Submerged City Reveals Its Secrets

For centuries, scholars dismissed the ancient Egyptian port of Thonis-Heracleion (Thonis to the Egyptians, Heracleion to the Greeks) as nothing more than a myth.

Vanishing beneath the waves of the Mediterranean some 1,200 years ago, the city was once a bustling hub of activity, both commercial and religious. In fact, the ancient port is thought to be the gateway though which all trade from Greece and the Mediterranean entered Egypt.

Thonis-Heracleion may even have been the city that Helen of Troy and Paris, being relentlessly pursued by King Menelaus, sought refuge in during the events that led up to the famous Trojan War of antiquity.

Thonis-Heracleion stood for roughly 1,000 years before its eventual slide into the sea, where it was swallowed whole by sand and mud. To this day nobody knows exactly what caused such a disaster to happen.

Theories range from an Atlantis-like series of natural disasters, to a gradual rise in sea level, which may have caused the sediment beneath the city’s foundations to collapse, but of course, nobody knows for sure.

Thonis-Heracleion was discovered by underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio, following a survey of Egypt’s North coast in 2000. Since then, underwater archaeologists have learned a great deal about the everyday lives of the people living in the city, and they’ve uncovered some truly astounding artefacts into the bargain.

Giant 16-foot statues, beautiful gold coins, large stone slabs bearing ancient writing and the wreckage of 64 seafaring vessels (together with some 700 anchors) are just some of the treasures that have been pulled up from the seafloor. It is thought that these, and other marvellous finds have remained in such good condition due to being protected by sand and sediment and thus, untouched for centuries.

Even though the site has been in the process of excavation for so many years, amazing photos continue to (ahem) flood the web, some of which are genuinely astonishing.



The finds hint that not only was the city an important centre for trade and commerce, it may also have been a site of great spiritual significance as well.

“We are just at the beginning of our research”, says Goddio, "We will probably have to continue working for the next 200 years for Thonis-Heracleion to be fully revealed and understood.” Who knows what sunken treasures the site will yield as the investigation continues?

Titanic, Avatar and Star Trek Composer James Horner Dies In Plane Crash

James Horner, one of the best known and most respected composers in cinema history, has died, aged 61. He leaves behind him a musical legacy that helped to define an era.

Throughout an incredibly successful career, Horner scored in excess of 100 movies. First Oscar nominated for his work on ‘Aliens’ (1986) and again for ‘Field of Dreams’ (1989), amongst others, Horner’s work would eventually earn him two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, ten Oscar nominations, seven Golden Globe nominations and three Bafta nominations.

The list of films scored by James Horner is a long and impressive one. From ‘Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’ (1982) and its sequel, 1984’s ‘The Search For Spock’, to more recent hits such as ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ (2012), ‘The Karate Kid’ (2010) and ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ (2008), Horner scored more Hollywood blockbusters than some people have seen.

His rich, fluidic tones and warm, sweeping scores were occasionally offset by moments of experimentation, such as the African-style vocal harmonies used in his score for ‘Avatar’ (2009) or the steel drums used in cult Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle ‘Commando’ (1985), all with the effect of serving the plot and the director’s vision. He was also an extremely versatile mind, every bit as capable of scoring hard-hitting drama as flippant comedy or high-octane action. Perhaps this was why James Cameron chose Horner to score ‘Titanic’ (1997), a decision that proved to be very fruitful indeed. Both the score, and the song ‘My Heart Will Go On’ (performed by Celine Dion) won Oscars, while the song itself sold 15 million copies worldwide.

However, the list of hit films helped along to box office success by Horner’s talents doesn’t end there. 90’s crowd-pleasers ‘Braveheart’ (1995), ‘The Mask of Zorro’ (1998), ‘Deep Impact’ (1998), Apollo 13’ (1995), ‘Casper’ (1995) and ‘Jumanji’ (1995) all benefited from Horner’s orchestrations, as did later films like ‘Troy’ (2004), ‘The Legend of Zorro’ (2005) ‘The Forgotten’ (2004), ‘Iris’ (2001), ‘A Beautiful Mind’ (2001), ‘Bicentennial Man’ (1999), ‘Windtalkers’ (2002) ‘The Perfect Storm’ (2000) and ‘Enemy at the Gates’ (2001).

The list of films upon which Horner worked, or conducted for, is longer still. After you’ve read this piece, head on over to IMDB and be amazed.

