Snakes

Snakes are elongated, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws.

To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes´paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one fuctional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of estigial claws on either side of the cloaca.

Living snakes are found on every continent except Antarctica, and on most smaller land masses - exceptions include some large islands, such as Ireland and New Zealand, and many small islands of the Atlantic and central Pacific. Additionally, sea snakes are widespread throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Television advertisement

A commercial advertisement on television (usually abbreviated to TV commercial, ad, ad-film, and known in UK as advert, or TV advert) is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization, which conveys a message, typically to market a product or service.

Advertising revenue provides a significant portion of the funding for most privately owned television networks. The vast majority of television advertisements today consist of brief advertising spots, ranging in length from a few seconds to several minutes (as well as program.length infomercials). 

Advertisements of this sort have been used to promote a wide variety of goods, services and ideas since the dawn of television. The effects of television advertising upon the viewing public (and the effects of mass media in general) have been the subject of philosophical discourse by such luminaries as Marshall Mcluhan. The viewership of television programming, as measured by companies such as Nielsen Media Research, is often used as a metric for television advertisement placement, and consequently, for the rates charged to advertisers to air within a given network, television program, or time of day (called a "day-part").

In many countries, including the United States, television campaign advertisements are considered indispensable for a political campaign. In other countries, such as France, political advertising on television is heavily restricted, while some countries, such as Norway, completely ban political ads. The first official, paid television advertisement was broadcast in the United States on July 1, 1941 over New York station WNBT (now WNBC) before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. The announcement for Bulova watches, for which the company paid anywhere from $4.00 to $9.00 (reports vary), displayed a WNBT test pattern modified to look like a clock with the hands showing the time.

The Bulova logo, with the phrase "Bulova Watch Time", as shown in the lower right-hand quadrant of the test pattern while the second hand swept around the dial for one minute. The first TV ad broadcast in Asia was on Nippon TV in Tokio on August 28, 1953, advertising Seikosha (now Seiko), with also displayed a clock with the current time. The first TV ad broadcast in the UK was on ITV on 22 September 1955, advertising Gibbs SR toothpaste.

Smart TV

A Smart TV, sometimes referred to as connected TV or hibrid TV, (not to be confused with IPTV, Internet TV, or with Web TV) is a television set or set-top box with integrated Internet and Web 2.0 features, and is an example of technological convergence between computers and television sets and set-top boxes.

Besides the traditional functions of television sets and set-top boxes provided through traditional broadcasting media, these devices can also provide online interactive media, Internet TV, over-the-top content, as well as on-demand streaming media, and home networking access.

The software that runs smart TVs can be preloaded into the device, or updated or installed on demand via on app store or app marketplace, in a similar manner to how the Internet, Web widgets, and software applications (in this context commonly just referred to as "apps") are integrated in modern smartphones.

The technology that enables smart TVs is also incorporated in devices such as set-top boxes, digital media players, Blu-ray players, game consoles, digital signage hotel television systems, and other network connected interactive devices that utilize television type display outputs. 

Welcome to the future of the TV.

Television or TV.

Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium that is used for transmiting and receiving moving images and sound. Television can transmit images that are monochrome (black and white), in color, or in three dimensions.

The word "television" comes from Ancient Greek (tele = far),  and Latin (visio = sight). Television may also refer specifically to a television set, television program, or television transmission. First commercially available in very crude form on an experimental basis in the late 1920s, then popularized in greatly improved form shortly after World War II, the television set has become commonplace in homes, businesses, and institutions, particularly as a vehicle for entertainment, adevertising, and news. During the 1950s, tv became the primary medium for molding public opinion.

In the mid-1960s, color broadcasting and sales of color tv sets surged in the US and began in most other developed countries. The availability of storage media such as video cassettes (mid 1970s), laserdiscs (1978), DVDs (1997), and highdefinition Blu-ray discs (2006) enabled viewers to use the television set to watch recorder material such as movies and broadcast material. 

