I rode the slide above despite its major joints were leaking acrid, over-chlorinated water. It was fun, but I suppose that's what made it dangerous for the others we were with; two flipped, with one ending up sliding down the entire ride on her neck, inhaling a good bit of water and eventually being delivered to the ER. You'd think it would be a good thing that I had a waterproof camera along to record the experience. But as I said, security guards asked persistently that I delete such photos to "protect my friend's identity". Seems more like they're trying to avoid posts like this one. Or this one! Or this one! As mr dude walked away, I passive aggressively snapped a few more of him walking away.

I know that guy who convinced me to delete the photos was just doing his job, but I didn't know his job was to be a dick.

My sense is that I didn't have to delete the photos and never have before during work related activities. But I would have had to leave the park right then and there and I wasn't ready to make that call for our entire group of 10. I took shots of the aftermath only because I thought that it was slightly negligent of the medical staff to not give a soaking wet patient standing in a breeze for 20 minutes a blanket when she could have been a little shocky.

As far as the Pentax W60 camera goes, it is still highly recommended. Although I am sad that the undelete button did not work. Apparently you need to keep the camera on and immediately undelete photos to recover them. I could attempt an SD card data recovery app, but the few I found were not cheap. I also am starting to notice that the extremely solid depth of field on this camera has an unfortunate side effect of catching all the water on the lens cover. The video mode continues to be the killer app. The focal length at widest zoom works to capture a POV of one's face during rides if one plants it on a belly. (I will warn you, although safe for work, there is decent amount of man nipple in this video.)

I guess the park has to watch its liability after accidents like that time in 1997 when a ride collapsed.

Other than that, the park was pretty good for kids, and apparently dangerous enough for adults to appreciate. Funnel cake sucked, burgers were good. I would have considered a 2009 season pass for $40, as just a fun testing ground for waterproof digital cameras, had the day not taken such a sour turn. To Raging Waters!

Located in the atrium of the 5-star Radisson SAS Hotel in Berlin Mitte, the $18.8 million aquarium is 36 feet in diameter and sits on a 29.5-foot-tall concrete foundation. Without a doubt, the most impressive thing about the aquarium from an engineering point of view is the glass surface. Built by Reynolds Polymer Technology, it required 41 R-Cast pannels, 26 for the outside cylinder and 15 panels for the inside, plus 16 on-site bonds. The precision of the work, required to hold that water volume and pressure, it's amazing. Reynolds is specialized in creating this kind of aquarium, among other things, which other jewels like the AB Baltic Mega Mall Aquarium, which holds 43,000 gallons of water but has reef sharks, or the aquariums of the famous the Burj-Al-Arab tower, in Dubai.

It was built in 2003, but we just came across it as we prepare our trips to CeBIT 2008, which is going to happen in Hannover on March but will serve as a perfect excuse to jump to Berlin in order to see friends for the weekend.

Needless to say, the Radisson SAS Hotel Berlin is going to be one of our destinations, hopefully staying in one of the rooms that overlook this awesome piece of engineering. And I will get my diving computer, just in case we can convince the pair of full-time divers that clean and feed the fish every day to let us dive for 30 minutes. [Flickr, Radisson SAS Hotel Berlin, Reynolds Polymer and Wikipedia via Below the clouds]