3D4K Smith Point Beach NY - IMRAN™

My first 4K 3D video of sunset at Smith Point Beach bridge on Fire Island, Long Island, New York, on December 13, 2015. This is the anaglyph (red/cyan) version so not as great as seeing on a 3D monitor. I am also going to upload a 3D SBS (side by side version). Love to have your comments on the kinds of subjects you would like to see 3D video of.

Prioritize DOING SOMETHING (Anything!) Over PRIORITIZING! - IMRAN™

I recently saw a good post on Medium about a poster that author saw on the FaceBook campus… “Ruthless Prioritization”.

That is a great topic of extraordinary significance to me. I have countless ideas. I even get started on dozens.

Yet, my actual productivity, not just output, but effective productivity that gets things done, that brings goals closer to reality, can often be drowned in my desire to organize, prioritize and optimize my tools rather than in doing what needs to get done.

Cal it procrastination, call is avoidance, call it laziness, call it stupidity, but the end result is the same…

Dreams remain dreams, and things do not get done until months later, when I kick myself seeing how easily I could have done them way back when.

One simple rule I am still trying to teach myself is…. 

Prioritize DOING SOMETHING (Anything!) Over PRIORITIZING!!

It is too easy to become OCD about prioritizing types of things important to us, then prioritizing projects within those, then tasks within those.

I find the ONLY days I get ANYTHING done is when I pick up and DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING, and literally get on a roll of getting things done.

Otherwise, I have spent one-third of my productive life investigating and evaluating tools, one-third installing and optimizing them, and one-third prioritizing things in them… leaving a big fat 0.0% of my time to DO *anything* out of what I need to achieve. 

That is still one of the single biggest weaknesses I have…

One of these days I will prioritize my list of weaknesses, to see which ones to find and evaluate tools to overcome next. [wink].

What do you think? Do you have this problem? How do you overcome it?

Out Of This World Views On Religion, Space & Terrorism! - IMRAN™

Non-Muslims worry that the sons of swine members of #ISIS somehow represent all 1.5 Billion Muslims. If their actions make all Muslims #terrorists then the thousands of child rapes by countless Christian priests in Churches worldwide, including here in America, would mean all Christians are pedophile child rapists. Are they?

Keep in mind Muslims are united in believing only a few things. There's only One God (Allah in Arabic) that Adam, Nosh, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad brought the message of. They believe in Mohammad as the final prophet in that line. They believe in the day of judgement, heaven and hell. And they believe that the broken roads in their countries, the electricity power failures, their internal bribery driven corrupt cultures, and probably even solar flares are all due to a Zionist conspiracy.

Everything else that can be disagreed on, is disagreed on.

As most people living in #Pakistan know, we #Muslims can’t even sometimes agree which day our #Eid#holiday falls on, with greedy halvah-swallowing mullahs play with telescopes arguing about sighting of the new #moon, here on Earth, which only has one moon.

#God help us if we lived on #Saturn which has 62 moons orbiting it! Talk about #Religion making your head spin. We already have dozens, if not hundreds, of Muslim sects, condemning each other to hell for the way they stand in prayers, or the length of their pants/bottoms. Imagine a Muslim astronaut being told he's going to hell because his spacesuit shows or conceals his ankles the wrong way.

So, my fellow human beings and especially Christian or non-Muslim friends, the planet's Muslims are ISIS as much as you are a pedophile. Meaning, don’t go for the foaming at the mouth neo-con hate-mongers whose words of hate about Muslims would get them thrown out of their jobs if they said them about Jews or other groups. All of us, all decent people, of all religions are under threat of ISIS.

Is there an increased risk, even near certainty, of ISIS wolf packs and lone wolves killing innocent people in our countries? Yes, unfortunately, certainly there is. But even here in America our biggest killers remain handguns and drunk drivers way more than any terrorist groups. But no one wants to pay attention to or stop those killers.

If anything, the evil ISIS, AlQaeda, Taliban, Boko Haram, have killed 100,000s more Muslims than they have barbarically and un-Islamically murdered non-Muslims. But 100,000 Muslims killed by terrorists in Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, etc. get 2 inches of newspaper space on Page 5.

When terrorists kill anywhere from 10-100 in a place like Paris, it becomes a global tragedy. That in itself plays right into the terrorists hands who will obviously want to carry out attacks that get news coverage.

