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Endangered Machinery: HKM Blast Furnace B
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Blast Furnace B
Hüttenwerke Krupp Mannesmann HKM, Duisburg-Huckingen, Germany
Put into service 1981, relined 2000, hearth diameter 11.0 meters
Yearly production: 2.7 million tons pig iron
Photo taken: May 2005
Current status: in service
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Endangered Machinery: Bleeding
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On my birthday, we have been able to witness a very rare event: a bleeding blast furnace. Under special conditions, the pressure of the recovery gas can exceed a critical point where the equilibrium between the recovery gas travelling from the bottom to the top of the furnace and the burden travelling the opposite direction (counter flow principle) gets lost. As a consequence, either the burden pillar collapses or the furnace's core explodes.
To prevent this, the recovery gas collectors have so-called bleeders mounted at their highest point - spring-loaded pressure relief valves that can be compared to a turbocharger's wastegate. They open autonomously or when manually triggered, and the excess gas evades rapidly with a most deafening noise - in this case for about 20 seconds, until the internal pressure was back to normal.
[Thanks to Oliver of Dillinger Hüttenwerke for the technical explanation]
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The Sky is the Limit: Highest Chopper Landing and Take Off ever
On May 14th, 2005 at 7h08 (local time), a serial Ecureuil/AStar AS 350 B3 piloted by the EUROCOPTER X-test pilot Didier Delsalle, landed at 8,850 meters (29,035ft) on the top of the Mount Everest (Kingdom of Nepal). [...] As required by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the aircraft remained landed on ground more than 2 minutes on the top of the world before flying back to Lukla. This feat was renewed the day after.
This is the ultimate milestone in helicopter aviation: despite altitude limitations most choppers face, now any place on earth can be reached with a serial model. It is the same serial model that can climb to 9,000 meters in less than 10 minutes and that made experimental flights up to 10,211 meters (33,500 ft).
Eurocopter did not release this news before May 24, 10 days after the record, which might be due to the implications of this flight. Rescue climbers will fear that chopper-based SAR could finally degenerate climbing Sagarmatha into an adventure for incautious amateurs. Proof that air SAR is possible was already delivered:
During the trial period, Didier Delsalle and his Ecureuil/AStar AS350 B3 flew some rescue missions on behalf of the Nepalese authorities demonstrating the operational capabilities of the aircraft
mounteverest.net: Mystery Chopper Summit Images >
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:: in category Aviation, Air and Space
Endangered Machinery: Back from Ijmuiden
CORUS Ijmuiden, The Netherlands, May 2005
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I am back from Ijmuiden and still feel impressed from what I saw. This huge and modern plant is both the engineers and the photographers dream of an integrated steel mill. An above photo alone you can see parts of the blast furnaces works, the steel mill, the pellet plant, of one of the coke plants and of the raw material logistics. Ocean-going vessel can cruise straight into the mill to supply it with coal and ore while you can watch straight into it from a broad range of elevated vantage points. Not enough, plant security even seemed happy to have folks with cameras roaming around - a sharp contrast to the rather hostile attitude many of their German colleagues share.
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Wählen gehen
Mein nun frisch angebrochenes Geburtstagswochenende werde ich in den schönen Niederlanden verbringen - gewählt habe ich gestern schon. Sonntag sollten das alle Leser aus NRW auch tun. Lasst uns dafür sorgen, daß keiner gewählt wird, der schon mal vorsorglich ankündigt, sich an rechtsgültige Verträge mit der Landesregierung nicht halten zu müssen, nur weil sie nicht mit ihm, sondern eben mit der Regierung gemacht wurden und sie ihm ideologisch nicht in den Kram passen. Keiner, der in NRWs Stammindustrien gerne Arbeitsplätze in fünfstelliger Höhe vernichten würde. Keiner, der auf seinen Plakaten gegen genau das wirbt, was er der Regierung selbst hat vorgeschlagen zu tun. Keiner, der nur Ankerpunkt für die leere Rhetorik eines Berliner Neutrums ohne Frisur ist. Papa Scott hat den Rest :-)
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Test Driving a Minolta Dynax Maxxum D7
Boys need toys, and the one I am test driving currently is called Konica Minolta Dynax D7 (Maxxum in the U.S.), a 6-Megapixel DSLR camera with built-in anti-shake system that works with all lenses. It attracted my attention due to its fairly unique user interface with one knob for each function plus one huge display that sums up all settings and automagically switches off once you look through the (large and bright) viewfinder. On first photos it looks like a dream interface "made by photographers for photographers" - so my test drive primarily aims at finding out if it can deliver, and according to my very first impressions, it likely can. But beware: this is not a girlie camera. If you want something small and light, try something else. The D7 feels as solid as if could double as a hammer and puts quite some weight into your hands, even more so if you use it with the portrait grip which is a dream by all means. After this weekend we will know if the D7 also can deliver in the other field that counts, photographic quality.
