Stairs come in all sizes and shapes and can be found everywhere, they always make great photography subjects.
Their patterns offer unlimited photography potentials and they can be shot from virtually any angle, from the old lost forest stair to the modern urban one they are enough to fit any taste.
Here is a collection of wonderful stairs pictures that, I am sure, will inspire you next time you take your camera on a walk.
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Skating, inline blading and BMX biking are enjoyed by people from every country in the world. Skate parks are like playgrounds to skaters, and fans of the sport are always on the lookout for the biggest, wildest, craziest courses to conquer! From America’s West Coast to City of France, skate parks come in all styles and each offers its own unique twist. Here are the world’s ten largest and most well-known skate parks!
SkateLab, Atlantic Beach Florida
Part indoor, part outdoor, the Atlantic Beach Skate Lab is a cornucopia of rails, verts, ramps and jumps. Unlike many strictly outdoor parks, weather does not affect your experience, as the inside area is just as expansive and enjoyable as the outdoor sector. As one of the most expansive skate parks on the east coast, riders from the southern states can enjoy total skating merriment!
Black Pearl Skate Park, Cayman Islands
Located in the gorgeous Cayman Islands, Black Pearl is the world’s largest outdoor concrete skate park. This massive park covers over 52,000 square feet and features courses for beginner, intermediate and expert skaters. Not big into skating? Located right next to the skate park is the world’s largest wave pool, producing a constant 11 foot swell to surf until your heart is content!
Louisville Extreme Park
Boasting a 24 foot full pipe, Extreme Park never falls short of its name! This enormous concrete playground spans 40,000 square feet and ranks as one of the largest skate parks in the nation. Among the unique features of the park are its hours of operation. The park is actually open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, providing skating, biking or inline bliss on demand!
SMP Skatepark, Shanghai China
SMP Skate Park is an enormous outdoor spans 44,936 square feet and represents China’s largest skate park. Each year SMP holds an international skate competition known as “The Showdown.” If you’re a skater, its hard to think of a more fitting place to compete. Not a skater, not a problem! Enjoy the activities from a 12,300 square foot viewing deck and plaza!
Marseille Skatepark, France
An urban skatepark covered in graffiti art work, Marseilles skate park is both beautiful and expansive. As France’s largest outdoor skate park, skaters from all over europe stop by to grind on the various painted bowls and verts. It’s unique style sets Marseilles apart from other parks around the world and offers a new experience unlike the usual terrain of outdoor parks.
Stoke Plaza, Stoke-On-Trent, England
Stoke Plaza is England’s premiere skate park, spanning 34,000 square feet. The park cost over $500,000 to create and features a unique design. If you don’t want to partake in the skating, there are quite a few designated “safe zones” where bystanders can hang out and observe!
VANS Skatepark, California
This enormous indoor/outdoor skate park was created by Vans Shoe Company, a prominent skating shoe brand. Made for inline skating and skateboarding, the slick wood allows for a smooth and controlled ride through the course’s ramps, rails and verts. Outside, riders can delight in concrete bowls and pools covering over 20,000 square feet of skateable area.
Kona Skate Park, Jacksonville, Florida
The world-famous Kona skate park offers one of the world’s most unique skating experiences. Smooth, pastel colored concrete has helped make Kona a favorite among professionals and hobbyists, and has earned it a spot in several popular skating video games. New to the world of skating? No problem! Kona USA offers a skate camp with professional instructions to have you skating like a pro in no time!
Amazing Square Skate Park, Japan
Amazing Square is a Japanese monster of a skate park! Featuring all the amenities of a good park, including a massive half pipe, the park is open 24 hours a day for total skating rapture! Enjoy street skating courses, rails, stairs and more as you skate around Tokyo’s most memorable park.
Lake Cunningham Regional Skate Park, California
Quite possibly one of the most unique skate parks, LCRSP is in a league all its own! Riders enjoy a 70 foot long, 22 foot wide full pipe, bowls, pools, thimbles, cradles, a mega wall and a street course! Spectators can watch the action for free but must sign a waiver at the door. Bikers can join in the fun and make use of the course, however the pools are off limits!
See this wonderful paper craft art installation by a genius of the name of Wataru Itou, a young student of a major art university here in Tokyo. The installation is hand made over four years of hard work, complete with electrical lights and a moving train, all made of paper! Clearly, this man must have created one of the most stunning examples of Paper Craft in the world? At the exhibition you will also have the chance to see a video showing Mr. Itou at work in his studio, cutting and folding piece by piece. The exhibition is called Umi no Ue no Oshiro (A Castle On the Ocean).