Even worse are the media hypocrisy and dual standards of justice we show. When a non-Muslims murders 30 (thirty) people in an attack, he is an “alleged shooter”. If a so-called Muslim kills 3, repeat three, people, it is a massacre by a terrorists. The non-Muslim who kills 30 gets life in prison.  

The moron younger brother involved in the deaths of 3 people in the Boston Marathon was declared a terrorist who got the death penalty even in bleeding heart (hypocrite) liberal Massachusetts.

All this plays right into the hands of AlQaeda and ISIS as “proof the West hates Muslims” and gets them even more recruitment success. That puts us all at even greater risk of terror attacks here.

May my fellow Americans who are maligning all Muslims and Islam for the actions of ISIS wake up and smell the coffee of logic and facts. And, may these ISIS type terrorists be pelted with 62 Saturn sized spinning fireballs in Hell when they think they're getting 72 hot virgins to take for a spin. Amen x 72 x 62!

What do you think?

-- Typed on a cell phone screen, excuse any typos if you're a grammar fundamentalist.

BUX: Apple's Falling Reliability & Incredibly Inconsistent UX On 2 Identical Brand New iPhone 6S+ - IMRAN™

The BUX Stops Here. Bad User Experiences are everywhere. I give examples, and name names, even of companies I love. 

The goal is to inform users of the problems that go on for years, to call attention of these companies to their lousy design or quality control choices, and to help UX designers and product managers improve both the customer experience and the quality of their loyal user's experience. 

Here is an example from a company I generally love, Apple. But I have been griping about the constantly falling reliability of the Apple user experience even from when Steve Jobs was still alive. It seemed like getting it out the door even at 90% reliability became acceptable instead of at least aiming for 99%. 

Under Tim Cook, and especially with the worst OS upgrade I have ever experienced from Apple with El Capitan, and parallel bug nightmares on iOS 9 show that it seems getting things out the door even at 80% is now acceptable at Apple.

The bug I am discussing today is a problem in November 2015, 3.5 years after similar problems have been discussed on Apple's own discussions forum in the past (2012 for example).

I have 2 BRAND NEW iPhone 6S+ 128GB phones, 100% identical in everything, including carrier and even color,... everything except for their device names. 

I even shot identical photographs with them (to use in 3D photos). I connected both devices to iPhoto. The first one's photos ALL came in without ANY problem. The second one's import into iPhoto fails over and over, and the iPhone even disappears from the app and has to be unplugged and replugged in for iPhoto/Mac (Image Capture included) to recognize the device again. 

Even Image Capture failed to import the images either all together or even one by one. I even switched to the cable the other phone's photos came over fine on. Nope. Everything failed. Emailing myself dozens of large image and video files was not an option as some discussions mention. 

I even turned Bluetooth off as others had found to work in past similar bugs. (That by the way is another reason I consider having to play such games of twisters to get things to work making the Mac user today sometimes seem like being a Windows user). 

I did manage to send the photos from the iPhone to the Mac over AirDrop and they ALL imported into iPhoto just fine. There were NO problems with ANY of the photos. Plugging the phone back into the Mac and iPhoto even correctly shows that the photos on the phone now already exist in iPhoto. Meaning the problem was NOT with the photos at all.

Yet the actual routine import of photos failed and the user experiences were smooth vs nightmare on two IDENTICAL devices bought literally the same week. That was the kind of thing you expected to happen with two lousy Windows PCs where they would act differently and inconsistently. But now it is a common Mac thing.

I have been an Apple user since the start of the platform but the more Windows-nightmare-experience-like it becomes the more I shake my head, and the more I can't stand when people think pointing out the falling reliability of the OS releases and apps UX to be some sort of Apple bashing.

I was able to workaround my problem this time, but the problem's root cause is still unknown. That is why I am sharing it here so others may shed light on it if they have ideas. And to try to wake up Apple's quality and UX teams before loyal users start seeing Apple as just another vendor to choose from, not a company we identified proudly with the quality products and consistent high quality user experience of. 

What have been your bad user experiences with devices, products or services?

Dark Justice & Death In The Air - IMRAN™

I ❤️ #flying and I hate #terrorism, especially attacks targeting passenger airliners. But #Russia shot down a #Japan Airlines jumbo jet and its thuggish agents in #Ukraine shot down a #Malaysia Airlines passenger plane on the same airway I had flown just 2 days before the state terror attack by Russia. But there would be a certain dark justice if it was a missile that hit their plane that blew up over #Egypt. I suspect #ISIS.but it’s not known yet. But that’s still bad news for all airlines and innocent fliers around the world. 

