There has been a bit of press of late about the Colorado River Bridge, whose arch is about to become connected, high above the Black Canyon. It is being built to take pressure off the Hoover Dam road and once completed will make the canyon even more picturesque (if you like modern architecture, that is!).

Having said that, the pictures of the bridge in contsruction are equally impressive and a few are showcased here, showing the varying stages of the project as well as a bit of information sourced about the work:


The origianl model showing the planned work. © Colorado River Project (2009)



Liquid Nitrogen being injected into fresh concrete. © Colorado River Project (2009)



The project was delayed when a large crane collapsed. © Colorado River Project (2009)





Building work goes on through the night. © Colorado River Project (2009)



The arch was still growing in May 2009. © Colorado River Project (2009)



By June 2009, the arch was nearly connected. © Colorado River Project (2009)




The latest pictures show the arch only 6ft from completion. © Getty / Brandon Neuman (2009)



A simulation of the completed bridge. © Alcatraz Media (2009)

So, there we have it - It should be a sight to behold when finished. It still amazes me just what a monumental job the original dam was and more information on that can be found via the link below.

Finally, don't forget to explore the blog for more articles on architecture or check out one of the blog's most popular posts, discussing unusual bridges and bridge building games:

Beats! Design Blog - Architecture Articles
#111 Unusual Bridges & Bridge-Building Games

----------------------------------------

Hoover Dam Bypass - Official Website
Wikipedia: Hoover Dam Bypass
Wikipedia: Hoover Dam


 
 
 

Impressive Eyjafjallajokull pics: http://bit.ly/cEsUf2

A few months back, I posted about random lottery number generation. It won't surprise you to find out that I didn't win. Not a dime!


This is what I didn't win!

It seems that when it comes to winning the lottery, "having a system" is not the way forward - being on the right side of a 1/14,000,000 probability is the only system that works! :)

A few weeks back, I posted a story about "The Shed", a Yorkshire music venue with an unusual leaflet. A short time after, I received an email from someone who'd stumbled on the post and could offer a bit more info:


Paul also gave me a link to Kathryn Tickell's website and another photo of her, this time involving some fiddling action, rather than bagpiping. There are more photos from the event here and here.


Kathryn Tickell, Fiddling Maestro © Paul Eliasberg (2009)

As Paul partly stated in his email, he found the post whilst searching for an image of bagpipes to use in a flyer for this year's William Kennedy Piping Festival, Armagh. Happily, Paul found an image that was suitable and the design is now complete, reproduced below - the festival is from 12-15th November 2009 so do pop along if you're in the area. You may well see Paul and his Uilleann pipes whilst you're there!


© Paul Eliasberg, Armagh Piping Festival (2009)

And one last thing, I'd just like to say that any festival with a flyer as cool as that should definitely be visited - the Marxist style graphics are a nice touch :)

Kathryn Tickell - Official Website
William Kennedy Piping Festival, Armagh

I'm currently in the mood for sharing - It's so easy to do the same old things on the internet and never really explore for anything new. But the best way to find new content is to ask others for their recommendations, so I thought it was time I reversed the process and gave some tips of my own.
 
My last post centred on computer and web browser modifications, so this time I'm moving on to web content and offering up the 9 blogs I visit most (and would thoroughly recommend). There's a nice range here - not all will be to everyone's tastes, but I'm sure some will, and I've tried to avoid any hugely popular sites that most will know of already. The rest should be self-explanatory, so sit back and enjoy. Oh, but don't forget to keep visiting this site too! :)
 
 

Category: Language Update Freq: ~25x per week URL: click here | RSS: here   The BBC Magazine Monitor blog has features such as Web Monitor, Paper Monitor, daily letters and a quote of the day.		Category: Comedy Update Freq: ~5x per week URL: click here | RSS: here   Emails from Crazy People is a pretty self-explanatory blog, and a very funny one at that.		Category: Comedy Update Freq: ~30x per week URL: click here | RSS: here   Failblog posts pictures and videos of people failing, and has a unique user community, often more baffling than the content!
Category: Image Design Update Freq: ~1x per week URL: click here | RSS: here   Tutorial9 is a website that provides really good quality Photoshop tutorials, with free PSDs available to download.		Category: Maps, History Update Freq: ~1x per week URL: click here | RSS: here   Strange Maps does what it says on the tin, but has suprisingly thought-provoking posts with some really interesting maps.		Category: Image Design Update Freq: ~7x per week URL: click here | RSS: here   Photoshop Disasters highlights awful image editing in the world of visual media, naming and shaming culprits!
Category: Video Update Freq: ~15x per week URL: click here | RSS: here   The Best of Youtube posts a wide-range of videos, most of which are certainly worth a watch - a good 'youtube guide'.		Category: Video Update Freq: ~1x per week URL: click here | RSS: N/A   Another 'best of youtube' site, canada.com posts the most talked-about videos of each week.		Category: Video, Sport Update Freq: ~1x per week URL: click here | RSS: here   The Guardian Youtube Sport Archive posts a group of videos based on that week's sporting events.