It is exhibited at Uminohotaru, a place which in itself is a major attraction: a service area in the middle of the ocean, right between Tokyo City and Chiba Prefecture. If you haven’t checked it out yet, use Google Earth for a close up of what is probably the weirdest parking lot in the world. Well, it’s more than a parking lot actually, but I am saving a more detailed description along with photos for another post. For now, enjoy this wonderful work of art!
Facebook will again tweak its privacy controls to give its 200 million users simplified control over what they want the public and their friends to see. In the past months, Firefox has added multiple privacy controls that confused and angered its members.
Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly said Wednesday that Facebook will begin a series of tests to simplify choices. “With the test we’re announcing today, we’ll move toward simplifying these settings and putting them all on the same page,” Kelly said.
Facebook users will soon begin to see the move to new settings. During the process, Facebook will ask offer a Transition Tool so users can select their level of sharing.
The settings will be tested by 40,000 U.S. Facebook users in week one, using one of the six versions of the Transition Tool. Tests in week two will include 80,000 users worldwide.
In week three, Facebook will slowly begin rolling out the final product to all users.
“I think that Facebook very much needed to revamp its user interface, the many mechanisms that deal with privacy controls,” said Ray Valdes, a Gartner analyst. “This had become complex due to a steady accumulation of features over the years that needed to be put back in order toward a more cohesive user experience.”
The slew of updates and changes to the social-networking site included the “everyone” option in March, which allowed users to share all information, including photos and posts. Last week, Facebook launched a beta version of the Publisher Privacy Control, which allows users to decide who can see their published content on a per-post basis.
Combined, those features enable users to allow some posts to be seen by everyone and other posts to be seen only by selected friends.
Global Gaming Factory X AB, a Swedish software company, has agreed to acquire The Pirate Bay video-sharing Web site — whose owners are under fire for brokering copyrighted content — for nearly $7.8 million.
Pirate Bay is one of the largest video-sharing sites on the Internet. The site has more than 20 million visitors and more than one billion searches per month. The four Swedish men who launched the infamous Web site are behind bars. In April, the men were ordered to pay $3.6 million in damages to copyright holders for infringing on their intellectual property. The men have appealed the verdict.
Global Gaming Factory said it plans to launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners when it takes control of the site in August. Global Gaming Factory has the largest network of Internet cafs and game centers and claims access to the largest group of game players on the Internet.
“The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most-visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary,” said Hans Pandeya, CEO of Global Gaming Factory. “Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers need faster downloads and better quality.”
The File-Sharing Backbone
Global Gaming Factory has also entered into an agreement to acquire the shares of Peerialism AB. Peerialism AB is rooted in the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SICS, the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. The company is currently owned by its employees. Peerialism develops solutions for data distribution and distributed storage based on new peer-to-peer technology.
Bowing to a request from the European Commission, 10 major device manufacturers have agreed to adopt a universal battery-charging design for their mobile handsets. Though the agreement only applies to mobile-device sales within the member states of the European Union, the standard is expected to have a far wider impact since the mobile-device market is essentially global.
Phone-charger compatibility will make life much simpler for consumers, noted EU Industry Commissioner Gnter Verheugen. “They will be able to charge mobile phones anywhere from the new common charger,” Verheugen said. “This also means considerably less electronic waste, because people will no longer have to throw away chargers when buying new phones.”
Eliminating Waste
Today’s plethora of external power supplies for mobile phones means there are many chargers that can only interface with a particular handset. Any user buying a replacement handset today must get a new charger — even though the charger for the previous phone may be in perfect condition.
According to the EC, the disposal of old chargers generates several thousand tons of waste each year. Moreover, consumers are paying for an accessory they shouldn’t have to replace.
Beginning in 2010, consumers will be able to charge mobile phones from any external power supply compatible with the new common charger specs. Additionally, the agreement will protect consumers from unsafe operations, which can occur if an incompatible external power supply is used to charge a phone.
A new memorandum of understanding governing the changes has been signed by representatives of Apple, LG Electronics, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research In Motion, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Texas Instruments. Verheugen said he was very pleased with the self-regulation agreement. “As a result, the commission does not consider it necessary to introduce legislation,” he said.