Just saw 2 brilliant TED Talks by Blaise Aguera y Arcas

One on Photosynth

And the other one on augmented reality maps

Book Title: THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Year written/published: 2003
Summary: Story of Henry, who time travels without any control and Clare, his wife.
Book Source: Google Books,
Some extracts:

Past and Future…

“Free will?”
He gets up, walks to the window, stands looking out over the Tatingers’ backyard. “I was just talking about that with a self from 1992. He said something interesting: he said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in the present. He says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there.”
“But whenever I am, that’s my present. Shouldn’t I be able to decide—”
“No. Apparently not.”
“What did he say about the future?”
“Well, think. You go to the future, you do something, you come back to the present. Then the thing that you did is part of your past. So that’s probably inevitable, too.”

Determinism and creating the future…

Clare shrugs. “But sometimes you tell me something and I feel like the future is already there, you know? Like my future has happened in the past and I can’t do anything about it.”
“That’s called determinism,” I tell her. “It haunts my dreams.”
Clare is intrigued. “Why?”
“Well, if you are feeling boxed in by the idea that your future is unalterable, imagine how I feel. I’m constantly running up against the fact that I can’t change anything, even though I am right there, watching it.”

Free Will and our choices….

“The choices we’re working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all the variables; and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we have free will anyway. Right?”
Clare wiggles her toes at me. “I guess.”
“And what do you vote for?”

Knowing death…

Alba smiles. “How do you do?” She is the most self-possessed child I’ve ever met.
I scrutinize her: where is Clare in this child? “Do we see each other much?”
She considers. “Not much. It’s been about a year. I saw you a few times when I was eight.”
“How old were you when I died?” I hold my breath. “Five.” Jesus. I can’t deal with this.
“I’m sorry! Should I not have said that?” Alba is contrite. I hug her to me. “It’s okay. I asked, didn’t I?”

Letter from Henry…

it was sweet beyond telling, to come as though from death to hold you, and to see the years all present in your face. I won’t tell you any more, so you can imagine it, so you can have it unrehearsed when the time comes, as it will, as it does come. We will see each other again, Clare. Until then, live, fully, present in the world, which is so beautiful.
It’s dark, now, and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.
Henry

Henry is 43, Clare is 82…. the final meet…

It’s not much different from the many other times he was gone, and I waited, except that this time I have instructions: this time I know Henry will come, eventually. I sometimes wonder if this readiness, this expectation,
prevents the miracle from happening. But I have no choice. He is coming, and I am here.

From Yanko Design:

There was a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend.?He read the dates on her tombstone from the beginning…to the end.

He noted first came the date of her birth and spoke the following date with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.

For that dash stands for all the time that she spent alive on earth…?and only those who loved her know what that little line is worth.

It matters not, how much we own; the cars….the house…the cash.
What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard…are there things you’d like to change??For you never know how much time is left that can still be re-arranged

If we would just slow down enough to consider what’s true and real and always try to understand the way that other’s feel. We’d be much less quick to anger and show appreciation more and love the people in our lives like we’ve never loved before.

So, when your eulogy’s being read and your life is being rehashed…would you be proud of the things they say about how you spent your dash?

From here

Architecture is becoming like an art structure … the cloud is a completely new architectural concept unimaginable…. floating in the sky!

As presented by metacole at the BarCamp.. very funny!!

An amazing perceptive sculpture by Jonathan Borofsky called “Walking to the Sky” It can be found at the Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

this goes into my RTM list and one of the small holiday project for my own room! Ideas Paint!

Blend modes in digital image editing are used to determine how two Layers are blended into each other.

1. Normal blend mode
2. Dissolve
3. Multiply
4. Screen
5. Overlay
6. Soft Light
7. Hard Light
8. Color Dodge
9. Linear Dodge
10. Color Burn
11. Linear Burn
12. Hard Mix
13. Divide
14. Addition
15. Subtract
16. Difference
17. Darken Only
18. Lighten Only
19. Hue
20. Saturation
21. Color
22. Luminosity

A great slide by Mike Kus 

A Pangram is a sentence that uses every letter of alphabet at least once! One very common example is “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.

Some other Pangrams which make sense are:

• Heavy boxes perform quick waltzes and jigs. (36 letters)
• A wizard’s job is to vex chumps quickly in fog. (36 letters)

i love this video! The drawing snapshots of blackboard drawings leave a trace of dust behind… cool effect!

The single chain stitch in crochet is the basic of all crochet stitches

Casting on will make the first foundation rows for starting a knitting project.

ssk – slip, slip, knit

yf, s, k1, passo, k2togg

awesome article by the tutorial blog lists down 25 sites for free stock photos:

1. StockVault
2. Pixel Galerie
3. Free Range
4. MorgueFile
5. EveryStockPhoto
6. Stock.xchng
7. Openphoto
8. Unprofound
9. PhotoRogue
10. Geek Philosopher
11. Woophy
12. PhotoRack
13. FreePixels
14. Design Packs
15. FreeFoto
16. Pixel Perfect Digital
17. Free Digital Photos
18. Public Domain Photos
19. Free Historical Stock Photos
20. NationsIllustrated
21. Kave Wall
22. Free Stock Photos
23. ImageBase
24. Cepolina
25. Abstract Influence

how awesome is this!