kuusanmaki.com

New Layout for kuusanmaki.com

Wednesday, July 16th
by martti

It is done. There are still some minor bugs to iron out (like the status error) and I’ll update this post with some background as soon as I’m finished.

Back again. Major revamp to this weblog is still to be implemented. One important aspect is to add social media parts and I did minor testing with K2 using three columns, but I was not satisfied with the result. As I’m not willing to put too much effort on the theme itself, I searched for other solutions and found a good candidate. But more of that later.

For the last few days I have been migrating my photos to Flickr. The work is still in progress, but I found a wonderful small program called Blow Up. It uses Flickr public API and some flash to present Flickr photosets in a great-looking, fullscreen display.

View albums by typing a valid flickr username here.

You can try with my flicker feed at photos.kuusanmaki.com. This address works also for me as a quick link if there is a need to present my photos. The gallery might take a while to load, but it is great and intuitive!

Building Burj Dubai

Tuesday, April 29th
by martti

Just had an inspiring conversation with one friend of mine. I mentioned a documentary about skyscraper history I saw few weeks ago and want to share it now.

It is about technological innovations, seven major leaps which made Burj Dubai possible. As for now, Burj Dubai is under construction and standing 637 meter high. The structure is generally believed to top out at 818 meters, but Emaar is keeping the final height a secret. An interesting article was released in Wired Magazine, where Bill Baker (the head structural engineer at SOM) tells interesting facts of the engineering process.

Burj Dubai crane shot.

But back to the documentary: Channel 5’s Big, Bigger, Biggest - The Building of Burj Dubai (April 2008). Seven key inventions (elevator, materials, etc.) are presented with seven landmark buildings and clarifying animations. Many documentaries are so-so, but htis one is really worth watching. Thanks for UKHolidaydude for sharing this. Here is the first part: