Atlantic Waves Wave Cold Farewell To Winter's Day - IMRAN™

Atlantic Waves Wave Cold Farewell To Winter's Day - IMRAN™, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

There is nothing quite like the majestic serenity of a winter’s day at a secluded spot on the ocean, with not a soul in sight for miles.

The sounds of a silent soul soaking in the scene, felt, though not heard, louder than the crashing of the waves giving up the fight against gravity and the combined strength of otherwise insignificant grains of sand making their stand.

The cold onslaught of the mighty ocean merely hoping to erase recent footsteps of a man’s walk on the beach.

The surf, rolling, thundering in, and then haplessly collapsing foaming, seething, bubbling, hissing before receding, to gather strength for its next return, knowing it has no choice, but to dance this eternal dance, until the end of time.

The Atlantic Ocean’s wave’s wave a cold farewell to a New York winter’s day and ominous clouds, with the promise that they will tango again.

© 2013 IMRAN
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Fifty Thousand Shades Of Grey - IMRAN™

Life is not black and white. It is full of a million shades of grey.

It has its ups and downs. We probably have between 50,000 and 70,000 hours available in life.

If Black is down and White is the up part of our lives, it is in the grey zone that we will live most of our days and hours.So mope not if you happen to hit a down period in your life. And gloat not if you happen to hit a high. 

Give thanks, instead, for having the 50,000 hours of grey. Be thankful that they are not black and dark. Be grateful they are in your power to make lighter, brighter, whiter, happier, more blessed.

Be proactive, make a choice, and do all you can that God empowered you with, to make them more delightful, more love filled, more full of smiles, more brimming with love. And yes, don’t take for granted the basics. 

Say a prayer of gratitude for being alive, healthy, loved, able to read with your own eyes, able to write or speak your thoughts, having the resources and ability to go online.

Bow your head to count the blessings, of having a bed to sleep in and food to eat, and being able to do many of things a billion or more on this earth cannot do.

Happy Thanksgiving, in every shade of grey. 

- Imran Anwar
Long Island, NY, November 2013

Fall Full Moon Falls As Sun Rises To Keep It At Bay At Tampa Bay - IMRAN™

Fall Full Moon Falls As Sun Rises To Keep It At Bay At Tampa Bay - IMRAN™, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

I had happened to pull an all-nighter in Florida to finish work on a project before catching an early flight to NY.

But just as the sun was rising behind me, I saw a beautiful fall full moon still clearly shining in the sky falling to the West over Tampa Bay.

This photo was taken with a 41MP Windows Phone Nokia Lumia 1020 cell phone. It is a great camera but one thing it does is try to lighten dark photos. That is great for indoor dark scenes but in this case it tried to “help” by making the scene lighter, easier to see, but taking away the rich tones I was seeing.

I enhanced the photo by darkening it back in Photoshop to bring it closer to what I saw that day…. “Fall Full Moon Falls As Sun Rises To Keep It At Bay At Tampa Bay”.

© 2013 IMRAN

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Stunning November Afternoon Glows With Orlando Magic - IMRAN™

Stunning November Afternoon Glows With Orlando Magic - IMRAN™, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

Even though Orlando is far from my favorite bodies of water, like Tampa Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, the landscaping in most resorts makes up for that with ample water surrounding everything.

This particular November afternoon on a Hilton Grand Vacations resort was a splendid display of the power of nature’s colors in Florida, with a touch of Orlando Magic.

This photo was taken with my WindowsPhone Lumia1020, imported into iPhoto, enhacned in Photoshop, with copyright insertion, and reimported into iPhoto to post on Flickr.

© IMRAN WP1020_20131108_15_41_22_Pro__highres

Smith Point Beach Fire Island Dance Party

During one of my drives to Smith Point Beach on Fire Island I saw this fun group of people enjoying  summer dancing with live music at the Beach Hut. Except for a few songs, I am not a big fan of country music, but this tune obviously had people enjoying the day like a weekend, even though it was a Monday.

Pollen, Petals, And Cell(ular Phone Camera) Biology - IMRAN™

Pollen, Petals, And Cell(ular Phone Camera) Biology - IMRAN™, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

This is a handheld photo taken at maximum zoom of the Nokia, WindowsPhone, Lumia 1020 at my home on Long Island New York this summer.