Whenever I install a new OS (thanks to XP, it's been a while), I always install a few applications / modifications to make everything run more smoothly and look a bit better. So this post is really just a list of 7 simple changes you can make to your (XP) computer / Firefox browser to bring it up-to-date and add some useful features:


1. Get the Image Resizer PowerToy
This is really simple, but also really useful - A tool that lets you right-click on any image and resize it, making a copy or changing the original. You can also select multiple images and change them all at once. It's perfect for quickly reducing image size to email, or resizing a batch of photos from a digital camera to upload to a photo-sharing website, for example - for every fresh OS install, this gets put back straight away. Clicking the 'more info' link below will take you to a page with all the PowerToys on - another I find useful is the RAW Image Viewer (link), but this is only likely to be useful for D-SLR users.


Image Resizer in action © Microsoft (2002)

More Info: Microsoft XP PowerToys
File Link: Download Image Resizer PowerToy



2. PowerOff Auto-Shutdown Software
I'm sure I'm not the only one who occasionally falls asleep with my computer on (mostly as it acts as my TV) so installing this simple piece of software can save you electricity and therefore money! I tend to just install it and set it to auto-shutdown at 3am every day, just in case - if you're still up, it warns you and you can cancel the action, so you've nothing to lose really. I wouldn't recommend leaving unsaved files open, but then that's never a good idea anyway :)

More Info: PowerOff Auto-Shutdown Software
File Link: Download PowerOff



3. Foxdie Graphite Firefox Theme
After trying out a considerable amount of Firefox themes, I came to the conclusion that all of them are rubbish and sticking to the default is the way to go. Then I was using a friends Mac and liked the brushed metal effect that the Mac Firefox has, so thought I'd see if anyone has replicated it for Windows. Well, they haven't exactly, but it did lead me to a theme that is similar and usable too - It's now my default theme. So, if you're going to try any Firefox theme, try this one! NB This theme works with Firefox 3.0, but no later (beta) versions as yet.


Foxdie vs Default Firefox Theme - with Web Developer Toolbar on display too   © Firefox (2009)

More Info: Foxdie Graphite Firefox Theme
File Link: Install Foxdie Graphite to Firefox



4. Image Tweak Firefox Add-on
When you look at image files using a web browser, the default white background of the browser and the fact that pixels set to invisible are shown as white means that you can't tell if you have a picture with any invisible sections or not. Say you wanted a PNG / GIF of the Firefox logo, so you could drop it into some design work without having to clip round it first. You might do an image search for 'Firefox logo png' but you can't tell if any of them are cropped or have white backgrounds. That's where ImageTweak comes in as it puts a dark grey background behind all image files when viewed directly (therefore not affecting images within webpages). Now it's simple to see if you have a PNG/GIF with invisible sections or not:


ImageTweak in action, displaying a PNG   © ImageTweak, Firefox (2009)

NB This add-on now also has some extra features, enabling image zoom and scrolling.

More Info: ImageTweak Add-On for Firefox
File Link: Install ImageTweak to Firefox



5. Web Developer ToolBar
For anyone who develops websites, or even anyone who wants to find out more info about a webpage, this tool really is a must. It's been a staple of Firefox for many years and it remains the best way to get underneath pages you are viewing as well as offering a huge variety of tools to help test, develop and debug websites and web apps. There are similar add-ons out there that may do individual tasks, but this really has them all. Once installed, it can easily be turned off and on (right click on top-menu and de-select), meaning you can query pages when you like.

More Info: Web Devloper Add-On for Firefox
File Link: Install Web Developer to Firefox



6. Spaz & Abode AIR
Adobe Air is a nice runtime environment that combines the worlds of web and software development by allowing you to build desktop software apps using HTML, CSS, Flash, AJAX and JavaScript. These "apps" are a huge growth market and products like the iPhone have shown how popular they can be, when you can download them to a hardware device, rather than just locate them online.


