Common Sense and Whiskey

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World Population by Latitude

Interesting maps at Radical Cartography, and commentary on them by Frank Jacobs at Strange Maps.

Friday Photo Quiz #150 - Where in the World

It's a beautiful, world-class city. But where is it?

Can you name the city? The country?

The answer is after the jump.

Wednesday HDR - Across the Tiber River, Before and After

Here's an example of turning a typically dreadful tourist snapshot into something you might hang on to.

You can't help the weather, and this was a pleasant enough day, but with a high overcast that washed out colors.

I'm always snapping away (ask Mirja) and if there's a body of water I'll be shooting across it. In this case, it's the Tiber River near the Vatican. It's one of those shots you skip through on your computer, and never look at again. But with a lot of spare time over the next winter, I went back to see if any of those Italy shots were salvageable.

You start by re-exposing the camera raw original + and - several stops. Then save each as a tiff, and then combine and process to suit you in Photomatix, and finish in Photoshop with the help of Nik filters. Up close, it looks like I used a tree bark texture over the whole thing, too. The result? Well, it beats the original:

Click the photos to A/B larger versions. There are 390 HDRs in the HDR Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

The Eleven Minute Map

European history since 1000. Pop it out to watch it in full screen mode so you can see the years go by at the top, and some commentary at the bottom. Great stuff.

Midsummer Train

Rainbow by the lake at midsummer, and Rovaniemi in midwinter.

Having family and a little cabin on the lake in Finland, I check in most mornings on the latest Finnish radio news in English, from Finnish broadcaster YLE.

Here's something fun: There's a story about a special train that will travel almost all the way across the country this summer, Helsinki to Rovaniemi, starting on the eve of the midsummer holiday. Way up north there, it won't get dark the whole time. And they'll broadcast it live.

"The first programme of its kind, the 13-hour live show has sparked interest in Germany, Norway and France, which will also air the marathon train ride through Finland's nightless night."

And it'll be carried live on the YLE site.

The Hurtigruten ships that ply coastal Norway did a five day live TV thing last midsummer, and Google Maps offers a video that will take you 9220 kilometers from Moscow to Vladivostok, but that, too, takes several days. A live streaming internet trip across Finland will feature all the same birch trees as the Trans-Siberian, and it'll be considerably shorter.

There's still a way to go to get to midsummer, though. The forecast for Rovaniemi right now?

Sochi Olympics Watch #13

The almost cosmic brilliance of the International Olympic Committee in picking Sochi as home of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games is again on display. See the article Russia 'foils Islamist plot to attack Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.'

"They said the plot had been devised by the Chechen rebel Doku Umarov, the head of Caucasus Emirate, a rebel group that seeks to wrest the Caucasus region from Russia in order to set up an Islamist state."

"The committee said surface-to-air missiles, TNT and grenade launchers were among the weapons seized."

The Olympic city is less than 300 miles from Grozny. I'm just saying.

Ships - Wednesday HDRs

Ships, top to bottom, from the dockyards at Fremantle, Australia, The Ortakoy Mosque and the Bosphorus Bridge, Istanbul, Turkey, the Mekong Delta near Saigon, Vietnam, and Stockholm, Sweden. Click them to make them bigger. There's a little story about that Mekong Delta boat ride here.

All these HDRs are shot with Nikon cameras, combined in Photomatix, finished in Photoshop, some with Nik filters.

Common Sense and Whiskey, the Book - The Southern Caucasus, Chapter Fifteen

Here is Chapter Fifteen of Common Sense and Whiskey, the book, a very short trip through Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Track down previous chapters here. Click the photos to make them bigger. More photos and additional commentary are available at A Common Sense and Whiskey Companion. And here's the Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia Galleries at EarthPhotos.com. Order the entire book for $9.99 at Amazon.com, at BN.com, or the Kindle version (just $4.99).

 

The Wien Flughafen stood disturbingly deserted at night, all the shops stocked like Christmas, but you couldn’t play with the toys. They glittered and blinked coquettishly behind glass doors pulled shut.

Our old buddy Austrian Airlines left Vienna on a beeline toward Budapest, then Timisoara, Bucharest, Constanta, over the Black Sea to Trabzon and on into Yerevan, all of it in blackness below. The flight tracking screen showed our destination tucked right in between Grozny and Baghdad: “Local time in Jerewan 4:31 a.m.”

Austrian’s corporate color scheme was brilliant red, the national color, and the cabin crew was dressed red hat to sensible (but red) shoes. Fetching, I thought.

Taxiing out (“We are number one for takeoff”), a wail arose behind us. A woman screamed “Go back, go back and check!” Crimson crew rushed to her and kneeled and huddled round our distraught Armenian. One of them came back forward and PA’d their apologies, “Dis is not Azerbaijan, ve know dis.”

The safety announcements were recorded, and they were for the wrong destination. This woman wasn’t by God going to Baku. Azerbaijan’s border with Armenia had been shut tight for fifteen years.

Next Week: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia

 

14th century Trinity Church (Tsminda Sameba) near Mt. Kazbeg, Georgia.

Several days back we put up a list of links to reading about the Caucasus. Next week we'll publish our small contribution, the final chapter of Common Sense and Whiskey, the book, ($9.99 at Amazon.com, at BN.com, or $4.99 for the Kindle version.) here on the blog. It's the story of our quick rumble through the southern Caucasus, from Yerevan, Armenia to Tbilisi, Georgia and up the Georgia Military Highway to the Russian border and Mt. Kazbeg, then over to Baku and the scary post-industrial Caspian Sea island of Pirallahi, in Azerbaijan. See previous CS&W chapters here.

 

Friday Photo Quiz #149 - Where in the World?

Now this is interesting. What is it? Sultan's palace? Mosque? Theme park? And where is it?

Can you name the city? The country?

The answer is after the jump.

Fourth Wife Flies Free

Unusual promotion on South Africa's Kulula.com - via its Facebook page.

"Inspired by regular VIP travellers with sizeable spousal entourages, the offer is open to all fourth wives when the family travels together on the Jo’burg to Cape Town route."