Apologies for the insane article title, it's one of the results of passing a piece of text through "Blahblahfish", a fun yet useless re-translator.

The site takes any text you enter, and translates it to one of the 28 languages supported by the translation site, then translates that back to English again.

"This location had absolutely tall" is actually "this site is absolutely fantastic" in English to Croatian and back.

The purpose? None. But it makes for some absolutely hilarious results. The "highest rated" Blahblahfish translation managed to turn "Oh Shit!" into "Human waste of Ohio" when passed through English to Korean and back. Passing "George Bush" through a Latin translator, yields "Agricultural Shrub".

Of course, if you need a way to justify wasting 10 minutes of your life on creating gobbledygook text, then you could always claim you are doing scientific research on automated translation sites, but the real lesson here is that online translation sites are horrible at doing their job, and that using them for anything serious might be a bad idea.

(Via our friends at Download Squad)

Here's proof that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. Imagine a left hand holding nail polish while the right is rotting. The Shilla Seoul hotel is offering a "Shopping at the Shilla" package for around $205 a night through October 31, 2009. The duty free shopping trip includes plenty of stuff, such as a deluxe room, breakfast for two and a VIP Gold Card for the Duty Free Shop, with discounts of 5 to 15 per cent (and some other stuff).

Now, the next bit is from a press release, so it must be true. The Shilla Seoul is consistently voted South Korea's leading hotel (which leads me to believe it's one of the best in both Koreas ... but that's just a guess). And, why wouldn't it be? It's part of the Leading Hotels of the World chain. The name says it all.

Now, back to that press release ... it says that you should go to LHW's website to take advantage of this deal. But, if you can believe it, the press release lies!!! (Or, maybe it's just wrong). I couldn't find it on the LHW site, but it turned up on The Shilla Seoul's website. I shouldn't be surprised at this debacle, given LHW's awesome track record with the Internet.

It's probably worth looking for this deal, because North Korea's Ryugyong Hotel isn't open yet. The Shilla Seoul is probably going to be the top hotel on the peninsula for a while (at least if you believe LHW's publicist).

Although the focus of the website How to Travel the World is to help folks plan for long term travel, also known as a gap year trip, the information is useful for anyone. Whether you're a person who is going to travel for a few days or months--years even, browsing the site is a place to start planning.

Various links provide info on everything you need to consider from how much money to budget to tips on what to pack.

Before you buy a plane ticket, the budget page can help you decide where to go on a trip in order to match your cash flow. Thailand is cheap. Australia is expensive.

Buying a plane ticket and packing are obvious details. The site also includes those items that you might forget to consider before leaving home, particularly if you're going to be gone for a long time. The page "Pre-Trip Planning" offers a handy list that ranges from bank accounts to wills.

Anyone who has traveled for an extended period of time knows about the almost certain let down that happens once a trip is over. Reading the section "Coming Home" is one way to ease the transition. Personally, I think it's helpful to know these details before heading out on a trip in order to be prepared ahead of time.

Another helpful page is the F.A.Q where readers submit questions and receive answers. Any travel jitters you might be having could be calmed by browsing through this one.

The How to Travel the World is written by folks who are long term travelers and edited by Matthew Kepnes who also writes the Nomadic Matt Travel Site.

It's not often here at Gadling that we link to a website that's entirely in Japanese, but this one's too good to pass up.

A new site called Nioibu.com allows you to use Google Maps to plot all of Japan's weird and wonderful smells. And when I say weird, well...

Here are a few odor-related attractions that have already been marked on the map: head to Yamamoto for the fumes of ferrets, check out Sagahirosawacho for the whiff of watermelon, or go to Kamakura for the odor of old lady.

A commentor over at JapanProbe (HT!) notes that the "old lady smell" has been improperly translated, and that it's actually the nostalgic smell of grandma's house.

But I'll stick with the first, funnier translation.

More here.

Do you ever read a review of some random restaurant in a national publication and think "gosh, if I ever go to Boise, I should totally eat there?" Some people I know even keep files for this kind of thing with newspaper and magazine clippings, and my friend Josh keeps a spreadsheet.

I'm lazy. What do I do? I go to FabSearch.com.

Then, I click on the random city I'm headed to for the wedding, or the story, or the Eiffel Tower (big cities like Paris are on there, too), and recent articles about hot places to stay and places to eat from local and national publications pop up! It's like having a friend in that city who lays around and reads magazines for you.

You can totally wow your friends with this wealth of knowledge. You could be all "Oh, I read about it in the Financial Times," and if they tried to call your bluff and checked the Financial Times, you'd be right, even though you're too lazy busy to read it.

Check out the site - I looked up my hometown of Minneapolis and the recommendations were all pretty good!

My discovery of HollyEats.com came about as I was searching out a place that serves Cincinnati-style chili. HollyEats.com is a site devoted to great, cheap food that often has a regional connection.

For those who wonder, Cincinnati-style chili, a chili version that is popularly served on spaghetti and hot dogs, has Greek origins, and is generally available only in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Packets of seasoning, however can be found at Krogers, an Ohio-based grocery store. Skyline Chili restaurants are also working their way outward into the rest of Ohio and down into Kentucky. There are a couple in Columbus. HollyEats lists the restaurant in Englewood, Ohio and mentions that they can be found in Florida.

Even though HollyEats listing is not the Cincinnati-style chili place I was looking for, there are many food hot spots and finds that could easily help a person eat across the U.S.

