Imran Anwar, founder of Internet email, co-founder of .PK ccTLD, pioneer of credit card industry in Pakistan, comments on topics of interest to everyone. From timely news to timeless movies, elections to electronics, cloud computing to strategic marketing, and everything interesting in between. Read these sometimes serious, sometimes tongue in cheek opinions, add your comments. Click Like! on the FaceBook button. Share the post on FaceBook and socials.
December Tampa Bay Florida Sunset By Drone - IMRAN™
Get your 1-minute sunset music video fix wherever you are. Come take off with me to see a magnificent Tampa Bay winter sunset at my blessed home on Apollo Beach, Florida. Can you spot me?
Symphony Isles Holiday Lights DriveBy 3X Music Video - IMRAN™
I am blessed to live in Symphony Isles, a popular neighborhood in Apollo Beach, Florida. Every year the board and various committees, plus individual homeowners, do a great job of holiday decorations.
One night every year the guards open the main gates to the town and all are welcome to drive by to enjoy the lights. Even without any traffic it took me 30-minutes of driving to go past every home.
Enjoy this 3X accelerated hyper-lapse of the drive. If I made it faster, e.g. 400%, then the lights pass by too fast. Even at 3X speed it is easy to miss the detail. But if I did not speed it up, few would have the time to watch the whole thing. So, hopefully this is an optimal balance of speed and duration.
I had wanted to compose an original soundtrack to go with the video but then it may not get done for a long time. So I used one of my existing music tracks, actually one I created for drone flight at Old Inn at Little Harbor about 4 year ago. "Big Sky At Little Harbor" is the tune, and the video is pretty awesome. You will love that too.
Meanwhile, come along for a "high speed" drive (without breaking 20 mph speed limits!) with me and enjoy the sights and lights.
Terrific TGIF Tranquil Tampa Time (Florida Sunset Aerial Drone Flying Livestream) - IMRAN™
Whether exhausted from a difficult day or tired from shopping or just feeling alone and needing to be cheered.... join me for a few minutes on the dock on the bay.... as my wonderful German Shepherd Dogs Kennedy and K2 keep me company....... during a short drone flying aerial Livestream .... another magnificent Tampa Bay Florida sunset at my blessed home.... with birds flying by and boats from the area passing by on their way home. Live, Love, Comment, Share if any of your friends will smile on seeing this! Happy Holidays!
While it is officially autumn, it was a summer-like 90°F weather day on Tampa Bay as I took my German Shepherd Dogs, Kennedy & K2, for a quick stroll. I thought the beautiful sailing, shipping, jet skiing, seaside Saturday scene deserved to be streamed to you. Enjoy a beach day in a few minutes wherever you are.
Cold White Hot Cloud Attack (Tampa Bay Florida) - IMRAN™
(Timelapse Music Video. Play with sound, enjoy more on larger screens)
An almost icy-cold but white-hot looking series of mushroom clouds rose from the waters of Tampa Bay attacking the perfectly blue sky today. This is the timelapse video I captured with no filter and no editing of any kind to the images. The movement of the clouds, first boiling up into the sky, and then flattening to march towards land at Apollo Beach, was so dramatic I was inspired to compose a short music tune. I titled it "Cloud Attack" just to go with the video. It may be something I build on to make a track for my next music album. What do you think?
Apollo Beach Tampa Bay Florida Fireworks (Aerial Music Video) - IMRAN™
As the fourth of July weekend was rolling to an end, I took out the DJI Phantom 4 drone to the dock. I wanted to capture the view of the fireworks from all around the Tampa Bay area. This is Part 1, presented as a quick and dirty music video.
Kennedy and K2, my German Shepherd Dogs, were with me, as I recorded this drone flight and as the night boomed with the explosions from fireworks. I launched the drone a few minutes before 9 PM at which hour I expected the fireworks to start in earnest.
Enjoy the music. The music is actually just a 30-seconds riff I created to build on later. It even has two notes I hit accidentally and would not use in any actual music album. In the interest of time, I just repeated the loop a few times for this video. Enjoy the fireworks. Share with your friends who will also enjoy them.
Yes, wordplay intended. Winds of Change are all around Tampa Bay, Florida. And, yes, see the winds change ON Tampa Bay, and see how the winds change Tampa Bay waters' colors, textures, waves, and moods.
This was supposed to be a longer dramatic music video but a timer setting error meant it was only recorded as a 2.5-seconds timelapse. That is too short to post anywhere. So I slowed it down a little bit. That makes it 7-8 seconds so a little less shockingly twister-like as the original short recording is.
But you can see the drama. You can literally see the invisible wind visibly change right in front of your eyes. Watch the clouds initially swirl and twist perpendicular to the usual shape of twisters. See how they stretch along the East-West line but travel south to north.
But then, within seconds even in real-time, a massive shift in wind occurs and the clouds head towards the house and head east. Watch again just to see how the palm trees indicate the brute force of the shift. Dramatic nature!
Unfortunately, it is not a cute wordplay humorous title, but it is accurate. Thanks to sleazy organizations and corrupt politicians releasing tons of toxic waste into Tampa Bay waters the last 3 days have caused thousands of dead and dying fish to float by. Who knows how many more died in the wider and deeper parts of the bay, and elsewhere. EACH white spot (especially if you see this on a monitor vs a small device) is a dead or dying fish. Hundreds that are lodged on the rocks and shorelines are not even clearly visible. Shame on the people who let such a criminal slaughter take place.
