Eric Rougier has posted a gorgeous full screen Quicktime VR scene from the 2nd floor of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Enjoy.Quicktime.

We took a ride through the arboretum today. I managed to shoot a few rather nice photos of the beautiful fall color. Click on the photos and view a 1024 x 768 version. This size can be used for a desktop background image on many pc, linux and mac computers (save the large photo to your computer):

Enjoy it now, before winter grey begins 🙁

12 stranded hikers found safe; common sense and prayers, the hikers used their heads — and kept the faith. John M. Hubbell, Meredith May and Ulysses Torassa:

It could have been disaster. Death in the utterly quiet wilderness, two miles above sea level. With nobody around to know you’re gone.
But it turned out differently for three groups of hikers that were imprisoned by weekend snowstorms in the Sierra Nevada high country. All of them were rescued Thursday, and the real tale of their ordeal is that in many ways it wasn’t an ordeal. They were pretty experienced in the outdoors, they had good equipment and, most important in the eyes of professional rescue workers, they stayed together.
On Thursday, as they were brought to safety and the hugs and kisses of their loved ones, they told their stories.

I doubt this means much for Madison flyers, other than more connections to similar sized 50 and 80 seat jets [I once flew Madison – Denver – Boise – San Francisco in one day, all on 50 seat jets 🙁 ].
I have to think one or two of the “major” airlines will be gone in the next two years.

James Dannenberg takes us west on Highway 14:

U.S. Highway 14, known as the Frank Lloyd Wright Memorial Highway, begins due west of town and winds through beautiful countryside, past some of the pieces of the puzzle that make up the self-professed “world’s greatest architect.” I drove this bucolic byway last September, on a perfect autumn day when the deep greens were just beginning to turn to gold in anticipation of the long Midwestern winter.
You could cruise the 120 miles in a few hours and revel just in the Wisconsin landscapes. But there’s a reason it’s called the Frank Lloyd Wright Memorial Highway: This fascinating, complex architect was born, lived and worked within a figurative stone’s throw of U.S. 14, and much of his spirit remains along the way, in his buildings, including Taliesin in Spring Green, and in the hills and fields of western Wisconsin, the inspiration for Wright’s conception of “organic architecture,” which emphasized the synchronicity of structure and nature.

Ian Orgias shares an interesting Tokyo VR Scene [Quicktime VR]

Toshio Fuji shares a nicely done Quicktime VR Tour of Tokyo’s Urababa area.

Spud Hilton takes us on a journey with the Hippie Bus:

It’s 5 a.m. and my left leg is wedged irretrievably between a couple of Brits, who are spooning in somnolent bliss as our strangely loaded bus trundles through the Sierra foothills.
Everywhere are bodies on mattresses — a tangle of blurry-eyed Brits, shaggy-headed Germans, curled-up Kiwis — languorously sprawled as if acting out a page of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog, only with more clothes.