Tag Archives: macbook

This Week’s Project 365 with Poetic Clouds and Bubbles

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Project 365 [Day 241] Working on a Draf of a Poem on Prayer

Project 365 [Day 241] Working on a Draft of a Poem on Prayer

Another week in 2012 has gone into history, and the week was as unique as the previous one for Project 365. This is Day 237 through Day 243 of 366 photos for the year so far (you can see the full gallery on Flickr here). Seems I can’t get by a week without having some different sunrise or sunset photo. The weather here down in the south has been dynamic as far as the clouds go, just without much rain. This week was a hard week for different reasons, and for different people. Often it seems there are so many different people and situations that need and deserve prayer, yet it can quickly become overwhelming if you try to take it all on yourself. Of course that’s not the point of prayer, and thank God He is never overwhelmed by our prayer requests, or number of prayers we offer.

The photo above that leads off this post is a draft of a poem on prayer I worked on this week. Surprisingly, once I started working on it, the bulk of the verse came together faster than any other poetic attempt, and I really only had to rewrite it a few times. If you have followed this blog at all you will know I have tried to put my creative mind to work through photography, reading, and writing, which includes poetry here and there. Poetry is one of those art forms our culture has ignored to such a point that it captured my attention, maybe because it has been so highly ignored by my generation. This is not to say I am a poet, but I do make attempts. Poetry is like photography in that if I never took any photos, there is a 100% chance I would never improve.

One thing I have learned about poetry is it’s every bit as difficult as I thought it was. It is difficult to understand at times, it’s extremely difficult to write, and overwhelmingly difficult to write well. Anyway, what I have learned about poetry is that when simple prose are inadequate to express the greatness at hand, poetry steps in and creates an entirely different level of expression, and that is incredible. Look for this poem later in the week, but this week, the images of the week include this attempt at poetry on prayer. If you are wondering about the bubbles image below, check out Weekly Photo Challenge: Purple, Oil and Water for an explanation.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside, a MacBook 5,1

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Project 365 [Day 239] Inside Look at the Mother Board of a MacBook 5,1

Project 365 [Day 239] Inside Look at the Mother Board of a MacBook 5,1

This post serves a few different purposes, like Day 239 of my Project 365, but once in a while I like to get something up there for the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge, and since this week’s theme was inside, I thought this would make a great shot. I don’t spend all of my days inside one of these, but at least some part of each week is spent messing around on the inside of one of these machines. This one is the first generation aluminum MacBook 5,1 (before the MBP version). This is the entire mother board here, RAM at the top and most of the guts on the flip side of the circuit board. The MacBook5,1 as it is known was one of the first unibody frames, and made a great laptop for several years, and in the very center of this mother board you can see the words “Apple ©2008.” Things move fast in the world of laptops and tablets, and this machine is now almost a relic of its day, now designated as a “streaming machine” for videos.

I was trying to think back at how many laptops and desktop computers I have had over the past 20 years (including an actual IBM 5150 from the 1980′s), but there is just no way in the world to know. My first computers weren’t Gateway or Dell, but were hand built IBM machines where I picked out each RAM chip, video card, modem, the CPU chip and so on, each separately. Wow those were the days

You can get a lot of life out of old machines for secondary purposes, and sites like iFixit with their step by step teardown of almost every single Mac ever made is a great place for do easy repairs, even iFixit on this old MacBook5,1. More and more these once great laptops are being replaced by better and better tablets, like the iPad, and Nexus 7, I already wonder how we ever lugged around such a massive device.

This Week’s Project 365 with Sunsets and Storms

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Abstract Sunrise Out My Office Window

For the last few weeks when I finally got around to reviewing the images for my Project 365 (see gallery of all P365 images here) I always seem to have a unique sunset or sunrise photo I like. The above shot wasn’t actually an official P365 image, but I really like how the abstract, somewhat pastel, sunrise turned out. This shot above was taken with my iPhone out of the window of my office-study around 6am while I was doing my daily routine of reading.

This week was a super busy week all around, and the images are really from all over the place. Two images in this set are part of larger posts, one of Deborah, which was posted yesterday, and another below is one image in a full set of images to be posted later in the week. These images represent my week well, and they are really all over the place, but my favorite image really has nothing to do with good photography, it has to do with the power of a yellow sticky note. I’m not sure I’ve ever received a more encouraging note on a computer left for me to fix. On a day I had almost no extra time to do anything I was handed a computer that didn’t work because of an unfortunate coffee spill directly on the computer’s keyboard. This note, and the fact that the computer was actually able to be cleaned up and get it fixed within about an hour was such a great end to my work week.

Sophistication Through Simplicity

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MacBook Air Desktop

I didn’t just post a picture of a black square, this is actually my desktop. I love the clean, simple, and yet still very sophisticated… desktop, home screen, written code, verse, prose, lyric, file structure, office, room, company, house, life… etc (could be I like this so much because life in reality is actually very messy). This term, sophistication through simplicity, has come across my desk several times over the last few weeks, and it’s a phrase I have attempted to develop throughout every aspect of my life for years now. The main reason of course is that this really seems to be how Jesus lived out his earthly ministry. Scripture is so complex, packed full of highly technical arguments and situations, yet, the stories of Jesus’ life are simple enough for any child to understand. The verse on my various desktops in the graphic above about Jesus in John 1.14 is one of the most complex and sophisticated statements ever uttered, yet it’s so very simple.

There are so many ways I try to live this out, and one is being very aggressive at keeping my digital life organized, my desk clean, and to only allow those things which are most important to be most visible. That’s one reason why I really love using an Apple product over a Windows PC or an Android device (I have all the above and use all of them for different things, so I’m not totally Apple bias). Apple just makes it so easy to be digitally organized and in our modern day is a secular company that has spent 30 years perfecting sophistication through simplicity, something Steve Jobs took to its extreme. There are many different ways to achieve this, but a disorganized digital life (to me) is no different than a messy living room, or a house full of junk I don’t need.

I can’t think of a time in my life when I have ever been this busy, a time (or season if you will) when I am being pulled in so many different directions all at once. None of those directions are necessarily “bad” so to speak, but I find the busier I get, the more I have to simplify, organize, and focus on specifics. And that’s why I love the concept of sophistication through simplicity. It allows you to stay focused, remove distractions, and focus on what’s important.

Jordan-Hare Stadium on Gameday as Seen from a Macbook

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The photo of the day today comes from just outside Jordan-Hare Stadium about an hour before kickoff for the Auburn vs ULM game.  It was such a beautiful day that Deborah decided to try to get some of her work done outside before we went in for the game.  I love reflections but this one, taken with my iPhone, shows one of the good functions of high reflectivity on those Apple screens.

MacBook Pro Video to an LCD HD VIZIO TV Monitor

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First time I have ever hooked up my MacBook Pro to a LCD, this is probably the coolest thing ever to have two monitors working at the same time, and it makes a really cool backlit photo frame.   This photo I took of the Wisteria in bloom made a great background.

You are more than welcome to grab the high-res version here and use it for your background if you like, you can find that on my Flickr photostream.