James Horner was born in Los Angeles, California in 1953. His father, Harry Horner, was an Oscar winning art director and set designer who had won the coveted awards for his work on 1949’s ‘The Heiress’ and 1961’s ‘The Hustler’, respectively. James learned to play the piano at age 5 and went on to study at the Royal College of Music in London, before studying music at the University of Southern California and doing postgraduate work at the University of California, Los Angeles.

His early successes included the movies ‘48 Hours’ (1982), ‘Cocoon’ (1985), ‘*Batteries Not Included’ (1987) and ‘An American Tail’ (1986) â€" which earned him an early Oscar nomination.

From there, Horner became one of Hollywood’s most in-demand composers, scoring ‘Willow’ (1988), ‘Honey, I Shrunk The Kids’ (1989), ‘The Rocketeer’ (1991), ‘Ransom’ (1996) and ‘Mighty Joe Young’ (1998), amongst (many) others.



On the 22^nd June it was reported that one of Horner’s private planes had crashed into the Los Padres National Forest near Ventucopa, California. He was the sole occupant of the craft when it crashed. Our best wishes and sincerest condolences go out to Horner’s family, friends and fans. He shall be missed.

Taking The .... Campaign To Urinate In The Shower (In An Effort To Save Water, Apparently), Goes National

Remember that episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza committed a major social faux pas by peeing in the showers at the gym? Well, it turns out that he wasn’t simply being lazy and disgusting. No, he was actively taking a stand to save the world’s water. Or something.

The Go With The Flow campaign, spearheaded by University of East Anglia students Debs Torr and Chris Dobson, is actively trying to encourage students to urinate in the shower as a way of saving water, apparently blissfully unaware that most students (the male ones, at least) probably already do.

In fact, male students have actually been ‘saving water’ for generations now. In addition to mastering the dubious art of shower urination, young men have also managed to ‘save water’ by urinating in other places, too.

Yes, that’s right, by spending literally decades peeing in places as diverse as the alley outside the pub, our mates’ mum’s carpet, empty beer bottles, abandoned port-a-loos The Download Festival and especially Swindon, male students in the UK will probably have saved the equivalent of the Atlantic ocean by the end of the year (possibly even the weekend, if the drinks are cheap enough).

You’re welcome, everyone.

Joking aside (not really), 20-year-old Chris Dobson, who has almost certainly destroyed his own chances of ever getting any female students to join him in the shower, reckons that if every student at his own Uni does just one ‘number one’ a day in the shower, they will save enough water to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool 26 times over.

Of course, even that isn’t particularly impressive, because, if that happened, all the water would just overfill the pool and flood the changing rooms and the car park, making the entire town centre stink of chlorine â€" and nobody needs that.

His findings also imply that nobody ever pees in public swimming pools. A fact which most of us know to be false.



In fact, according to ‘Pissy Chrissy’ if all UEA students accepted the challenge (as I said, not counting the 50% of them that probably already do), they’d save a combined £125,000 per annum. If the population of East Anglia joined in, they’d be looking at around £42.5 Million.

"We’ve done the maths, and this project stands to have a phenomenal impact”. Said Dobson, accidentally outing himself as a maths nerd as well as a dude that pees in the shower. Sexy prospect.

As you can extrapolate, the numbers would be amazing if the whole country took part in the ‘challenge’ of pissing in the shower once a day, but personally, I think it would be a shame if it was limited to just the shower. Let’s all find exotic places to pee and, when questioned, simply state that we’re doing it for the planet. The power is yours (a brand new no-prize for everyone that gets the reference).

Of course, the ‘Go With The Flow’ initiative only saves water if you flush after every trip to the loo, which is, in and of itself, a huge waste of water. But we already knew that. In fact, the entire thing would appear to be based on assumptions about other people’s urination habits, rather than any sort of quantifiable facts.

On a final note, I just hope some bright spark doesn’t confuse this latest viral campaign with the ‘ice bucket challenge’  â€" because, quite frankly, nobody needs that.

...And on that note, I’m off to take a quick shower.

PS â€" by the same logic, you can also save water by taking a dump in your local Sainsbury’s.

New Smart Cast Mobile Phone Projects a image or Video on to Walls

Oh, now THIS is cool. A new phone unveiled by Chinese corporation Lenovo (makers of the Ideapad tablet, amongst others), will be able to project interactive objects, such as virtual keyboards or piano keys onto almost any flat surface.

