Tony J's Hacienda de la Blog

So can you imagine hard-core gaming via the cloud? Or how about serious photoshop design layout in the cloud? Or, even more taxing, doing video production in the cloud? 

I read a speech a couple weeks ago and part of it was so wonderfully profound. So for everyone out there worried about getting good grades, or getting into the right school, or climbing the corporate ladder or whatever--stop worrying!

So I've noticed over the last couple years a trend in the design of cars. It seems there's been a big movement toward "wedgy" looking body styles. It may be a subjective opinion but I don't like it. I think cars look better when they use flat lines in their body styling. To me the wedgy look has a sense of being cheap but the flat lines have a sense of precision and like they are more in harmony with the road and the wind. See the photos below:

Wedgy Car Body Styles:

Photos_wedge_style_cars

A car with nice straight lines:

Porsche

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Mercedes

One of my most favorite places to eat a donut is here:

Top_pot_donuts

It's tragic when you see a nicely designed font abused and overused. It seems like just about every other business is beginning to use this font as their "logo". I've seen it on several dentist offices, tons of restaurants, spas, hair salons, and furniture stores. Here's an example of the typical abuse.

Papyrus_font_bad

This is one of my favorite buildings in Seattle. I wish more buildings were like this. If anyone knows more information about this building: who designed it? when was it built? I'd love to find out more. Here are a couple photos and...

Office_cool_modern_building1

Office_cool_modern_building2

Here is where it is located.

In order for computing to really be useful we need monitors the size of our entire desk surface. Not these piddly 1280x1024 screens that most of us work on.

Screen-resolution

Hi Neighborhood People.

Hope this post finds everyone happy, and with pleasant and comfortable conditions occurring in your lives.

I saw a particularly fascinating picture of the earth this week. It was presented in a lecture by Dr. Carl Sagan--a long time "enemy" of creation perspective. In spite of his world view, what he said was absolutely fascinating. Read below:

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Preface:
On October 13, 1994, the famous astronomer Carl Sagan was delivering a public lecture at his own university of Cornell. During that lecture, he presented this photo:

Pbd_sm

The photo above was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 as it sailed away from Earth, more than 4 billion miles in the distance. Having completed it primary mission, Voyager at that time was on its way out of the Solar System, on a trajectory of approximately 32 degrees above the plane of the Solar System. Ground Control issued a command for the distant space craft to turn around and, looking back, take photos of each of the planets it had visited. From Voyager's vast distance, the Earth was captured as a infinitesimal point of light (between the two white tick marks), actually smaller than a single pixel of the photo. The image was taken with a narrow angle camera lens, with the Sun quite close to the field of view. Quite by accident, the Earth was captured in one of the scattered light rays caused by taking the image at an angle so close to the Sun. Dr. Sagan was quite moved by this image of our tiny world. Here is an enlargement of the area around our Pale Blue Dot and an excerpt from the late Dr. Sagan's talk:

Pbd_close

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

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What a wondeful and refreshing perspective to hear. It only adds a sense of depth to the perspective of knowing God. To loving Him and loving our neighbors as much as we love ourselves.

Take care,
Tony J.

This is my first post!