BONJOUR MES AMIS: juillet 2014

mercredi 30 juillet 2014

This Site Offers Amazing Panoramic Views.

Panoramic pictures are incredible 360 degrees photos and are one of the closest ways you can get to “being there”, from the comfort of your home. If you like such amazing photographs and traveling around the world, you would love 360cities.net. This website offers breath-taking panoramic views from all over the world and also helps you easily “move” form each picture to picture.

How Do I Use This Website?

The main feature of the site is the map you go to by clicking here or on any of the photos. You can move around the map by holding your left mouse button and moving it around, or with the move controls on the left upper corner of the map. To zoom in and out use the + or – keyboard keys, your mouse wheel, or the zoom controls on the left upper corner. Once you get to the place you are interested in, clicking on any photo will open a new window for you to explore your picture.

You can look around each picture, and zoom in and out, the same way you did in the main map. Another great feature is the option to go from each panoramic picture to the closest one in each direction by clicking on the white arrows, like the one you see in the center of the picture above. I hope you will have as much fun as I did exploring the world and see all of its beauties!

If you enjoyed using this site, I recommend you click here for information on a site that will let you travel the world with a flying drone!

lundi 21 juillet 2014

Amazing Feather Paintings

Many people have seen feathers as decorative items before. Today, ostrich, peacock and bird of paradise feathers can be seen in haute couture and in the costumes of indigenous peoples.

Alaskan-born and -bred artist Julie Thompson is an astounding exponent of this incredible art form. Known as feather art, this is the drawing or creation of images on feathers.

Light as a Feather, Beautiful as a Painting!

Julie, a self-taught wildlife artist for nearly 20 years, lives and works in the Pacific Northwest of Canada, close by the beautiful Puget Sound. She strives to make every feather painting as unique as the feathers themselves are, and believes that every feather has a kind of personality relating to the painting it bears.

Julie's feather drawings have been well-received in galleries and exhibitions throughout the Pacific Northwest and are beginning to expand into other parts of the country. Successfully painting on feathers for 17 years now, Julie is finding that her work gets ever more public attention, to the extent that successful exhibitions in galleries throughout Canada have begun spreading out across the American continent as a whole.

samedi 19 juillet 2014

How to Keep Your Food Fresh for Longer

Nothing is more wasteful than food that hasn't been eaten and allowed to go bad. It's not only a waste of money but also a waste of good food that in other parts of the world would be worth more than gold. So as to not throw away good money after good food, here are some great tips to help you keep your foods fresh and tasty that much longer.

Apply a little butter to the cut side of a cheese wedge to make sure it doesn't dry out.

Store potatoes with a few apples, this will stop them from sprouting.

As for mushrooms, these you should store in a paper bag, not a plastic one, to keep it fresh.

If you keep milk in the fridge door, it will go bad sooner than if you had put it in the middle of the fridge.

Wrap lettuce in tin foil to keep it fresh and crisp for much longer.

Use, or rather, re-use bottles to close up your plastic bags.

Rinse strawberries in a mixture of 1 part vinegar and 10 parts water. Drain, rinse and put in the fridge for strawberries that will last for 2 weeks longer. Make sure you keep the mixture diluted so you don't taste the vinegar.

Store eggs on the middle shelf of the refrigerator to make them last 304 weeks longer than their date of expiration.

To revive old bread, rub an ice cube on it and then bake it for 12 minutes.

If you cook corn kernels in a bowl topped with a plate, it will reduce the number of unpopped kernels.

Tomatoes last longer when stored in room temperature, not in the fridge.

Cheese should be kept in the warmest part of the fridge, such as the vegetable or cheese drawer.

Keep older foods in the front of the fridge so you don't miss out on their expiration date.

Click Here for more great DIY Tips >>

Carefully wrap the crown of a batch of bananas with cling film to block the air and extend their shelf life for 3-5 days more.

If you store onions in tights, they'll last up to 8 months longer.

