The tallest structure ever built is complete. The Burj Dubai has been under construction since 2004, located in Dubai, UAE (that’s in the Middle East if you don’t know). It is one of the most beautiful buildings I’ve ever seen, in one of the most beautiful cities (structurally) I’ve ever seen. It is 2,684 feet tall with 160 floors, and it’s GIGANTIC. The record for tallest skyskraper in the world has been broken several times recently, but the Burj Dubai not only broke the record, it broke the record for how much a record was broken by. To give you an idea of how tall this building is, let me show you some images and compare it with other supertall buildings.

To the left you can see the tower as it nears completion. Do not adjust your television set, that is a real image of the tower. I know, I know, you just realized it is now the future. Happened to me too. The tower is a half-mile high, and it can hold 35,000 people. Just imagine waiting for an elevator at the end of the work day. Of course, since the building houses offices and residential spaces (and hotels and restaurants to boot), your rush hour commute could potentially consist of an elevator ride from the 150th floor to the 107th floor. That is, if you’re super rich.

Speaking of elevators, Burj Dubai has 56 of them, which are capable of speeds up to 40 mph (a world record). You still want more trivia? Ok, the air outside the building is 11 degrees cooler at the top than the base, and the top of the tower can sway 4 feet during strong winds. It took 22 million man hours to complete. All 700 private residences between the 45th and 108th floors sold out within 8 hours of being on the market.

So just how tall is Burj Dubai? Well, for a long time the tallest building in the world was the Empire State Building, which stands at 1250 feet with 102 floors:

After 42 years of owning the record, the Empire State Building was destroyed by aliens on July 4th. Just kidding, it was surpassed when the World Trade Center towers were built, which stood 1368 feet and had 110 floors, beating the previous record by 118 feet:

Is it just me or were those towers ugly? Well, they were surpassed in 1973 by Willis Tower (originally Sears Tower) which stands at 1450 feet and has 108 floors, beating the previous record by 82 feet:

Willis Tower held the record for a few decades until the Petronas Towers were built – the ones featured in the movie “Entrapment” with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Well those are 1480 feet tall, beating the previous record by 30 feet:

They were the tallest buildings in the world from 1998 to 2004. Then, along came Taipei 101, built in Taipei, Taiwan. Completed in 2004, it is 1670 feet tall, breaking the previous record by around 200 feet:

Holy cow that’s tall. Well I’ve got news for you. None of these buildings compare with Burj Dubai. As mentioned, Burj Dubai is a whopping 2684 feet tall. That smashes the previous record by over 1000 feet! Ever since the Empire State Building, the record for tallest building in the world was broken by 118 feet, 82 feet, 30 feet, and 200 feet. You can add all those together and Burj Dubai smashes the record by more than double that number. Just take a look at this infographic to get a feel for the scale of the buildings:

Wow! Feast your eyes on these images of Burj Dubai. Keep in mind the buildings in Dubai are really tall, ultra modern buildings. Look at them compared to Burj Dubai. They seem so insignificant. Also, keep in mind that the exterior of the building was completed so recently (within the last week) that there aren’t even images out there yet of the finished product. The following images were taken before it was even at its full height:

Now that your mind has been fully blown, let me go one step further in classic TGM style. There is a building in the works that is going to blow Burj Dubai out of the water. Remember in Star Wars when you are actually able to fully fathom the size of the Death Star? You are only able to do so when you use relative objects. We start out grasping how extremely large a Star Destroyer is. Then we see how miniscule it is compared to a Super Star Destroyer. Then, and only then, are we able to grasp the sheer size of the Death Star, when we see that a Super Star Destroyer is only a dot compared to it.

In similar fashion we have taken a look at the tallest buildings ever built, and then shown how insignificant they are compared to Burj Dubai. Now, we are going to fully grasp the size of a building that is currently being built by comparing it to Burj Dubai. The building is called Nakheel Tower, and it is being built in – you guessed it – Dubai. It is going to be 4593 feet tall. That is almost a mile! Take a look at some of these renderings:

That second one is interesting because you can see some other buildings in the works around the world, including the China 117 Tower in China, the Freedom Tower (1 World Trade Tower) in New York, the Chicago Spire in Chicago, and the Abraj Al Bait Towers in Saudi Arabia. Some Buildings in the works not pictured are the Shangai Tower in China, the Pentominium in Dubai, the Burj Al Alam in (*yawn*) Dubai, and the Federation Tower in – hey – Moscow enters the ring!

As for local news, let’s check in on the progress of a beautiful skyscraper being built right here in my hometown of Indianapolis. The JW Marriott tower – the 7th tallest building in Indianapolis, the tallest hotel in Indiana, and tallest JW Marriott in the country – is coming along quite nicely:

It’s actually a lot taller than that now, but that’s the latest construction image I could find. Hope you enjoyed this post!