Photo credit unknown to me.

Day And Night - IMRAN™

A 15 seconds time lapse captures the magic of Tampa Bay Florida's breathtaking sunsets.

Holier than thou religious hypocrites, Go F..., I mean, go save yourselves! - IMRAN™

Organized Religion is the best business humans ever created, but its execution, no pun intended, was the worst thing for mankind. 

Religion should be simple. You and God (or gods if you believe in more than one) do NOT need an intermediary driving up in a Rolls Royce to yell at you like a rock star, taking your money, and making up whatever they want, as they drive up TV audiences. 

You do not need someone who can be an ex-Nazi one day and suddenly become infallible the next day. You don’t need someone who does not give advice on how to be a better human being but on what country to label the Great Satan. You do not need clerics with bad breath, worse personal hygiene, and worst demagoguery, yelling on loudspeakers five times a day on the need to go kill others instead of trying to work hard to solve corruption and crime in your own society.

Most major monotheist religions were PROGRESSIVE revolutions at their time of being founded. They literally all brought down major empires not by the power of their semi-automatic weapons, but by living great lives and setting wonderful examples which others wanted to emulate.  It is a tragedy these same religions  now attract the least intelligent, or at least the least free-thinking, kind of people in every part of the globe. 

Here is one way to look at it. The stories in the holy books were to illustrate good things in simple terms that people of that time could understand. Can you imagine Prophets Moses or Jesus or Muhammad trying to explain to people of their times the history of the universe in terms of the Einstein’s equation, or the size of the universe in light-years, and it being billions of years old? 

The tragedy is that the self-styled "true" believers of all of these major religions (and others too) today take the 1500-5000 years old words as LITERAL. There are people who insist the world is 5000-10,000 years old. There are people who will insist with a straight face that the moon was split in two, just like the river was parted at one man’s command, and so much more. 

All of them do this instead of doing what is needed. People can progress with the times but still remain true to the real ideals and ideas, which were the foundations of the religions. Of being good, doing good, not stealing, not killing, etc. and making the world a better place. That part people in almost every religion tend to ignore and would rather bomb someone for their religion, burn someone else alive for theirs, or behead others for theirs. Shame. Shame. Shame.

If all these Prophets could come back for a day with their swords, or whatever tool they preferred, I would like to think that the first group they would behead (or castrate {wink})  would be these false prophets in all the religions -- whether those who burned 'witches' at the stake or today's mega pastors or pedophile Christian priests; or the rabid Zionist Jew occupiers of holy lands burning Palestinian families alive; or the sons of satan of ISIS murdering and beheading innocent people (from other religions but ironically mostly killing Muslims!), for political power in the name of Islam. 

Shame and all of God’s and all gods’ curses on these evildoers all. Let the good people of the world believe what they want to believe, without needing special agents of God. Let them live and let live, not needing to feel as if they have the one true answer or that it is somehow their job to judge everyone else, or to “save” their souls, sometimes by killing them, as all major religions have done! 

Holier than thou hypocrites, Go F..., I mean, go save yourselves! 

Let humankind live and love in peace and harmony. Amen.

Spectacular Stormy Saturday Seaside Scene Seen - IMRAN™

Spectacular Stormy Saturday Seaside #music #video #Florida

Another dramatic sunset scene on Tampa Bay Florida as a hurricane passed beyond the East Coast.

Duck Off! Go Fish! Lessons For Mankind! - IMRAN™

 

Amusing but even more than that, this is amazing and inspiring. In this day and age, when man kills man...

 

Posted by

Imran Anwar

on 

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Paragliding To The Moon At Magical Dusk - IMRAN™

It was one of most vivid recent sunsets I had enjoyed at my blessed home's private beach on the Great South Bay. As I was capturing the magical colors I saw a paraglider take off in the distance. I have seen him show off a it when he sees me taking pictures, so I got to see him fly by pretty close, do a few showing off turns, as I was able to frame him with the still newish moon shining in the blue sky above a golden red dusk on the deep golden blue water. The song Gonna Fly Now from the movie Rocky seems to be a good fit!

Heron Pointe Dusk & Moon At Great South Bay - IMRAN™

Gorgeous sunset followed by magical dusk at my blessed home's beach at Heron Pointe, Long Island, NY, while a still new moon shines above the Great South Bay.



