1904 - Walls of Jerusalem and the Ferris Wheel looking from West Restaurant Pavillion, Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, U.S.A.

Click the picture to see it full size.

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WORK has begun on a 55m-high big wheel which will take riders on a 15 minute skyline tour of Liverpool UK.

What's Going On In Liverpool

A modern version of a Ferris wheel, the Liverpool ONE wheel, at Chavasse Park, will be illuminated by white beams when it begins turning next week.

The Mellors fairground family, who have moved into corporate events after specialising in fun rides for three generations are behind the plans.

But it is proving difficult even for them to lift 365 tonnes of metal into the air.

Company director Edward Mellors said: “It is quite tricky to build on top of a multi-storey car park which is already 20m above ground.
“But it does mean the viewing height is going to be around 80m when the wheel is up.
“It is going to be very impressive. “We are aiming for November 18, but if we end up a bit late, so bit it”

The £6 a go Liverpool ONE Wheel will run until January 31.

A second Ferris wheel – the 60m high Wheel of Liverpool – is also set to be erected next to the Echo Arena. It’s first sightseers could be taking rides on the wheel by Valentine’s day. It would be the same size as the wheel situated in Manchester’s Exchange Square since 2004

To find out more about Liverpool ONE and what’s going on in the North West, please check out their website at http://www.liverpool-one.com

“Get busy livin’ or get busy dying.”

Movie:  Shawshank Redemption

Context

Well, there was a time you see, back in Maine when some hot shot banker was sentenced for murder and sent up to Shawshank Prison.  That’s where he became my friend.  Actually, that’s where Andy Dufresne became the friend of a man who knows how to get things.  Andy inspired one and all, from a misfit greaser high school dropout to a group of prison rapists.  He even got a beer from the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at the prison. Good ol’ Andy.  Despite his ability to inspire, these words that launched a thousand year book quotes came from Andy in his darkest hour . . . we are left unsure which part of the sentence he’s going to get busy doing.  But we hope for the best . . . we hope.

Appropriate Usage

There are two appropriate usage categories for this quote.  The first is before death defying feats to psych you up.  For example, you are getting ready to jump off a ledge and fall 440 foot (that’s 134 meters for my international audience – in which case I’ll throw in metres as well) only to be bungied up again like this guy.  If you’re either scared or lack something macho to say, I highly recommend this quote.  It will serve as either good inspiration or will be pretty cool on your tombstone as your last words.

The second appropriate usage is decidedly less funny.  Use it when you’re at a low point and need to turn things around, like if you’re in the midst of a profound Tony Soprano season 2 depression, recovering from a break-up, or in a Seven­-esque period of sloth.   However, the use of it, even in the midst of desperation, could trigger the re-entering of funniness into your life.  For example, you’re crying as you look at yourself in the bathroom mirror. So say the quote and THEN imagine yourself in engaging in a whole host of activities to get back on track in 80’s movie montage style. I recommend playing in your head either “Like to Get to Know You Well” from Better Off Dead, “No Easy Way Out” from Rocky IV, or “Win, in the End” from Teen Wolf to turn your life around.  Take two mental montages and call me in the morning, you’ll be back on your feet in no time.

Cross-reference Quote

You should have another quote in your quiver along with this one.  There may be times when the words below will make your point better than those of Andy.  They are both about seizing the day, but this one has a slightly different spin.

“Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller known aliases: Abe Froman and Mr. Peterson

Please love carnivals. They’re one 0f the cutest dates. And let’s always take a ride on the Ferris wheel last.

Dear readers,

It is with a heavy heart that I regretfully tell you that my dog, Ferris, thought my SD card would be an excellent snack.  This means I have lost over 100 pictures of the last couple days — including the tattooed banana.

Until I buy a new SD card (or however long it takes me to buy a new one), there will only be — and trust me, I hate it too — text only posts.  :[

Please bear with me.  I trust there will be MANY more tattooed fruit pictures to come.

Thanks!

1904 - Biggest wheel on earth (240 ft. diam.) with heaviest axle ever forged (56 tons), World's Fair, St. Louis

To view the complete collection in full resolution, visit clicksypics.com.  To find out how these are created, go here.

