Tuesday, August 26, 2008

La Tomatina, Buñol

Tomorrow, on 27th of August, a Spanish town Buñol will gather for the yearly Tomatina festival.
Like on any festival, guests from all around the world will enjoy live music, food, drinks, and fireworks. But at about 11 am several trucks will bring tons of tomatoes to Plaza del Pueblo, the center of the town. Everyone in the streets will run towards the trucks and tomatoes to fight in a tomato battle. During the fight, most of bars and cafes are closed, and people wear minimum of clothes.

In 2008, as La Tomatina official website says, 40,000 people will participate in the battle where 120,000 kilograms of tomatoes will be launched and destroyed. Six trucks will be carrying them from the town of Castellón Xilxes. The trucks will distribute the tomatoes over Paseo de San Luis, Calle del Cid, the Piazza del Popolo, and Avenida del País Valencià. You can find these streets in Google Maps.

There are only few rules of the battle. They are automatically translated from Spanish, so may not be too accurate :)

If you come to La Tomatina, respects the rules.
This year's Tomatina is celebrated on August 27, 2008.
La Tomatina begins at 11 am, there is a rocket that announces the start of the battle, an hour, another rocket indicating that the battle is over.
The tomato, which is mature, must be crushed by hand before launching it.
You should not enter bottles or any object that might cause accidents.
You should not either break or launching shirts.
You must be careful to the passage of trucks.
In the second shooting of housing should be left to launch tomatoes.
These small rules of civility and coexistence are necessary for the feast takes place as every year, ie without any kind of problems.




View in Google Maps

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Tskhinvali

There will never be this town of Tskhinvali, capital of self-declared South Ossetia.


View in Google Maps

Note that Google removed all roads and towns from Georgia in Google Maps - now it's just one big blank country.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

New Google Imagery For Beijing Olympics 2008

New Google Earth imagery provides access to the latest shots of Beijing Olympics stadiums, sports centers and other buildings of the Olympics 2008.
New images cover Beijing, Tianjin, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, Quingdao, and Shenyang. Some of the images were made just on July 19th, like the image of the Olympic Sports Center Stadium below.



View in Google Maps

It is worth to mention that the 3D Building layer already contains some 3D models like the Beijing National Stadium below.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Total Solar Eclipse

No words can describe this