fun stuff for ship geeks

i've spent quite a bit of time looking for cool ship geek related stuff on the web. for work purposes, of course. there are a lot of fun things about my job, despite the dinosaurs. one of the fun things i found (some of you know this, because i sent you the link already) was a website where you can design your own fish. it's called, intuitively enough, www.designafish.com. you go in, it loads a genome and you set the various parameters of your fish, from his head to fins, tail and torso and then you can fiddle with how much color and mottle he has. then, the program gives you feedback as to his capacity, hydrodynamics and level of innovation and gives him an overall rating.  i hereby present my efforts...

but there is a serious purpose behind all this fun, it's the innovative way that wärtsilä has of illustrating how difficult and complex ship design can be. clever cookies, i say.

and then, there's an iPhone app, where to kill time, you can load cargos onto various ship types, testing your knowledge of when to use tankers, bulkers and container vessels while you're on a plane or train. it's called ShipIt! and here's a you tube demo, but be sure to go get it on iTunes if you want to play. i'm not sure what it costs in the US, but i paid a mere 6 danish kroner (about $1), it's harder than you think to load those cargoes and send the ship off so another can come into place before the next cargo comes along. if i were to give a mini review, i'd say that the pace is nerve-wracking enough to be interesting, but i could do without the quasi-porn film music. worth the 6DKK:

and then, of course, don't forget that awesome marine traffic site, where you can see what ships are hanging out off your shores.  it might be that the somali pirates who accidentally tried to board a frigate belonging to the french navy (wonder if they didn't see that big letter F and numbers on the side?) a couple of days ago could use that site. actually, tho', they couldn't, as the gulf of aden isn't covered there. maybe they just need glasses.

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one last thing that's not a ship geek thing, tho' a ship geek showed it to me...it's called contact juggling and it's totally amazing...