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| From Meltdown08, Austria |
Went to Solden to try some winter sports. The snow was great even for the end of April.
More of my pictures here and here
Matlock Bath
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| From Matlock Bath, England |
Had a visit to Matlock Bath and the Heights of Abraham and the Derwent River.
I must have been to the area so many times, and never had good weather. It seems that the best I can hope for is a small break in the clouds and a brief burst of sunshine.
The Heights of Abraham are named after a hill in Quebec where the English and Americans defeated the French and Canadians in 1759.
The picture above shows the limestone cliff created by fault slippage, the abandoned Riber Castle, and the town of Matlock.
More pictures from the trip
More of my pictures
Underwater Photography
Underwater or in-water photography as the pros call it, can give you fantastic results. I cannot claim to be an expert, or even any good, but I got lucky with a few shots when I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
more underwater photographs
more of my photographs
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| From Underwater |
more of my photographs
Bluebells
It'll soon be time to photograph those most capricious of plants, the bluebell. Here's one from last year.
Hong Kong
Night time photos of Hong Kong
What with being on a rather tight schedule, and also at this time of the year the weather is not very good, the only time I got to take photos in Hong Kong was the first evening I was there. Since it was dark, thats all I got.More pictures of Hong Kong
More of my pictures
Around the world in less than 5 1/2 days
Graphic from the Great Circle mapper.
In a bout of total madness, I agreed to a schedule that required me to go round the world in 5 1/2 days.On the Sunday evening I flew from Heathrow to Hong Kong, arriving Monday late pm. Then on Wednesday evening (it was midnight when we pulled back and its a looooong taxi now at HKG) I flew to San Francisco, arriving Wednesday evening (due to the magic of crossing the International Dateline).
Stayed in the Bay Area a whole 2 days until Friday pm, and then back to Heathrow, arriving lunchtime. Madness!
I now have a carbon footprint the size of Germany, having flown about 18288 miles.
The shortest way - updated
In a previous post I was looking at ways to minimise flight distance, using Great Circle routes. One could argue that actually if you are in a frequent flyer program that you don't care about flight distance, only flight time.
It seems from the various online booking sites, that only www.expedia.co.uk allows you to sort by flight duration.
If I try a notional trip from LHR to ABQ it tells me that the shortest duration is actually via Denver. Great Circle mapper shows this as 5019 miles:
It seems from the various online booking sites, that only www.expedia.co.uk allows you to sort by flight duration.
If I try a notional trip from LHR to ABQ it tells me that the shortest duration is actually via Denver. Great Circle mapper shows this as 5019 miles:
The shortest way between 2 places
Ever wondered what is the shortest way between 2 places? The answer is a Great Circle. There's an online Great Circle finder here at gc.kls2.com.
Its really useful if you need to fly somewhere, but there are no direct flights. You can look for intermediate stops close to the Great Circle route, and this will minimise your flying time. Of course you need to check on the schedules to minimise the holdover time.
For example, say I want to fly to Albuquerque from London Heathrow. This is the Great Circle route and is 4994 miles long:
There are no direct flights, but I can see from gc.kls2.com that my best best is going through Minneapolis St Paul to give a total airborne mileage of 4995 miles:
Now I could go via Washington Dulles, but thats 5304 miles ie about an extra half an our airborne:
Its really useful if you need to fly somewhere, but there are no direct flights. You can look for intermediate stops close to the Great Circle route, and this will minimise your flying time. Of course you need to check on the schedules to minimise the holdover time.
For example, say I want to fly to Albuquerque from London Heathrow. This is the Great Circle route and is 4994 miles long:
There are no direct flights, but I can see from gc.kls2.com that my best best is going through Minneapolis St Paul to give a total airborne mileage of 4995 miles:
Now I could go via Washington Dulles, but thats 5304 miles ie about an extra half an our airborne:
Hong Kong - new country visited
correct April 2 2008
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