Hambach Lignite Mine Part 2

Cybrbeast posted the photos of his excursion to the Hambach open pit mine a few days ago, which reminded me that I still haven't posted any photos of my excursion to the same mine, one year ago. So, maybe a bit late, here are some photos from my excursion. The tour-van: Make sure to view this one fullscreen and look for the white car for reference: And this is the precious lignite: A video:

Best album cover ever?

You can hear them singing here.

If only we could get suits like that in our colors, it would be amazing.

Galaxy Collision Simulation

This computer animation visualises the full time evolution of a galaxy collision simulation of two spiral galaxies that host supermassive black holes at their centres. Only the gas distribution in the galaxies is shown. As in the figure, brightness represents gas density while the colour hue indicates gas temperature.

How to vote in Russian parliament

Rollable OLED screen

Before long we will be able to fit an entire smart phone in a pen.

Hambach Lignite Mine

On excursion I visited the Hambach opencast mine is the largest mine operated by RWE Power AG (formerly Rheinbraun AG) for the extraction of "brown coal" or lignite. This is the lowest grade and dirtiest type of coal.

View Larger Map

It's about 5km by 4.5km, and around 350m depth. It is the lowest point in Europe at 293 meter below sea level. Next to the mine is the Sophienhöhe, the largest artificial hill in the world composed of excavated material.

It was a hazy day, but still one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen. I've tried to reduce the haze in the pictures. Before haze removal:

After haze removal. You can see a man for scale (next to the car) if you look at the full size:

The machines on this side of the mine are only dumping the material from the other side of the mine, that is the ~250m of useless soil that is on top of the coal. It gets transported by conveyor belts from the place where it is eaten by the Baggers:

Basically the whole mine pit slowly moves through the landscape as one side is dug and the other dumped.

Words and pictures cannot describe the vastness of this place.

The Hambach mine is part of the Rhenish (Rhineland) lignite-mining region that covers an area of some 2,500km². Three other mines operate in the area, the Garzweiler, Inden and Bergheim. Together producing about 100Mt/y of coal. Almost all coal is used for power generation, generating 10289MW. So all this could be replaced by about 10 nuclear power plants.

More information on the mining at RWE Rhineland.

Small avalanche on the Eiger

On my excursion we saw a few avalanches coming down the Eiger. It was cloudy and snowy on the Eiger the days before, but in the afternoon the sun broke through, which I think caused the avalanches. This is the best one I filmed. Too bad my camera doesn't have HD resolution, but the 12x zoom is nice.

Nog meer campagnespotjes

Na twee eerdere post (hier en hier) volgen nu de laatste spotjes voor Zendtijd politieke partijen. Groenlinks heeft niet 1 spotje maar gaat steeds nieuwe spotjes maken. Ze noemen het toekomst TV. De eerste aflevering: SP (een compilatie van 3 spotjes):
CDA:

Google is turning evil

Google Data Admission Angers European Officials

By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN

BERLIN — European privacy regulators and advocates reacted angrily Saturday to the disclosure by Google, the world’s largest search engine, that it had systematically collected private data since 2006 while compiling its Street View photo archive.

After being pressed by European officials about the kind of data the company compiled in creating the archive — and what it did with that information — Google acknowledged on Friday that it had collected snippets of private data around the world. In a blog post on its Web site, the company said information had been recorded as it was sent over unencrypted residential wireless networks as Google’s Street View cars with mounted recording equipment passed by.

The data collection, which Google said was inadvertent and the result of a programming error, took place in all the countries where Street View has been catalogued, including the United States and parts of Europe. Google apologized and said it had not used the information, which it plans to delete in conjunction with regulators.

But in Germany, Google’s collection of the data — which the company said could include the Web sites viewed by individuals or the content of their e-mail — is a violation of privacy law, said Ilse Aigner, the German minister for food, agriculture and consumer protection. In a statement Saturday, her ministry demanded a full accounting.

.....

But in its review, Mr. Oberbeck said the company learned that its data collection performed by roving Street View vehicles was much more extensive, including a record of sites viewed by the user and potentially the contents of messages if users did not secure their WLANS with a password.

Despite its internal efforts to address the situation, Google may face an uphill battle in Germany overcoming skepticism about its intentions. So far, thousands of Germans have signed up to have their properties excluded from Google’s Street View archives.

