Month: July 2014

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Shared: Flow

A new Flickr Favorite by Yogendra174.

Flowing water has always amazed me and will continue to do so.. 🙂

Thanks Anand J (Andy) for letting me use his 4 stop ND filter.

Blogged Here || FB || G+

Uploaded: July 27, 2011 at 02:33AM

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Shared: Puente General Belgrano / General Belgrano Bridge (Resistencia/Corrientes, Argentina)

A new Flickr Favorite by Claudio.Ar.

View On Black

El Puente "General Manuel Belgrano" es un viaducto sobre el tramo argentino del río Paraná que une las ciudades de Barranqueras (en la provincia del Chaco, cerca de la ciudad de Resistencia) y Corrientes (en la provincia homónima), pocos kilómetros después de la desembocadura del río Paraguay. Fue el primer puente argentino en sortear el río Paraná y su construcción rompió el virtual aislamiento en el que se encontraban las provincias de Corrientes y Misiones. Su inauguración se realizó el 10 de mayo de 1973.

Para construirlo debió además hacerse un terraplén especial que permita cruzar por los terrenos bajos que forma el río Tragadero, y se extendió la ruta nacional 16 para que esta llegue hasta la cabecera del puente.

El puente tuvo un alto impacto en las economías de las regiones, potenciando a la ciudad de Resistencia como nudo de comunicaciones del nordeste argentino, y vinculando de forma efectiva a las provincias de la Mesopotamia argentina. Es asimismo una atracción turística, debido a sus dimensiones e ingeniería. También posibilitó el viaducto una interacción mucho más fluida entre el Gran Resistencia y el Gran Corrientes, permitiendo que numerosos grupos de trabajadores y estudiantes vivan en una provincia y tengan sus actividades diarias en la otra. Según algunos autores esto convierte a Resistencia – Corrientes en un espacio urbano integrado de alrededor de 700.000 habitantes, conformando lo que sería la 6ª metrópoli de la Argentina, o la séptima si se considera idéntica situación a la dupla Gran Santa Fe – Gran Paraná.

Desde mediados de los años 1990 el tráfico es superior a lo aconsejable, por lo que está previsto la construcción de un segundo puente algunos kilómetros más al sur del mismo.

Lleva su nombre en honor al abogado y militar argentino Manuel Belgrano.

Su longitud es de 1.700 metros, y se yergue hasta unos 35 metros por encima del nivel medio de las máximas crecientes, permitiendo la navegación de buques de alto porte. Tiene una calzada de 8,30 metros de ancho y dos veredas laterales de 1,80 metros cada una.

The bridge "General Manuel Belgrano" is a viaduct on the Argentine part of the Parana river linking the cities of Barranqueras (in the province of Chaco, near the city of Resistencia) and Corrientes (in the province of the same name), a few kilometers before the mouth of the river Paraguay. It was the first bridge in Argentine circumvent the Parana River and its construction broke the virtual isolation in which they were the provinces of Corrientes and Misiones. His inauguration took place on May 10, 1973.

To build further due to an embankment special permits to cross by land which forms the low river Tragadero, and the national route 16 was extended to reach the bridge header.

The bridge had a high impact on the economies of the regions, empowering the city of Resistancia as communications hub in northeastern Argentina, and linking them effectively to the Argentine provinces of the Mesopotamia. It is also a tourist attraction, given its size and engineering. The viaduct also enabled much more fluid interaction between the Great Resistencia area and the Great Corrientes area, allowing many groups of workers and students live in a province and have their daily activities on the other side. According to some authors that makes Resistancia – Corrientes in an integrated urban area of about 700,000 inhabitants, forming what would be the 6th metropolis of Argentina, or the seventh when one considers identical situation to the tuple Great Santa Fe-Great Parana.

Since mid-1990 the traffic is higher than desirable, it is expected the construction of a second bridge a few kilometers to the south of it.

It takes its name in honor of the Argentine military and lawyer and Manuel Belgrano.

Its length is 1,700 meters, and rises to about 35 m above the average level of the highest growing, allowing the navigation of vessels carrying high. It has a roadway of 8.30 meters wide and two sidewalks side of 1.80 meters each.

Uploaded: November 25, 2007 at 01:42PM

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Shared: kelly on top down control

A new Flickr Favorite by Will Lion.

Full quote: "Changing things from the top down works when things are stable. It’s a very efficient way to do it. But in a turbulent environment the change is so widespread that it just routes around any kind of central authority. So it is best to manage the bottom-up change rather than try to institute it from the top down." Kevin Kelly

The interesting thing is that this was written in 1995 and was talking about organisational structure. However, I think it just as well applies to the Internet now.

Specifically, it ossifies the view that eschews trying to control everything – a largely pointless exercise because the Internet is systemically dynamic.

It’s like planting seeds and then continuously trampling your garden to make sure everything is growing to your precise idea of how it should when just seeding and standing back, returning occasionally to water and weed, will work a lot better.

www.well.com/~bbear/kellyart.html

Uploaded: June 20, 2008 at 10:02AM

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Shared: Cedar Wax Wing

A new Flickr Favorite by thelearnedfoot_.

A gorgeous little bird I had never seen before today. Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum) in the Rocky River Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks. He was underneath the Lorain Road bridge near Fairview Hospital on the edge of a thistle field. He is a little bit smaller than a cardinal. Has the distinctive crest.

