Time-Lapse from space
Amazing video of the Earth using Time-Lapse from the International Space Station
Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | Nasa, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.
Beyond what eyes can see
Sometimes we need help to see things that our naked eyes can’t see… either because they are too big, too small, too dark or move to fast.
The first video is about stars and was filmed using stop motion.
The second is about fast small things… vibrations!
Queen Mary 2 in stop-motion
Its been a almost two years since I enjoyed a trip onboard Cunard‘s Queen Mary 2 through the norwegian fjords, but I stumbled upon this video which was a nice reminder. Although not much of the cruiser is visible, it is an interesting take.
Cheers,
Mobile megatrends 2011
Interesting presentation on mobile mega trends for this year…
100 things to watch in 2011
Can introverts lead?
Interesting interview done by the Harvard Business Review to Francesca Gino about a study of leadership with introverted and extroverted people. Although I admit parts of the study sound a little dodgy…
Opposite to the general stereotype, introverted people tend to be better leaders as they are more receptive to listening to ideas. However I think the most important part is to learn to adapt to the needs required depending on the situation.
So I guess the next time my boss tells me I should be less introvert, I will tell him to consider making me the leader and him the follower 
Belarus in motion time-lapse video
Very nice video of Belarus (Minsk) using motion time-lapse.
City lights
Documentary video promoting Mexico City with some very nice shots. Makes me even more anxious to go back!!
Una producción del Fondo Mixto de promoción turística de la Ciudad de México producido por AZOTEA POST
Co DIRECCIÓN: LUIS MANDOKI, MARIANA RODRÍGUEZ
Co FOTOGRAFÍA: ALBERTO ANAYA, ESTEBAN ARRANGOIZ
FOTOGRAFÍA ADICIONAL: ADOLFO DAVILA
Co EDICIÓN: MARIANA RODRÍGUEZ, YOAME ESCAMILLA
MÚSICA: ALEJANDRO CASTAÑOS
Transmongolian Express Part II
This is a continuation to my previous post, with the second part of my summer travel on the transmongolian route.
The arrival to Mongolia was interesting, with very nice views in the train of the typical mongolian ger’s. Mongolia is a country with a third of its population still nomadic, which makes for an interesting countryside.
We stayed in Mongolia for three days… based in Ulaanbaatar, the first day we walked around and visited the city. Highly recommended is the Gandantegchinlen Monastery, which includes a couple budhist temples and a few buildings. The central area of the city is Sükhbaatar Square and the area around Peace Avenue road. There are also a couple of sightseeing places in the hills nearby, a couple museums and a few shopping centres, but there is not much more to see in the city.
The second day we decided to hire a driver, who basically drove us wherever we wanted, and helped in recommending places and explaining stuff. This is definitely the best way to move around mongolia, as in many places you will encounter people who don’t speak english and the driver will help you out and translate. We went to a couple places, including a huge equestrian figure of Genghis Khan (supposedly the biggest equastrian figure in the world) and to Gorkhi-Terelj National Park which has, besides a turtle-shaped rock, a very nice buddhist monastery and Ger’s prepared for tourists. We decided to stay for the night at one of the Ger’s below the buddhist monastery, and it was an unforgettable experience. At the park we also took rides on camels and we went 2 hourse horse-riding.
After Ulaanbaatar, we took the transmongolian train again now headed to Beijing. Although the train seemed to be pretty much the same as the first one, this was operated by chinese people and you could really tell the difference in the (scarce) service. Again, this meant two days in the train, but only one night. Still, it seemed as a long trip and we spent quite a few hours crossing the border between Mongolia and China, where besides doing passport and visa control, they also have to change the width of the train tracks. This is an interesting process for any engineer, since they lift the whole train, including passengers, remove the weels, adjust the tracks, and put chinese wheels on.
The arrival to Beijing was a bit overwhelming. The city is huge, full of a mixture of mist and pollution, and overall quite dirty. The differences in cultures can be a bit shocking, specially the spitting and peeing on the streets. However the city turned to be very very interesting. In beijing we visited the typical tourist places… from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, to the Great Wall (at Badaling) and the Summer Palace.
For the next and last stop, we took a night express train to Shanghai. This turned out to be a very modern train which even included a tv for every bed (although all movies were in Chinese). The train arrives in the early morning to Shanghai, which is an amazing city. It is not as historical as Beijing, but it is full of lights and nightlife. Overall it feels like people are ‘cleaner’ in Shanghai and you don’t see as often things such as spitting. In Shanghai we went to the Pearl Tower, a sight-seeing tunnel (with no sight to see) and the Expo 2010 (which was very impressive), but overall the city is more about walking around and living it rather than visiting tourist places. I have to admit I really liked the city and would be a very interesting experience to live there for a while.
For the trip back home, we started out with the Maglev Train to the airport, whose typical maximum speed is of 431 km/h, although it has reached 501 km/h. This was an amazing trip, although very short… about 7 minutes for 30 Km. From Shanghai we flew to Moscow (with Aeroflot) and from there back to Madrid. An amazing trip which I will never forget.
Transmongolian Express Part I
This summer a few friends and I decided to take a different approach on vacations and change the typical beach summer holidays for a new adventure. The challenge: to cross Asia through the transsiberian railway network.
