Thomas De Maesschalck’s blog

Yesterday Carmen and I got back from our holiday in Calabria, Italy. We stayed at the Garden Resort hotel in Calabria for one week and we had a really good time. I’m kinda busy right now as I’m still catching up with some of the stuff I missed while I was gone but within a couple of days I’ll publish a big report of our trip. For now, here’s a panorama photo I shot in Pizzo:

Next week Carmen and I are heading to Calabria, a region in southern Italy, for a one week-long holiday. We’ll be staying at the Garden Resort Calabria hotel which has a very nice big pool and a long sandy/grit beach.

One of the things I would like to do is visit Stromboli, a small island that has an active volcano. The remarkable thing about Stromboli is that this volcano has been in nearly continuous eruption for more than 2000 years. Several small gas explosions that emit ash, incandescent lava fragments and lithic blocks occur each hour!

The guys over at I4U really know how to make a tech site more interesting. They have a Gadget Photo Model gallery and about once a month they add a new set of photos with a gorgeous model that poses with some of the latest hardware like a new iPod, the Eee PC, a phone or a video card.

This month their gadget model of the month is Katarina Van Derham, she presents you a GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card from EVGA. More pics over here.

I wish I could do something similar on DV Hardware

I just ordered the Lowepro Cirrus TLZ 25 camera bag and the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS lens for my Canon EOS 450D dSLR camera.

I already have the EF-S 18-55mm IS kit lens and this new lens should give me more zooming power. The 55-250mm lens features Image Stabilization (IS) and according to many people who bought this lens it’s one of the best you can get in its price class.

I hope it arrives in time for my holiday to Italy

As oil prices keep soaring car makers are investing more and more into alternative fuels. Several car makers have plans to introduce electric or hydrogen powered cars but Mercedes seems to be the first that has plans to completely ditch petroleum cars. According to some sources like Tree Hugger the German car makers aims to make its entire lineup petroleum-free by 2015:

If you want to achieve great things, you have to set bold goals and then do your best to meet them. Mercedes now has the first part of the equation down, lets hope they can deliver on the execution.

Their plan is to make their whole car lineup petroleum free in 7 years. To do that, they’re looking at battery electric cars, fuel cells, and more efficient combustion engines that can run on biofuels (lets hope that by then we have truly sustainable ethanol and biodiesel). “The company have already spent £2million on their new long-term Sustainable Mobility plan and are set to invest a further £7billion before 2014.” Of course, there’s a catch: A car that can run on biofuels can still run on fossil fuels, so without a good supply of sustainable biofuels, that’s probably how they’re going to be used. But still, a step in the right direction.