A Genealogy of Corleys by Dewitt C. Corley (1927)

One item that I was incredibly lucky to procure over the past few years is “A genealogy of Corleys beginning with Caniel Corley of Bedford County, Virginia,: Tracing all lineal descendants of his son, Jonathan Cheathem [sic] Corley” by Dewitt C. Corley (1927). This book is packed with anecdotal information that Dewitt gathered from interviews with kin, in addition to thorough historical research. It has proved invaluable in my search for more information about my ancestors.

I found out about this book after posting a question about one of my ancestors on genealogy.com and just happened to find an original copy after searching for it on Amazon. The book contains extra copies of photos published within its pages.

Not only was this book written by a Corley, my copy was previously owned by a Corley (Elmer “Pat” Corley). One of my favorite passages details the author’s interactions with my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, Joseph E. Corley and Ida Champ Ferris Corley:

“The compiler has repeatedly had the pleasure of entertaining him and his wife in his home, and always found them most gracious and entertaining guests. He [Joseph] married Miss Ida C. Ferris, an accomplished and educated woman, who survived him.”

The book provides information on when each passed away and where they were buried. It also details the lives of their sons, including my grandfather, Karl Coates Corley, Sr. There is a photo of Ida and Joseph and another of their five grown sons (and I have an original copy of that photo!).

One mysterious find within the pages of my copy was this hand-written poem:

"Only One" by George Cooper

The poem was folded and on the front says “To Mother.” Googling the first line of the poem turns up lots of results, one of which can be found here: http://bartleby.com/248/1205.html

I’m fascinated by who may have copied this poem down — it is possible it was written for Elmer’s wife. It’s also possible that this book belonged to a different owner since Elmer and it was written by or for that owner or one of their relatives. The poem apparently pre-dates the book.

1905 - The great ferris wheel - first erected Chicago 1893 - now at World's Fair, St. Louis

Checking out referring links is turning out to be a big time sink, but it’s way too entertaining.  I wasted about two hours at alltop after seeing a link from guykawasaki.  Thanks, guy!  I did a little research and learned that the first animations were actually found on cave walls.  No surprise, they were mostly comprised of scantily clad and very hairy women.

View the complete collection at clicksypics.com

Warner Bros. Pictures has released casting calls for three of the major players in the upcoming Green Lantern film, and they tell quite a bit about what direction the Green Lantern team could be taking. The most interesting bit being that Carol Ferris was once a pilot, but is now the work-a-holic CEO of Ferris Air. Sounds a lot like an adaptation of Secret Origin if I do say so myself (OMFG YES PLEASE!). I can only hope that Secret Origin is the story they’re choosing to adapt in this instance.

[CAROL FERRIS] 26-32, a smart and attractive woman with an MBA. She started as a pilot and now runs Ferris Aircraft. She is a work-a-holic…FEMALE LEAD

[DR. HECTOR HAMMOND] 27-35, Character actor who is austere and impersonal, he is real “scummy.” He is a pathologist and also the son of a Senator.

[SINESTRO] Mid-30s to Mid-40s, he is smart, tough, intimidating and in great physical shape.

[ABIN SUR] Mid-30s to mid-40s, he is a great warrior.

Although this is a travel blog, it does not seem to fair to be just blogging about other countries, except Singapore.  It is a tourist destination after all.  Singaporeans have imprinted on their consciousness that this is such a boring place.  That’s why it’s possible to sell S$57 million worth of travel packages at the NATAS fair 2009 (Travel Fair).  Whether or not, this reflects how “rich” Singaporeans are or how “desperate” we are to get out of the country.  But with a little exploration, there are lots of beautiful places here. 

I deem the Singapore Flyer(it’s the world’s largest observation wheel, which stands at 165m from the ground.) as a tourist attraction that every Singaporean has to go once in his/her lifetime at the pricey entrance fee of S$29.50, but definitely not exciting enough for a second round.  Same goes for the London Eye which I visited years back.  If you haven’t been up there, it will be like,”Huh! You haven’t been to the Singapore Flyer? Which “ulu” mountain (godforsaken place) do you hail from?”  Therefore, for my birthday celebration this year, that was where I went. 

Everything’s taken with my handphone camera because silly me forgot to bring my idiot-proof Lumix along. So bear with the fuzzy resolution.

