Umbul Ponggok, A, Obscure Indonesian village,

has a pond, which is a must for every Instagram influencer,

photograph, Umbul Ponggok/Instagram, but it was not always so, 15 years ago, Ponggok was a poor, obscure Indonesian village, and its immaculate pond was a dirty, polluted cesspool where locals used to bathe and wash their dirty clothes, unemployment was high and locals barely earned a living farming and mining in nearby quarries, 

today, that same village ranks among the 10 richest in Indonesia, unemployment is almost non-existent, and tourism drives the local economy, and it was all possible thanks to Umbul Ponggok and Instagram,

 the South China Morning Post reports that back in 2005 Ponggok had an annual income of some 80 million rupiah, today, Tirta Mandiri’s annual revenue from its various businesses – all centered around the pond – reaches 14 billion rupiah, it has also become known as one of the must-see tourist attraction of Klaten Regency, and a magnet for Instagram influencers in search of the hottest selfie spots, thousands of people travel to Umbul Ponggok every weekend, and the local authorities make sure that they are not disappointed, as underwater selfies are the most popular among visitors, they’ve set up all kinds of props on the bottom of the pond, such as motorcycles, benches, even old TV sets, all things designed to make photos stand out, and it even has its own Instagram account, with over 40,000 followers, where the coolest underwater photos are featured, what a neat place to have your photograph taken, and if you go to the link a fascinating story of how the head of the village had such a great idea.

I Guess Many Of Us Enjoy A Coffee,

I know I do,

but how much are you prepared to pay for a cup of coffee in a coffee shop, served in the cup and saucer above? photograph Kanji Tanaka/Yelp, but first a bit about the coffee, The Münch, a small coffee house in Osaka, Japan, is probably the only place in the world where you can enjoy a cup of freshly brewed 22-year-old coffee, the story started decades ago, totally by mistake, Kanji Tanaka, the owner and sole employee of The Münch, used to a type of ice coffee in the refrigerator so he could serve it to customers right away, only one time he forgot a batch of it in the fridge for over half a year, He couldn’t possibly serve it to paying customers anymore, but before throwing it out he decided to take a sip and see how it tasted, to his surprise, the coffee was still good and had acquired a special flavor, around the time he discovered that his months-old coffee was still drinkable, small wooden barrels were all the rage in Japan, they were advertised as a great way to make cheap alcohol taste better, and Tanaka wondered what they could do for his brew,

He put the batch of coffee he had forgotten in the refrigerator in these wooden barrels and let it age for 10 years, when he tasted it a decade later, it had become sweet, almost like a syrup, so Tanaka started using raw coffee beans aged for 20 years, roasting them himself, grinding them and finally brewing his now famous vintage coffee using a Nel Drip system similar to a pour over dripper or a Chemex, basically, he puts the coffee grounds into a filter and pours hot water over it, only he has his own way of doing things, so how much I hear you ask? A cup is a mere $914.00, and you do not get to keep the cup and saucer!

If You Are Into Star Wars,

this ceiling fan is a must have,

unfortunately not official merchandise, you will have it make it yourself like Redditor Marcus_Nery did, maybe a missed marketing opportunity by Disney!

As Diana Was At Work,

I decided to play with one of the infrared photographs I took,

 whilst we were in bath, this is how it looks straight out of the camera in RW2 format,

 after using a color swapping program I arrived with this, lots of dark areas, under the bridges and at the extreme left at the water's edge,

 so a play with them and a few other things,

the detail in the dark area under the bridges now revealed,

 and I arrived at this, 

 I then decided to make a black and white or I should say sepia toned image of it,

 also I did not like the buoys on the bottom right hand side, so they had to go,

 next a small degree of vignetting,

 which I increased and added a few spots and scratches,

 along with some mould to hopefully give the photograph a vintage look, not everyone's cup of tea, but I like playing with the infrared photographs and making different looking photographs from the original,

in the evening I walked down to the bus stop to meet Diana, arriving home it was feet up for a coffee, one from Peaky Blinders and we were off to bed.

