30,000 LED Lights Make the “Trams” Looks like Time Machines

In many major cities excitingly light up during the holiday season, and the Hungarian capital of Budapest is no different. In every winter season, this city is covered in festive holiday decorations, but one of the most interesting events is the city’s trams, which are amazingly covered in 30,000 bright blinking LED lights. Perhaps the lights themselves might be of no specific interest but it’s what photographers can do with them that are really cool. With a long exposure photograph, these trams transform into ethereal cosmic vessels or time-travelling public transportation vehicles, giving photographers spending their holidays in Budapest a fun opportunity to snap some cool photographs.

World’s Most Expensive Restaurant for Just £1,250 per head

Now you can have a look inside the most world's most expensive restaurant: Levitating food, light shows and waitresses dressed as air stewardesses only for £1,250 per head. The innocuous white door set in an entirely white building on the island of Ibiza. It’s really magic inside that justifies but setting hardly seems for the most expensive restaurant in the world.  This is a new restaurant from two-Michelin star Spanish chef Paco Roncero Spain’s version of experimental chef Heston Blumenthal. Its food is highly enjoyable just like an immersive theatre experience. The owners stand by the charge, and the cost of setting up the restaurant, the quality of the food and the 27 staff for a dozen diners explains the price.  

Furthermore the eatery which seats just twelve people at a time is part of the brand new Hard Rock Hotel, which celebrated its grand opening just done with live performances at its open-air, beachside concert space from disco king Nile Rodgers and garage stars Masters at Work. They claim their taste at Sublimotion will be a work of theatre appealing to everybody of our senses and transporting us to another world. Though few may shudder at the price tag, celebrities and wealthy holidaymakers are already queuing up for bookings. In a tiny room with more than a few artfully-placed boxes and giant nitrogen tank a key ingredient in many of Roncero’s dishes. 

In a flash of opaque window becomes transparent, giving a vivid glimpse of the 27 staff working in the kitchen to make the 20-course meal that is served up over a two-and-a-half hour “performance” in the restaurant. A metal lift with the support of screens, lights and simulators gives the impression of plunging down the below ground as music blares all around. The feelings are just like a Disneyland ride, guests giggling nervously, wondering what on earth comes next. A all white with a white table and padded white chairs, with names are beamed onto the table as place settings. Then 2 waitresses are dressed as air stewardesses, there is a compere who will introduce the dishes and light and laser effects create different worlds to accompany each separate dish.

Roncero wants the precise tricks of the trade to remain a secret, but needless to say, the white surfaces of the room don’t stay white for long as different settings and videos are beamed onto them, creating a backdrop for the plates and other unusual crockery put in front of visitor. Food is served with a flourish and makes own Bloody Mary cocktails using test tubes presented to us in a giant book. The sweet dessert served up on a spinning, levitating plate, which eventually slows down enough to allow eating it. It is just like a food presentation and all wispy nitrogen clouds and bizarre concoctions that mean you don’t know what you’re eating until it is in your mouth, then Roncero to make an appearance dressed as Willy Wonka, the deranged chocolate producer in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

Roncero explains he always wanted to explore diners’ surroundings and complete the meal experience appealing to every one of our senses. The temperature in the room, the humidity and even the smells can be altered to suit each dish, along with the musical accessory. The restaurant is completely booked by millionaire racers from the Gumball Rally, which has just ended its 3,000-mile odyssey across the globe from Miami, via New York, Edinburgh, London, Paris and Barcelona. Is it worth the £1,250 price tag? Spend 10 minutes talking to Roncero and you will say yes. His desire and explanations about the food and how it is prepared are inspirational. He truly is Spain’s Heston Blumenthal.

Artist Made Pieces of Land Art by Rocks & Leafs.

Dietmar Voorworld is skillful artist who finds in nature and turns them into memorable pieces of land art by rocks, pebbles and leafs. When he was on Greece visit, he starts playing with the sand and pebbles on one of its beaches and felt an artistic inclination to create something special art.  

Dietmar Voorworld first mosaic arose out of that experience and he sustained down this path, seeing it more as a playful hobby than a full-time career. He started to snapshot of his works, and after finding a resilient connection to the beauty of Scottish landscapes, he eventually decided to settle down in northern Scotland, creating spectacular land art works along its coasts. He says; my installations blend perfectly into the landscape and often appear to have been there forever. Harmony is really imperative to me, as well as handling the gifts of nature with due respect. 

I can’t really sure the request as to why I make art in nature. I only know that I feel very decent with it. Despite all the experiments involved in working with nature, I continue venturing out with flawless enthusiasm. I’m simply following the call of my soul. So whether I like it or not, nature is the true and never-ending source of my inspiration, my grandest stage. Here I feel free and at home. To work with her, and in her, is a fabulous gift. In a word, my artistic work has something to do with peace. Peace with nature, with the weather and stones, the light and the enigmatic ocean. Peace with myself. 