It is amazing to see the detail of pollen on the petals that a 41MP cell phone camera’s zoom (crop to merely 1.5MB) picture can show.

I Imported into iPhoto, enhanced with copyright insertion in Photoshop, and shared with you all.

Air, Land & Sky That Even Poseidon Would Love - IMRAN™

Air, Land & Sky That Even Poseidon Would Love - IMRAN™, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

1989 was my first full year of living in the United States (after first coming in 1987). And at the end of that year, during a visit to Miami, Florida, where I made many wonderful friends, it was Susane Ronai, a dear friend until years afterwards, who took me to Disney in Orlando for New Year’s.

Even though I came to Orlando many times in subsequent years, for meetings, to speak at conferences like HIMMS, and more, I never made it back to a Florida theme park. I did go to Universal Studios in Los Angeles, and to Six Flags in New Jersey, both in 1991.

This year, I finally made it back to a theme partk after nearly 22 years, with my beautiful girlfriend Kat. It ended up being Universal Studios’ Islands of Adventure, in Orlando, that we spent November 10, 2013, at.

The more than 10 miles of walking we got in was quite a lot, especially wearing new shoes without socks. LOL. But the Hulk roller coaster (that I took twice), and the tower where you are shot up at the same acceleration as a fighter jet being catapulted off an aircraft carrier, were definitely worth experiencing (again).

I had to miss the Poseidon experience because it was a stunning day and I wanted to capture a panorama (actually an auto stitch with the Microsoft Photosynth app in my Lumia 1020 41MP phone). Not using a tripod means less than perfect alignment, but in this case Photosynth did a decent job. I cropped the full 360x360 degree spherical view into a rectangular photo for you to enjoy.

Feel free to post the link on your FaceBook or Twitter feeds if you have been to this place, and share your stories here.

My Blessed Heavenly Home By The Sea - IMRAN™

My Blessed Heavenly Home By The Sea - IMRAN™, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

This is a panorama photo of my blessed home in Florida, the white home to the right. You have to click to soak in the scene larger size on a monitor. It was taken while standing in the water of Tampa Bay at my beach as the tide was receding.

Having slept at 4AM or so, I was woken by my girlfriend who had gone for a walk on the beach and realized the stunning Florida sky colors, sand flats color and the water shades would be worth waking me up for.

Normally waking me up from deep sleep is a serious offense (LOL), but in this case I just jumped out of bed and walked on to the sands with her.

I took 22 handheld Nikon D300 images facing the morning sun. It was a breathtaking moment as the sun behind the home gave it a heavenly aura.

Later back inside on my brand new MacBook Pro Adobe Photoshop and other apps could not handle stitching them straight but in a wave shape, but they were stitched by Microsoft’s ICE program on Windows 8, running in Parallels. But even that skipped 2 shots, as it seems beach/water/horizon/sky are the weakest parts of panorama software and those happen to be my favorite subjects. Oh well, this will do for now.

I opened that stitched image in Photoshop CC/CS to fill out the jagged edges (Fill/Content Aware), improved shadow detail, but did not reduce sun glare which would make the sky color seem fake, so I just added my name, exported as JPG and imported into iPhoto to post on Flickr.

I hope you enjoy this moment as much I did and do. Your prayers to bless my family, me and my homes are always requested.

© 2013 IMRAN

St. Petersberg Stunning Sunset Silhouette - IMRAN™

St. Petersberg Stunning Sunset Silhouette - IMRAN™ -- {SOOC}, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

This stunning silhouette of a breathtaking red sky over St. Petersberg, Florida, was taken across miles of wide open Tampa Bay, with my mostly trusty 5+ years old Nikon D300, in mid-September.

ISO200, 450mm handheld zoom, f/13 at 1/640 second 0EV.

SOOC Image Straight Out Of Camera!! NO editing, tweaking, of ANY kind. Only added my name in Photoshop..

