I am so incredibly infatuated with this band right now. It is the first good "new" music I've heard in a long time:

Skeye

Skeye's YouTube Channel

Tree, Skeye

Pretty much sums up my life at this time.

Tree:

I'm, I'm just a tree

Deceased but still standing

Leafless and gray

I reach for the sky

A skeletal remain

Just waiting here to fall

Or someone to walk by 

And see that I 

Am no longer me

Split me in half

Forget the roots that grew me

Just leave them in the ground cause I

Need them no more

Now there's nothing I can do

This is peaceful now

Now there's nothing I can do

Death is peaceful now

Am I a danger 

To all the others?

Would it be better 

If they just took me down?

I don't know,

I don't know,

I don't know.

Why we have blind spots. [VIDEO]

Why we have blind spots. [VIDEO]:

'via Blog this'

Change

One undeniable truth in my life is the occurrence of ever present change. This is at least partially true for everyone I think, however I am a person that has experienced profound change on a regular basis. As a child, I moved into and out of homes with some regularity, and I seem to have replicated that model in my adulthood. Most of the time, the change has been for the worse. I get myself into situations where change is inevitable. In the most recent example I blindly put too much faith in the concept of marriage, thinking that my "partner-in-life" would see through my behavior, words, and actions to the real me, who was hurt, lost and confused. At the very least I expected the benefit of the doubt. See, I was going through a rough time in my life. My mom died, I lost my job, I had succumbed to various unhealthy 'medicinal' habits, and I think I must have been having some sort of midlife crisis because for a couple of months I was damn sure I wasn't going to work in IT anymore! In fact, I was looking for ways to be a stay at home dad, much to the disapproval of my then best friend, the one whom I married. My attitude and outlook had become miserable and I would lash out at anyone for any reason. An enormous turmoil and stress had built up inside me and I lost my ability to cope in a healthy way. I turned into a selfish, rude, and disrespectful man. I don't argue that it was (putting it nicely), 'difficult' to be around me for any length of time. Yet when I needed my friend the most, she left me alone and depressed. I was abandoned to be an asshole by myself. I'm sure one could look at the situation and interpret it in any number of ways and maybe it's realistic to think I deserved to be left alone to figure out my life by myself, and fix myself on my own.

However, I don't believe that. I think that when a couple is married, they vow to stay together for better or worse. Issues, concerns, problems, and untenable situations are opportunities to help one another, and be a closer couple on the other side. Even if it takes awhile. There are certain actions that in my opinion justifies a divorce, including infidelity, physical abuse, and lying. There are perhaps more however, mental health issues aren't acceptable reasons to end a lifelong pact. If someone I decided to trust and love forever experienced a personality change and became a different person than the one I married, I would not leave or give up. I would not abandon her or remove her from my heart. I have now learned that in my case, I needed time, understanding, patience, help, and above all... love.

Unfortunately those apparent luxuries were not available to me. The person I needed this from the most instead withdrew and cultivated her own resentments. I was devastated. I was unbelievably heartbroken. I had never felt this blackness, hopelessness, and sense of loss. I could go on describing the utter despair I felt but... Maybe you, reader, get the idea. Suffering through depression throughout this time I came real close to ending my life. Once, I admitted myself to an ER and spent a few days in a psych ward. Some time after that I took a LOT of pills. I am actually very surprised I survived the amount of painkillers, alcohol, and sleeping pills I simultaneously put into myself. I tried another time as well, but there is not much to say about that. See, the emotional pain of losing my family (again) had overcome my ability to cope. I had no tools with which to counter the overwhelming sadness and suffering. This family I had cherished, the son we had agreed to make, the life we agreed to reach for, the woman I had loved beyond description. All gone. All gone and I was made aware of The Decision by a text message on my phone. The phone that was one of a pair we upgraded, the newness of the gadget we experienced together. For some reason getting a text that indicated my marriage was over, that my life was again changing, on that particular phone hurt almost as much as the message itself.

That's it for now. Writing this stuff down is a necessary process for me but it opens scabs that are just beginning to heal over. I have to vent in small doses or... I will exceed my coping capacity.

