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Some fascinating facts about The Pentagon (US HQ Dept. of Defense):

"The Pentagon is virtually a city in itself. Approximately 23,000 employees, both military and civilian, contribute to the planning and execution of the defense of our country. These people arrive daily from Washington, D.C. and its suburbs over approximately 30 miles of access highways, including express bus lanes and one of the newest subway systems in our country. They ride past 200 acres of lawn to park approximately 8,770 cars in 16 parking lots; climb 131 stairways or ride 19 escalators to reach offices that occupy 3,705,793 square feet. While in the building, they tell time by 4,200 clocks, drink from 691 water fountains, utilize 284 rest rooms, consume 4,500 cups of coffee, 1,700 pints of milk and 6,800 soft drinks prepared or served by a restaurant staff of 230 persons and dispensed in 1 dining room, 2 cafeterias, 6 snack bars, and an outdoor snack bar."

The fun thing about this is the shear detail of the description. But for sure, it's a big building: "three times the floor space of the Empire State Building in New York" and when they built it the used 435,000 cubic yards of concrete (or 33,000 cubic metres which is 3 London double deckers piled in all directions)
More facts here

Another fascinating fact is that they built this monster of a building in 16 months!

This is a module worth remembering. It converts Python code into TeX nicely. Unfortunately not colour coded, but "=" equal signs become "<--" arrows and negations like "!=" become an equal sign with a dash across it. This will be good for formatting little sections of Python code into serious documentation.

Album covers that makes you think: "What the hell were they thinking?"

This is the follow-up to Worst Album Covers Ever

Fascinating view of the London tube map. Not quite sure how accurate this is. I mean, how can this 3D designer know so much about the engineering work put into the tube? Maybe it's not that hard to find out.

It's fun to see how much further down the Jubilee line is. Was that not one of the latest additions to the network?

This weekend was great. The Fujian White Crane Kung Fu club held a competition in Guildford just south-east of London. In fact, it was my club, the City & Islington (of Dave Courtney Jones) that hosted it. The reason it was held outside London was that it would have been too expensive to have in in central London.

Our club performed really well. We collected seven gold medals which I think is pretty good compared to the other clubs. I personally collected 2 gold and 1 silver. The two golds were for the senior Suan Yang form (looks like T'ai Chi) and the demo (a group effort, we performed like a play). The silver was for heavy-weight semi-contact sparring. I won my first two fights but had to stop the third fight because I got a kick above the eye and another blow could break more blood vessels and that could be very dangerous for the eye. Black-eyed

All together I am very pleased with the competition. It was loads of fun despite all the nervousity and the light injury. (last competition I broke a toe and received no medals so it's clearly an improvement). I made many friends and this kung fu hobby of mine is not only about self-dense in a dark alley but also a very prosperous social club.

I will try to collect more photos and put them here. Sadly I ran out of batteries in my digital camera.

Today the Fujian White Crane Kung Fu competition starts. All actual events don't start until tomorrow morning actually.

I will compete in Patterns, Suan Yang, Semi contact sparring and Demo.

Wish me luck!

Today I finally got the phone I wanted. The Nokia 7250i. My old Nokia 8210 has been broken for a while so I haven't been able to talk to people. Only to send messages.

I decided to get a contract phone. So now I'm stuck with Orange for 12 months. However, in the insurance plan I bought into, there's an option to opt-out of the contract after 3 months completely free! I bet there's a catch to that that I have missed because otherwise I would be able to get a free phone and without be stuck to the contract for another 9 months.

My first impression with this phone is that it's clear and crisp. Got a lovely bright screen and easy to use keypad. Some of the buttons, like the 4-directional pointer, were too small for my big fingers. Hopefully I will grow into it and get better precision.

It's got a built-in camera but I don't have an infrared port on my computers to receive the images. Where can I buy an external infrared port or other USB simple device to connect the phone with my PC?

Another nuisance is that there is no predictive text in Swedish! Gahh!! Every second message I send is in Swedish. Does anybody out there know how I can get a Swedish dictionary onto the phone?

The number is the same as before. However, to make that transfer cost me £29.99!! Why? They should be happy that I don't use up another number and that I stay with Orange. Bad Orange!

Some impressive 3D sidewalk paintings. Must be said that some these don't look half as nice as it does at a certain angle.

I hope to see some of these on the streets of London soon.

I'm experimenting with analysing the referer logs I get from Google. I.e. what search terms makes people find my site from Google.

The first attempt at summarising this.

I have always wanted to stay a night or two in these motels that we've seen so many films about. Here in Europe there are hardly any motels. Only hotels. To be honest I don't even know what the difference is. I think the word "motel" really means "motor hotel" which implies that it'd be stupid to walk to it.

Some are very futurisc, some childish, some with really nice signs, some with funny comments and some less attractive

My architectural favourite must be Olson's Motel Worst name (these days) must Bagdad Inn