A huge photo - World's Largest Spherical Photo (18-Gigapixel Awesomeness)

Available at this site (link)
About this Photo
This is a super high resolution photo. Use your mouse to zoom in and see a startling level of detail. This image is currently (as of 12/2009) the largest spherical panoramic photo in the world. It is 192,000 pixels wide and 96,000 pixels tall. That’s 18.4 billion pixels, or 18.4 gigapixels! When it’s printed, it will be 16 meters (53 feet) long at regular photographic quality (300dpi). It was shot in early October 2009 from the top of the Zizkov TV Tower in Prague, Czech Republic.
How did you create this panorama?
I used a Canon 5d mark 2 and a 70-200mm lens, set to 200mm. The camera was mounted on a robotic device which turned the camera in tiny, precise increments, in every direction. All together, 40 gigabytes of images were shot. These images were then stitched together using PTGui. The resulting panorama was adjusted for color, contrast, sharpness, etc. in Photoshop. Afterwards, the image was cut into lots of “tiles” and uploaded to our server. When you view the image online, you only load a few of these “tiles” at one time.

Joke: Whose store was it

It was the day of the big sale. Rumors of the sale (and some advertising in
the local paper) were the main reason for the long line that formed by 8:30,
the store's opening time, in front of the store.

A small man pushed his way to the front of the line, only to be pushed back,
amid loud and colourful curse. On the man's second attempt, he was punched
square in the jaw, and knocked around a bit, and then thrown at the end of
the line again.

As he got up, he said to the person at the end of the line, "That does it!
If they hit me one more time, I won't open the store!"

Joke: Karate my ass

Harold's new job had him working really late.

He decides to get his wife a watchdog. He goes to the pet store and
asks for a doberman.

The employee said, "If its a guard dog you want I have a dog just for
you." The man walks to the back of the store to get a dog and comes
back with a little poodle.

Harold says, "This small thing, a watch dog? You're kidding, right?"
The employee says, "No, this dog is special; he knows karate."

"Karate? I don't believe it," Harold says.

The employee puts the dog down and says, "Karate the sign." And he
points to a sign advertising dog food.
The dog runs up and rips the sign to shreds. Harold is amazed at this.

The employee then says, "Karate the chair." And he points to a chair
in the corner. The dog runs up and rips the chair to shreds.

By now Harold is convinced. "I'll take him," he says.

When he gets home he surprises his wife and she yells out, "This
little thing, a watch dog? No way."

Harold says, "But this dog knows karate."

"Karate," she yells. "Karate my ass!"

Joke: Sex between an older man and younger woman

An older man was married to a younger woman.

After several years of a very happy marriage, he had a heart attack.

The doctor advised him that to prolong his life they should cut out sex.

He and his wife discussed the matter and decided that he should sleep
in the family room downstairs to save them both from temptation.

One night, after several weeks, he decided that life without sex
wasn't worth living. So he headed upstairs.

He met his wife on the staircase and said, "I was coming up to die."

She laughed and replied, "I was coming down to kill you!"

SourceMate - tool for Flash builders

SourceMate is the new must-have companion tool for serious Flash Builder developers.

Features:
Refactoring
- Convert Local Variable to Field
- Extract Constant
- Extract Method
- Extract Interface
- Change Method Signature
- Disable All trace() Statements
Code Generation
- Override/Implement Methods
- Generate Getters/Setters
- Generate Constructor using Fields
- Generate toString()
- Generate ASDoc Comments
Metadata Integration
- Content Assist for Metadata Tags (can include custom/framework tags)
- Metadata Tag Validation
General Productivity
- Task markers for TODO,FIXME, and XXX comments
- MXML and Actionscript Code Snippets View
- Generate Ant Build.xml from Flex project settings
- ASDoc Generation Wizard

Available at this link for Beta.

BillionVault.com - Good Delivery bars

Why would you be interested in something called BillionVault.com ? What is it ?
It used to be very difficult for private individuals to find a simple, safe and cost-effective way of buying, storing, and then selling gold. The main problem was the sheer size of the investment you needed to make to access the best prices - and there were extra complications with integrity and storage too.

BillionVault.com enables people from all over the world to own professional market gold and keep it in any quantity in officially recognized bullion vaults in London (UK), New York (USA), or Zurich (Switzerland).
All BullionVault gold is held in Good Delivery form. So when you come to sell, your buyer is able to trust the purity and weight of your gold, which is guaranteed by BullionVault itself because we know that you never had the chance to corrupt it.

Humour: WARNING SIGNS OF INSANITY

~ You write to your mother in Germany every week, even though she sends you mail from Iowa asking why you never write.

~ You're always having to apologize to your next door neighbor for setting fire to his lawn decorations.

~ Nobody listens to you anymore, because they can't understand you through that scuba mask.

~ You begin to stop and consider all of the blades of grass you've stepped on as a child, and worry that their ancestors are going to one day seek revenge.

~ You have meaningful conversations with your toaster.

~ You collect dead windowsill flies.

~ Every time the phone rings, you shout, "Hey! An angel just got its wings!"

