Photos From Palmyra
These are some of my favorite photos of Palmyra, Syria.
Palmyra is an amazing ruined city in the middle of the desert in Syria. Pretty much my entire recent holiday was organised so I could finally visit. And it was worth it - beautiful, unique, and not at all crowded with tourists. I am definitely going back!
The Great Colonnade, looking towards the Monumental Arch
The Sanctuary of Bel through one of the smaller openings on the Monumental Arch
A crumbling tower tomb seen from Elahbel’s Tower
Letters of Note
I just discovered Letters of Note, a surprisingly interesting new website.
Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. Scans/photos where possible. Fakes will be sneered at. Updated 2-3 times every weekday.
I Was Ready To Sink Into The Earth With Shame - a 9th Century Chinese form letter for apologising to one’s host for being embarrassingly drunk.
The Masked Letter – written in 1777, and an example of an early code.
The Result Would Be A Catastrophe - a memo from an engineer who raised concerns about the exact issue that led to the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion in 1986.
Random Quotation
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator
(This haiku may or may not be by William Shatner)
Human Space Exploration
A beautiful and elegant map of human space exploration from National Geographic. A larger picture can be found here.
The Cat Piano
In a city of music-loving cats, a mysterious figure abducts the best singers for nefarious purposes…
The Cat Piano is a beautiful and atmospheric animated short film.
Parallelostory
From impactist, the people who brought us Leo’s Song, comes the multi-dimensional love song of Parallelostory.
The Discworld in Lego
I saw a production of Maskerade last night. Terry Pratchett’s books do make great plays!
It therefore seemed appropriate to post these photos of the Discworld in Lego, from captainsmog’s flickr site.
Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax
Hex: Unseen University’s computer
Unseen University’s Library
For more Discworldian goodness, see LEGO Discworld.
World’s Biggest Alarm Clock
An invention to get those very heavy sleepers out of bed on time!
