Atlanta Trip

I’ve been on vacation, busy, so I haven’t had time to update. The first four days I saw my family, which included some cousins, father, and paternal grandparents. Now my mother is visiting old college friends. Neither where much fun.

Of course there is always new photography ops. With my family I visited the Georgia Aquarium, which was amazing. It’s mostly saltwater, but an even mix between fresh too. In one room is a huge, IMAX size glass wall, which you can see fish. It’s more amazing than a movie.

The other days I had one of my grandparents delicious BBQs, they make the best grilled food ever. A secret BBQ sauce makes it so good.

Filed under: Photography

Kings Dominion Trip

I went to Kings Dominion, a amusement park in Virginia yesterday. It was the second amusement park I’d been to, and the first in 00’s.

The group I was with only wanted to ride roller coasters, I didn’t. I did go to three different attractions. The drop, which let your vehicle free fall from 1000(?) feet. Then I went into a wave pool, which needs no explaining. And lastly a green tower that looked nothing like the Eiffel Tower, but was called that.

Here is some photography from the trip. Nothing great as shooting against a mid day sky can cause a hell of troubles.

Filed under: Photography

Flickr Stats

Yahoo! tends to be very secretive about visits, users and what not. When Flickr got taken over by Yahoo! there where many questions about how many users, terabytes of data… Here is some recent numbers that Flickr staff have mentioned

20 terabytes of data restored, after a storage glitch. It was not clear weather they moved all data to make sure there where no inconsisties, or just moved the data that had been lost.

4,000,000 users. Mentioned when users where complaining about there photos being used in large projects that made use of the Flickr API.

228,000,000 photos, with about 1,000,000 added per day

1300 Million page views per day, average, according to Alexa.

Filed under: Technology

Urban Nature

Not really in an urban place but sounded better than suburban nature.

Filed under: Photography

Web 4.0: The End of PCs?

Forget bulky laptops, or droppable PDAs. The two things you’d need for a computer anywhere would be glasses and a watch.

The watch acts as a thin client. If you play a 3D game all rendering would be done on say, Google’s servers. It then “pushes” the images to your “watch” which sends a wireless signal to your glasses. The glasses display an image which appears to be three feet away. The Internet connectivity is provided by EVDO-like technology. Weather on a plane or Antarctica you’d always be near the Internet and your data.

Text input is as easy as speaking, the watch recognizes what you’re saying. The mouse is controlled by eye movements. If you lose the watch no problem, your “hard drive” is stored at central place like Windows Live servers.

And all those other electronic gadgets you carry like the cellphone, digital camera, USB drive could be integrated into the device.

Filed under: Technology

The Easiest Way To Spread Democracy

Forget Iraq. Forget spending billions, giving someone a gift they don’t want. Worldwide, nations beg for democracy. Places like China, North Korea, and Cuba. Such countries wouldn’t even have an insurgency.

Bush, why don’t you give the country you live in democracy? Yes, why don’t you give America democracy? Remember those text books, they said America was a Republic? But with the supreme court deciding your first election you’ve made America even more of a Republic.

You’re content with America having less political freedoms than Iaq? Than why not give the District of Columbia freedom? They’ve taxation without representation. But you couldn’t let African Americans have a virtually guaranteed seat in the House and Senate. So lets just waste billions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of lives giving democracy to countries that don’t want it.

Filed under: Photography

Aryan Nation in Baghdad – DoD estimate thousands in the Army are involved in extremist or gang activity.

July 7, 2006 — Under pressure to meet wartime manpower goals, the U.S. military has relaxed standards designed to weed out racist extremists. Large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the armed forces.

Read more at African American Policitcal Pundit.

Filed under: American Politics, Black Matters

Best Creative Commons Images: Round Five

The people are taking back the press. Thanks to modern technology like blogs, youtube, and Flickr, people can share their news media. Here are some Creative Commons images taken in a photo journalistic style. The first two photos is by Hugo, who gave excellent coverage to the Anti-CPE demonstrations in France a few months ago. The last photograph is flood damage from recent rains in the Northeast.

Filed under: Photography

US Botanincal Garden

The United States Botanical garden, in Washington, DC is a mere five minutes from the US Capitol building. The museum is mostly dedicated to plants, but it has a few displays of animals. Inside are plants from the jungle, desert, rare & endangered plants, and more. In the largest section of the museum is a overhead walkway for which you can stare down at huge jungle trees.

If you like biology, botany, or plant photography, you’ll probably stay at this museum for 45-60 minutes. Photography is permitted, but the lighting is dark so we recommend a tripod or flash. Entrance price is free. Capitol South metro station is nearest to the museum.

Filed under: Photography

Testimony

Salvation, salvation, salvation! Over and over the pastor was shouting salvation. While listening to the radio and washing dishes my mother was about to switch stations. Right then I asked “What is salvation?” My mother told me “It was when someone asked Jesus into their heart.”

Being three I accepted that at face value. I later asked “To have salvation.” I prayed the sinners prayer, and accepted Christ, believed that he died and rose again, and confessed my sins. If you’d like eternal life leave a comment on my blog, or eMail me.

Filed under: Religion