In Search for the Inner Light

Evil Grin

http://xkcd.com/566

This has always been my favorite Matrix quote:

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.

More fun:

May is the new August (albeit much drier) :(



Some weather people are expecting the heat to reach 60C in open areas (and 50C in shade) in under a month. Add 90%+ humidity to that….

I'm in a doom and gloom mood today.

That's it, the weather is officially beyond creepy. We have had more than 10-year worth of blowing dust so far and the year is still young, bleh.

I'm counting the clear-sky days now. When it is not blowing dust, there is dust haze hanging in the air. I have witnessed no less than 8 accidents on the highway today morning; 5 mild, 2 major and 1 almost-disastrous with a huge chemical truck blocking all three lanes and two cars smashed between the concrete fence wall and it rear end. One could only imagine what would have happened if a car hit it in the middle.

On another note, the recorded quakes in the region are increasing. While the majority of these quakes are quite weak on Richter magnitude scale, I don't remember many quakes happening in the past.

Maybe I should look for more galactic clues or some conspiracy theories to entertain me.

Found this on a camera rumor site, haha!

Pretty cool, nevertheless :)

Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

At least the humidity still hasn't kicked into top gear and...

The sky is mostly clear now.

No darn dust!

NSFW

CollegHumor are teh best! Huzzah! :D



Be sure not to miss their mini-series Street Fighter: The Later Years

One doesn't get more "international" than this, LOL!

Speaking of rain and thunder...


and lightning!



Why, isn't this the tallest and nicest lightning rod mankind has managed to erect :3

George Carlin was making fun of airline companies as I was zooming down the highway on my daily commute back from work. Over the distance, there was an occasional flash of lightning ornamenting the night sky. The lovely nests of light offered a majestic view as they highlighted the curves of the clouds above. As I got closer to my hometown, the flashes became more occasional and more powerful. Nevertheless, the sound of thunder was feeble at best, if present at all. It looked like a distance storm was raging in some far away land. As I reached the outskirts of my hometown, the flashes seemed to occur over my head instead. The rest was quite apparent.

When I stopped at the post office to check my mail (yeah, we have our mailboxes inside the post office building but that is changing), the air was stagnant and dry. I went into the post office of a mere two minutes, only to come out and witness a somewhat strong wind blowing big particles of dust. I quickly hopped into my car, gazed through the windshield and, lo and behold, there was dust hanging in the air. A minute later, as I was leaving my car and entering home, there was a strong wind blowing dust. There were flashes of lightening, rumbles of thunder, and rain! That was pretty creepy. I have never witnessed something like this before as far as I can remember. Naturally, as the rain gained momentum, the dust faded away. The creepiness barely lasted a couple of minutes.

The weather has been weird and creepy these days past. It is either raining or there is dust in the air. Even when it rains, the rain brings down the little dust particles with it. My car looked liked it hasn’t been cleaned for weeks after only a few hours of rain.

Only here you can wake up to a magnificent thunderstorm complete with long showers and hail, have a clear and sunny afternoon and end up with a malevolent sandstorm with strong blowing winds at night. *cough*cough* XD

But.... Woooooooooooo! At last, some real rain!

I was really hyped about the thunderstorm last night and early this morning. It has been years since I have seen such ferocity (strong showers AND hail!) I don't remember driving in such intense rain at night before and I surely haven't driven with hail falling before. It kinda scary with the strong noises it makes. You can barely see the road.

Of course, by Western standards, the storm might be nothing out of ordinary but we don't get to see such violent weather often.

The country is not designed to handle any sorts of rain. A mere two hours of heavy rain resulted in a foot-high pool of water in front of my house. Other parts of the town were less lucky because of their lower elevation so the water looked like this:







Several cars broke down when water made it to the engines.

Below are some pics of the hail from my inbox:

It's hitting the Capital as we speak... it is on its way here :s











Images from Sudeer (160Km north of Riyadh):







Another crappy weekend :/

Update: The storm that reached here was nowhere as intense as the one seen in the picture and it didn't last for long, thankfully.

More pictures from the Daily Mail

This article summarizes the situation. The official cover story is, of course, radically different.

King Abdullah Has No Robes

There have been demonstrations in all major towns in the Qatif area during the past few days. Demonstrations are deemed illegal over here. Hence, the security forces swiftly arrived with their armored vehicles and freaking 50mm artillery guns in order to dissipate the masses. No clashes were reported but there were multiple shootings to scare away the people. Some random arrests have also taken place.

Buy weapons.

UAE agrees $692 mln weapon deal at arms show

UAE Announces $2.9bn Defense Deal With U.S. Firms

That will rust in peace.

Who needs to learn spelling? LOL!

Video Info:

This is a song of hope for the Palestinians in Gaza, composed and performed by Michael Heart (www.michaelheart.com)



Lyrics:

A blinding flash of white light
Lit up the sky over Gaza tonight
People running for cover
Not knowing whether they're dead or alive

They came with their tanks and their planes
With ravaging fiery flames
And nothing remains
Just a voice rising up in the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

Women and children alike
Murdered and massacred night after night
While the so-called leaders of countries afar
Debated on who's wrong or right

But their powerless words were in vain
And the bombs fell down like acid rain
But through the tears and the blood and the pain
You can still hear that voice through the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight

We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

CES 2009 is one busy exhibition.

In any case, many companies have announced their new lineups of HD camcorders. The market has more or less matured by now.

I am mainly interested in one of these two models:

Sony HDR XR520



- 240GB HDD Storage
- Memory Stick PRO Duo External Storage
- GPS sensor for geo-tagging and timezone detection
- Viewfinder
- 1/2.88" Back-illuminated CMOS sensor
- 12x Optical Zoom Lens (43 - 516mm)
- 16Mbps AVCHD Encoding
- Aperture: f/1.8-3.4
- 3.2" 921K pixel Touch-Panel LCD
- 6MP Video Resolution @ 60i
- 12MP Still Pictures (6MP Upsampled)
- Dual Recording: Video + 8.3MP Still Pictures
- Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio
- HDMI, Component, S-Video & USB Ports
- Price: $1500

XR520 First Impressions Review

Canon HF S10



- 32GB Flash Storage
- SD/SDHC External Storage
- 1/2.6" CMOS sensor
- 10x Optical Zoom Lens (43.5 - 435mm)
- 24Mbps AVCHD Encoding
- Aperture f/1.8 - 3.0
- 2.7" 211K pixel Touch-Panel LCD
- 6MP Video Resolution @ 60i
- 8.59MP Still Pictures
- Dolby Digital 2 channels (AC-3 2 ch)
- HDMI, Component & USB Ports
- Price: TBA
- Available in February 2009

HF S10 CamcorderInfo First Impressions Review

The Canon has the better design. The Sony has got all the bells and whistles. However, more MP doesn't always translate positively since the pixel-density/sensor-size is directly related to noise. The Canon cameras have always had exceptional low-light shooting capabilities. However, with the new Back-illuminated CMOS sensor, Sony promises double the low-light performance of earlier models. The 16Mbps AVCHD encoding is a killer... If it came with 24Mbps, it might have been able to completely destroy the Canon.

Oh well, I will wait until the full CamcorderInfo reviews and then decide.

:O

This is a very cool site.

http://www.earthalbum.com

Earth album is a simpler, slicker Flickr mash-up that allows you to explore some of the most stunning photos in the world courtesy of Google maps and Flickr. To begin your journey, just click somewhere on the map, e.g. "India". Images change every few weeks; bookmark this site and check back for a different experience in a month