© IMRAN™

Dumb & Dumber & Dumbest All In One News Week! - IMRAN™

What a week it has been in the news cycle. Never a dull moment. And the politicians in the news are not vying to win the Best or Smartest politician vote, but to prove how unbelievably dumb they are and can be.

Let’s start with Hillary Clinton. I remember when Bill Clinton became President, most considered Hillary the brains behind the operation. She was also always the most deeply enmeshed in any of their non-sexual scandals. But for someone so experienced, and so full of hubris, she has shown herself neither smart, nor savvy.

First she was dumb enough to use a private email server to run classified information through. Then she was dumber to deny that. Then she was moronic in doubling down and saying she did nothing wrong and refusing to apologize. And now, patently obviously showing how polls and hunger to get the Democratic party ticket are her only guiding light, she is now apologizing. Too little, too late, too insincere.

In the past I did think she was a more experienced candidate when Obama and she were competing for the ticket. I thought he lacked experience compared to her. He won. And served two terms. Regardless of her viability in the past, I do not think she is worthy of being President.

I thought Bill Clinton was a great President, regardless of the inexcusable sexual escapades he is infamous for. His (not) having sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky, did not destroy the economy or cause the deaths of tens of thousands as George W. Bush and Darth Cheney did, while destroying the economy too. So hearing another Bush name coming up also irritates me.

I am personally opposed to the political dynasty concept that Jeb Bush (whom I liked as a politician more than his brother or father) or Hillary Clinton are the ‘only viable candidates' that both political parties seem to follow.

This is America, not some third world country where one family or two families rules for decades.

It is time for the unexciting Bush and the completely untrustworthy Hillary Clinton to be sent packing. They can go write books, make money giving speeches, but please, spare this country more from those two houses of cards.

My Democrat friends, Hillary will sink you all. And, my Republican friends, if you do not dissociate yourselves from people like Mike Huckabee, the only politician who has proven himself absolutely shamelessly desperate even more than Hillary, you will give the Democrats another win.

Mike Huckabee is actually supporting a buffoon government employee, that moronic two bit clerk Kim Davis (the one with four husbands and children conceived with others while married to someone else) claiming her FAITH keeps from following the law on gay marriage. If you read her actual background you would ROTFL (roll on the floor laughing) at the mind numbing surreality of her stance.

No matter where I stand on that issue, now that it is the law of the land, it has be respected. If she does not like it, she should quit her job. Or stand aside so others can.

But, wait! Huckabee is all over her. She is his desperate Hail Mary (no pun intended) attempt to touchdown with the low IQ crowd that cannot differentiate between a personally odious woman breaking the law and her claiming she is good Christian who is the victim of religious persecution. Seriously!? So if a Muslim gets elected clerk in a county, would it be OK for him or her to issue four marriage licenses to people? If someone else becomes clerk, would it be OK for them to say their religious beliefs keep them from issuing marriage licenses to interracial couples?

To show how stupid people have gotten, to ensure even greater ignorance, and even greater intolerance, and even greater likelihood to falling for liars and false logic, the people in that dumb county have decided to close schools in support of this repulsive woman! Way to go!

But it is not all bad news. I see a silver lining. Kim Davis and Huckabee are a match made in heaven I say. Huckabee can be her husband number five perhaps, because he definitely does not match what we need in a candidate for President.

God SAVE the United States…..from these dumb, dumber and dumbest candidates.

 

Democrats Need To Wipe Their Servers Clean, of Clintons - IMRAN™

I do not belong to any political party. I vote on issues, not parties, not personalities. Never in history  have I seen such a group of unelectable & undeserving candidates, Democrats  & Republicans , for US Presidential elections !

I appreciated the Clinton Presidency (except for his sleazy behavior in the White House with Monica Lewinsky ). I originally liked George W. Bush  for not being as slick as the Democratic candidates and believed it was time for change. I could not believe America elected Bush a second term and let him do so much damage to the USA and the world. I voted for Obama , though he has been a big disappointment in the second term so far.

I think it is time for change, but when I look at the Republican candidates I find it hard to believe such a large field with so little to offer. But then I look at the scary front runner on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton, and I get equally worried.

Much that I dislike many of the Republican candidates, I truly cannot like this woman, and would not trust her. I could still see her winning if the Republicans did not get their house in order. But with this non-stop display of being over-clever and actually doing more and more stupid things, Hillary  may become Democrats' liability if they keep all their eggs in her basket.