I personally prefer the theme called Tree because it changes with the weather. All you have to do is type in your city when you select the theme and it takes care of the rest. It’s awesome, and also very accurate. No joke – one time I was checking my email and saw that it was snowing on the screen behind my emails and then I turned my head and looked out the window and sure enough it was snowing. Had it not been for my Gmail theme I might have never known! Based on this principal I have thought of a really fun challenge that you can do. It’s pretty hard because I haven’t even been able to complete it yet. So it’s hard and it’s fun. At least it’s fun, though.

I have been using the Tree theme for about 4 months and up to this point I have only noticed about 4 different weather possibilities. That is until today, when my Gmail suddenly showed a dark and ominous sky that I had never seen before – even during rain. It scared me. It really really scared me. No it didn’t, but anyway I wanted to find out just how many different types of weather my theme was capable of showing me. It turns out there are a total of 12 possible variations of the Tree theme!

Here’s what I usually see:

And here’s what punched me in the face and gave me a dose of reality today:

So dark, I know! Really really scary. Not really, but you can imagine my shock nonetheless. Ever think you’re about to take a big swig of coke and it turns out to be ice tea? You have to be careful in this life. On with the challenge.

So the first ever (and probably last) TGM reader challenge is: can you find all 12? Here’s how to play:

1. Change your Gmail theme to “Tree”:
   • In Gmail, click Settings (top right)
   • Click the Themes tab
   • Click “Tree” (about halfway down the list)
   • Make sure your location is correct (below the list of themes)
2. Note your current weather and then have a look at all 12 possible weather conditions so you’ll know what yours is called (sunny? hazy? cloudy?)
3. Now here’s the hard part: change your city until you find all 12 conditions

So far I have been able to find 6 of the 12. The way I did it was to look at current weather maps and then change my city in Gmail to where it looks like that weather is. For instance, I saw a bunch of rain over Kentucky this morning, so I changed my city to Lexington in Gmail and just like that it was rainy and all my emails were wet (literally – this theme is sweet!)

Tip: each time you change your city, make sure you refresh your browser to see your new weather.

The 12 possibilities are:

1. sunny
2. hazy
3. windy
4. foggy
5. mostly cloudy
6. cloudy
7. rainy
8. stormy
9. thunderstorm
10. icy
11. flurries
12. snowy

Here are the ones I’ve found so far:

Sunny In El Paso

Mostly Cloudy In Cleveland

Cloudy In Alexandria (Louisiana)

Rainy In Lexington

And finally, I’ll help you out with a gem I was able to find today:

Hazy In Los Angeles

So, it’s up to you to find the 6 remaining weather conditions: windy, foggy, icy, thunderstorm, flurries, and snowy. Take a screenshot and post it in the comments (do my comments accept screenshots?) or at least the city, weather condition, and time. I bet thunderstorm is the rarest, and fog is probably hard to snag too. I wish they would add the following conditions: sleet, hail, tornado, hurricane, humid (90%+) and sweltering (100°+).

Good luck and enjoy the weather!

The Intarwebs are scary. Especially when they gots AJAX on them. Cuz it’s hard to get them out.

There are so many elements that go into an ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX website: assemblies, controls, the script manager and whatnot. Don’t fret. I found a great reference for AJAX-enabling your existing ASP.NET 2.0 applications.

I’ve been developing a project for about a week and I just realized I hadn’t installed the AJAX extensions on my new computer. I thought about starting over, but that was before I did some research and found that the process of updating a non AJAX-enabled ASP.NET 2.0 website into a fully functioning AJAX-enabled website is not as hard as I thought.

This article explains the process step by step.

As always, I found the solution on the best website EVAR for solutions to technical questions such as web development. I don’t think they help you with your spelling though.

Kthxbai.

Finally, no more right-click Task Bar, select Toolbars, and uncheck The Language Bar every time I login to my Windows XP machine. I found a post about how to do this, and I’ll conveniently list the steps for you below:

• 1. Click the Start Button.
• 2. Select Control Panel option.
• 3. Double-Click the Regional and Language Options icon.
• 4. Click on the Languages tab.
• 5. Click the Details button.
• 6. Click the Language Bar button.
• 7. Remove the checkmark from the Show Language Bar option.
• 8. Click OK.

I finally figured it out, thanks to the genius of Arcsin’s CSS skills, when I was looking at the stylesheet for the very blog you are reading as we speak, or as you read, rather. The blog. As you are currently reading the blog this post is in, as we sit here and speak, during whilst you read it, or something concurrently, visa vie.

Ergo, here is the code. Don’t blink because you’ll miss it, that’s how simple it is.


.container {margin: 0 auto;}


Just put everything inside <div class=”container”></div> and you’re ready to rock and roll. Speaking of rock and roll, did you know Death Cab for Cutie rocks and rolls? I watched a RockDock about them and they go crazy up on stage. I mean they’re really rocking and rolling. You wouldn’t guess it solely by listening to their albums.

P.S. Make sure your container div tag is inside another div tag with attribute text-align:center or this technique won’t work in IE.