© IMRAN
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Fire Island Glows Across From Long Island's Fire Filled Sky Sunset - IMRAN™

Fire Island Glows Across From Long Island's Fire Filled Sky Sunset - IMRAN™, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

I got into making panoramas a long time before most people. I still miss my QTVR Authoring Studio software that Apple did not support well. I miss my precision engineered 0-360 degree OneShot lens (accidentally broken along with a Nikon camera at Christmas 2008).

Yet over time the ability of cell phone cameras and software to enable me (and millions of others) to take panoramas made up for that. I really appreciate the camera and photography capabilities of my WindowsPhone Lumia 1020, but alas it's panorama stitching capabilities do not handle handheld photography (standing in one spot turning taking dozens of photos while trying to keep the camera location fixed) well at all.

This becomes sadly apparent in beach/horizon photos, among my favorite subjects. Often the horizon will appear as a square waveform if even one picture is processed by the software a few pixels above where it should be.

I do appreciate my iPhone 4S camera app for its ability to fairly seamlessly stitch together a panorama, but it is not a full 360 degrees. Some other apps do offer good options though.

So, in this particular case, the stunning colors of the sky on Fire above the beach at my home on Long Island (left of the photo) and the glowing red horizon showing Fire Island (and a near full moon on the right of the picture) were due to the awesome camera on the WindowsPhone Lumia. But, I did have to manually cut/move/paste some of the horizon parts to make them straight, in Photoshop.

It took effort to make the horizon (almost) straight since I am not a Photoshop guru. Nor do I have the time to compensate for the fact that these were all taken standing on sloping sand turning around in a full circle. Making the horizon a perfect straight line on both sides to align on the left and right is something I would love to do (and process this photo into a pixel accurately aligned real Quicktime virtual reality immersive experience) but alas, lack of time means I can only share the magic of this moment in a straight flat but, you will agree, stunning image.

Here's to software getting better faster than any hopes of my photography skills!

© IMRAN

Look Up, Fall (Coming) Down! - IMRAN™ - (SOOC)

Look Up, Fall (Coming) Down! - IMRAN™ - (SOOC), a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

SOOC Image Straight Out Of Camera!! NO photo editing, tweaking, or processing of ANY kind on this 41MP Nokia Cellphone photo. Only added my name in Photoshop & saved image as JPG.

As I was driving home from lunch recently during my 3 weeks stay at my home in Long Island, New York, I did a quick (but safe) U-turn on South Country Road to catch this photo from one of the few trees like this that still had leaves on them.

This year it seemed like the season changed rather quickly. With all of God's blessings, even as I Look Up, Fall (Coming) Down all around is what I see.

Nokia WindowsPhone Lumia1020 Cell Phone Camera

Falling For Fall As Sun Falls Below NY Horizon - IMRAN™

Falling For Fall As Sun Falls Below NY Horizon - IMRAN™, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

As the cold air starts to creep in from the North, the sun starts to slide to set more over the water than land on the South Shore of Long Island, New York. The moisture squeezed out of the air also makes for crisper cooler air to breathe in but also for sharper photographs. Dusk scene at my blessed home beach in NY, taken with my new WindowsPhone Lumia 1020.

Easy To Work In Microsoft Office With These Microsoft Windows & Windows Phone, Literally! - IMRAN™

Easy To Work In Microsoft Office With These Microsoft Windows & Windows Phone, Literally! - IMRAN™, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

Now that is what I call Microsoft Office AND Microsoft Windows. It is a good thing I do not have to visit the Microsoft office in Southwest Florida regularly. With windows offering a 270 degrees waterview like this -- combining my loves for boating/waterfront living and flying {as jets come in to land right across the bay) -- I'd get nothing done! Two handheld photos I took with my WindowsPhone Lumia 1020, merged in Microsoft ICE and titled in Photoshop.

Keep A Finger On The Pulse Of Fingerprint Readers In Gadgets

By now everyone has probably seen the news about Apple's recently launched iPhone 5S. Even as an old time iPhone fan, I had stopped buying new ones since the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 5 had not given me any compelling reason to buy one either. Ironically, in that period of time, even as an old time Mac user and past critic of old versions of Windows, I joined Microsoft. 