Click on the Carolina Barbecue link and there you'll barbecue places a plenty. One of the places is Wilbur's in Goldsboro, North Carolina. It's the barbecue restaurant on the Blue-Gray Scenic Byway.

Each restaurant is rated by grease stains. The more grease stains--5 is the maximum, the better the food. Although 3 grease stains, the lowest rating, still means the food is great. I also enjoyed reading the background history of the places Holly visited.

Holly is actually Hollister Moore who has the nickname Holly. He has been a foodie for years. Before you head out on a vacation, I'd check here to find interesting eateries that are worth a stop. The photo of the drawing of him is on the website. You can see the original at the Palm Steak House in Philadelphia. I wrote about the significance of The Palm restaurant group in October. Small world.

'Tis the season as they say. Yes, you could take part in the hectic Christmas shopping frenzy, or you could put your money to more philanthropic efforts. That's exactly the goal of Passports with Purpose, the brainchild of four travel bloggers: Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby, Pam Mandel of Nerd's Eye View, Michelle Duffy of WanderMom, and Beth Whitman of Wanderlust and Lipstick. The blogging divas all decided that this holiday season it was time to give back, launching PWP to allow travel bloggers the chance to help raise funds for Heifer International.

Each participating blogger -- and if you're up on your travel blogs, you'll recognize many of the names on the list -- has gotten together a raffle prize. A $10 raffle ticket (which all goes to Heifer International) gets you the chance to maybe pick one of them up. Now, this isn't your standard school raffle with homemade baked goods and a year's worth of tree pruning; PWP prizes are something to get excited about. The list is long, but here is just a sampling:

• 3 Nights at the Wyland Waikiki in Hawaii
• Mountain Hardwear Women's Mynx Jacket
• Eagle Creek luggage
• A collection of 5 Lonely Plant books

To take part in this great fundraiser, check out the full list of prizes, pick the one you want (or want to give to someone else!) and buy one or more $10 raffle tickets at FirstGiving. You'll get the chance to win something cool and, at the same time, help out an organization committed to building sustainable communities around the world.

I don't know about you, but when I'm not on a trip somewhere, my digital camera just sits on a desk in my room looking sad. Thankfully, the folks over at Cockeyed have come up with 10 practical tips for using your camera in your everyday life. Among them:

Going somewhere new? Take a hi-res photo of a map.

"With modern 5-12 megapixel cameras, you can fit a lot of detail on a single photo, and most cameras allow you to zoom in on photos for a closer view.... If you are new to an airport, snap a shot of their floorplan in case you have to find gate L45 in a hurry. This trick is also good for keeping a shot of the Metro system."

Remember where you parked your car.

Snap a quick photo of your parking spot next time you go to the mall, and you won't have to wander around for a half-hour looking for your car. [Once again, all of life relates back to Seinfeld.]

Take the "before" photo of that thing you're fixing.

This one's a great tip for the mechanically-impaired like myself: "Before you unplug your router, fix a guitar string or disassemble the lawnmower throttle linkage, snap a photo of what it used to look like. You probably won't need it, but if you have to drop the project for a few days, you might appreciate a visual refresh of what it look like when it was just a little broken."

Seven more tips here.

One of the common statements I hear from people is, "well, of course your holiday images are great -- look at that huge camera you use!" The truth is that with as much technology as is crammed into those tiny little point-and-shoots these days, it's absolutely possible to take images with a point and shoot of close to equal quality to an SLR.

Don't believe me? Then let's try an experiment: take a look at the following three pairs of images, all taken in Bath, United Kingdom, during my recent vacation. In each pair, one of them was shot with my Nikon D300 digital SLR camera (a serious bad-boy, if I do say so myself), and the other was shot with my Nikon Coolpix (a very respectable point-and-shoot). See if you can guess which of each pair was shot with the SLR. Ready?

While I was packing yesterday for my daughter's and my trip to Denmark, I asked her if she wanted to take a lightweight shawl to use as a blanket on the airplane.

"Don't they give you blankets?" she asked.

Maybe. Some airlines charge extra for a blanket and pillow. Jet Blue already does. U.S. Airways is going to start soon.

In another conversation yesterday, this one on the phone, my father told me that he decided against checking a second bag on his Delta flight from Columbus to JFK in New York when he found out that this would cost him $50. On December 5, that fee will go down to $25.

My dad's plane was an hour late leaving Columbus yesterday, and he said that the JFK connection to Albany was a hassle to navigate. Perhaps, that's why the extra baggage fees seem unreasonable. Plane travel is anything but heavenly.

Blanket fees, bag fees, reservation fees, carry-on size changes, meals or no meals, drinks or no drinks, working toilet or no working toilet--just kidding on that one--are details that make air travel more confusing than it used to be.

Sure, buy the plane ticket, but don't think you're done paying for the cost of getting from here to there. Keep some extra cash on hand because you're bound to need it for something when you fly.

In this comprehensive article at Smarter Travel, Tim Winship covers 25 policy changes that are coming to various airlines. When trying to find the best deal, knowing an airline's checked baggage policy, for example, can make a difference as to how pricey a cheap ticket may become.

One point Winship makes is that complaining can work. When United received complaints galore from passengers who were miffed about paying for meals on overseas flights, the airlines dropped that charge.

If there is anything that's certain, as soon as you learn an airline's policy, it's going to change.