living .....

'Reflections .........

A little over eleven years before I originally posted this topic- I'll always remember it as the 'Ramadan-of-the-big-snow'- It was about the time of the original World Trade Center bombing. [ February 26, 1993 ] ...

This then was the ground out of which this site, and the dream that goes with it was born. The winter of the 'great storm' - It swept from coast-to-coast, and south to north, touching everything and every one in it's path.

Index with Commentary

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The last time I saw Manhattan you could, literally, have walked from Riverdale to Grand Central Station on the Hudson Line. It was snowing all the way to the Sierra's.

I left and for all practical purposes, have never looked back. I never really had to. Just about everyone I knew back there, has come out here, to the 'Left Coast' and I think, for pretty much the same reason. Well- Everyone except Bernie Glassman

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This story, this 'reflection', really has to begin in Louisville Kentucky, and it really has to begin somewhere in 1852.

My Great-Great-Grandfather, Theophile Conrad, left Alsace-Lorraine to seek his further fame and fortune in America. Little is known of him prior to this point-in-time beyond that he served the Imperial Crown, the Austrian Empire during the Franco-Prussian Revolution, and building upon relationships started there, did commerce at court through 6 - 11 August 1884.

By the time my Great-Grandmother was twenty-one and made her debut in Vienna, she had visited Europe no less than fourteen times.

Shortcut to 'Lucy'

Now stop and reflect on that just a moment-

Barrel Full of .....

Apple's, What else? As I outlined earlier, I have been using PC's ( Think IBM, Zenith, Intel & Amdahl Chips running CP/M, DOS, or Windows thru XP Professional ) for about thirty-nine years now. In early 2003 I ran out and bought a G3 ( The Turquoise & White 'Smurfs' ) converted to run v. 10.2.8. I was so deeply moved ( blame it on Steve Jobs ) by that experience that I got a single-processor G4 ( 1.25 GHz PowerPC w. 1 MB L3 cache & 1 GB DDR SDRAM - The Chromed Drive-Bay Door Model ) and a dual-processor G5 ( Dual 2 GHz Power PC w. 512 MB DDR SDRAM - I've got another 512 MB of DDR SDRAM but haven't installed it yet ... ). Back-

- I Switched. The only times I've looked back, is building or creating graphics files and exchanging them with others. From time-to-time PC's balk at opening *.jpg files much less *.tif's prepared on an Apple. Then, at other times- Not. Go Figure !!

While we are somewhere near the Subject

A dear Friend was just asking me whether or not I had abandoned the so-called 'PC' Market, to be concise, that means the so-called 'Windows' version of the Personal Computer. I have to state in all honesty that I have not. However- That said, It will be well over another year before Bill Gates in his infinite wisdom releases the next 'iteration' or 'Longhorn', as it's still being called.

In the interim, I direct your attention to clustered 64-Bit Processor's and Operating Systems designed from the ground up to deal with clusters or 'terascale' systems.

On the Edge .....

A few weeks later in 2003 I added another application to my repertoire , only this time it pretty much lives on my desktop- It's that valuable.

The application, for those of you running OS X 10.2.x or higher, is AquaMinds NoteTaker. Publish, share and read other notebooks, view any multimedia content including QuickTime , live navigation of any web pages, and even more .....

The next step is to add Snap Pro X 2 so that I can create and capture multimedia 'Illustrations' all the easier. It effortlessly records anything on my screen ..... Well, after some adjustments in terms of protocol & syntax, that is.

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I'm no longer having trouble with the Snap Pro X 2.0.0 recording process in OS X version 10.3.3 & look forward to incorporating motion graphics here.

I've discovered that this must be run in conjunction with the Audio Application 'WireTap' in order to record both audio & video i.e. Music Videos, Trailers and Full-Motion. Go To: WireTap 1.0.0 for details.
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Fot those of you, like myself, who still intend 'publishing' to those running Microsoft operating systems, NoteTaker can save to *.pdf format ( although I'm not certain about Adobe PDF's 'multimedia' prowess ) or something like Night Kitchen's tk3.

'Stop and Think .....

The 'mechanics' of writing, certainly of publishing, a Web Log or 'Blog' is a lot different than, for example, writing and publishing a 'book'. I'm sure most of you are at least peripherally aware of those things called 'books'.

Since about the time of Gutenberg ( About seven centuries ago - 1440 C.E. ). To be fair, wood blocks, carved in relief, were attributed to the Chinese and/or Japanese as early as 868 C.E. The steam-press was introduced approx. 1814 ( The Times of London ) and Ottmar Merganthaler invented his linotype machine in 1884 ( Monotype - 1897 ). Edward Rondthaler invented the Rutherford Photolettering Machine in 1929 and by 1969 some 6,500 fonts were digitized ( Actually, It was a lot closer to 65,000 fonts, but that whole era was so dramatic there are but a few, a mere handful of people who can appreciate that. Only some 6,500 or so remain and it's hard to tell how long they will last. )

For all intents and purposes, The 'Book', as we have known it anyway, is dead. It just doesn't know it yet- Or in this case, We Just Don't Know It yet.

Now, If I could only generate a 'page-flip'..........