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FeedDemon sold to NewsGator
NewsGator acquired FeedDemon, TopStyle and NickBradbury - what does that mean for us FeedDemon customers? Says Nick:
NewsGator uses a subscription model, and FeedDemon will become part of their subscription plans. All existing FeedDemon customers will get a two-year business standard subscription for free - and this includes upgrades to FeedDemon.
Business Standard is the entry plan covering basic features. Notice that features like saved keyword searches and others that are default in FeedDemon require more expensive plans and come with ridiculously low limits in NewsGator. Read, FeedDemon upgrades remain free for the next two years and you also get a NewsGator preview.
Obviously, FeedDemon as a desktop app is the missing link in Newsgator's read-and-sync-anywhere strategy:
FeedDemon will integrate very closely with NewsGator's online synchronization platform, enabling using FeedDemon on multiple computers while maintaining state between all of them.
And what if you use FeedDemon with Bloglines? Say Nick and Greg:
We're not going to drop FeedDemon's support for Bloglines. [But oviously] future development will concentrate on integration with the NewsGator Online platform.
My impression browsing the NewsGator website: nice idea for business environments, but bloated. If you want smart, fast, free read-nearly-anywhere news aggregation, Bloglines still is the tool of choice.
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Endangered Machinery: Bleistahl
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Facilty: Bleistahl, Wetter-Wengern, Germany; supplier of the automotive industry. The chimney and the water tower in the background belong to the remaining facilities of a former Thyssen Edelstahlwerke electrical steel mill.
Photo taken: May 2005 with a tiny Canon A95 digital all-in-one camera which delivers quite OK results considering the size of its lens and its price. My Olympus suddenly quit working and is on its way to Hamburg where Olympus customer care is seated. Keep your fingers crossed that the repair will be smooth sailing.
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
Endangered Machinery: Taking a Spring Stroll
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Phoenix Dortmund
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Using FeedDemon as a Bloglines fallback
As Bloglines is becoming less and less reliable due to database problems, it is time to think about a fallback solution. I purchased FeedDemon a while ago but stopped using it when I switched to Bloglines. Now I found this in the FeedDemon help:
FeedDemon enables you to create a special Bloglines Channel Group which is synchronized with your Bloglines subscriptions. Unlike "normal" channels, Bloglines Channels contain only the items you haven't already read through Bloglines. Likewise, items you read in FeedDemon won't appear as new in Bloglines. This enables you to read your subscriptions in either FeedDemon or Bloglines without duplication of items you've already read.
Feed- and item-based synchronization! Time to dig out that old license, to update and to move the installation to my (LAN-only) VNC-controlled machine. If Bloglines fails and the sync feature really works, I could switch to FeedDemon, read stuff through the local copy of my OPML file and sync read items back with Bloglines once it becomes available again. Nifty.
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Endangered Machinery: Tranquility
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Painting with light - Hansa Coke as I liked it
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
It's a girl!
Sophie entered this world at 16:20 today, and Marc and Petra are the proud parents - congratulations!
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Hobbyaufgabe
Da gibt jemand sein Hobby auf. Kein Wunder. Vermutlich fand er alle seine Fotos etwas zu hell :-)
For my English speaking readers, it says "Goods damaged, auction aborted"
[via Ralf]
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Endangered Machinery: CBR Lixhe
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S.A. Cimenteries CBR Cementbedrijven N.V.
Heidelberg Cement Group
Usine Lixhe, Belgium
Photo taken April 2005. In operation. Though technically below average, I still like this photo for its colors and tonality.