 

 

The Unique Umbrella Shaped “Dragon's Blood Trees” Which Produced Red Sap

Perhaps the most prominent and distinct plant that evocatively named “Dragon’s Blood Tree” has a unique and bizarre appearance, it is overturned, densely-packed crown having the shape of an upside-down umbrella. Dragon’s blood trees are a unique and slow growing but potentially long-lived species that is very native to the Socotra archipelago off the horn of Africa. It is so popular due to the red sap that the trees produce. The prominent red resin that gives it its name is exuded from the bark after wounding. This evergreen plant is a substance which has been highly prized since ancient times, and has been the major commercial source of this resin, and many myths surround the rare trees. The “dragon’s blood” resin of this tree exudes naturally from fissures and wounds in the bark, and is frequently harvested by widening these fissures with a knife. The resin has had numerous different uses since ancient times, including to color wool, varnishes and plaster, to decorate houses and pottery, and in ritual magic. It is also used for many medicinal purposes, including as an antiseptic, antiviral, anti-diarrhetic, and for treating tumors, and in addition contains compounds with beneficial antioxidant properties.

The medicinal and coloring properties of this resin, and that from other dragon trees, was recorded by the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome. It continues to be used in medicine, dyes, varnish and incense to this day. Similar to other monocotyledons, such as palms, the tree grows from the tip of the stem, with the long, stiff leaves borne in dense rosettes at the end. However, contrasting too many palms, the dragon’s blood tree branches at maturity to produce the characteristic umbrella-shaped crown with the leaves, which measure up to 60 centimeters long and 3 centimeters wide, remaining crowded at the branch tips. Dragon’s Blood Trees trunk and branches are thick and stout, and show ‘dichotomous’ branching, in which each branch repeatedly divides into two. The first description was made in 1835 when The East India Company led by Lieutenant Wellsted made a survey of Socotra and gives the description to Pterocarpus Draco, but in 1880, the Scottish botanist Isaac Bayley Balfour made a formal description of the species and renamed it as “Dracaena Cinnabari”. Of between 60 and 100 Dracaena species, D. Cinnabari is one of only 6 species which grows as a tree.

The tree usually flowers in Feb; however exact flowering time may vary and depends on location. Normally flowers grow at the ends of the branches, comprises of branched inflorescences bearing clusters of small, fragrant, white or greenish flowers. The fruit usually takes five months to completely develop, which is small fleshy berry that transform from green to black as it ripens, to end becoming orange-red, and containing between one and three seeds. The berries may be eaten by animals and birds, including domestic livestock, which then act as seed dispersers.

Due to its unique flora and fauna, the Socotra Archipelago is designated as a World Heritage Site, a WWF Global 200 Ecoregion, a Centre of Plant Diversity and an Endemic Bird Area, and it also lies within the Horn of Africa biodiversity “hotspot”. Numerous initiatives are underway to aid sustainable development and biodiversity management on Socotra & the dragon’s blood tree is considered an important flagship species for conservation on the island, and an “umbrella species”, whose protection would also benefit many other plants and animals.

 Dragon’s Blood Tree is usually found at elevations of 300 to 1,500 metres, preferring limestone-based soil and naturally growing in evergreen or semi­-deciduous woodland. It is the only tree-forming Dracaena species to form dense woodland and frequently appears to grow well in areas of solid rock pavement with wide-ranging cracks, down which water and soil can flow after rains, however; as long as moisture and nourishment for the roots. The tree’s pattern of distribution closely matches the areas of the island that experience normal low cloud, rain and drizzle during the monsoon season.

The Drangon’s Blood Tree bizarre shape assists to survive in often arid conditions and on mountaintops with little soil. Early morning mists condense on the waxy, skyward-pointing leaves, the water then channeling down the trunk to the roots. The vast densely packed crown also offers highly effective shade, so dropping the evaporation of any water drops that fall to the ground, and giving shade to the tree’s roots. This shading allows seedlings to survive better beneath the adult tree than in full sun, which could be why many dragon’s blood trees grow close together.

The dragon’s blood tree is still relatively widespread, but its range has become abridged and fragmented, and various populations are suffering from poor regeneration. Though human activities may have play a bigger contribution to this deterioration, like overgrazing and the feeding of the flowers and fruit to livestock, the main threat to the species is thought to come from the gradual drying out of the Socotra Archipelago, a process that has been ongoing for the last few hundred years, but which may be exacerbated by global climate change. In many cases, the trees are failing to flourish, and the extent and duration of the mist and cloud brought by the monsoon appears to be decreasing. Growing aridity is foreseen to cause a 45 % dropping in available habitat for this species by the year 2080.

Other impending threats to the dragon’s blood tree, such as harvesting of its resin and the use of its leaves to develop rope, have decreased in recent years and are currently small-scale, but in future rise in demand could potentially lead to over-collection. Some dragon’s blood trees have been felled to make beehives. Though this was usually condemned, and it illustrates how the species may be threatened by a breakdown in traditional practices on the island.