Hey, what's that?

http://www.heywhatsthat.com/

Right now this is a very flaky beta, but it's still a great application. What it does is, takes a location you specify (click on Google maps, or lat and long, or whatever) and works out what you can see from there. However, I think they've missed a serious trick here. Focus seems to be on creating a system which will calculate and display the views from mountaintops - but what this reminds me of most are the coastline sketches you find in pilot books for yachtsmen (and women, no sexism intended). These sort of sketches are really seriously useful if you're down at sea level looking out at unfamiliar coastline... sadly, though, when I tried to get the view from just off Holy Island (the Lindisfarne one), it - well, it struggled. Sea level kinda blows its little mind right now, I guess.

L'hydroptere

It's not the best photo, but you can see the central hull lifted out of the water.

While I was on holiday, sailing the west coast of France, we stopped one day in a sheltered cove for lunch. As luck would have it, anchored in the same bay was this contrivance - which has its own page on Wikipedia. It's a sailing hydrofoil - a rare beast indeed!

More photos of the holiday here.

Ooo pretty: Explorius Hydrofoil Yacht

Now, I flatter myself that I know a thing or two about yacht design, what with being a designer and having done a lot of sailing and being involved in commissioning two new yachts, so I'm fairly confident that as a real-life yacht this concept is not going to fly (you'll notice how flat the water is in all his renderings)... so I'm clicking through the presentation going 'Nope... nah, don't buy that... not a chance...'... and then I come to pictures like this and I go all gooey.



I just wish I could draw like that, to be honest.