The Clintons got away with an unexplained murder (supposed suicide) of Vince Foster. They got away with other scandals. But her hubris and sense of entitlement to run top secret national security related emails through a private email server apparently kept in a bathroom is beyond dumb. And to make stupider jokes about it and to think only the media cares about the issue of these emails, when the FBI itself is investigating a potentially criminal lapse, is almost like her behaving evil like Dick Cheney  but coming across looking dumb like George W. Bush.

Her latest comment, which was also reported by the Washington Post, about not knowing what wiping a server clean means, suggests “I did not know about it” would be a common excuse for national blunders and scandals if she ever got elected to the White House.

Her making a joke about SnapChat  automatically deleting emails, in reference to her mishandling top secret national documents and emails, was ridiculous and shameful. It would have been as if Bill Clinton was making a speech in reference to the Monica Lewinsky affair, which got him impeached and almost thrown out of office, and joked about the Ashley Madison sex site hacking scandal.

Wake up my Democrat friends. Your situation is no better than the Republicans’, whose candidates I will discuss in other postings.

Jumping Jacks! Dragons Fly! - IMRAN™

Jumping Jacks! Fish & Dragons Fly in real life. Dragonflies hover in air as bunch of fish leap from stunningly tranquil glass-like flat clear as bathtub water Tampa Bay waters in Florida right now! Each ripple is a fish jumping and falling back in the water. St. Petersburg shines across the bay, seen from my home in Apollo Beach.

Meteor Shower - IMRAN™

Just the sight of one of last night’s shooting stars inspired me to type out this poem on my Twitter app at 3AM today standing under the majestic moonless dark night sky.
As I stepped out of the house to soak in the Perseids meteor shower, one of the longest shooting stars I have ever seen streaked across the night sky right in front of me. Then another one sliced the dark night in its final but most glorious moment.
I wondered at how insignificant we are, and yet what great and significant lives we are blessed to have an opportunity to live, like gold dust from the heavens, shining uniquely for all eternity, once and only once, until we are gone, from this earth, but then to become parts of the specs of God’s dust in the ground below and the heavens above.

 METEOR SHOWER 
===============
 O streaking band 
 Of meteoric light 
 A gold dust rain 
 Each shiny grain 
 Of universal sand 
 Cosmic gift grand 
 Flung in fiery flight 
 From God's hand!

 - Imran Anwar
August 13, 2015.
Apollo Beach, Florida

 © 2015 IMRAN
IMG_5297

Massacre 12 Get Life, Kill 3 Get Death, Kill Unarmed Black Man & Walk Free!

Shame on those spineless and shameless members of the jury who opposed the death penalty in the  # Colorado terrorist movie theater massacre murderer trial. They gave him a taxpayer funded life sentence instead of the death penalty.

Here is the lesson that teaches us about the way justice is being served. Massacre 12 People Get Life Sentence, Kill 3 And Get Death Sentence. Kill an unarmed black man on video by choking him to death, or shooting a black kid, and walk scot free.

The younger Boston bomber caused fewer deaths but was declared a  # terrorist The 3 white Christian guys planning terror attacks to massacre US troops arrested in NC were NOT called terrorists, by the  # FBI  or the shameless  # media

But the TN shooter at the marines recruitment center was declared a terrorist, probably because he also was a  # Muslim .

They should all be called Terrorist and treated accordingly, and, when found guilty, put to death for carrying out attacks on Americans which terrorize the public.

Enough with the dual standards about applying the label of  # terrorism  only on  # Muslims . Enough with the  # hypocrisy . Enough with coddling murderers with life sentences while their innocent victims never had a chance to live their full lives.

Firing squads for anyone whose actions lead to the random killing of 4 or more people.

That way someone in a liquor store hold up who kills 2-3 people planned or unplanned is dealt with for murder and manslaughter. But anyone who plans an attack with the intent of killing people at random is treated as a terrorist. Period. Firing Squad.

If someone murders a cop who is performing his duty, then that should lead to the death penalty too. And it should also apply to bad cops who murder unarmed people and put decent cops’ lives in greater danger. 

What do you think?