If Google’s software makes a mistake, it could be costly for the company. Till Steffen, the justice senator for the city-state of Hamburg, where Google’s German headquarters is located, said Google’s latest disclosure raised questions about its intent to follow local laws.

....

First 'synthetic life'

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have developed the first cell controlled by a synthetic genome. They now hope to use this method to probe the basic machinery of life and to engineer bacteria specially designed to solve environmental or energy problems.
"This is the first synthetic cell that's been made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer," said Venter.
"This becomes a very powerful tool for trying to design what we want biology to do. We have a wide range of applications [in mind]," he said.

Video.

Meer campagnespotjes

Meer campagnespotjes voor de tweede kamerverkiezingen van 9 juni.(eerdere post hier) VVD: D66: Piratenpartij: Lijst 17 (Jongerenpartij):

LSD no-hitter

"Ellis (a Major League Baseball player) pitched a no-hitter (= very good for a pitcher, about 7 per year in the MLB) against the San Diego Padres on June 12, 1970. He would admit in 1984 to being under the influence of LSD throughout the course of the game. Ellis had been visiting friends in Los Angeles under the impression he had the day off and was still high when his friend's girlfriend told him he had to pitch a game against the Padres that night.

The Rosenhan Experiment

Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates

Click to continue

Red het land, sta drugs toe

NRC Handelsblad, 18 mei 2010

Schaf verbod op soft- én harddrugs af. Dat dringt de criminaliteit terug, schrijft Bolkestein

Omkoping, bedreiging, corruptie, afrekeningen. De criminaliteit die het verbod op harddrugs, zoals cocaïne, xtc en heroïne, veroorzaakt, kost de Nederlandse belastingbetaler 924 euro per jaar.

En daarom moet het taboe op regulering van soft- én harddrugs doorbroken worden. Dat betogen Frits Bolkestein (oud-VVD-leider), Els Borst-Eilers (oud-minister van Volksgezondheid), Theo de Roos (hoogleraar strafrecht) en een reeks hoogleraren, juristen en drugsdeskundigen in dit opiniestuk.

Voor cannabis is sprake van een gedoogbeleid. Coffeeshops mogen dagelijks maximaal 500 gram verhandelen en gebruikers mogen maximaal 5 gram in bezit hebben. Maar het op grote schaal telen is verboden. “Dit is onwerkbaar”, stellen de auteurs. “Geen enkele coffeeshop kan daarop draaien. Het geeft slechts aan het OM de macht om elke coffeeshop de nek om te draaien, en daar is het de laatste jaren ook ijverig mee bezig.”

Het opheffen van het verbod op drugs zal drugsbendes verdrijven, denken de auteurs. “De zwarte markt schrompelt ineen. De werkdruk van politie en justitie wordt tientallen procenten lichter. De samenleving wordt substantieel veiliger.”

Ook stellen de auteurs dat de volksgezondheid ermee is gediend. Door het wegvallen van de zwarte markt zou met name de jeugd veel beter beschermd zijn. “De kwaliteit van de drugs is gewaarborgd, ze zijn voorzien van bijsluiters en voorlichting wordt geloofwaardig.” Wel vinden ze dat de drugs niet verstrekt mogen worden aan minderjarigen en niet-ingezetenen."

Artikel, Discussie

Eerste campagnespotjes

De eerste campagnespotjes zijn inmiddels bekend. Van de volgende vier partijen heb ik de spot gevonden voor de Zendtijd voor politieke partijen. PvdA: Trots op Nederland: PVV: ChristenUnie:

Electroejaculation

Electroejaculation is a procedure used to obtain semen samples from sexually mature male mammals. The procedure is applied for breeding programs and research purposes in various species, as well as in the treatment of an ejaculatory dysfunction in human males.

An electric probe is inserted into the rectum adjacent to the prostate. The probe delivers a slight electric current that stimulates nearby nerves, resulting in contraction of the pelvic muscles and ejaculation. This procedure is used frequently with large mammals, particularly bulls and some domestic animals, as well as humans who have certain types of paralysis or erectile dysfunction.

Video Streaming from Smartphone

I did a little test with Ustream, a live video stream service for smartphones (and webcams). The video quality sucks, but I was impressed that it is possible at all. I used the 3G network and crappy cam of my HTC Magic. A useful service to film police encounters because the video is automatically saved in the cloud so that mister Cop can't delete the video that shows his anal rape.