Spaz & Adobe AIR   © Spaz, Adobe (2009)

So I thought I'd explore some of the programs currently built on Adobe AIR and found something I'd been looking for for ages: A great, customisable desktop twitter app, called Spaz (not a UK name!). You simply get it installed (after installing AIR) and then log in and everything's pretty self-explanatory. It sits on your desktop (can be minimised to the system tray) and gently alerts you of any updates on your twitter account, whilst letting you easily reply, forward and send messages. Before Spaz, my twitter usage was minimal and I was struggling to see the point of it, but now it makes much more sense!

More Info (Adobe AIR): Abobe AIR
Download Link (Adobe AIR): Download Adobe AIR

More Info (Spaz): Spaz Twitter Application
File Link (Spaz): Download Spaz



7. Textpad
Textpad is a simple text editor, with none of the whiz-bang of word, but has most of its useful functions and plenty additional ones. This isn't a program to make fancy documents on, but more for simple text editing and coding.

If you do any programming whatsoever, Textpad is a god-send. Even if you don't, I regularly use it just to open documents in their simplest form and if they are text-based, it always seems to display them as they were intended.

One of its best features is the macro creation tool, whereby tasks can be recorded and replayed across a large file. Equally, regular expressions are accepted so complicated editing tasks can be performed automatically.

More Info: Textpad Text Editor
File Link: Download Textpad

To start of my new committal to posting regularly, here are a few pictures from BBC photo galleries that I've stumbled upon in the past few months.

I know photos often do the rounds on the internet, with lots of blogs linking to the same (often recently released) galleries at the same time. However, I've not seen these on any blogs (although I've not been looking) and just saw them as I browsed the BBC website, so hopefully there are a few newbies in here for all.


Wave Pictures (BBC Newsround)

As this section of the BBC website is designed for kids, the gallery itself is a bit garish, but that doesn't take away from the quality of the images, a few of which are shown below:


© Clark Little (2009)


© Clark Little (2009)


© Clark Little (2009)

BBC Newsround - In Pictures: Amazing Waves



Hubble Space Telescope (BBC News)

Everyone's seen images from the Hubble Space Telescope, but this gallery brings together the best of them and each has a good description as well. They're all crackers so take a look at the full gallery when you can, but below is a small sample for your delectation anyway:


© NASA (2008)

BBC News - In Pictures: Hubble's best images



South America's Wildlife Wonders (BBC News)

I remember a few years ago seeing some photos from an scientific expedition to a "lost forest" in Borneo, where a number of new species were discovered within the pristine rainforest. Previously unexplored parts of the world (by science) are rare these days, so these pictures from an expedition to the Ecuador-Peru border are worth a wee gander.

The expedition reported 12 new species, most of which photograph rather well. This part of the world has been troubled by ongoing conflict and scientists rarely get a glimpse of the wildlife it holds.


© Jessica Deichmann (2009)


© Luis A Coloma (2009)


© Holger Braun (2009)

BBC News - In Pictures: South America's wildlife wonders



Unsung Views Mapped (UK)

A few weeks ago, the BBC Magazine put out an article asking for user's images of 'unsung views' across Britain. They got over 500 entries and have since posted an image gallery (with 25 images - although not all working it seems) and now an interactive map of the best images.

The map is pretty basic at the mo, but it at least allows the location of these great images to be easily found, due to the fact some are slightly of the beaten track (as requested). I've linked to all 3 articles below so you can see the lot - but the basic premise is quoted below from the original article:



© BBC / Microsoft (2009)


© Ben Hall / BBC (2009)


© Joe Reid / BBC (2009)

BBC Magazine: An unsung view (original article)
BBC Magazine - Your pictures: Unsung Views I
BBC Magazine - Your unsung views mapped

Six weeks ago, I posted on here to apologise for the lack of recent posts and to suggest I'll be being a bit snappier in the future:


So how many posts did I publish in those 6 weeks? Two. Just two. And neither were particularly snappy. OK, I've been really busy and got loads of work done (updates on here soon - once the sites are officially released) but I've neglected this blog somewhat.

I've got a relatively free run for a while so things should get back to normal on here, but I won't promise anything in case I need to go back on it like I'm doing now. However, I have plenty of things to post and nearly finished a couple of articles so please do watch this space! :)

Just so this post isn't purely boring admin, I've put one of my favourite recent FailBlog pictures below - made me laugh anyway!


© FailBlog (2009)

FailBlog.org - Bulletin Board Win