The challenge actually started quite a few months before the trip, as we organized and bought everything on our own. First, being 7 people in total for the trip, it was a tedious work to get to agreements, but with time we learned to be more efficient. Once we had agreed on the route planned and the dates, we set to buy airplane tickets, train tickets, make hostel reservations and arrange visa permits. The plan was to start in Russia, go to lake Baikal, take the trans-mongolian train to Ulaanbaatar, continue to Beijing and end in Shanghai.
Buying the airplane tickets was an easy task with Aeroflot, a russian airline with relatively good service. Buying the train tickes however proved to be a bit more complicated. We ended up buying the train tickets through local agencies, as international trains cannot be bought online. Obtaining the 3 required visas proved also to be a challenge, especially the russian which requires and invitation to the country and hence we had to do it through a travel agency (with the additional costs implied).
The trip started out by flying to St. Petersburg after an overnight flight to Moscow, where we spent a couple days to enjoy the city. We had the opportunity to visit the Peterhof palace and enjoy the russian ballet with Anna Karenina.
Afterwards we flew to Moscow, where we spent another couple of days. Here we made the typical visits to the Kremlin, to Lenin’s mausoleum, the Red square and other areas around the city. I had the great pleasure to meet an old russian friend from university, who gave us the insider tour and took us around all the city. Overall we had a great time in Moscow and it couldn’t have been better.
The transsiberian train route starts in Moscow, but because of time constraints, we decided to cheat a bit and do the first leg of the journey by air. We flew directly to Irkutsk, where we took a local (illegal) taxi to Listvyanka, next to the lake Baikal. Here we stayed for the night in a very nice cabin overseeing the lake. The next day, we began the train journey from Irkutsk to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. This meant 2 nights in train including 7 hours being held up to cross the border. The train was a very interesting experience, meeting new people and even getting to know yourself a bit better
Russia overall was a great country to visit, and I feel like I need to go back to Moscow and St. Petersburg sometime soon. People are not very used to tourists and the language barrier can make things difficult at times, but it was totally worth it.
It was a long trip and I don’t want to bore you, so I will continue on another post but I leave you with a few pictures I hope you will enjoy.
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- UK Pavilion, Expo Shanghai 2010
Ode to joy
To follow with the musical videos composed of mixing different sequences, I leave you today with a less serious take to classical music.
The perfect way to start the week. And obviously you can’t miss the classical Bohemian Rhapsody by the muppets Enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JruqUIjl5Sw
Mr. Sandman
Nowadays all you need is talent… and they say Internet is killing music & culture!
Update semestral
Aunque tengo el blog más olvidado de lo que me gustaría, el poco tiempo libre, la poca disponibilidad de acceso a Internet, y la cada vez mayor invasión de múltiples sitios sociales dejan cada vez menos oportunidades para escribir un par de líneas por aquí. No obstante intentaré romper la rutina un poco para dar una breve actualización de los últimos meses.
He estado por proyecto desde finales de octubre desplazado en Santiago de Compostela, Galicia. En general ha sido una experiencia muy positiva: el proyecto (un plan estratégico de telecomunicaciones) ha sido interesante, el equipo de trabajo ha hecho más que soportables las largas horas de trabajo, y la vida en Santiago me ha permitido conocer la cultura de la región.
En el lado negativo, tengo que destacar el largo invierno que ha sido, con poca luz, algo de frío, pero sobretodo mucha lluvia. Además, he estado un poco aislado del mundo exterior ya que en el piso (en casco histórico) no contaba con cobertura de móvil y por tanto tampoco de Internet.
Pero mi participación en el proyecto termina, y la próxima será la última semana que vaya a Santiago (por ahora). Ahora toca volver a la oficina y aunque ya tengo otro proyecto en puerta, será importante pararme un momento a pensar y replantearme algunas cosas. Ya veremos dentro de seis meses a donde hemos llegado y en que dirección vamos.
Kinetic sculptures
Presentation by Theo Jansen at TED on his amazing life-like kinetic sculptures.
It is an interesting mixture between art and science.
Too many coincidences?
A few days after the 9/11 anniversary, it happens to be also the anniversary of the Death Star explosion
iQ font
I stumbled upon this interesting marketing campaign by Toyota Belgium for the new car iQ. As explained in the video below, the font was created with the use of tracking technology and an overhead camera. I don’t know how effective this marketing campaign can be, but it sure is innovative.
The campaign was done by Pleaseletmedesign, Happiness Brussels and others… and the font can be downloaded at nl.toyota.be/iqfont
Top ten reasons…
to see the movie “Brüno”.
Judge for yourself…
The World in Data
Very valuable presentation by Hans Rosling from Gapminder World at last Google’s Zeitgeist event talking about the development and convergence of the world, all based on data. Very interesting, fun, and worth every minute (it is about 25min long) although the recording could be better done by the people at google. I also recommend visiting the Gapminder website, which has very interesting and cultivating presentations and practical tools to compare more data than you can imagine.
I hope you enjoy, and learn something!! hehe
French Navy
Great song and video by Camera Obscura from their latest album ‘My Maudlin Career’.
Every new album I like more the band… and even though they have an old-looking style, they not only have a webpage but even a twitter account! Which I actually recommend, can be quite amusing sometimes.
Ahhh and yes, I need to find myself a scottish girlfriend soon… just love the accent.
Jason Plato on a Chevrolet Lacetti
Another typical youtube video, but with quite impressive driving… or is it just good luck?