FowERotica: Flower Erotica - IMRAN™

This gorgeous Florida flowers photo was just too good not to post. Yes you do have a dirty mind :-)  … because beautiful flowers do grow in the dirt. Yes it does look like some sort of X-rated inter-“racial" intimacy. How beautiful is that! What can be more beautiful than chocolate covering vanilla and filling it with cream? :-) LOL The aroused engorged green probing parting pushing penetrating the tender pinkish petals opening as a purple nub yearns to be brought to ecstasy. Hey, I don't know what you're thinking. I'm describing two potted plants here! OK OK, so I saw the plants and had the idea, so I did move the plants a little bit closer at the Home Depot. :-) Sort of like doing an intimate photo shoot in a public place. :-) :-)

© 2015 IMRAN

Butterfly / Butterfly Bush - IMRAN™

Not long after I had built my blessed home on Long Island, I was at a Home Depot in the area and picked up two small butterfly bush plants. They were barely six inches tall each. I am so glad I planted them because not they are nearly twelve feet tall, reaching up to my upper deck. In summer their aroma always makes me stop to smell the non-roses, and at the height of the season they are surrounded by Monarch and other butterflies. This is a half crop of a 14MB original RAW file from my now 7 years old Nikon D300.

© 2015 IMRAN™
DSC_6570

New Moon At Golden Dusk Over Golden Gate Bridge(s) Day & Night - IMRAN™

There are so many different vantage points and so many different lighting conditions to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California. I have always only managed to catch a quick shot now and then during usually hurried short trips there for the last 26 years. This one was a particular stunning sight as the golden pink dusk settled in over the dark silhouette of the mountains and the new moon was sharply visible in the sky as bright as the headlights of drivers making their way across the bridge. As the monumental structures bridged the cities across the bay, the moon and dusk bridged the ending day and coming night.

© 2015 IMRAN
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Sun Sets (Seas At Ease); Seize The Moment, (Ocean In Motion) - IMRAN™

Sun Sets (Seas At Ease); Seize The Moment, (Ocean In Motion) - (PG13 Alert!) - An ocean beach at sunset, with no one...

Posted by Imran Anwar on Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Pastel Tranquility - IMRAN™

Stunning pastels underscore vivid golden bursts of magic in the sky at dusk over my blessed home beach on Long Island, New York, in East Patchogue. The private beach is secluded and seductive as the Great South Bay's gentle waters roll in to my feet.


Video, words & music © Imran Anwar

Bard & Bard. Memories Of Quarter Century Ago - IMRAN™

Bard & Bard, In Memory Of A Friend. Exactly 25 Years Ago! Upstate New York photo (printed and scanned in 1990) was taken...
Posted by Imran Anwar on Thursday, July 16, 2015

Another Brick In The (Fire)Wall Versus The Great Wall Of Red China! - IMRAN™

Another Brick In The (Fire)Wall Versus The Great Wall Of Red China! In 1998-1999 I had the privilege of being the first...
Posted by Imran Anwar on Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Magic Clouds At Sunset - IMRAN™

This short one minute clip shows the full 360 degrees view of God's paintings I'm blessed to see and share with you. This was last night. NO FILTERS or any editing of any kind! Video and music are mine. Enjoy and Share with your friends. Your prayers always appreciated. 

© 2015 IMRAN

Stunning Days Of Our Lives Fly By IMRAN™

This whole week and #weekend has been one of mind blowing colors in the #sky over my blessed home. Each was more perfect than the last. Almost each night I have managed to capture the sunsets which have made me bow my head in gratitude. You can actually see me wading into the waters of #TampaBay in this #timelapse as I photograph sea, sky and skyscrapers on land in the distance. The absolutely stunning natural colors of #Florida sunsets on #Tampa Bay at #ApolloBeach light up the sky in this timelapse with absolutely no color tweaking, processing or editing of ANY kind. Recorded with an old #Apple #iPhone 4S and created on a 2014 MacBook Pro Retina i7 15" using #iMovie. 

© 2015 IMRAN

https://youtu.be/urxSPdLBaB4

Bright Days And Thunder: Boating Must Go On! - IMRAN™

In another day of typical stunning and stormy Florida weather on Tampa Bay at Apollo Beach, I loved seeing people calmly boating as half the sky was filled with bright clouds while rolling thunder came from deep within towering dark storm clouds. No filters! No edits! iPhone 6 Plus video through an old window pane.