Photographers From Around The World,

submitted their best snapshots of wildlife for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition,

 developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London and now in its fifty-fifth year, the showcase received over 48,000 submissions from 100 countries for the 2019 edition, above “Touching Trust” by Thomas P Peschak, Germany/South Africa,

  “Big Cat and Dog Spat” by Peter Haygarth, U.K.

  “Cool Drink” by Diana Rebman, U.S.A.

   “Last Gasp” by Adrian Hirschi, Switzerland

“The Freshwater Forest” by Michel Roggo, Switzerland

“The Climbing Dead” by Frank Deschandol, France

“Sleeping Like a Weddell” by Ralf Schneider, U.S.A.

“Beach Waste” by Matthew Ware, U.S.A.

 “Jelly Baby” by Fabien Michenet, France

“Lucky Break” by Jason Bantle, Canada, all photographs shown here were designated as highly commended across a range of categories including plants and fungi, mammal behavior, wildlife photojournalism, and more, winners will be announced on October 15 and photographs can be viewed in person at the Museum between October 18, 2019 and May 31, 2020, You can also follow the annual contest on Instagram and Facebook, these are just the highly commended,the winners will be stunning!

I Would Not Have Thought It Possible,

but it has been done,

at just 2.7-meters wide, or a little less than 9 ft, the plot had remained vacant for the past 3 years, in Ginza, Japan, of not much use to anyone, until a developer teamed up with So Teruuchi of SO&CO to create one of the district’s most skinniest buildings, all photos by Takumi Ota courtesy SO&CO,

 due to the nature of the property, the architect was faced with several constraints: not only did they have to leave enough room for scaffolding but they couldn’t fit any heavy machinery into the plot,

 so everything had to be done by hand!

 the result is a surprisingly minimal and elegant 4-story building, titled “Ginza Tenant Building,” it was completed in early 2019,

 the structure houses a total of 5 individual offices that are separated but accessible via the stairway, which doubles as a lightwell that feeds light into the nooks and crannies, there’s also a space behind the entrance designed to be used as a retail shop, along with a rooftop,

the building was designed to be leased in its entirety, the real estate listing is for the entire building and is currently available for 1.7 million yen, or about £12,800 per month,which apparently for Ginza is not bad, so that waste of space between existing buildings might be worth more than you at first thought!

There Seems To Be Some Debate,

at the moment about facial recognition,

and how intrusive it is, and apparently how it can be exploited by hackers, also that there are only 80 to 280 feature points on the face that artificial intelligence can asses when scanning an individual, but how about a system that is said to be a million times more accurate than facial recognition technology? developed by MELUX, AirWave, the system is able to scan more than a million micro-feature points in the palm of the hand in under 0.3 seconds, making it virtually impossible to cheat, “The AirWave full-hand-vein technology, based on artificial intelligence, is capable of sensing millions of dimensional micro-feature characteristic points, from major veins to capillaries, with just a single wave of the hand, enabling users to remain in motion while being identified and authorized,” Xie Qinglu, founder and chairman of MELUX, recently told China Daily, “The major veins and capillaries under skin are individually unique, and they are at the five- micrometer level and even more sophisticated than road systems in a metropolis,” Xie added. “The AirWave technology can identify one hand out of a billion accurately in less than three-tenths of a second.” right now, China’s cashless society relies on facial recognition, QR codes and password systems to authorize mobile payments, MELUX considers current options to be either exploitable by cybercrime experts, or unfriendly to senior citizens, privacy concerns are also well-founded, especially where facial recognition is concerned, so AirWave is considered much more efficient and secure, easy to use by anyone, and less intrusive, unveiled in 2018, AirWave technology has been making waves in China over the past year, and is already being in several cafeterias and government public service areas in South China’s Guangdong province. MELUX is reportedly in talks with a metro operator in Guangzhou to implement Airwave as a seamless authentication method, facial recognition? out of date already!