Last Wednesday I undertook that I sincerely hope will become a regular occurrence for me. After finishing work early I showered and donned the maroon polo shirt that I had purchased for this exact occasion.  I was determined to go sailing and learn the ropes (literally) before the world wide Daniel tour began in September. Wednesday s at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, there are races and I had prepared myself in two ways: one was the afore mentioned polo shirt that Brett would have made sure I knew how poor of a purchase he thought it was had it not been for this exact purpose; and two was the acquisition of a six pack the night before which I had on ice. A more experienced sailor, of which there are many since I had none, told me that it takes one of three things to get on a sail boat: experience, boobs, or beer. Going O for 2 I had no choice but to stock up on the elixir of life.
                Walking down the wharf at the Royal Van I was experiencing an array of emotions that I had not felt in years. It was the uncomfortable feeling of being truly nervous. I think the last time I felt like that was my first kiss or maybe even sooner. Never before can I recall the dread of not being picked. I did have what seemed to be the essentials for sailing. A fit body, a pulse, common sense above average if I may be so bold, and a case of beer, yet there was this deep upwelling of nervous emotion that forced me to fight to keep composure.
                Just as I was about to dash for a boat and stow myself on board I heard a whistle that caught my attention. It was not the kind of cat call I am used to getting from 40-something single mom’s when I wear my Turkish made Speedo on the beach. This was the “your attention is needed” kind of whistle. As I scanned for the source my eyes came across the most welcome sight I have ever seen – a friendly gesture that I was needed to help crew the boat. The walk down seemed like one of the longest of my life as the crew doubtlessly eyed me up possibly reconsidering why they had chosen a jack-knob wearing a maroon polo to help them glide to victory. However, once I arrived on the scene the crew turned out to be helpful, friendly, and quite knowledgeable about sailing. That first race I was rail bait and hoisted the spinnaker with all my gusto when the time came at each leg. My sailing knowledge increased moderately, but I received a passing grade in the form of a return invite and overcame the first major obstacle in completing a significant leg of the journey by boat – myself.

When I first saw it, my heart went into my mouth and then dropped in to my stomach as I realised I was looking at a pterodactyl. Loping away from a low branch, it’s massive wings somehow rolling up and then unrolling in an unbelievably slow movement, it rose gracefully, magnificently away from me.

Regaining my composure, with my trusty Kodak Digital at my side, I still managed to miss the chance of a great picture and Capone, my faithful, four-legged companion, just looked at me in disgust before doing his own loping away towards the sea.

Ever since then I’ve been hunting the heron and its mate, for there are two of them cruising the farmland, woods and foreshore between Emsworth, Warblington and Langstone. I’ve seen it perhaps half a dozen times in as many months, once just three feet above my head as I walked down one of Havant’s more exclusive residential avenues. Every time I fumble for my camera, it uncurls those great wings, folds its neck up in dinosaur style and leaves me in disarray.

Every day produces something remarkable in this little haven on the south coast. Across Chichester and Langstone harbours the Portsmouth Spinnaker tower glints bright white in the sun. Crowds of brent geese grow bigger and individually fatter by the day and the oyster catchers screech low along the water’s edge, swinging in formation to display the dazzling zigzags along their backs.

When the brent geese first came in from their summer home in the arctic, they would gather in one huge flock of perhaps five hundred in a field just above the sea. Capone would put them up in a force five south-westerly and they would head seaward in a cacophony of honking, flapping wings getting them nowhere, directly into the gale. I would walk on with them above and all around me, hanging motionless, creating a world of noise and feathers and wind and dog and insignificant me.

Warblington cemetery contains a piteous children’s section where the gravestones are decorated with teddies, windmills, rubber ducks, Rupert and Peter Rabbit. Every day that two minute walk touches me but never more so than on Christmas morning. Then, the really remarkable thing was the intense, beaming smiles that both the bereaved mothers gave me as they tended their child’s grave. Walking into the south-westerly that morning made my eyes water as never before.

The March storms brought both drama and damage, the fields along the coast displaying lines of seaweed 40 yards further back than usual. Other dog walkers who live right on the foreshore told me their roof tiles were tinkling like a xylophone. Parts of Emsworth were flooded. The sea overflowing the mill pond wall filled the empty eight and a half acre pond in half an hour and brought down great lengths of the inner retaining wall. I found myself up to my knees in overflowing sea as it swept in round the sailing clubhouse and caused chaos in the dinghy park.

This morning I left the warmth of Nore Barn Wood and struck out across the most heavily pigeoned stubble field I know. Then to my right a white object caught my eye in the middle of the boggy area that runs down to the stream where the pterodactyl had first frightened me. Capone and I diverted and plugged our way towards it but it was still, inert, probably one of those plastic bags that Emsworth has virtually done away with. We trudged on, me avoiding the cow pats, Capone stepping in every one and relaxed into the warm morning sunshine, another storm promised for the weekend.

It rose again, elegant and yet ponderous at the same time, lofted up and away and gone.