~ You cry at the end of every episode of Gilligan's Island, because they weren't rescued.

~ You put tennis balls in the microwave to see if they'll hatch.

~ Whenever you listen to the radio, the music sounds backwards.

~ You have a predominant fear of fabric softener.

~ Your dentist asks you why each individual tooth has your name etched on it, and you tell him it's for security reasons.

~ Melba toast excites you.

~ When the waiter asks for your order, you ask to go into another room to tell him, because "the napkins have ears."

~ You tend to agree with everything your mother's dead uncle tells you.

~ You call up random people and ask if you can borrow their dog, just for a few minutes.

~ Your main goal in life is to become the president of Bulemia.

~ Nearly everything you say involves the word, "P-toing!"

~ You argue with yourself about which is better, to be eaten by a koala or to be loved by an infectious disease.

~ You like to sit in cornfields for prolonged periods of time, and pretend that you're a stalk.

~ You think that exploding wouldn't be so bad, once you got used to it.

~ People offer you help, but you unfortunately interpret this as a violation of your rights as a boysenberry.

Joke: The potion that makes a person younger

A man and his wife receive a letter from their daughter who went to study overseas:

My beloved Parents, I miss you so much. I don't know when I'm coming home, but it seems not anytime soon. It breaks my heart to think that by the time I get back you'll be too old. So enclosed you will find a bottle of a potion I have invented. It will make you young, so when I return you'll be the same age as I left you. NOTE: "Please take only one drop"
NOTE: "Please take only one drop"

So they open the envelope and in it there is a bottle with a red potion..
The husband looks at the wife and says: "You go first."

So the wife opens the bottle and takes a drop, there after the husband follows. Indeed they do turn 5 years younger.

A year passes and the daughter returns home to find her mother young and beautiful, carrying a baby on her back.
The mother proceeds to tell her daughter how the potion worked and made her look young.

The daughter is delighted and asks about her father.
"Your father, my child, got so jealous that I was young and beautiful so he drank the whole bottle."
"So where is he?"

"Oh, that's him I have on my back."

Joke: The Old Prospector

An old prospector walks his tired old mule into a western town one day. He'd
been out in the desert for about six months without a drop of whiskey. He
walked up to the first saloon he came to and tied his old mule to the hitch
rail. As he stood there brushing some of the dust from his face and clothes,
a gunslinger walked out of the saloon with a gun in one hand and a bottle of
whiskey in the other.

The gunslinger looked at the old man and laughed, saying, "Hey old man, have
you ever danced?"

The old man looked up at the gunslinger and said, "No, I never did dance. I
just never wanted to."

A crowd had gathered by then and the gunslinger said, "Well you old fool,
you're gonna' dance now," and started shooting at the old man's feet. The
old prospector was hopping around and everybody was laughing. When the
gunslinger fired his last bullet he holstered his gun and turned around to
go back into the saloon.

The old man reached up on the mule, drew his shotgun, and pulled both
hammers back making a double clicking sound. The gunslinger heard the sound
and everything got quiet. The crowd watched as the gunslinger slowly turned
around looking down both barrels of the shotgun.

The old man asked, "Did you ever kiss a mule square on the ass?"

The gunslinger swallowed hard and said, "No. But I've always wanted to."

Don't mess with the old guys.

Photo making collage - PhotoMix

What is PhotoMix ?
PhotoMix is a full-featured collage making software. It allows any user to create professionally looking collages with a couple of clicks - no experience in image editing required. Create a collage by compiling various pictures of any size and form, or work with one photo and give it a unique look by applying numerous actions. Collage can be exported as an editable project or single image, you can send it by email or print.
Learn more at this link.

Humour: If Women Ruled The World

- PMS would be a legitimate defense in court.

- Men would get reputations for sleeping around.

- A man would no longer be considered a "good catch" simply because
he is breathing.

- Fewer women would be dieting because their ideal weight standard
would increase by 40 pounds - Shopping would be considered an aerobic activity.

- Men would be secretaries for female bosses, working twice as hard
for none of the credit.

- Men would earn 70 cents for every dollar women made.

- Men would bring drinks, chips and dip to women watching soap
operas. - Men would HAVE to get Playboy for the articles, because
there would be no pictures.

- Men would learn phrases like: "I'm sorry", "I love you", "You're
beautiful", "Of course you don't look fat in that outfit."

- Men would be judged entirely by their looks, women by their accomplishments.

- Men would sit around and wonder what WE are thinking. - Men would
pay as much attention to their woman as to their car.

- All toilet seats would be nailed down.

- Men would work on relationships as much as they work on their careers.

- TV news segments on sports would never run longer than 1 minute. -
All men would be forced to spend one month in a PMS simulator

- During mid-life crisis, men would get hot-flashes and women would
date 19 year olds.

- Overweight men would have their weight brought to their attention constantly.

- After a baby is born, men would take a six-week paternity leave to
wait on their wives hand and foot.

Humour: HOME MECHANIC'S TOOLS.... and their usage....

HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate expensive parts not far from the object we are trying to hit.

