The Russian name of the city Владивосток​ (Vladivostok) can be roughly translated into something like “dominate the East”, and it stands in a proud line with Владикавказ (Vladikavkaz – “dominate the Caucasus”) some 7000km to the West.

But many people don’t know that there is a Chinese name for this place as well: 海參崴 (Haishenwai), which means “sea cucumber cliffs”, a relic from the time when the area was under Chinese control a few centuries ago.

I thought the different subtextual meanings were hilarious.

…

You know I have really been enjoying time lapse movies lately. Well, here’s another one:

1282 shots (tripod, timed remote, manual settings: 1/200sec. f6.3 ISO50 16mm 7sec-intervall).

The shooting went like a breeze, but during the post processing I discovered I had birds (a flock of swifts, apparently) showing up as black dots on about 30% of my pictures. So I had to get rid of them, individually, one at a time. Pz… pz… pz…

500 virtual dead birds.

Terrible karma.

Pz….

Soundtrack: Richard Strauss (Ormandy) – “Also Sprach Zarathustra”