If your fridge smells - clean it immediately. It means that something is rotting in your fridge, and if it stays there it will quickly spread to your new food. If the smell is strong, use disinfectant.

There's an Incredible Universe Out There...

It's a brilliant universe out there, shimmering with endless lights. The sights of this unending space aren't only epic, but hint at the incredible secrets the universe has in store for the man with the telescope...

Here's our Milky Way galaxy, contrasted by a night forest skyline. The Milky Way has a disc-like structure and it was first observed by famous astronomer Galileo Galilei. The Milky Way has a diameter of around 110,000 light years, which means even if you were traveling at the speed of light, it would take you about 110,000 years to get from one end to the other!

Here we have Mercury, the which is closest to the Sun out of our eight planets (that's right, eight, Pluto is still on time-out.) This image has been filtered to illustrate the rock and mineral makeup of Mercury. Since it's so close to the Sun, the surface temperatures of Mercury can reach around 700 Kelvin, or 800 Fahrenheit! We love the colors and the clarity of this image.

Orion is one of the most recognized constellations in the night sky; it can be seen from around the world. In this constellation, you will find an asterism, or group of stars, commonly referred to as Orion's Belt. In the U.S. you are most likely to get a view of Orion's Belt in January around 9 pm. The combinations of color here are really breathtaking, it's hard to believe this kind of beauty is naturally occurring.

This is the butterfly nebula as photographed by the wide Field Camera 3 aboard the Hubble Telescope. The official name of this nebula is NGC 6302, and it's shape is due to it being a bipolar planetary nebula, but because of it's shape it is nicknamed the butterfly nebula. This nebula was first observed by astronomers way back in 1888.

Can you guess the location of this crater? It looks like it could be on the moon, but it's actually on Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun in our solar system. This is considered to be a 'fresh' crater because the rim is still sharp and there isn't much erosion, but it could very well be a thousand years old or more. It's only 'fresh' when compared to the relative lifespan of Mars.

Here's our sixth planet from the Sun, and most people's favorite, Saturn. The fascinating rings on Saturn are what make it a fan favorite. There are twelve rings total, nine are continuous and three are discontinuous, and the rings are composed mainly of ice particles, rocks, and dust. This photo, as seen from the Cassini spacecraft, shows a storm brewing over the northern hemisphere of Saturn. We really love the shadow of the rings, too!

Another breathtaking view of the Milky Way galaxy, this time as seen over the Rocky Mountains. In case you didn't know, the Milky Way galaxy is the one we reside in. Now, we can't get any full-view pictures of the Milky Way because we are inside of it (this would be like trying to photograph the outside of your house while you are standing inside of it) but we get views like this that show us the edge of our galaxy.

A nova is the explosion of a dwarf star, and aptly enough, a supernova is an even more energetic explosion of a star. To put it concisely, a supernova is basically a star exploding in a giant nuclear reaction; think Hiroshima times about a million. Astronomers first identified this Supernova, 1987A, over twenty years ago and it's still exploding brilliantly in the sky today.

This is a star that is several hundred times larger than our sun; the cloudy disc you see surrounding it is outflowing gas. Unlike the other images in the gallery, this one was actually created by a digital artist. But it is an extremely accurate representation of what a supermassive star would look like up close.

One more amazing photograph of everyone's favorite planet: Saturn. Can you spot Earth in the background? See that little dot just outside of Saturn's rings, on the left side? That tiny little speck? That's Earth. Really puts things in perspective, huh? We love the way Saturn's rings are reflecting sunlight in this picture.

jeudi 17 juillet 2014

The Unmatched Beauty of US National Forests

The official name of this area is 'Region 6', but its nickname is 'God's Country'. This is an area in the North-West USA that spreads over Washington and Oregon to the beaches of the pacific ocean. The name was given to it due to the huge variety of natural beauty, centered in one area. From ever-green forests to snowy mountains, crystal clear lakes and deep valleys, waterfalls to fields of flowers - all these and more cover every inch of this area.