I did not immediately get a Windows Phone (even though I was losing out an employee discount) and waited until the phone I really wanted came out….. The Nokia Lumia 1020 WindowsPhone 8, with its 41MP mind-blowing smartphone camera, which I bought without a discount or employee rebate. I still kept and use my iPhone 4S, because of the many apps I had bought over the years, and music that is tied to iTunes/Apple at present.

I was very hopeful for a truly innovative iPhone 5S, because, even though Apple's phone is now a direct competitor to my employer's recently acquired smartphone business, I believe innovation at one leading competitor benefits us all, as others have to work hard, invest in innovation and build great devices and services around them.

But, try as I might, despite being eligible for the new iPhone 5 upgrade from AT&T, I did not see any compelling reason to buy this one, at least yet, while my 4S is working fine. The only thing that I found of some interest was the fingerprint reader Apple built in, based on a company it had bought not too long ago.

I have always been a fan of natural interfaces or input devices. 

Ironically, my first fingerprint reader was actually a Microsoft branded one I bought for one of my PCs in the days I was a big time Mac fan.

A few years ago I discovered Authentec's USB readers and bought several, especially as they could work on my Macs and my PCs.

Some time later their prices dropped drastically and I found Apple had bought the company. So, predicting that the next generation iPhone would have fingerprint capability was not a leap of genius. 

However, I have to say my experience with the Authentec USB pluggable fob readers was frustrating, to the extent I do not use them anymore. Sometimes it would take half a dozen attempts of aligning the finger, the reader and Jupiter with Saturn before it would accept the print. I found simply typing in my complex password took less time and frustration.

Ironically, now that my current position is with Microsoft, I am happy that the technology is becoming more mainstream even if launched by a competitor. Such wide distribution of technology features leads to a greater pressure on everyone to improve the technology. (Remember how frustrating BlueTooth was early on?).

I have a fingerprint reader built into the new Lenovo Windows 8 (now. 8.1 :-) ) laptop I got earlier this year, and it works smoothly, quickly and without trouble (so far!).

So, I am hoping to see more of that technology in other laptops and smartphones. Let the new game begin…. Touch And Go (Innovate!).

 

 

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, Microsoft, Photography, technology, Nokia, Smartphones, WindowsPhone, Innovation

Floral Explosion - IMRAN™

Floral Explosion - IMRAN™ -- {SOOC WindowsPhone Lumia 1020 Cell Phone Camera!), a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

SOOC Image Straight Out Of WindowsPhone Lumia 1020 Smartphone Camera!! NO editing, tweaking, or color processing of ANY kind. Only added © IMRAN in top right corner..

It is hard to imagine that this is a smartphone camera photo taken at night in a dimly lit restaurant with the cell phone's built in flash. I took it at the Texas de Brazil restaurant's salad bar in Tampa, Florida.

I am glad I waited for the Nokia Lumia 1020 before buying my WindowsPhone.

© 2013 IMRAN

Why I Would Never Recommend A Lenovo Thinkpad Laptop To Anyone

Even as a then Mac bigot the Lenovo (then IBM) ThinkPad with a writing pad and touchscreen was one of the few times I had bought a Windows laptop.

Fast forward to 2013 and I was given a brand new Lenovo W530 for work and hate it (though much less than the lousy new HP Ultrabook).

In 2013 a no touchscreen Microsoft Windows 8 laptop is funny enough, but it is designed by a team of truck designers or drivers. They put a 15 inch non-touch screen in a body bigger than most 17" laptops. And about as elegant.

WARNING: You need to buy a matching Samsonite luggage set for this, not to protect the laptop but to protect other people's luggage from it.

Get a set of two, one for the boulder-weight laptop and the other for the power adaptor just slightly lighter than a concrete block.

It has the weakest speakers on any laptop I have ever owned, and the world's most atrocious sandpaper textured trackpad that often requires multiple attempts to register movement.

And what can I say about the Lenovo web site designed by those who were rejected for mail room janitor jobs….

The site asks you for a 4-25 character ID, which it later rejects because you used non-AlphaNumeric characters, like a period in the name. They of course do not state it before you have clicked submit.

