Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

I've been wondering where the new front page background on Dopplr was. There was something very familiar about it, but there are lots of airports in the world.

Then I found a gallery of photographs at Gadling, a look at some of the best airport architecture around. One picture caught my eye - the original for that image on Dopplr.

No wonder it was familiar, it was the recently remodelled concourse at Seattle-Tacoma. The original picture shows the wonderful spiralling sculpture that fills the void behind the coffee bar. The sculpture is rather amazing: a mobile composed of small plastic toys, it's a 3D image of a bald eagle reaching for a salmon, and its reflection. The rippled reflection is made out of fish, the bird of soaring gulls. Suddenly you realise that some of the outlying components aren't fish or birds - instead they're random plastic toys.



The photo is marypcb's - from her excellent Airport Art group on Flickr. It's a small community, but growing, now with nearly 100 members and over 300 shared images.

And if anyone wants a Dopplr invite, drop me a line...

A scan of a document that can't exist. Yet...

Actually it can, I was in Terminal 5 recently getting a tour of the systems being installed, and they ran a test of the new self-check-in kiosks.

If I can fly from New Zealand to Hong Kong to the UK with three bottles of wine in my hand luggage, why is my own zip-lock bag (itself provided by an airline) unsuitable for a tube of toothpaste on a flight from the UK to Switzerland?

Answers on a postcard.