World's Most Unusual Houses - Home Sweet Home

Our homes are very close to our hearts and a pivotal part of our lives. However while many of us love our homes and depend on them greatly, the majority of houses still follow a fairly mundane design. This is not true of all homes however, as this list of some of the world's most unusual houses proves. Read on...

Bart Prince Homes: Bart Prince is an architect who is well known for his unusual structures. These include many unusual homes that break the mould of the box-shaped buildings we all drew as children and are some of the world's most unusual houses. Each home revolves around a central theme, and is designed from the 'inside out'. Bart Prince's own home is of course a testament to this original and quirky design – some kind of metallic snake-like looking building that is suspended in the air and features unusual looking antennae along with some other mysterious features.

Dal al Hajar: Dal al Hajar in Yemen is one of the world's most unusual houses for sure but it quite different from those designs of Bart Prince. This is really more of a palace than a house per-se, but was designed to be a summer home. Cut straight into the rock that forms its base it is highly tall and narrow in its design and made up from many different layers and levels.

Bubble House: The bubble house in Tourettes-su-Loup, France is listed as a historic monument despite being designed in the 70s and being as-yet incomplete. The design is highly futuristic and you might expect from the name it is made up from several 'bubble' shapes give it round ceilings and walls – which is reflected in the curved convex windows and doors too. It also features a range of round pools and waterfalls and if that wasn't enough it's situated on a volcanic terrain.

Upside Down House: Situated in Szymbark in Poland, the upside down house is essentially exactly what it sounds like – a house that is completely upside down. Looking like any other wooden home apart from that rather distinguishing feature, it was designed to be a statement on 'communism and the end of the world' (whatever that means...). Apparently just standing inside the building can make you feel dizzy and seasick. One of the world's most unusual houses and apparently one of the most sickening and disorientating as well!

Toilet Shaped House: Again this is a house that is adequately described by its title – the toilet shaped house is a house that is shaped like a toilet, or more accurately a toilet seat with a distinct lack of cistern at the back. The windows are glass around the outside making for a very spacious and light interior. This masterpiece can be found in Suweon, South Korea.

Floating House: The floating house is one of the world's most unusual houses and also one of the most striking. Here the name is slightly misleading – of course the house does not actually float, it just appears to be floating as the result of some very clever design work that enables it to be held up by just one point. Found allegedly in the Ukraine there are some claims that it may be a hoax.

Crooked House: The crooked house is Poland's second entry into the world's most unusual houses and is less 'crooked' than wavy, looking like its morphing and warping along the vertical edges and inducing quite a headache. Apparently inspired by the paintings of the Polish artist 'Jan Marcin Szancer' it can be found in Sopot. Unfortunately it is a contentious entry into any list of the world's most unusual houses as it is actually a shopping mall more than a home.

Shoe House: Surely inspired by the nursery rhyme (about the old lady who lived in a shoe) it seems like someone decided to turn it into a reality. That someone was the artist-come-hotelier Ron Van Zyl who built a shoe shaped house for his wife in South Africa.

source : http://www.worldsmostunique.com/worlds-most-unusual-houses.html

»»  READMORE...

Worlds Fastest Computer

 

Roadrunner - Roadrunner is miles ahead of the competition
     

On the dawn of 25 May 2008, IBM unveiled their gentle giant- the ‘roadrunner’. Do not mistake it with the cute little cartoon character that your children enjoy watching on TV, the roadrunner is actually the worlds fastest computer at present, and it is capable of processing 1.7 petaflops. On May 25th, the computer had achieved 1.06 petaflops, making it the worlds fastest computer. This lean and hungry machine is not a child’s toy and it is priced at an eye-popping amount of $133 million.

Built by IBM at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, this is truly a one of its kind supercomputer, primarily because of the fact that this machine is built mostly on commodity parts, available off the shelf at any hardware store.  The worlds fastest computer boasts of some great design techniques, which have made it one of the marvels of modern engineering and computer architecture.

Built for the National nuclear security administration department, this computer has 12,960 IBM powerXcell 8i CPUs in conglomeration with 6,480 AMD opteron microprocessor systems. These systems are connected via a new technique of CPU-Processor connection, known as the infiniband, using blade server architecture. Running on Fedora and Red hat enterprise editions, the worlds fastest computer is as easy to work with as any other computing device. Designed to predict the vulnerability and the safety of America’s ageing nuclear weapons, the worlds fastest computer computes the reaction of nuclear components and ingredients as time progresses. The roadrunner is a massive machine, and occupies almost 550 square meters of space.

The main area where the worlds fasts computer differs from a lot of other super computers is the fact that it uses a combination of two architectures wherein each AMD 64 opteron processor is combined in a hybrid architecture with a ‘cell’, manufactured by IBM using its patented ‘power architecture’ technology.