You write a short review and THEN the site does not accept it because it has "too much text"… but it does not tell you what the text limit it. This is the last time I will go to their web site….

Though Windows 8 has been rock solid on this and I have not had any crashes at all since I got it, the hardware is the worst ever from a company division that used to be IBM.

I cannot recommend this to anyone.... well, except my worst enemies. :-)

--

UPDATE 09/09/2013

------------------
As if things could not get worse, or as if to prove some latent tendency to feel pain and anger, I went to the Lenovo web site to look for some updated firmware and drivers. The made-by-Martians-for-Saturnites-living-on-Neptune interface would be funny if it did not make you cry for how you have to (or I had to) click on about a dozen or more links to display the drivers under various areas, and then to click on each of THOSE to see what the issue date was. If the date was later than the purchase date I downloaded it. (I did not download all because some were not relevant to me). When all was said and done, I dutifully and painfully installed each one by one… Until…

One of the update installers completed its work, asked for a reboot, which I allowed and then…

The Lenovo W530 stopped booting. It just stopped going past the Boot Menu, but instead of showing the various USB stick, external disk or even WIndows2Go on USB OS plus the internal drive, it simply showed ZERO boot devices available. In the meantime, the utilities area allowed me to run disk tests on the internal drive and memory etc. All came back 100% but the machine remained unbeatable. So, after spending one day trying to resolve that, I had to go in for a technician to try everything he could, and he had no luck either. FInally, the only way the machine was booted was with LAN startup and formatting and reinstalling the OS. That used up most of today. And now I have to dig for installers of all the files, not to mention the work in progress from the last few days that had not been backed up (since I am not at home in NY).

Word to the wise, Friends Don't Let Friends Buy Lenovo.

 

[I also posted this product review on Amazon]

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Windows, Laptops, Lenovo, HP, ThinkPad

Sun(Set)Bird(Sit) - IMRAN™

Sun(Set)Bird(Sit) - IMRAN™, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

I invite you my friends here to connect with me on FaceBook at facebook.com/IMRAN.TV .

Sun(Set)Bird(Sit). Stunning colors on Tampa Bay sunsets this whole week that the heron takes in at dusk. NO color processing. Original Nikon D300 image simply cropped to square size and added title.

© 2013 IMRAN
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Stunning Day, Tampa Bay - IMRAN™

Stunning Day, Tampa Bay - IMRAN™ a video by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

Please enjoy: Spectacular Mid-August Tampa Bay Florida Afternoon, Unedited Windows Phone Nokia Lumia 1020 Video Clip. Video & Music © IMRAN.

Eid Mubarak and Greetings - IMRAN

Eid Mubarak and Greetings, Love and Best Wishes to All, - IMRAN -- [SOOC], a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

Eid Mubarak and Greetings, Love and Best Wishes to All, Imran

Unedited Nikon D300 image. Text layer added in Photoshop.

From The Earth To The Moon. Honoring Moon Landing July 20, 1969 - IMRAN™

From The Earth To The Moon. Commemorating Moon Landing July 20, 1969 - IMRAN™, a photo by ImranAnwar on Flickr.

From The Earth To The Moon. It was today's date, but July 20th, 1969. I was a 7-year old kid who had left home to live with my grandmother in Karachi, Pakistan, because there were no decent schools in the remote part of the country my late beloved father was posted to, in the Irrigation Department in Punjab.

It was a Telefunken Black and White TV that we were watching in the early hours of the morning, way past bed time for most adults, much less kids. But, I recall watching, and hearing, every wonderful minute of that historic event.

Decades later, I was walking on the Smith Point Beach on Fire Island, off of Long Island, New York, when this stunning (super) moon was appearing on the horizon of a magical dusk.

I captured this moment, of two unknown humans, on a beach on earth, with their backpacks emulating personal space ready jetpacks of the not too distant future, seemingly ready to step on to the dusty, sandy, rock strewn but dry surface of the heavenly body forever enslaved to our planet.

From The Earth To The Moon, "One Small Step For A Man, One Giant Step For Mankind…".

Farewell and RIP Neil Armstrong and other heroes of the race to the moon. Hello, Moon… Until we meet again…..

© 2013 IMRAN™
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