Happy Day Before Spring
 

The day before spring and the sun is shining. It looks warm but I would guess that it is still in the mid teens.

I am finally going to start moving today so I should be scarce for most of the day. And, I have been trying for 2 hours to get online. Time Warner tells me they are having problems that should be repaired by 4PM today.

It's also the day before Palm Sunday |buddy|

Good Saturday Everyone! |waves|

I'll be here all day going over some stuff on LOR - time to do a little spring cleaning I think :)

Jim - didn't you move already? |couch|

Good Morning Skin Peddlers :)

I got stuck waiting for UPS until almost 5 PM yesterday waiting for my new lens to arrive. When it did the Goodyear blimp was hovering over my house so I tried the lens out on it.

Going to do the gym thing this this morning and then probably play tennis later today. Other then that not doing much other then some web work.

Good morning all :)

About time Spring has come around.

Thank god for warmer weather...

Morning :)

Looks like spring arrived this morning. Sunny.... but still a little cold. They say the warm weather will come next week, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Yesterday I noticed that the facade on Turning Torso is finished and they took down one of the cranes. It looks damn cool now.

http://www.bodab.se/test_webcam_torso2.asp

1-2 weeks ago it won an award as best international residential property |thumb

finally spring.... time to get some warm weather....

What is that going to become? Office building, tourist attraction, condos, airport tower, blimp dock, target practice for religious fanatics, Babylon space station, inquiring minds want to know.

It's hard to see it in that picture. But the whole building consists of 9 cubes. The lower 2 is going to be offices, the top 7 will be apartments.
From top to bottom there's a 90 degrees rotation, that's where it got the name Turning Torso from.

http://www.turningtorso.com/

So far it has been one hell of an expensive building. A lot of people thinks that it's just a waste to build such a luxury building. You should build buidling that everybody can live in blah blah blah.

The exposure this building has got is incredible. Discovery Channel made a documentary about it. It has been on numerous TV shows all over the world. Awards, newspapers, you name it.
It has been nothing but great for the city :)

The most expensive apartment is 2300 square foot big and will cost around $3800 (with todays exchange rate), that includes Concièrge, room in the wine cellar, laundry service, and some other services :D

http://www.turningtorso.com/
Wow that is a kewl building but damn do I hate sites built 100% in Flash.

How tall is it, how many stories?

190 meters (623 feet) and 54 stories.

I have watched at least two different documentaries on that building, and it just amazes me every time I see it.

I would love to actually tour that building. And the hotel in Dubai. And a bunch of other places. The Jersey Harbor. Man, I have a lot of work to do if I want to see the stuff I want to see.

Happy day before spring all!

and yes, its Palm Sunday, if your catholic.

Anyhow, I hope all your palms lead to thick wads of cash today and tomorrow!
|king|

The hotel in Dubai would be awsome to go see. It's just amazing. The architecture is not of this world.

The people I buy bread from, Il Panificio has got a contract with them. They deliver "¤#&¤/ BREAD to them. If you send bread from half across the globe, you have way too much money to spend hehe.
But it's pretty cool for them. It's a small bakery, only 2 bakers and his wife that takes care of the papers and everything they do is baked in stone ovens.

It's too bad you will not be able to tour Turning Torso. Once it's done, only residents will be able to get in :(
But I guess it would be a pretty big pain in the ass for people living there if they would have tours and stuff.

These may be fake, I received them from a golfing friend
http://cd34.com/dubai/ - Shaggin Balls

I believe you could rent a condo at Turning Torso for a month if you had the cash. Even the Burj Al Arab's most expensive room is only $7000/night.

Oh, and Kansai International Airport. :)

DAAAAAMNN! What a place to tee off at :D

There's some weird people on this Interweb thing!

The urinals of the Osaka Kansai International Airport. "No, Osaka Kansai has bad urinals, I don't want to land there. Lets go to Tokyo instead."

that is NOT why I want to go there. :)

Isn't there a rail-tunnel near you that turns 270 degrees in the mountain and has a 2.5 degree incline? That would be cool to see too.

The closest mountain to me is 10-15 hours away. Are you sure you're not thinking about Switzerland? ;)

Asberget Tunnel I think? On Botnaibanan Railway or something like that. I couldn't find anything on the net, that showed it. I'll have to find it -- you've gotten me curious now. It wasn't so much the size of the tunnel, it was barely longer than one train, it was the fact that the tunnel went in, the tunnel looped and the train was headed 270 degrees off and an elevation of another 800 or so feet.

Add to that Millau Viaduct. and the Falkirk Wheel. I think I should have been a civil engineer or architect. :)

If it's on Botniabanan, it's in Sweden. I had no idea about it. I'll look it up :)

The correct names are "Botniabanan" and "Åsberget".

If you like tunnels and stuff, you should read about the biggest train tunnel fiasco in Swedish history. Hallands*stunneln, unforunately I don't think there's too much about it in English.

The tunnel was supposed the be finished many years ago and cost 1.5 billion SEK (6.8 SEK on 1 USD). After lowering the ground water 350 feet, poisoning ground water and streams, was not able to even drill the tunnel and all other crap they had to close it down. At that point it was WAY over budget already. Now they say they will start it up again and the cost to finish it will be 6-10 billion. FIASCO! hehe

Having been educated in the US Public School system, typing any letter that requires more than 2 keystrokes is beyond my abilities. :) However, I should have gotten Botniabanan right since I cut and pasted it from a website. :) (probably designed and maintained by another public school educated US resident)

I did find one .pdf that mentioned the tunnel, but, only noted that it was 1.1km. It may not be the right tunnel, but, the length seems about right.

And its not really tunnels, its unique engineering. Other than there being stoplights and dams at the Jersey Harbor and the birthplace of the Jersey/Sweater, it really would be a nice place to visit, but, the attraction is the unique engineering approach that they took to keep water in their harbor during low tide. I know, many people would consider it boring.

The Falkirk wheel is an artsy lock system that was quite well engineered and planned. As far as water and energy efficiency, it takes the equivalent energy of using a computer for an hour to raise and lower a boat (thanks to Archimedes and displacement). The London Eye doesn't impress me as much, although, it is indeed a unique structure.

The Millau Viaduct's construction was quite interesting. Basically, the road sections were built on land and pushed over the pylons and put into place. Kansai International Airport is a man-made island with room for 3 large runways.

One of my favorite bridges is the Varina-Enon bridge. Nothing spectacular. Its on I-295 around Richmond, VA, but, its a cantilevered suspension bridge.

http://richmondcitywatch.com/infra_varina_enon.php

I'm a nerd.

I saw part of a documentary about the Millau Viaduct. When I first heard about before it was being built, it was hard to picture it. It was HUGE, and push the parts out... and the height? It was just too big.

Something that was pretty cool to see was when they built the bridge, Öresundsbron (8km bridge + 4km tunnel, top level is a a 4 lane road, lower level has 2 train tracks), between Sweden and Denmark. When it was finished 1999 it was the longest of its kind, not sure if it is anymore. But the boat crane they used was enormous. It's still sitting in the harbor here.
They built the sections on land and we're not talking small sections, then they were taken out to the bridge by the boat crane and put into place. The foundation sections were also put into place by the crane.
The crane is called Svanen and can lift 8700 tonne.

http://www.leopoldreport.com/Bro0814.html
One pic of it at the bottom of the page

http://www.svt.se/malmo/oresundsbron/dokument/dokum.htm

http://www.svt.se/malmo/oresundsbron...ent/vatten.htm
One my favorite pics of the bridge :D
It's taken from the nude bath house hehe.