MECHANIC'S KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on boxes containing seats and motorcycle jackets.

ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Normally used for spinning steel Pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age, but it also works great for drilling mounting holes in fenders just above the brake line that goes to the rear wheel.

PLIERS: Used to round off bolt heads.

HACKSAW: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

VICE- GRIPS: Used to round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for lighting various flammable objects in your garage on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside a brake drum you're trying to get the bearing grease out of.

WHITWORTH SOCKETS: Once used for working on older British cars and motorcycles, they are now used mainly for impersonating that 9/16 or 1/2 socket you've been searching for, the last 15 minutes.

DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, splattering it against that freshly painted part you were drying.

WIRE WHEEL: Cleans rust off old bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprint whorls and hard-earned guitar calluses in about the time it takes you to say, "Ouc...."

HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering a motorcycle to the ground after you have installed your new front disk brake set-up, trapping the jack handle firmly under the front fender.

EIGHT-FOOT LONG DOUGLAS FIR 2X4: Used for levering a motorcycle upward off a hydraulic jack.

TWEEZERS: A tool for removing wood splinters.

PHONE: Tool for calling your neighbour to see if he has another hydraulic floor jack.

SNAP-ON GASKET SCRAPER: Theoretically useful as a sandwich tool for spreading mayonnaise; used mainly for getting dog-doo off your boot.

E-Z OUT BOLT AND STUD EXTRACTOR: A tool that snaps off in bolt holes and is ten times harder than any known drill bit.

TIMING LIGHT: A stroboscopic instrument for illuminating grease build up.

TWO-TON HYDRAULIC ENGINE HOIST: A handy tool for testing the tensile strength of ground straps and brake lines you may have forgotten to disconnect.

CRAFTSMAN 1/2 x 16-INCH SCREWDRIVER: A large motor mount prying tool that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end without the handle.

BATTERY ELECTROLYTE TESTER: A handy tool for transferring sulphuric acid from a car battery to the inside of your tool box after determining that your battery is dead as a door nail, just as you thought.

METAL SNIPS: See hacksaw.

TROUBLE LIGHT: The mechanic's own tanning booth. Sometimes called a drop light, it is a good source of vitamin D, "the sunshine vitamin," which is not otherwise found under motorcycles at night. Health benefits aside, its main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at about the same rate that 105-mm howitzer shells might be used during, say, the first few hours of the Battle of the Bulge. More often dark
than light, its name is somewhat misleading.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the lids of old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splash oil on your shirt; can also be used, as the name implies, to round off Phillips screw heads and can double as oil filter removal wrench by stabbing through stubborn oil filters.

AIR COMPRESSOR: A machine that takes energy produced in a coal-burning power plant 200 miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a Chicago Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty bolts last tightened 60 years ago by someone in Springfield, and rounds them off.

PRYBAR: A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50 cent part.

HOSE CUTTER: A tool used to cut hoses 1/2 inch too short.

Joke: No ears means that you would be blind

Jon and Dave were in a mental institution. This place had an annual contest, picking two of the best patients and giving them two questions. If they got them correct, they're deemed cured and free to go.

Jon was called into the doctor's office first and asked if he understood that he'd be free if he answered the questions correctly. The doctor said, "Jon, what would happen if I poked out one of your eyes?"

Jon said, "I'd be half blind." "That's correct. What if I poked out both of your eyes?" "I'd be completely blind." The doctor got up, shook his hand and told him he was free.

On Jon's way out, as the doctor filled out the paperwork, Jon mentioned the exam to Dave. He told him what questions were going to be asked, and told him the answers. Dave was called in. The doctor went through the formalities and asked, "What would happen if I cut off one of your ears?"

Dave, remembering what Jon said was the correct answer, he said, "I'd be half blind." The doctor looked a little puzzled, but went on. "What if I cut off both of your
ears?" "I'd be completely blind." Dave answered. "Dave, can you explain how you'd be blind?" "My hat would fall over my eyes."

Humour: TUBE ANNOUNCEMENTS

"To the gentleman wearing the long grey coat trying to
get on the second carriage, what part of 'stand clear
of the doors' don't you understand?"

At Camden town station (on a crowded Saturday afternoon):
"Please let the passengers off the train first. Please let
the passengers off the train first. Please let the passengers
off the train first. Let the passengers off the train FIRST!
Oh go on then, stuff yourselves in like sardines, see if I
care, I'm going home."

"Your delay this evening is caused by the line controller suffering
from elbow and backside syndrome, not knowing one from the other.
I'll let you know any further information as soon as I'm given any."

"Please mind the closing doors..." The doors close...The doors reopen.
"Passengers are reminded that the big red slidey things on the side
of the train are called the doors. Let's try it again, shall we? Please
stand clear of the doors." The doors close... "Thank you."

"I am sorry about the delay, apparently some nutter has just wandered
into the tunnel at Euston. We don't know when we'll be moving again, but
these people tend to come out pretty quickly...usually in bits."

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen. This train is for Brixton. The time
is almost upon us for the doors to close and for us to discover if the
person next to us is wearing deodorant."