Photocritic has an excellent article on photographing smoke. Apparently the two secrets to taking great shots are inverting the image, and using grey smoke.

After 10 years of research, we now have coloured floating bubbles..non staining too Zubbles!

Due to warmer winter conditions, butterflies from Africa and the Mediterranean are making themselves at home in the Austrian Alps, one of Western Europe’s coldest region.

From the Planetark article - “We have seen some very unusual species and … we are talking about species that shouldn’t even be able to survive the winter here, which is what surprises us” said Peter Huemer, biologist at the Tyrolean State Museum.

I’ve been buying alot of fresh herbs lately for cooking (the herbs haven’t been going so well on my balcony) and searched for some tips on storing them in this hot, humid climate of Brisbane. Here’s what it boils down to:

1. Wash the herbs in cold water, trim off dead leaves and dead stems and pat them dry
2. Place the stems in a small container of water, don’t submerge the leaves

3. The cover lightly with a plastic bag or plastic wrap making sure there is a small amount of air that can get through

4. Refrigerate and change the water every day or so. You can use the old water watering your other plants

Packet Garden stores all of the information about how you use the internet, what servers you visit, their locations etc and builds a private world for you to explore.

The concept is an artwork commissioned by Arnolfini and is open source.

There is an excellent article at Fast Company on conflict rising within a workplace or business and how to deal with it - basically as soon as possible.

John Baldoni writes “When managers sense a conflict brewing they must act quickly and decisively.“

Jennifer Maestre creates sculptures using industrial and other types of everyday objects such as pencils. This latest collection was originally inspired by the form of the sea urchin:

“To make the pencil sculptures, I take hundreds of pencils, cut them into 1-inch sections, drill a hole in each section (to turn them into beads), sharpen them all and sew them together. ”

The Fruit Box provides fruit services to workplaces around Australia. With rising health issues and people getting larger, offering an alternative to vending machine snacks and soft drinks is awesome. What a great idea!

Joel on Software has a great article on why you should bother writing a functional
specification:

“I believe that on any non-trivial project (more than about 1 week of coding or more than 1 programmer), if you don’t have a spec, you will always spend more time and create lower quality code. Here’s why.

The most important function of a spec is to design the program. Even if you are working on code all by yourself, and you write a spec solely for your own benefit, the act of writing the spec — describing how the program works in minute detail — will force you to actually design the program.“

This is well worth a read, an interview on Grist with Terry Tamminen, the environmental advisor brought on board in 2003 to work with the California governor.

From the article:

“By the way, when we talk about the United States as 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of its CO2 emissions … I think we’re 50 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. Why is it that China is building 1,000 megawatts of coal-fired power plants a week? It’s to make factories to make plastic flamingos to sell in Wal-Mart. On top of that, we’re exporting our culture to them. We’re exporting this culture in our movies and our TV and our advertising, with our car companies saying it’s not enough to just have a car … go out and have an SUV just like your American counterpart.“