Dolphin(s) Tale - IMRAN™

Dolphin(s) Tale - Four of seven beautiful ‪#‎Dolphins‬ that swim by my home at least twice a day. A few times they have splashed me with water as they chased their prey under my dock on ‪#‎Tampa‬ Bay in ‪#‎Florida‬! What gorgeous creatures they are. I remember growing up in ‪#‎Pakistan‬ and watching a TV show about a Dolphin called ‪#‎Flipper‬. Do you remember the show? That show was based on an earlier movie which came out soon after I was born. The title of this video plays on a more recent movie called Dolphin Tale.
Posted by Imran Anwar on Friday, April 24, 2015

Love The Cloud With No Limits, But Know Your Limits!

I just read an article on Forbes' site where the writer correctly argued that despite the cost of cloud storage being nearly zero (who can compete with "Free!" ?) he likes to use personal networked storage at home for his data.

I agree with the points he makes about why using personal storage is still the better option versus cloud storage. But I disagree on the use of Network Attached Storage at home. No matter what device I have tried, no NAS at home comes close to the speed of a Thunderbolt, Firewire or USB3 external hard drive when doing regular and incremental backups of my Macs and MacBook Pros, as I do.

Coincidentally, one of the biggest problems I have with cloud storage is that despite buying cool utilities like ExpanDrive. which mount my Google, Box, DropBox OneDrive, FTP and other cloud storage on my Macs's desktops as local drives, none of them is writable from backup apps like Carbon Copy Cloner or Time Machine.

Additionally, the time it would take for my backups to complete even over my 75/75Mbps connections is another huge deterrent.

I personally carry 2 portable drives (one ThunderBolt and one USB3) with my laptops when I travel, while having multiple clones and Time Machine backups at both homes in NY and FL. Each is obviously encrypted with the highest level security, or I would be trading reliable backup with high risk of theft.

No matter what you do and what type of data you have, whether on a phone or a computer, you MUST backup your data, if you value your time, and your data. As Clint Eastwood would say, A man's gotta know his limits. So does a woman.

Can you afford to lose all the data on your device? Pictures? Messages? Emails? Contacts? How much spare time did God give you that you'd want to take on the burden of re-gathering all the contacts you have? And what about the photos? You do have them backed up somewhere, right?

Don't tell me you are relying on FaceBook as your personal album storage? What if someone hacks your account and deletes all your albums? Even worse, what if the FB policy Nazis don't like something you post and delete your account?

By the way, did you know that FaceBook turns your gorgeous 1-15MB photos taken with anything from a cell phone to a fancy camera into pure-crap-minimum-tolerable-quality 72 dpi files of merely 100-200KB? Good luck printing those if you ever want to in the future. Even a USB stick or two are so cheap these days. Not using at least a Thumb Drive is Dumb!

At the very least use something like Flickr, that stores the images at full size and gives you 1TB free. But check your security settings so none of your private photos become public. (Well, it is OK to give me access to see them. Purely for my giving you security advice of course. LOL).

Finally, remember, One is never enough, and as I also always say, Once Every Night isn't enough either. :-) I learned a long time ago that when a laptop drive dies, it will happen on the same day an external backup drive will also die ...and the backup of the backup will be unmountable on that same day. ;-)

So, backup on more than one system (external drive, thumb drive, CD/DVD/Blu Ray, cloud), with more than one method (data only, full clone, incremental timestamped backups), in more than one place (your home, your parents' home, across the country).

One day (or night) you will thank me for it!

Imran Anwar
Love The Unlimited Cloud, But Within Limits!™
Cloud 9 Global Inc.
IMRAN.TV

Apollo Beach Summer Sunset Tampa Bay Florida - IMRAN™

Apollo Beach Summer Sunset Tampa Bay Florida - IMRAN™

An early summer sunset on Tampa Bay at Apollo Beach, captured with a good old iPad 3 at my Florida home. Timelapse music video shows a stunning sunset followed by dramatic storm. 

© 2014-2018 IMRAN™  

Cold - Spring - Harbor !

Cold - Spring - Harbor ! -- Stunning but frigid day despite spring at my blessed Long Island home marina made me think of the name of a different place.. Cold Spring Harbor. :-)

Gotham Hall Masquerade Ball 2015 - IMRAN™

Sweeping Views Of Fabulous Gotham Hall, Times Square, New York City During A Masquerade Party. An old bank building it is an exciting (though quite loud) venue for corporate parties and events.

Stunning Sunset Apollo Beach Florida - IMRAN™

Stunning Sunset Apollo Beach #Florida in 12 seconds timelapse #video

http://youtu.be/-WYWw7KhDdw made with my Windows Phone #Lumia1020.