Path to Capsule

I was “queueing” to get into the capsule, albeit there was not much of a queue because it was a quiet weekday afternoon.  Once we scrambled into the capsule, there was a lot of photo snapping.  It went on for a few minutes before everyone was bored (it was crawling really slowly along) and waited for the capsule to roll to the other side of the flyer so that we could take pictures of the other side of the island.

Panorama View Map

 Using the Panorama Map provided, you could easily identify the various landmarks across the horizon.  On a clear day, you can even see Indonesia and Malaysia.  However, it was near evening, therefore, I had no such luck. BUT, I managed to snap some “near” sunset photos. Not the best shots, due to the limitations of a handphone camera, but scatter brains just have to make do. Sigh.

East of Singapore

Singapore Marina and Iconic Esplanade

Construction of New CBD Area and Marina Sands Integrated Resort

Sunset @ Marina Bay

Sunset @ Central Business District (CBD)

 Just like any other tourist attractions, there are a handful of touristy shops and restaurants situated at the Singapore Flyer.  Maybe I have been spoiled badly by the variety found at Orchard Road, which is the shopping belt of Singapore, the shops somehow hold no attraction to me.  They looked embarassingly empty too. I wonder how many of them will be left standing before the year’s out.  Perhaps, the annual F1 affair will bring some life to them.

The landscape may change dramatically after the new CBD district has been fully built up and the Marina Sands Integrated Resort is fully functional.  But, before that,  I hardly see the need to re-visit the wheel. 

Opening hours : 8.30am – 10.30pm

Ticket Sales : 8am – 10pm

This book is a great overview of the history of astronomy.  Since advances in astronomy affected many other branches of science as well, particularly physics, one may say that the scope of the book is the history of science as a whole.  This is a very informative book and Mr. Ferris is not afraid to delve into some nitty gritty theories.  Most of the time his explanations are lucid and more easily understandable than in most college textbooks I’ve read.

I did things a little different while reading this book.  I put little strips of paper in at pages where I read something that I wanted to remember and put up here.  So here goes…I’ll list the page number just for the sake of reference.

pg. 30 – one of the first descriptions of the motions of the planets was the Ptolemaic model, consisting of spheres and epicycles.  Although ungainly, it was able to do a decent job of predicting the planetary locations.  Yet is was not the true order of things, as we have seen upon venturing out into the solar system via probes, etc.  This is a good example of the definition and proper frame of thinking about any scientific theory.  It may provide useful results, but is it the truth?  Not always.  We simplify things and try to make them fit observations, and when we are done we may have something that helps predict future results, but we still cannot claim complete understanding of the event.

pg. 116 – “When <Isaac> Newton was asked years later how he had discovered his laws of celestial dynamics, he replied, ‘By thinking of them without ceasing.’”  Wouldn’t it be great if more people thought without ceasing more often?

pg. 120 – Newton admitted that while the law of gravitation predicted planetary motion, he could not explain why it was so.  He maintained a faith that “this most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”

pg. 192 – Einstein’s theory of relativity predicts that the faster a particle is traveling, the more massive it becomes, and the slower its time relative to non-moving objects.  Weird.  This has all been experimentally confirmed, too.

pg. 262 – Quantum theory predicts what is known as “quantum tunneling,” which enables protons to approach close enough to each other to fuse.  Ferris analogizes this to a cannonball probabilistically penetrating a ten-foot-thick wall sometimes, without passing through it.  Weird yet again.  (pg. 288 – Neils Bohr – “If anybody says he can think about quantum problems without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.”)  Quantum theory makes me think of the Ptolemaic system sometimes – it is bizarre, but it does help predict an awful lot of things. But is it truly the way things happen?

pg. 290 – Einstein didn’t like the probabilistic nature of quantum theory, either: “Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing, but an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing.  The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘old one.’  I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice….I am quite convinced that someone will eventually come up with a theory whose objects, connected by laws, are not probabilities but considered facts.”

pg. 298 – Leon Lederman, on particle physics: “The standard model … explains so much, but it’s not complete….One of it’s greatest flaws is aesthetic.  It’s too complicated.  It has too many arbitrary parameters.  We don’t really see the creator twiddling seventeen knobs to set seventeen different parameters to create the universe as we know it.  The picture is not beautiful, and that drive for beauty and simplicity and symmetry has been an unfailing guidepost to how to go in physics.”