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
Presenting: Steel Wheels
Rolling Stones - Steel Wheels, released in 1989 and still so good that you really should get it. Addictive.
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:: in category Music
Endangered Machinery: Snail
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Dedusting < Seraing blast furnace plant < Cockerill Sambre, Liege, Belgium
Photo taken: April 2005
Changes since: plant decommissioned
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
Stativmarken
Im Pausenraum einer Kohlenwäsche (Klick = groß)
Heute im A bis Z der Photographie: S wie Stativmarken. Der Heilige Gral all derer, die sich nicht näher mit Aufbau, Eigenschaften und Charakter eines Objekts beschäftigen, aber dennoch irgendein Foto davon haben möchten - einfach das Stativ in die tiefsten auffindbaren Stativmarken der zahlreichen vorherigen Photographen am gleichen Ort aufstellen und auslösen. Stativmarkentouristen sind für das eigene photographische Werk von großem Nutzen, da sie einem nicht durchs Bild laufen können.
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:: in category Das A bis Z der Photographie
Backpack observations
It’s good but clearly over-hyped . Real men need more than a variation on a wiki to wet themselves from excitement and I remain dry.
Krzysztof Kowalczyk's Backpack review is the best I've read so far. He concludes that Backpack is little more than a wiki without the wiki plus some design and DHTML goodies plus ridiculously low page count limits. It once again shows that 37signals has transformed from just another web thing (whose original website I loved and from whose Better Project I learned a lot) into a company that masters the art of making very much out of next to nothing - or, as Krzysztof puts it, the art of making "hype-generation moves".
(Get Krzysztof's blog on your radar. It is an opinionated, low posting frequency blog on software and usability with an above-the-average signal-to-noise ratio.)
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Endangered Machinery: Oiler
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Older stuff: Oiler < steam winding engine < Consolidation coal mine < Gelsenkirchen, Germany
Photo taken: ca. 1995 on Nikon SLR
Current status: Unknown, supposedly preserved
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Just ordered: NSLU2
What I was looking for: a reasonably priced network attached RAID 5 solution in the 600 GB region for savely storing my digital photos on.
What I found instead: the Linksys NSLU2, a tiny embedded Linux device that connects up to two USB 2.0 disk drives or flash disks to a network. Does it solve my 600 GB problem? No. But my noise problem. Once updated with an Open Source replacement firmware, it seems to be an almost standard 250 MHz Linux computer - noise free, for as little as 80 €. I think that fitted with a low-noise hard disk in a fanless USB 2.0 case, it can replace an loud and aging machine that I use as a mini fileserver, a PHP development server and a Mediawiki staging server, finally making my working environment noise free. Within a few days I will know if this plan works out. At least, it seems to be a great toy.
RELATED DEL.ICIO.US TAGS
del.icio.us/haikohebig/nslu2 - NSLU2 links
del.icio.us/haikohebig/raid - (NAS) RAID 5 solutions
del.icio.us/haikohebig/nas - Non-RAID NAS solutions
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Tag bundles in del.icio.us
I don't know if this is old or new, but I hadn't seen this before: del.icio.us offers so-called tag bundles. If you have a look on the tags sidebar on my del.icio.us page you will find all "via" and all photography tags bundled together, making the list much more clearly laid out. Such bundles can be created by clicking settings > experimental > tag bundles. Regrettably, there is no wildcard support, so I had to add all via-tags manually - "via:*" would be much easier and more in the spirit of semantic tagging. Later on, I will form more bundles which might also help to contain tag creep (insensible growth of the total number of tags).
Tag bundles are the featureless version of what I call tag clouds, loose groups of related tags which allow to introduce "related tags/nearby tags"-features into tag-enabled applications without having to fall back to fully-fledged hierarchy mechanisms. For del.icio.us, the next step is to move bundles beyond cosmetics: add "show me all links within a tag bundle" aka tag bundle pages and tag bundle feeds, and to make bundles programmatically accessible.
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1. Mai
Klick = groß
Aufruf zum Aufmarsch aller Hoesch-Werker zur Maikundgebung 1984
Und: Jörg Kantel erklärt was das alles mit Nelken zu tun hat >
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Posted in category Endangered Machinery