Sorry to be so emo.

To be continued...

Entropy

I learned a new word recently: Entropy. I'm writing about it because I think it is such an incredible word. There are many incredible words that are so for their own reasons. For example, the word palindrome is incredible because of the way it makes my mouth feel. Entropy is incredible because of it's meaning. Rather, it's possible meanings, depending on what context it is used in.

Wikipedia says that:

Entropy is a thermodynamic property that can be used to determine the energy available for useful work in a thermodynamic process, such as in energy conversion devices, engines, or machines.

This roughly means that in a running car engine, for instance, there is a certain amount of energy that is wasted. The waste is usually discharged in the form of heat. Entropy is a measurement of what that waste is. Maybe turbochargers take advantage of entropy? That is a question.

However entropy has other meanings as well. In information theory, entropy is defined as a way to measure the best guess you could make about a piece of data if you didn't have all the information. While that isn't exactly right, it's not entirely wrong, by the way. Data compression schemes benefit from entropy measurement when determining how much  a piece of data can be compressed by. This actually turns out to be extremely important. Every bit of information that is sent or received by a computer system is compressed in some manner.

There are other meanings. Too much to get into here.

I think the explanation I understand best is that entropy is a measure of unpredictability. If someone is always surprising you with their words or actions, you could say that person has high entropy, at least as it relates to the rate at which your are surprised by them. It's probably better to say that your ability to predict their actions is entropically inclined. A physicist or chemist would calculate the energy released by your persons act of unpredictability and the energy you release being surprised by it. Another physicist might include his or herself and the measurement devices entropy. Another way to put it is if one were to separate a bunch of red and blue marbles and in a bowl dump the blue ones on top of the red, then vibrate the bowl, after a certain amount of time, the marbles would be evenly distributed. The reason why they eventually mix together is because of the degree of disorder that affects everything. Everything eventually returns to a disorganized state, that is to say, the Earth. If I'm wrong or not right enough about any of this, please feel free to comment and correct me.

I didn't really have a point, just wanted to talk a little bit about entropy and what a fascinating word it is to me. If you want to know more, click here.

And donate to Wikipedia for Pete's sake!

Mixed Pics

Here's a little bit of what I've been up to since my last post. I took my kids to the trains again (they loved them), Halloween happened, we visited the air museum, and I went on a little walkabout in Coconut Grove. I met homeless people there and listened to a little bit of their stories. One guy told me a story of a boat, a romance, and a drug deal gone wrong. I took his picture and included it here. I wasn't surprised to learn that even in their terrible situations, they could still find love. Lucky them.

This is the only picture from the zoo I wanted to post. These kangaroos look emaciated.

On this plane, every time the guns or rockets fired, these cameras would turn on for several seconds. The pilots were instructed to keep the plane pointed at the target until the guns or rockets found their target, or missed. That is how they would verify kills.

If you view the enlarged pic, you will see a perfect "m" bird shape in the break between the clouds. Also, wtf is with the logo? Weird... and nasty.

I thought this nosecone was interesting up close.

This boat is the home of a man who's wife got into some trouble with a drug dealer.

It is obvious that the he loved that boat.

At the park.

I recently learned that these days, shoes on a telephone wire indicate gang borders. It used to mean that the shoes owners was a liar, and their pants were on fire. I'm not sure which is worse, crossing into gang territory, or being a liar and finding out your pants are on fire. How times change, I guess.

Looks like the building is wearing a hat. Or ablaze.

All the detail going on in this tiny waterfall is amazing to me.

Water is so crazy. So random. There is so much that happens on a small scale all around us. It's too bad we don't take the time to diligently inspect our physical world beyond what is required to keep ourselves safe.

All these differently shaped lines and angles were interesting to me.

My 5 year old son actually took this. Pretty neat, huh?

This one, too.

More shapes and light. I wish I knew what all those bolts held in place. They couldn't all be for the steel plate, right? I have to get inside that thing. Next time.

Macro Music

The other night I shot some more macro. However this time I kept it to a theme of music. I guess most of these are somewhat more... creative than what I've been doing in the past. Enjoy!