embarrassed they couldn’t find Kathmandu or Lhasa on a map.

Once in a while, somebody will have done something equally fabulous and they will be a pleasure to talk with.

And others will say, “I want to go to Italy.”

With those people, just let the whole thing slide.

(Photo from EarthPhotos.com.)