The ‘Smart Cast’ phone (which could have been branded better, it has to be said) will also be able to project videos and photographic content onto walls, desks or any other flat surface, allowing the user to share videos (and even potentially screen movies) with multiple viewers.

The phone is able to project a fully functional replica of its own touch screen, or even a full-size computer keyboard if desired.



Despite being utterly tiny (34mm x 26mm x 5mm), the phone’s laser projector does not need focussing in order to project far larger images onto walls, desks, or anywhere else you might need to project an image (and for all you nerd lings aiming on creating a pocket Bat-Signal, forget it. I got there first!).

The projector itself can also be manually moved into at least one other position, which ensures that the projection quality should always be first rate.

...It even has a motorbike style kickstand to keep it upright when you’re using the virtual keyboard. How cool is that?

Justifiably proud of their new creation, Lenovo hired Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang to play the phone’s virtual piano as projected on the desk in front of him. I suppose they could afford to, as it was recently announced that their profits are up 20% from last year.

Of course, projector phones have been explored in the past, usually without success. The Samsung Galaxy Beam, released in 2012, was a failure of Star Trek: Into Darkness proportions (the joke being in the ‘beam me up’ area â€" in case you missed that) and the technology is notoriously hard to use. Still, perhaps this time somebody has finally gotten it right? Time will tell...

Sadly for us Brits, the Smart cast phone seems unlikely to be released here in the UK, so for us, it’s all a moot point in the end.

The Smart Cast phone was officially unveiled at Lenovo’s Tech World conference in Beijing, China, an event that also saw the debut of a new smartwatch, which has a ‘public’ and ‘private’ mode for some reason (all I can imagine it would be useful for is if somebody asked you the time whilst you were watching porn â€" at which point, keeping the screen on your wrist would defeat the object somewhat anyway).

It is open to interpretation as to whether or not the Smart Cast phone will be a stroke of consumer electronics genius or a costly failure, but for now, the early buzz certainly looks intriguing and you can pretty much guarantee that various engineering bigwigs employed by other developers will be following its progress with interest.

Taking a closer look at the DP3400 Earpiece

Anyone who is looking for a reliable, robust and high quality earpiece that boasts incredible depth of sound and clarity will be hard pressed to find something better than the DP3400 from Motorola. Given the fact that this is a high quality push to talk earpiece built specifically to deliver crystal clear sound, any instructions delivered even by people suffering from laryngitis or those with very coarse voices are going to sound crisp to the ear.

Transparent design

However, there are a lot more great things to say about this earpiece. While other earpieces on the market are fitted with a visible tube, the one on the DP3400 is transparent and therefore it's very hard to notice. In fact, the transparent design was considered in order to improve discretion and make it as less noticeable as possible. On top of that, there's even a micro-speaker that is hidden away at the base of the middle of the push to talk switch. Talk about ingenuity in design.

Durability and weight

While a lot of similar products of this caliber are indeed available for great prices, they seem to have nothing on the DP3400 not only in terms of quality, but also in terms of weight. This earpiece is so light that you'll barely even feel it when you wear it and given the fact that the push to talk housing/microphone clips to your vest, it's hard for it to be displaced. On top of that, you don't need to grab a hold of the earpiece in order to press it.

Great for anyone working in the security industry

If you're someone who plans on working as a guard at a private security company or are already working as a store detective, covert police, security office, a doorman or maybe a close protection officer, having a high quality earpiece is mandatory in order to do your job as best as possible. In this case, the DP3400 is definitely one of the best choices out there not only because its performance and build quality are great, but because it's also very light.

The wire length is 110 centimeters plus ear tube and microphone.



Compatibility

Anyone who is serious about their job and wants to get their hands (or ears) on the best earpiece out there should certainly get the DP3400. Compatibility wise, the earpiece can be used with many Motorola radios, such as the DP3401, DGPTM 6150, but also DP3600, mth850s and the motorola dp4400 and many others.

All in all, this is by far one of the best earpieces you can currently get and given the fact that it has a functional and cool design makes it a much more attractive option for anyone working in the security industry. Pricewise, you won't have to worry about breaking the bank to get it and it's definitely quite affordable for what it offers. In fact, most people are so satisfied with the DP3400 that after they start using it they're going to wonder why they didn’t get it earlier.