This is a "live recorded/uploaded" example,

Nice illusion

WTF gears

More videos

Look what just passed by my house

The Giro d'Italia. They go by pretty fast.

The fail boat arrives in Utrecht

Why we're going to Ukraine

This is the reason, right?

The band NikitA are made up of Dasha Astafieva and Julia Kavtaradze. Here's another music video. Dasha (born 4 August 1985) has also been a Playmate. Apparently they all look like this in Ukraine.

Some new Renders

Here are some renders from a new model I made up, it's some green Urbanvilla/Skycrapper. For DUBAI!!!!!1!! omg for real!!!1!!

Actually I would like to have the green to be as in these pictures but the rendertime would be estimated at 623 hours for one picture. i need a 623x faster PC on my next birthday.

I also made a rainbowboy.org thingie to get the feeling more of the animated shit. This movie took me 25 hours to render. Its shitty on everything but i don't wana render it again.

Rageguy FFFFFUUUUUUUUU

A 4chan meme that became popular in late 2008, the “fffuuuuu” Rageguy is an ‘exploitable’ 4pane image macro in which the main character expresses serious disappointment/exasperation/displeasure with a given scenario (this is the original)

FFFFFUUUUUUs can be hard to find on google because you never know what the correct amount of Fs and Us is. Is it FFFFFUUUUUUUUU, FFFFFFFFFUUUUUU, FFFUUUUUUUU, FFFFFFFFFUUUUUU, FFUUUU, FFFFUUU, FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUU, FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU?

Know your meme says it's fffuuuu

Reddit says it's FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU (many more pictures at this link).

America can't be considered a civilized country - Part II

We already had this post about how America treats (some) gays. Today I came along two drug related stories that, again, show that America can not be considered a civilized country.

Meet Roderick J. Walker. He is sentenced to LIFE in prison for selling LSD. Here is some more official background information. It only confirms his story. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars, no parole, unless the president does something or a miracle happens. For selling LSD.

And second, here you can see how a SWAT team will enter your house and shoot your dogs in front of your 7 year old son and wife, if they suspect you posses some weed and bongs:

What happens when hurricane season mixes with lightning and oil slick?

Nuke that Slick

"As BP prepares to lower a four-story, 70-ton dome over the oil gusher under the Gulf of Mexico, the Russians — the world’s biggest oil producers — have some advice for their American counterparts: nuke it.

Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: “the underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well’s channel.”

Yes! It’s so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union, a major oil exporter, used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities. The first happened in Uzbekistan, on September 30, 1966 with a blast 1.5 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb and at a depth of 1.5 kilometers. KP also notes that subterranean nuclear blasts were used as much as 169 times in the Soviet Union to accomplish fairly mundane tasks like creating underground storage spaces for gas or building canals."

I'm sure Greenpeace does not approve and, as usual, prefers to scrub ducks over real solutions.

Top 10 Flybys

Pretty amazing stuff. I embedded the video to start at 40s in because it started with super lame Top Gun.

Interactive anti-aggression billboard

Wow, this is really great, would almost make it worth going to Rotterdam to see, almost...

Attic Conversion

I know my 3D modeling looks pathetic compared to the work in kamiel's post, however I still want to share this. I quickly made a model and animation on how I hope the attic might look once the work is done. I made it in Bryce 6, which probably isn't the best CAD program for architecture because it only has boolean modeling, however I don't have any experience with other 3D CAD programs.

Computer animation

Maybe a bit boring for the youtube generation, after a minute I expected to see some boobs or at least a fat german kid breaking his neck.

Anyway the animation skillz are nice and the idea of "architecture through the cinematographic lens" is kinda cool so here is the video:

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

he made it in sketchup, 3dmax, vray, aftereffects and priemere. here is a video to kinda see how he did it:

Exeter Shot -- Making Of from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Age of Consent

The Middle East is a real pedo heaven as long as you marry first.

How wasted can you be?

We've already had Larry on the blog who showed us getting beer while smashed can be a challenge. Putting on a slipper can also be very difficult when you're shitfaced.

BTW, these clips are also great to try the awesome Benny Hillifier on :) You just paste the YouTube link in the site and it turns the very recognizable and fitting Benny Hill music into the soundtrack.

Being completely wasted might also make you mistake trousers for a t-shirt.

Hooray for alcohol!

Fuck him

From Tim Minchin. He's a bit of a weird comedian, also known for:

More Tim Minchin which was featured on our blog.