pg. 373 – on the probability of extraterrestrial life – some combine the probability another Earth-like planet existing, where water is neither frozen or boiling, with the right mixture of elements, and all the biological, social, and cultural variables that must work out so intelligent life can exist and progress to a detectable (ie radio wave generating) state, and come up with some pretty small numbers – something like one in 10^18, which is more than the total of planets in the galaxy.  Ferris points out some faults with this reasoning.  One, we are working with a single example of life…it’s pretty hard to draw general conclusions about anything with just a single example.  Plus, we don’t know everything about Earth or life on it.  So how can we make guesses about the probability of life on other worlds when we don’t fully comprehend ours.  Second, Ferris points out that by the same reasoning, it is extremely unlikely that you would be reading his book – that you exist, were born and educated and went down the path of experiencing everything leading up to reading the book, and he likewise went through all he did before writing it.

Ferris has a neat SciFi-ish idea about how future civilizations in space could communicate via networks of self-replicating probes that go throughout the galaxy and rely information back to each other.  It could take thousands or millions of years to communicate information between two points, but information about distant points were stored and archived more locally, then the time penalty is not nearly so bad.

In the concluding chapter, Ferris writes about how as we have “come of age” as a species and gained some understanding of our place in the universe, we have come to a realization of our ignorance.  The quest for knowledge will be never-ending due to the immense size and variety of the universe.  As we observe and gain more knowledge, our theories will become more and more refined.  Ernst Mach – “Theories are like withered leaves, which drop off after having enabled the organism of science to breathe for a time.”

Winnning competition entry for a ferris wheel complex in Elche, Spain. By STAR

(via-Bustler )

Hong Kong, el paraíso de los shoppings, se vuelve cada vez más ecológico! Gonzalo Tirado tiene el agrado de presentarles los nuevos ferries solares que estarán comenzando sus trayectos desde los diferentes puertos de la ciudad nipona. Se pretende mediante el uso de paneles solares en sus techos, reducir hasta 3/4 del consumo de combustible, que sólo será usado en el 1/4 restante en base a derivados del petróleo.

Estos ferries costaron $45 millones de dólares. Ojalá muchas otras ciudades pudieran emular este comportamiento!

Gerade habe ich beim jog gelesen, dass John Hughes gestorben ist. Grund für große cineastische Trauer besteht eigentlich nicht, denn seit den achtziger Jahren hat Hughes nichts mehr Bedeutendes geschaffen. Aber in den Achtzigern hat er die Filme gemacht, die ich unzählige Male gesehen habe und in denen ich mich zu Hause gefühlt habe. Wer von uns (Jahrgang 1970) fühlte sich damals nicht wie Cameron und wollte so gerne Ferris Bueler (Ferris macht blau) sein ? Und wer träumte nicht davon, eine Frau wie Lisa (L.I.S.A. Der helle Wahnsinn) schaffen zu können. Kelly Le Brock war lange meine absolute Traumfrau. Naja, ich war halt 16. Und manchmal glaube ich auch, dass die Charakter aus dem Breakfast Club in meiner Klasse waren, so oft habe ich den Film damals gesehen. Schöne Bescherung mit Chevy Chase lag auch in den letzten Jahren in der Vorweihnachtszeit noch regelmäßig im DVD-Player. John Hughes hat meine Jugend versüßt. Ich hatte schon ganz vergessen, wieviele schöne Stunden ich ihm verdanke. Vielen Dank dafür !

Sephardic Jews have lived in the state for more than 300 years,(*) (*) (*) especially in and around Charleston (*). Until about 1830, South Carolina had the largest population of Jews in North America. Many of South Carolina’s Jews have assimilated into Christian society, shrinking Judaism down to less than 1% of the total religious makeup. In addition, Roman Catholicism is growing in South Carolina due to immigration from the North.

[...much MORE]

via South Carolina: Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article.

I feel like this demo reel has taken me too long to put out, and up on the internet, but it’s a good collection of video. I tried out some stop-motion for my transitions. I think it turned out pretty good. The video is a good view of my freelance work, and a taste of what I produce at WKTV. hope you enjoy. oh ya… have video production needs? ideas? my contact info is at the end of the video..