Peter Reynolds 20-03-08

E' l'equipaggio di Nerone a vincere la prima tappa dell'Audi Farr 40 Cup. Le regate di oggi hanno chiuso l'appuntamento di Porto Cervo in bellezza, con numeri veramente spettacolari nelle andature portanti. Se ne sono viste di tutti i colori: straorze, strapugge, spinnaker che vanno in brandelli, ingavonate che alzano via la poppa dall'acqua di qualche metro! Chi più ne ha più ne metta...

Foto: sailrev.tv

Dopo Mascalzone Latino, Luna Rossa e +39, un altro equipaggio italiano prenderà parte alla 33^ America's Cup di Vela, la Comitato's Square - 1860. L'imbarcazione non è ancora pronta, ma noi siamo riusciti a rubare uno scatto della parte più importante dello scafo, lo Spinnaker (vedi foto).

Sull'onda dell'entusiamo, sembra che Misilmeri abbia avanzato la propria candidatura per ospitare la prossima edizione della competizione, viste le ormai innumerevoli vele che vengono issate per le vie cittadine.

L'unico inconveniente?...manca il mare!

Si troverà la soluzione anche per questo. Dai, forza che ce la fai!

JFK very snowy. CEO cancels meeting as I sit in reception. Deep breath…

Productive meeting with Jon Bond on future opportunities for our respective businesses - food for thought. Spend the rest of the afternoon working through new asset management system (Spinnaker) that I recommended to KB. Looking very impressive. Leave for airport via Soho House New York and a first rate burger.

... so much so that Facebook is cleaning up its profile pages so that apps will be listed in a separate tab to the combined wall/newsfeed, while the wild west "forced invite 100 friends to get the result of the 'which German philosopher are you?' quiz practices than some app developers use to boost app distribution have also been outlawed.

So why have apps become unpopular? A quick straw poll of my friends reinforces the conventional wisdom here - people are sick of streams of useless apps. A live poll taken at the last London Facebook Developers Garage confirmed the same, with a large majority of regular users surveyed saying that apps were good for "nothing" rather than other options such as "irritating people" and "connecting with friends". Given this backlash, it was interesting timing for the Developers Garage to see how app developers and organisations are reacting to this change in user behaviour.

One such interesting company is business collaboration, communication and project management network Huddle. Huddle produce a rivalling service to Google docs, where multiple users in a workgroup (or "huddle" if you will) can upload, edit and comment on documents. Huddle have made a useful app whereby you can use their service through Facebook effectively. The app is integrated with the main Huddle site so regardless of whether you work through Facebook or the main Huddle portal, you can still collaborate effectively. Huddle are looking to expand the service to Myspace and LinkedIn, which is easy to do these days as SOAP can be used to link Huddle's platform to multiple platforms. This allows users freedom to use Huddle whatever way they like wherever they like, especially if they already spend a lot of time doing work through Facebook (who are implementing plans to add a Googletalk-style IM client) or LinkedIn.

The goal of this app from Huddle's viewpoint is to generate a buzz about the product and to encourage people to come to the mail Huddle site and monetise them by encouraging them to sign up for their premium services. Conversely Huddle are pushing the app through their site, which is sending users TO Facebook rather than the other way around but does have the benefit of creating buzz.

Another interesting app discussed at the Garage was the 'Become Rambo' app developed by UK company Wakari, who were contracted by digital agency Spinnaker as part of their advertising campaign for the new Rambo film for Sony Pictures. Long story short, Lionsgate in the US (who had the distribution rights for across the pond) hired another agency there, who also decided to make a Rambo Facebook app ('Get Rambo'd'). Both of these rival apps were based loosely on the Superpoke concept, as in "A attacks B with C", seeing as Rambo mainly assaults people. The key factor in the success of the Become Rambo app was the extra functionality; while Get Rambo'd just had options for attacking, Become Rambo included a points scoring system (if you hit the max then you get to fight Rambo), a health bar that can be refilled through invitations, and a wide variety of weapons to unlock.

The Get Rambo'd app is a great example of how to add a fun app that engages users. The average for the app was 200 returns per user, which was built through being clever with viral distribution and creating a ranking system to encourage interaction and competition between friends. This benefits the users, who are having fun with the app, and the advertisers as the app is driving the users towards their content. A comparison between the two Rambo apps showed that the 'Become Rambo' app held users attention for much longer as there were reasons to come back.

For me, companies like Huddle and Wakari are leading the way in the social networking app space. Rather than just building for the sake of it, they have created two very different apps that actually add value to the user. Overall the backlash against social networks and apps is a good thing - it should thin the market of the weaker and irritating apps and the more useful and fun apps should well emerge at the end. This change is being led by social network users, and as seen above, the likes of Facebook is listening and making changes. I think the craze and newness of social networks has worn off (all old school friends have been tracked down at this stage!) but with the app streamlining and noise reduction beginning, there will be a more gradual growth rate and stabilisation in the space as social networks become an everyday part of our lives.

(Thanks as always to Techcrunch for their up-to-date Facebook news!)

It's so strange to write those words. Other science fiction authors - Robert Heinlein, Isaac Isamov, Poul Anderson - have died. But Clarke just kept chugging along, despite violence in his adopted home of Sri Lanka, despite the 2004 tsunami, despite everything, it seemed. Hell, after I heard he was alive after the tsunami, I was convinced the guy was immortal, bullet-proof.