The building process of the roadrunner was divided into three broad phases. The first phase was concerned with the development of a cluster, on a smaller scale, of the AMD 64- Cell combination and to check its feasibility on a larger scale. The second phase was primarily concerned with building a prototype using the clusters developed in the first phase. The third phase was dedicated to reach a peak performance, which was aimed to be measured in petaflops. Additional clusters, architectural enhancements and some additional powerXcell systems were arranged in order to breach the petaflops limit. Thus the worlds fastest computer was born on May 25th, 2008.

Containing two different kinds of processors, one being for calculations and the other for performing normal computer functions (such as bootstrapping, process scheduling and memory management), the worlds fastest computer is an architectural marvel. The two cores of computations in the worlds fastest computer are the AMD opteron and the IBM powerXcell. While the Opteron runs at 1.8 GHz, the PowerXcell runs at 3.2 GHz. The roadrunner utilizes a total of 122,400 cores, with roughly 6,000 coming from the Opteron and the rest coming from the PowerXcell.The computational unit of the roadrunner is the ‘triblade’, which consists of two dual core opterons with 16 GB of RAM and four powerXcells, containing their own additional 16 GB of RAM. The complete CU or the computational unit is the main unit of computation in the roadrunner and consists of 180 such triblades, with each of these triblades connected to a 288 port Voltaire infiband switch. The Panasas file system is implemented through twelve system servers. Each triblade, therefore, has to pass though one of these servers to access the Panasas files system.

The overall structure which emerges out as the complete roadrunner model consists of eighteen CUs, or connected units, which are connected through a second infiniband switch. The whole architecture is a mammoth structure and is testimony to the huge computing potential of the worlds fastest computer, setting it far apart from the rest of the competition. 

source : http://www.worldsmostunique.com/worldsfastestcomputer.html

»»  READMORE...

Worlds Biggest Dog

Hercules - The Largest Pooch in The World
     
Over the past two odd decades, there have been many dogs which have been featured in the Guinness book of world records for their extremities. Leading the list of such hounds is Hercules, an English Mastiff, which was inducted in the Guinness book of world records back in 2001 for being the worlds biggest dog, weighing 282 pounds and having a 39 inch broad neck, back then. Hercules was three years of age at that time, and the story of its induction is a dramatic one indeed. Before moving on to some of the personal aspects associated with the worlds largest dog and its owners, we shall take a look at some of the other dogs which were included in the Guinness book due to similar reasons.

Kell, another English Mastiff is the heaviest dog. The reason why Kell didn’t get the title of being the worlds largest dog is that even though it weighed 286 pounds in 2001, its neck was 32 inches broad, which was a good 6 inches smaller that Hercules. Another English Mastiff named Zorba has been rendered immortal in the books and is by far the heaviest dog in the history of mankind. Weighed in 1989, Zorba was the worlds biggest dog back then, weighing 343 pounds. It was only after Zorba’s death that Hercules got inducted into the Guinness book in a rather strange way. It was on a day when a child in the neighborhood of Hercules was browsing to check for the heaviest dog in the world. He gave the idea to Hercules’ owners- Flynn and his wife Wendy, residing in Massachusetts back then. When Flynn filed an application for the record with the Guinness book of world records, it became clear that Hercules was apt to become the worlds biggest dog.

Coming back to Hercules, it is said that Hercules has paws that are the size of a softball. After getting up-close and personal with the owners of the worlds biggest dog, one can not stop adoring the gentle nature of this otherwise huge dog. He is huge, but is very well-behaved, explains Flynn, who himself happens to be a power-lifter and weighs more than 270 pounds. As a puppy, according to Flynn, Hercules was large, but they didn’t think that he would go on to become the worlds biggest dog. As far as diet is concerned, Flynn maintains categorically that he has never served Hercules with anything extraordinary and that Hercules’ size is totally natural. They have fed him what they would have otherwise fed any normal dog. The reason why Flynn got Hercules in the first place was because Wendy, his wife, wanted a dog that was larger than their already existing two year old dog, which was a Bull-Mastiff. According the Flynn, it was the playfulness of the puppy in Hercules that had got him excited and roaring to make Hercules a part of his family’s lives.

Hercules is a dog that enjoys the limelight. It was back then in 2001, when Hercules was adjudged as being the worlds biggest dog that Flynn came to know about the limelight-loving nature of his pooch. Hercules would go wagging to the interviewers and in front of the cameras, which made him a lovable animal. He was featured on many news and daily shows, and was even featured in a few commercial ads. Whatever it was, the worlds biggest dog was willing to try out new things, much to the surprise and approval of its owners. The Flynns themselves have two children, who were two and seven years old respectively back then, and according to the Flynns, Hercules got along really well with them. Later on, due to his loving nature, the world largest dog was doing shows and was booked for various birthday parties. He was also allowed to meet and get photos shot with children who came to see him from around the world.

Hercules, in true sense, stands as a testimony to the phrase- “the gentle giant”.

Source : http://www.worldsmostunique.com/worldsbiggestdog.html

»»  READMORE...