Serbia’s Milorad ÄŒavić greeting the audience before the men’s 50 meter butterfly semi-final at the Rome 2009 World Aquatics Championships. World champ the day after :-)
-
-
London data center staff to live in pods during 2012 Games
Interxion engineers test out their sleeping pods / future home According to Wired, the newly founded British company Podtime has sold 19 futuristic sleeping pods originally intended for overworked financial staffers, airport travelers and youth hostels, to three colocation facilities including a London data center operated by Interxion, to ensure that its high service levels are continually met throughout the Olympic Games.
With the Olympics on the horizon, Interxion realised the need to take its resilience that extra mile to ensure that its facilities – and more importantly its customer’s applications – were not hindered during the Games. So as part of a number of initiatives, sleeping pods have been installed at its London data centre campus, allowing engineering staff to stay on site 24/7 should congestion on the travel and road networks become too severe, making it difficult for critical staff to travel to and from the site in a timely fashion.
(Don’t show my boss this ‘solution’, please)
-
Olympic organizers invite Keith Moon (1946-1978) to perform at the 2012 Games
According to the manager for The Who, officials of the 2012 Olympics in London recently approached him to see if Keith Moon “would be available” to play with the surviving members this summer. Problem just that Moon died from an overdose back in 1978.
“I emailed back saying Keith now resides in Golders Green crematorium, having lived up to the Who’s anthemic line ‘I hope I die before I get old’,” came the excellent reply.
“If they have a round table, some glasses and candles, we might contact him.”
Read The Guardian via Neatorama.
Obviously going into the WTF-category, RIP Keith Moon.
-
Ian Thorpe splits from longtime manager David Flaskas
According to The Daily Telegraph, Ian Thorpe has split from his former manager David Flaskas to join James Erskine at SEL, shocking many in Australian swimming considering Flaskas has been with Thorpe since the outset. “The fact Thorpe is Australia’s most decorated Olympian should have set him up for life. But he’s far from it, and that is why he has turned to Erskine.” Via OpposingViews
Ian Thorpe, photo courtesy of mtlin, cc by-nc-nd -
CC photo #108: Beautiful trees behind the Roma 2009 spectator stands
Just a shot of the Rome 2009 World Aquatics Championships swimming pool spectator stands, taken mainly because of those beautiful trees in the background. Jeez, everything is special when you come from the cold and windy north, including trees :-)
-
Eindhoven Swim Cup: Kromowidjojo sets another textile best
So yesterday at the Eindhoven Swim Cup, the Netherland’s Ranomi Kromowidjojo blazed the women’s 50 meter freestyle with a world textile best of 24.10. Brazil’s Bruno Fratus managed an impressive 21.87 in the men’s event, read more here on SwimmingWorld Magazine, and see all results here.
-
Anthony Ervin talks to kids at diversity clinic
2000 Olympic gold medalist Anthony Ervin visited the Ossining Aquatics Center on Sunday to speak to about 100 aspiring swimmers on the Spartans Swim Team at Metropolitan Swimming’s diversity clinic. Read lohud.com
-
Wow, beautiful all-red spectator stand in tribute to 11-year-old cancer victim
At the 10th annual Easter swim meet at Hutton Moor Leisure Center in Weston, UK, yesterday, hundreds of swimmers and supporters came together in red in tribute of 11-year-old Mary Collard, keen member of the Weston Swimming Club, who lost her battle against bone cancer on New Year’s Day. Read more here on Mercury24 -
What makes a swimming pool fast ?
Interesting story here on The Brown Daily Herald, with Brown Bears’ head coach Peter Brown describing what makes the new Katherine Moran Coleman Center swimming pool the fastest aquatic center in the Ivy League and in the Northeast.
(Ehm, vaguely related video)
“Fast pools have specific characteristics, and if you don’t have those, you’re going to have a slow pool,†Peter Brown said.
The first quality is the pool’s depth. In general, “the deeper the water, the better,†Peter Brown said. Men’s swimming captain James Hunter ’12 said the nine feet of depth reduce swimmers’ waves from bouncing off the bottom of the pool, which reduces turbulence in the water.