Gorgeous Caribbean Waters At George Town, Cayman Islands Rocky Shoreline - IMRAN™
My then-GF "K" had taken me on a 4th of July holiday weekend trip to the Cayman Islands. It had been planned for my birthday a month or so earlier.
It was summer 2013. It was hot. It was the Caribbean. It was quite beautiful. I do have to admit, the Cayman Islands are not quite as exciting or beautiful to me as the Virgin Islands, or especially places like Eleuthera, also in the Caribbean.
This trip ended up being a lot more drama than it was worth at the time. Fortunately, it accelerated my decision to clear my life of unneeded drama on returning to the USA. However, I savor my great memories.
Regardless of how happy I can be to be rid of a few specific people in my life, I do always cherish the (good) memories and experiences we shared. Life is too short to erase those joyful experiences just because the persons with me at those times were not worthy of being kept next to me.
So, despite the too frequent bursts of drama, and my literally almost taking an early flight home, we did have some good times. We spent a lot of time exploring the shoreline of Grand Cayman.
During a long walk exploring the nooks and crannies off South Church Street, George Town, we found many beautiful spots to make memories, including this magical rocky place. Smith's Barcadere sandy beach was a good place to go snorkeling, as well as swimming in the absolutely stunning blue shades of water that surrounded the area. Very few people were around.
This is an old 3D camera video so the quality is not that great. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do to block out the irritating background sound. I did not want to kill the full audio of this clip because the sounds of water are always part of the magic of seeing a sea or ocean video. After all, it is just like having to tolerate negative people even during an amazingly positive happy blessed life!
It may be impossible to have two hours to spare to watch a golden Tampa Bay afternoon sky turn into a stunning summer sunset and mellow magical moon-fall. It is impossible not to be blown away by watching it in less than one minute in this HDR timelapse music video I created to share with you. Come, experience everything with me here.
German Shepherd Dogs Kennedy Looking For Dolphins & 3 Months Old Puppy K2 Looking For Ways To Annoy Him - IMRAN™
Kennedy, a GSD rescue I got in 2019, is one of those German Shepherd Dogs that should be a breed called Saint Something for his patience. K2 was a three months old puppy when I recorded this video at the dock of my blessed home on Tampa Bay, in Apollo Beach, Florida. This was a few days after my birthday last year, and only 5 weeks since K2 had found his forever family home here.
As boats go by you can see Kennedy keep an eye on them but his real interest is to wait for his dolphin buddies to show up. K2 in the meantime is getting ON Kennedy's nerves, by getting UNDER his skin AND his body to playfully bite at the larger dog's legs.
I love how Kennedy is so gentle even when he play fights puppies, smaller dogs. His tenderness is most incredible when I have seen him approach babies in strollers and sniff but without waking up the sleeping infant. That is better than some people's kids I know. LOL
Kennedy & K2 Frolic At The Beach On Tampa Bay Florida (3D Anaglyph) - IMRAN™
Enjoy this anaglyph (red/blue shades) 3D experience as Kennedy and K2, my always happy and active German Shepherd Dogs, frolic on the beach in my neighborhood. (Please use the red/blue shades to see the 3D).
Renegade Serenade (First Cut) - Untitled Album - IMRAN™
Been too busy (or lazy? LOL) to do anything since I released my first album "nTrance" in 2003-2004. Catch that on Spotify at https://play.spotify.com/album/0w09TS16TwyBs3FVHgb0BH .
Over the years I started work on many new tracks, but have not had time to put them together into a new album. I am finally getting around to giving it more time.
Check out this first take on one I call Renegade Serenade. Work in progress, and it has not been given any editing, mixing, or mastering treatment at all.
One sound is jarring because the real synth for that track is my Korg in New York so the placeholder instrument sound is a bit too loud and clashing. But, as I said, just a first take... Enjoy.
10 Years - Dusk At Shoreline Park Marina Alameda California January 2011 - IMRAN™
How quickly a decade can fly by. The iPhone 4 video was recorded during my stay in Oakland, California, literally 10 years ago prior to my writing these lines.
It was mid-January, 2011. It was a complicated time in my life, as for many others. I was recovering from the craziness that was the George W. Bush inflicted near-depression economic meltdown of 2008-2009. But I was hard at work exploring new ideas, new opportunities, and yet experiencing life to the fullest. Today, I am writing this hoping that the country can recover from the Donald Trump inflicted economic suffering, and a near-destruction of democracy in America in the four years leading up to the elections in 2020. As I was a decade ago, I am hopeful.
That chilly California evening I had met my friend and old Columbia MBA classmate Larry Landman, who had left the USA for Denmark back in 1991 or so but was visiting California at the same time as me. We walked around this beautiful marina in Alameda catching up while catching the sunset and dusk over the Shoreline Park marina.
The fleet of sailboats, many with blue colors prominent, were lined up against the pink sky and the terrain in the background. I wonder if the scene there has changed much 10 years later.
Without being presumptuous of even a day of life ahead, I also wonder what life holds in store in the next 10 years. Only the best, God Willing.
Inauguration Day 2021 Magic Floating By On Tampa Bay Sunset Clouds - IMRAN™
Enjoy 30 seconds of tranquility and peace in this timelapse sunset music video.
This was the first sunset after the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States. A sense, and hope, of a return to normalcy, was in the air as the magic floated in the air of these colorful clouds crossing over my blessed home at sunset.
I just hit a couple of keys on the Korg WaveStation keyboard to add random music to the video in a quick music-video. This is a sound I plan to use in a track in my next music album.
