HyperSensory.com - Random thoughts of random people

It is America who killed the greatest pop singer of all times. Yes, this sounds ridiculous, but just think about all the unwelcome attention, all the gossips and all the lawsuits that he had to deal with. Add to that the fact that he was trying to make a come back in the age of five minute attention span, instant gratification and more personal assaults than ever ,and you can see how someone would finally give to the pressures of the world. No mater what anyone says - Michael was the greatest performer, incredible entertainer, extremely creative and very dedicated person.

Just as many others who grew up watching his music videos and listening to his songs, it is very hard for me to believe that he is no longer going to be with us.

And while everyone suddenly rushed to buy up anything that had his name - CDs, books, or shirts, that's just too late. Instead of showing how much you loved him before - you should have condemned all the attention to his personal life, his appearance, his habits, and supported him buy going to his concerts and buying his CDs while he was alive. Maybe then he still would be able to do the greatest come back ever, like he planned to do in London giving 50 (!) concerts basically back-to-back.

But America doesn't like those who succeed, those who can show the world that they are stronger than all the negative attitude and personal assaults. It is much easier to watch his videos for free on YouTube or put on a t-shirt with the name of the greatest star after the star is dead.
 

Michael - you were the greatest.
 

Yesterday I've stopped by a newstand in a shopping mall to check out the latest issue of Grassroots Motorsports. I was very pleasently surprised when I've opened page 152 and there it was - an article by Keith Tanner and Photographs by Yuri Risovanny! Even though editors dedicated only two little spots for photographs (especially when compared to advertisements), this is still a personal achievement to get my images published in a popular USA magazine that has 25 year old history and a large following. It was also good to see that Miata folks are planning another event next year, which I plan on attending. While I haven't made any decisions yet, there is a chance that I will be offering my photographic services to attendee and companies at the event. This though was planted by enthusiasts from miata.net community who have made quite a few positive comments on the pictures that I've provided them free of charge. Hopefully they will be true to their word in regard to willingness to pay for quality pictures.

I'm one of those people who thinks that learning to program is hard. But it is hard not because it is hard to memorize functions or calls, but because the documentation is geek encrypted.

Let's take something simple to use as an example - a need to generate a range of numbers from 0 to 10 in Python (which is often touted as one of the easier scripting languages to learn).

I'm very happy to announce that one of my pictures taken during the unofficial celebration of 20 years of Mazda Miata production that took place in Laguna Seca California was recently used as catalog cover by Flyin' Miata! I was at the event with my friend who was racing his car and was walking around taking pictures just for the fun of it. After posting pictures to Mazda Miata community several people approached me with requests to obtain high resolution pictures for printing and publishing. As I've said above, one of them ended up on the catalog for Flyin' Miata - company that specializes in customizations and parts for Miata's. They sell anything form exhaust tips to Corvette V8 engines for the little roadster.

A set of pictures from the event was also selected to be published in an article in Grassroots Motorsports  (issue is not our for sale as of this moment). This is one of the best magazines for those who are serious about racing and their cars. The publication is centered on cars that can be purchased and raced without a need for sponsor or a team of mechancis.

This is very exciting news, as I have been photographing for almost ten years and getting published is definitely a milestone.
 

If you are in need of your own mail server, but don't want to pay for Microsoft Exchange, yet don't want to spend hours building one by hand - here is a good alternative "MailServer Appliance" from AllradSoft. It is your basic FreeBSD distribution with all the right mail server software preinstalled and ready for use. All you need to do is enter your domain name, add users and make appropriate DNS/Domain entries with your registrar.

This virtual appliance runs on VMWARE and features: mail aliases, quatas, spam filtering, anti-virus filtering, IMAP/POP3/SMTP, webmail, SSL connections, certifactes, auto-updating of all the spam/virus signatures, easy server update process, MySQL database, web management, and more.

A free version allows you to have 1 domain and 10 mailboxes. For $99 you will get a license to have unlimited users and domains as well as ISO for instals on actual hardware (not in virtual machine) ! And that is cheap considering amount of hassle it saves.

Quite a few people are just like myself - want to have a nice looking and functional place to live. So in our quest for a first home we have purchased an oldish (1972) house in Southern California. It needed some work, but that didn't scare us away. After a year of living in a place of our own, I have started fixing minor things here and there around the house. But since I'm really interested in saving money whenever possible - I had to make a decision every time to do it myself or hire someone to do the work. While I enjoy doing almost everything myself the question of time and money always comes into the equation. Is it worth my time and how long would something take me to do. Very few things were done by contractors, but I've felt that I'm just so unqualified to do the job, that it simply be rather foolish to even try it. For example removing asbestos infused popcorn from the ceiling or plastering it later with a texture. In cases like this where the work would be way over my head (pun intended) or if there is a health risk - it is better to pay the money and let someone else do the hard stuff.

Everyone is on MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter. I can udnerstand why teenagers and musicians are on MySpace. I see why college kids are on FaceBook, but I don't udnerstand why even NPR hosts are on Twitter. The format is not useful - 140 character messages are not usefull for journalism, 140 chars is about 135 too many for teenagers who speak in LOL, OMG,l8r.