Vortex (album)
Vortex is a remix album by the group Collide featuring remixes of songs from their albums Chasing the Ghost (2000) and Some Kind of Strange (2003) and 3 new covers.
Track listing
CD 1 - Vortex
CD 2 - Xetrov
Vortex (Thorpe Park)
Vortex is a KMG Afterburner at Thorpe Park, an amusement park in Chertsey, Surrey, England. It was installed in the Lost City area of the park in 2001. It opened on 25 May, seven weeks after the opening of the 2001 season.
Riders sit in seats arranged in a circle facing inwards, there are eight gondolas with four seats on each. After the over-the-shoulder restraints have been lowered and checked, the platform lowers. The seats then begin to rotate, and after approximately one rotation the ride begins to swing. The ride swings back and forth, swinging up to a maximum height of 20 metres and angle of 120 degrees at 15rpm. After several full height swings, the ride then begins to slow before coming to a halt, the platform is then raised and riders fast track and single rider questions operate.
References
External links
Vortex (software)
Vortex is a high-fidelity, realtime physics engine developed by CM Labs Simulations that simulates rigid body dynamics, collision detection, contact determination, and dynamic reactions. Vortex adds accurate physical motion and interactions to objects in visual-simulation applications for operator training, mission planning, product concept validation, vehicle and robotics testing, haptics devices, immersive and virtual reality (VR) environments.
The Vortex C++ SDK has several modules that simulate physics-based particles, sensors, floating bodies, cable systems, grasping, and wheeled and tracked vehicles. Developers integrate their projects into 3D visualization frameworks such as OpenSceneGraph (OSG) and Vega Prime, and deploy them in environments that contain software-in-the-loop (SIL), MATLAB, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), and motion platform components.
History
Vortex is developed by CM Labs Simulations Inc., a private company established in Montreal in 2001. CM Labs was created when the management of MathEngine Canada Inc. purchased a portion of the business from MathEngine PLC, the parent company in the UK. MathEngine Canada Inc. was originally the research and development team responsible for creating the Karma physics simulation engine for computer games.
Sirius
Sirius (/ˈsɪriəs/) is the brightest star (in fact, a star system) in the Earth's night sky. With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, it is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. The name "Sirius" is derived from the Ancient Greek Σείριος (Seirios), meaning "glowing" or "scorcher". The system has the Bayer designation Alpha Canis Majoris (α CMa). What the naked eye perceives as a single star is actually a binary star system, consisting of a white main-sequence star of spectral type A1V, termed Sirius A, and a faint white dwarf companion of spectral type DA2, called Sirius B. The distance separating Sirius A from its companion varies between 8.2 and 31.5 AU.
Sirius appears bright because of both its intrinsic luminosity and its proximity to Earth. At a distance of 2.6 parsecs (8.6 ly), as determined by the Hipparcos astrometry satellite, the Sirius system is one of Earth's near neighbors. Sirius is gradually moving closer to the Solar System, so it will slightly increase in brightness over the next 60,000 years. After that time its distance will begin to increase and it will become fainter, but it will continue to be the brightest star in the Earth's sky for the next 210,000 years.
Sean Thackrey
Sean Thackrey is an American winemaker based in Marin County, California in the town of Bolinas. From a background as director of an art gallery, Thackrey has been described as an unconventional winemaker who has done pioneering work in promoting California Syrah.
Career
Thackrey studied art history at Reed College in Portland, OR, and the University of Vienna, but without graduating. He moved to Bolinas in 1964 and for a while worked as a book editor for the Sierra Club. In 1970, Thackrey, with Susan Thackrey and Cynthia Pritzker, opened the art gallery in San Francisco that became Thackrey & Robertson, by then in partnership with watercolorist Sally Robertson; the gallery remained operational until closed in 1995. Thackrey's particular expertise was in early photography, in exhibiting which the gallery was an internationally renowned pioneer.
After several years in Berkeley and San Francisco, Thackrey moved back to Bolinas in 1977. Following initial winemaking experiments with Cabernet Sauvignon grapes purchased from Fay Vineyard in Napa Valley, Thackrey became a bonded winemaker in 1981, as the Thackrey & Co. winery. Some early problems with lactobacillus led Thackrey to take extension courses at UC Davis, although he states he has little use for the scientific approach to winemaking.
MV Sirius Star
MV Sirius Star is an oil tanker formally owned and operated by Vela International Marine. With a length overall of 330 m (1,080 ft) and a capacity of 2.2 million barrels (350,000 m3) of crude oil, the ship is classified as a very large crude carrier or VLCC. Vela is based in the United Arab Emirates and is a subsidiary of the Saudi Arabian state oil company Saudi Aramco. Sirius Star is one of Vela's 24 tankers, of which 19 are VLCCs. Since her launch, the ship has been registered in Monrovia under the Liberian flag of convenience.
Sirius Star was built by the South Korean company Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering. Her construction began in October 2007 and she was launched by Huda M. Ghoson in late March 2008.
The ship received international attention when it was hijacked by Somali pirates (allegedly under the orders of piracy kingpin Mohamed Abdi Hassan) on 15 November 2008, becoming the largest ship ever captured by pirates. The ship was en route from Saudi Arabia to the United States by way of the Cape of Good Hope. At the time of the attack, it was about 450 nautical miles (830 km) southeast of the coast of Kenya, carrying 25 crewmen and its tanks fully loaded with oil. The ship was estimated to be worth approximately US$150 million, with its cargo worth at least US$100 million.
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