Internet TV has seen the rise of television programming available via the Internet through services such as iPlayer, Hulu, and Netflix. In 2009, 78% of the word´s households owned at least one television set, an increase of 5% from 2003. The replacement of bulky, high-voltage cathode ray tuve (CRT) screen displays with compact, energy-efficient, flat-panel alternatives such as LCDs (both fluorescentbacklit and LED-backlit), plasma displays, and OLED displays was a major hardware revolution that began penetrating the consumer computer monitor market in the late 1990s and soon spread to TV sets. In 2013, 87% of televisions sold had color LCD screens.

Ebola virus

Ebola virus (EBOV, formerly designated Zaire ebolavirus) is the sole member of the Zaire ebolavirus species, and the most dangerous of the five known viruses within the genus Ebolavirus. Four of the five known ebolaviruses cause a severe and often fatal hemorrhagic fever in humans and other mammals, known as Ebola virus disease. The virus and its species were both originally named for Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), the country where it was first described, and was at first suspected to be a new "strain" of the closely related Marburg virus; the virus (but not its species) was renamed to "Ebola virus" in 2010 to avoid confusion.

The EBOV genome is approximately 19.000 base pairs long. It encodes seven structural proteins: nucleoprotein (NP), polymerse cofactor (VP35), (VP40), GP, transcription activator (VP30), VP24, and RNA polymerase (L). It is difficult to study due to the virulent nature of the virus. Ebola virus is one of the four ebolaviruses known to cause disease in humans. It has the higest case-fatality rate of these ebolaviruses, averaging 83% since first described in 1976, although fatality rates up to 90% have been recorded in one epidemic (2002-03).

Amsterdam to Wacken 2014

Wacken Open Air (W.O.A) is a summer open air metal music festival. It takes place annually in the small village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany. With 80.000 festival visitors, and including personnel a total of roughly 86.000 attendees in 2011, it attracts all kinds of metal music fans, such as fans of black, death, power, trash, gothic, folk, metalcore, nu and hard rock from around the world.

The festival was first held in 1990 as a small event for local German bands. W.O.A. is usually held at the beginning of August and lasts three days. Since 2002, the Wacken Firefighters, the local volunteer fire department band, opens the festival. This year the confirmed bands Death Angel and Iced Earth canceled their summer shows including Wacken Open Air.

Double Main Stage, Thursday 31st July:

- Letz-Zep

- Skyline

- Bülent

- Ceylan

- Hammerfall

- Steel Panther

- Saxon

- Accept

- Masterplan

Friday, 1st August:

- Chthonic

- Skid Row

- Endstille

- Five Finger Death Punch

- Bring me the horizon

- Heaven shall burn

- Children of Bodom

- Apocalyptica

- Motörhead

- Slayer

- King Diamond

- WASP

Saturday, 2nd August:

- Arch Enemy
- Sodom
- Behemonth
- Devin Townsend Project
- Emperor
- Amon Amarth
- Megadeth
- Avantasia
- Kreator
- Van Canto

This journey was amazing and my favourite place was Alkmaar, it´s a municipaly and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of Noord Holland. Alkmaar is well known for its traditional cheese market. For tourists, it´s a popular cultural destination.

Thanks to: Victor Van Canto, Hector Our Destiny, Lu of the North, Melanie the Croatian, Alfa Romeo Mito,  Joacim Cans, Oscar Dronjak, Michael Starr, Biff Byford, Mark Tornillo, Roland Grapow, Jorn Lande, Ivan Moody, Alexi Lahilo, Eicca Toppinen, Lemmy Kilmister, Johan Hegg, Dave Mustaine, Tobias Sammet, Michael Kiske, Amanda Somerville, Stefan and Ross "Rakkataka", Holland and Germany for putting up with us. Someday we will come back to another adventure.

Long live to Rock and may the force be with you...only time will tell.

Mental health

Mental health or behavioral health is a level of psychological well-being, or an absence of a mental disorder; it is the "psychological state of someone who is functioning at a satisfactory level of emotional and behavioral adjustment". From the perspective of positive psychology or holism, mental health may include an individual´s ability to enjoy life, and create a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience.

According to World Health Organization (WHO) mental health includes "subjective well-being, perceived self-efficacy, autonomy, competence, intergenerational dependence, and self-actualization of one´s intellectual and emotional potencial, among others." WHO further states that the well-being of an individual is encompassed in the realization of their abilities, coping with normal stresses of life, productive work and contribution to their community.