It must have been four months ago, during a trip of mine to the UK when everything suddenly started hinting at an interesting development: 2006 seemed like the year when megacorp. became vocal about ecology, energy consumption etc. Huge advertising posters at LHR, advising about fuel, electricity conservation etc. ‘Green’ products in industry sectors that never really cared before (e.g. automotive, air travel), frequent mentions of environmental issues on T.V., climate change etc. on the mainstream news — topics that used to be considered outcast, or typical of independent, alternative media outlets or ‘tree-huggers’ before. While it is true that the ‘eco-friendly’ gears of the industry were set in motion a few years back — BP changing its name to ‘beyond petroleum’ in 2002 springs to mind — that was the exception rather than the norm especially for a western business world that is still largely silent when it comes to alternative energy sources and ecology.
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Ξεκίνησε σήμερα και το δεύτερο ψηφιακό κανάλι της ΕΡΤ Ψηφιακής, το σινε+.

Εκ πρώτης όψεως από το πρόγραμμα, το κανάλι φαίνεται πως θα έχει αρκετές ταινίες, ντοκυμαντέρ και παιδικά, 24 ώρες το 24ωρο, και όπως το πρίσμα+ δίχως διαφημίσεις. Ωραία όλα αυτά, όμως με πάνω από 5 ταινίες τη πρώτη ημέρα (άσχετα αν πολλές από αυτές τις ξαναέδειξε το πρίσμα+ από τότε που ξεκίνησε πριν από έναν μήνα) πως θα μπορέσει η ΕΡΤ να κρατήσει το επίπεδο του περιεχομένου (βλ. των ταινιών) υψηλό;
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I recently visited Olympia, a truly beautiful, very quiet, and most definitely one of the most nature-rich parts of the Peloponnese.
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Πάνε σχεδόν δύο χρόνια από τη 1η Μαΐου 2004 όταν επίσημα η Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση διευρύνθηκε σε 25 μέλη. Πολλοί από τους φόβους συντηρητικών Ευρωπαίων πολιτικών αλλά και πολιτών πως η αγορά, η κοινότητες και οι χώρες τους θα κατακλησθούν από μετανάστες εξ ανατολής που θα τους πάρουν τις δουλειές και θα αλλοιώσουν τον χαρακτήρα και τις παραδόσεις τους απεδείχθησαν άκυρες. Τότε είχα γράψει με σχετική αισιοδοξία, σήμερα δεν είμαι τόσο σίγουρος.
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Today I took some pictures of Athens from Mt. Penteli just before sunset.

The angle is more or less southwest. I used Auto Exposure Bracketing (±2 f-stops) and then prepared some HDR images. The one I thought was visually the best I downsampled to 2Mpixels and uploaded it here.

I also made a panorama of Athens, from the same location, using the excellent free Autostitch demo program that’s sadly only available for Windows. The University of British Columbia has licensed the autostitch algorithms to several companies. One of them Kekus Digital makes a Mac OS X program called Calico that uses the Autostitch engine. I downloaded and gave Calico a try. Sadly, I found it to be as basic as the free Autostitch demo utility for windows which you can download and use from Autostitch’s page. While there are some additional features such as TIFF support, for the time being I don’t think Calico is worth its money. Hopefully the developers will add more features and make it a worthwhile purchase. Until then, Autostitch on Windows should be enough for casual, occasional use.

I set the panorama size to approximately 16000×3000 pixels. At this resolution you can discern large well known buildings such as the OTE headquarters, the Olympic Stadium, the controversial ‘Mall’ shopping mall, other large commercial buildings and perhaps your house (if you’re lucky and eagle eyed). Right-click on the thumbnail below and download the linked image.

A word of warning: This is a huge JPG file even for modern displays/computers and some viewer programs may not be designed to cope with such high resolution files. Also, note that this is a 6.5MB file so those of you still stuck with 20th century connections may want to think twice before downloading.

Lo and behold, the cement jungle called Athens stretches before you!