Clarke was  part of a very close circle of friends I had when I was growing up. I had a lot of emotional problems growing up (still do). Books by Clarke and others gave me solace and escape. They gave me something to look forward to or at least excitement and fulfillment, things of desperate scarcity for an asthmatic, nearsighted and very lonely little kid.

I couldn't not mark the death of Clarke, any more than I could have not marked the death of any friend.

So your neat thing today is a tribute to my favorite Clarke story of all, Rendezvous with Rama.

There's no real story to Rendezvous with Rama: some astronauts land on a 50-by-16 kilometer O'Neill cylinder in space, they poke around, weird stuff happens and then the cylinder leaves for parts unknown. If you haven't read it, you'd never understand why I love it so much: the pains he took to get the tech right, the atmosphere of sheer indifferent alienness that Clarke conjured and, like any alien contact would, how it created more questions than answers.

 These movies capture some of that. Or they have "Rama" in the title. Either way, I like them.

Your first neat thing, put up by vladikoff, is a short student film directed by Aaron M. Ross. It's done like a trailer for a Rendevous with Rama feature movie, and it's a pitch-perfect adaptation of the Endeavour crew's first glimpse of the inside of Rama. (And if the proposed Morgan Freeman/David Fincher Rendevous with Rama movie is anything like this, then I'll be at the theatre with bells on)

Moving inside Rama, you'd see something like your next neat thing, which is titled A 3D view of Rama object on YouTube and put up by Delfwaren. It's a 3D flyover by Eric Bruneton of the inside of Rama, and it's got a lot of details right: the drive horns on the far side of the cylinder, the Cylindrical Sea and the "cities" and chopped-up land on the far side of the sea. It's not quite as alien and geometrical as I'd want but, hey, it's good CGI and it has nice music. By the way, this movie is available for download in AVI format at Bruneton's site.

This is an alternative version of Rama's interior. It's shorter and done in much lower resolution, but I think it's more faithful to the book. Thanks to monomorph1 for putting this up.

Oh, and if you want to go tromping around in Rama right now, you might want to consider the 1984 Spinnaker game of the same name, available for free download at Stephan's Retrocomputing Site here.

Finally... just who is this Rama character? Turns out he's an incarnation of Vishnu (the probe that first spots Rama in the book, incidentally, is named after Rama's wife Sita). You can get the skinny at About.com's Hinduism site.

Un articolo promozionale personalizzato riesce ad infondere con grande efficacia il proprio messaggio in ogni occasione: fiere, congressi, manifestazioni, apertura punti vendita, campagne di fidelizzazione…. In altre parole, l’oggetto promozionale è sicuramente uno dei più potenti mezzi di comunicazione tra un'azienda e i propri partner. Sailorado ti offre una vasta gamma di articoli del comparto nautico, che si caratterizzano per il prestigio, la raffinatezza e lo stile. Quando comunicare con distinzione diventa il punto di forza della campagna marketing di un'azienda, Sailorado è al tuo fianco per una scelta che caratterizza il tuo status. I processi di personalizzazione, anche i più complessi, permettono di non avere limiti, qualunque materiale si scelga per la personalizzazione dei propri oggetti promozionali
È il plus Sailorado: dal controllo della qualità dei prodotti al servizio secondo i più alti standard . Concretamente, questo significa:

- verificare le credenziali dei fornitori

- effettuare approfonditi controlli lungo le diverse fasi del percorso produttivo

- garantire un monitoraggio continuo dei processi di personalizzazione

Un’impostazione rigorosa e metodica consente l’agevole gestione di piccole e grandi campagne. Con una gestione "just-in-time" Sailorado è in grado di evadere rapidamente qualsiasi ordine d’acquisto su tutto il territorio nazionale.

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Von links nach rechts: CCTV-Kamera (4 mio. Stück davon in England); Sunset am Strand; 150m hoher Spinnaker-Tower mit antikem Schiff (u.a. ist in Portsmouth das historische Flaggschiff von Admiral Nelson ausgestellt); wieder Spinnaker-Tower; Der Rest der Gruppe auf der Bank.

Ecco alcune idee regalo per il vostro beccaccino:

prodotti di bellezza beccaccino:

O altrimenti per il vostro prodiere :

oppure sempre per il vostro beccaccino finalmente una vela di prua:

Oppure direttamente dall'ultimo campionato invernale di Anzio questa splendida stella, fratello maggiore del nostro beccaccino:

Esto que véis en la foto es el edificio abierto al público más alto de todo el Reino Unido, a excepción de Londres. Se llama Spinnaker Tower y toma el nombre de la vela más grande de los barcos de vela. Con 170 metros de alto, se puede ver incluso desde Ryde, y está situado en el puerto de Portsmouth. Fue diseñado por HGP (Hijos de la Gran Peich) Architects y se inauguró el 18 de Octubre de 2005. Debajo hay una enorme zona con tiendas, cines, restaurantes e incruso una bolera.

La foto es de esta misma mañana.

En este enlace podéis ver una webcam y en este otro enlace un impresionante testimonio.