September 25, 2011
My Old Street
I've added a few neighboring houses to the isometric image of my old house I posted yesterday ... eventually I'll have recreated my whole neighborhood.
Labels: Graphic/web design, maps
September 24, 2011
My Old House
I can't believe it's been almost 6 years since I sold my house and moved to Charlotte! I loved my little house, and this is a tribute to it...an isometric rendering made with Inkscape and Gimp.Seems like only yesterday I was watching Firefly (now one of my all time favorite shows) and eating Thai food from this amazing restaurant around the corner...
Labels: Graphic/web design, maps
September 18, 2011
Celtic Dharma Wheel (Wallpaper version)
a variation of the Celtic Dharma wheel I made yesterday, click on it for a wall-paper size image.
September 17, 2011
Celtic dharma wheel
made with Inkscape and Gimp
Labels: Graphic/web design
September 14, 2011
Shangri-la
Between the synapses …Lately I've been having a lot of strange dreams. I have heard that everyone dreams, every time they get a full night's sleep (always except if they are under the influence of alcohol); its just that for many people dreaming is only something they remember if their dream is disturbed – as in the case when you wake from a bad dream. And lately I know I've had some interesting dreams, but I can't remember most of them. They fade away soon after waking up. Except a couple nights ago I dreamed about remembering a place I haven't been to in a long time, a place from my childhood, or from another lifetime ago. And somehow this place was connected with my father; it was a small little dive bar just north of the downtown part of my home town. This place, somehow connecting me and my father from a different era … it was so real. How could I ever have forgotten it? I was so happy to have remembered this long lost treasure. It was SO REAL, as real as any place I've ever been, anything I've ever known, any experience I've ever had. I couldn't wait to get back there. As I woke the memory of the dream faded, as did the permanence of the existence of this place. But somehow, somewhere, that place is real … and I'm going to go there someday to have a drink.
[ … ]
Several months ago I was struck with a memory, completely out of the blue. And not just any memory, a memory from years and years ago, from my early childhood. How did this memory just materialize in my consciousness without provocation? … My family used to vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Every summer for a week, in a rented house close to the ocean. Back before the highways were fully developed, we'd take the roads available, which passed from town to town until we were able to get back on the Highway for a straight shot back home. Somewhere on a small road in North Carolina, between Nagshead and Richmond, is the place I remembered spontaneously from my childhood. It was a little tourist spot, on someone's personal property along the road, where on display was a tiny village of little white stone houses. A tiny little village, where even as a child you felt like a giant walking about. It was itself a magical experience to be there, for the very young me, like traveling to another world; as amazing as any attraction at Disney World, these tiny houses of stone. This place was named Shagri-la.
September 11, 2011
Ten years ago today …
It was a beautiful Tuesday morning in Virginia. I walked out of my college apartment bedroom and my roommate, heading off to her kickboxing class, said: “have you heard? A plane hit the World Trade Center.” My immediate assumption was that this was a small aircraft ... a sightseer must have made a mistake ... and an accident happened. I turned on the tv and saw the massive smoke cloud pouring out of the building. I was shocked. How could so much smoke come from a small plan? Moments later the journalists were stunned when a second large jet plane crashed into Tower One. It was clear to them then that none of this was an accident. Suddenly they cut to DC where smoke was pouring out of the Pentagon, the cause uncertain. Soon witnesses reported that an airplane had had crashed there as well. Then Tower One fell; Smoke blanketing the city, pouring through the streets. People running for there lives. Only then did it occur to me to find a blank tape, put into the VCR, and hit 'record.' Moments later, Tower Two fell, again blanketing all of lower Manhattan. Our classes were not immediately canceled, so I walked to school. My statistics teacher made it clear, terrorists were not going to stop him from doing his job. The rest of my classes were canceled. That evening I went with my other roommate to the grocery store to get things we needed, and some things for his girlfriend's Birthday which was the next day, she was turning 21. We saw one plane flying alone in the calm blue sky. I didn't even realize that this day was my parent's thirty-seventh wedding anniversary, now their anniversaries are hard to forget.
September 1, 2011
Planet BLING
How cool is this: http://www.space.com/12731-diamond-alien-planet-discovered-neutron-star.htmlScientists discovered a planet not too far from our own solar system (about 4,000 light years), mostly made up of crystallized carbon -- in other words, a giant diamond in space!
This interesting rock in space orbits its star, a small pulsar star named J1719-1438 , once every 2 hours and 10 minutes! Besides being a giant diamond, this planet is slightly more massive and about 20 times more dense than Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system
My suggestion: name this planet "Planet Bling"