In the comments, I have a shot that better shows off the markings. I also returned to the same location the next day and have photographs of another Cedar Waxwing AND a juvenile. See below.

Uploaded: August 07, 2008 at 08:40AM

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Shared: (147/365) lotus position

A new Flickr Favorite by nanny snowflake.

“As a lotus flower is born in water, grows in water and rises out of water to stand above it unsoiled, so I, born in the world, raised in the world having overcome the world, live unsoiled by the world” – Buddha

I was finally able to make it to mindfulness meditation last night at our local Buddhist temple.

I went to the temple earlier to get my picture, sitting in the center of a lotus design that is in front of the temple. The temple is such a beautiful location. It’s hard not to feel peaceful and tranquil in their surroundings. I found it really beneficial in helping my mind calm-down and de-stress with what is going on currently in my life. By being more mindful, and focusing on the present (and not the past or future), I can better manage what is going in my life and be more observant.

Uploaded: June 04, 2011 at 02:09PM

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Shared: New Yorkers love themselves … who can blame them?

A new Flickr Favorite by Ed Yourdon.

This photo was taken at the "Mariner’s Gate" entrance at the southwest corner of Central Park, at Columbus Circle.

Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Nov 22, 2013.

This set of photos is based on a very simple concept: walk every block of Manhattan with a camera, and see what happens. To avoid missing anything, walk both sides of the street.

That’s all there is to it …

Of course, if you wanted to be more ambitious, you could also walk the streets of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. But that’s more than I’m willing to commit to at this point, and I’ll leave the remaining boroughs of New York City to other, more adventurous photographers.

Oh, actually, there’s one more small detail: leave the photos alone for a month — unedited, untouched, and unviewed. By the time I actually focus on the first of these "every-block" photos, I will have taken more than 8,000 images on the nearby streets of the Upper West Side — plus another several thousand in Rome, Coney Island, and the various spots in NYC where I traditionally take photos. So I don’t expect to be emotionally attached to any of the "every-block" photos, and hope that I’ll be able to make an objective selection of the ones worth looking at.

As for the criteria that I’ve used to select the small subset of every-block photos that get uploaded to Flickr: there are three. First, I’ll upload any photo that I think is "great," and where I hope the reaction of my Flickr-friends will be, "I have no idea when or where that photo was taken, but it’s really a terrific picture!"

A second criterion has to do with place, and the third involves time. I’m hoping that I’ll take some photos that clearly say, "This is New York!" to anyone who looks at it. Obviously, certain landscape icons like the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty would satisfy that criterion; but I’m hoping that I’ll find other, more unexpected examples. I hope that I’ll be able to take some shots that will make a "local" viewer say, "Well, even if that’s not recognizable to someone from another part of the country, or another part of the world, I know that that’s New York!" And there might be some photos where a "non-local" viewer might say, "I had no idea that there was anyplace in New York City that was so interesting/beautiful/ugly/spectacular."

As for the sense of time: I remember wandering around my neighborhood in 2005, photographing various shops, stores, restaurants, and business establishments — and then casually looking at the photos about five years later, and being stunned by how much had changed. Little by little, store by store, day by day, things change … and when you’ve been around as long as I have, it’s even more amazing to go back and look at the photos you took thirty or forty years ago, and ask yourself, "Was it really like that back then? Seriously, did people really wear bell-bottom jeans?"

So, with the expectation that I’ll be looking at these every-block photos five or ten years from now (and maybe you will be, too), I’m going to be doing my best to capture scenes that convey the sense that they were taken in the year 2013 … or at least sometime in the decade of the 2010’s (I have no idea what we’re calling this decade yet). Or maybe they’ll just say to us, "This is what it was like a dozen years after 9-11".

Movie posters are a trivial example of such a time-specific image; I’ve already taken a bunch, and I don’t know if I’ll ultimately decide that they’re worth uploading. Women’s fashion/styles are another obvious example of a time-specific phenomenon; and even though I’m definitely not a fashion expert, I suspected that I’ll be able to look at some images ten years from now and mutter to myself, "Did we really wear shirts like that? Did women really wear those weird skirts that are short in the front, and long in the back? Did everyone in New York have a tattoo?"

Another example: I’m fascinated by the interactions that people have with their cellphones out on the street. It seems that everyone has one, which certainly wasn’t true a decade ago; and it seems that everyone walks down the street with their eyes and their entire conscious attention riveted on this little box-like gadget, utterly oblivious about anything else that might be going on (among other things, that makes it very easy for me to photograph them without their even noticing, particularly if they’ve also got earphones so they can listen to music or carry on a phone conversation). But I can’t help wondering whether this kind of social behavior will seem bizarre a decade from now … especially if our cellphones have become so miniaturized that they’re incorporated into the glasses we wear, or implanted directly into our eyeballs.

Oh, one last thing: I’ve created a customized Google Map to show the precise details of each day’s photo-walk. I’ll be updating it each day, and the most recent part of my every-block journey will be marked in red, to differentiate it from all of the older segments of the journey, which will be shown in blue. You can see the map, and peek at it each day to see where I’ve been, by clicking on this link

URL link to Ed’s every-block progress through Manhattan

If you have any suggestions about places that I should definitely visit to get some good photos, or if you’d like me to photograph you in your little corner of New York City, please let me know. You can send me a Flickr-mail message, or you can email me directly at ed-at-yourdon-dot-com

Stay tuned as the photo-walk continues, block by block …

Uploaded: November 16, 2013 at 08:40PM