Check out Yvan Bedard’s photo gallery here to access crisp & luminous photos of Quebec, Canada and other fascinating locations .. the “bird photography” section is the center piece of Yvan’s work.
It’s been nearly 2 years since I left Sri Lanka … as I was going through my photographs I realized I had quite a few shots here which nicely captured those precious and unique moments with the people, the nature, the atmosphere of this beautiful island.
I took these photos here in Madagascar, around 15 km east of the city of Murundava on the East coast in August 1994. Baobab trees have a very distinctive shape that makes them stand out from the other trees . There are 9 species of Baobabs known in the world which 7 can only be found in Madagascar. Malagasy people call them ‘Renana’ which literally translates as ‘mother of the forest’. At the time of this shoot it was winter hence these trees had lost their leaves amplifying the striking illusion that their roots were hanging in the air. Baobabs have always played a key role in supplying wood, rope, fruits, leaves, etc. They are believed by the Malagasy to carry great powers and are employed in traditional medecine and magic.
Many of my friends have never seen the effects of winter on human life - just posted here a couple of interesting photos that I took in Quebec, Canada.
My Facebook network of ‘friends’ in graphical form … a line between two names indicates they are ‘friends’ through facebook.
Just posted here some of the pictures taken late auguest 2006 at my IWMI farewell in HQ, Colombo, Sri Lanka. As usual there was so many staff traveling the world that only a few made it but we did manage to eat the 12 Kg of cake ordered for the event … 6 Kg of which were entirely dedicated for the Abbans staff. It was very difficult to say good bye to Everyone, especially to my Sri Lankan friends. Many thanks once again for the many gifts I received, I do enjoy them continously !
Friday 18 June, I received a special recognition award from Shell for my work on data integration and project management.
Have you ever been told that 80% of your organization’s data is spatial ?If yes think twice … this 80% story is over 15 years old and was originally quoted to the following reference :Franklin, C. 1992. An Introduction to Geographic Information Systems: Linking Maps to Databases. Database, April, pp. 13-21.If I remember correctly this figure resulted from a study carried out for the US Government as part of an assessment to determine how much of the documents they (=a specific subset of gov) had carried a spatial reference. It’s important to note that this assessment was not solely focused on data but had a strong bend towards documents.It’s quite obvious that such a figure will vary from one domain/industry to another and vary across time. Strangely not much debate has happened on this 80% figure mainly because a) it sells well and b) ‘feels’ like it’s coming out of the 80/20 Pareto principle.