Explicit Exposure: February 2005

Ten years since I

Ten years since I long waited for you to come
Ten years since I saw you come into my life
Ten years since I loved you at the first sight
Ten years since I held you in my arms
Ten years since I showed you with proud
Ten years since I thanked God
Ten years since I thanked everyone
Ten years since I heard you cry
Ten years since I cried with you
Ten years since I cried for you
Ten years since I grabbed your hand and you grabbed my finger
Ten years since I brought you home
Ten years since I didn't sleep watching you sleep
Ten years since I feared that you had not woken up
Ten years since I rejoiced when you woke up
Ten years since I was kept awake all night every night
Ten years since I fed you when you were hungry
Ten years since I cleaned you when you were done
Ten years since I made you burp
Ten years since I rocked you in my arms
Ten years since I made you go back sleep
Ten years since I crossed the mountains with you
Ten years since I took you to your new home
Ten years since I suffered when you got sick
Ten years since I gladdened when you got well
Ten years since I gave you your baths
Ten years since I ironed your clothes
Ten years since I prepared your meals
Ten years since I smiled when you smiled
Ten years since I laughed when you laughed
Ten years since I crept alongside you when you crept
Ten years since I walked behind you when you walked
Ten years since I ran to you when you stumbled
Ten years since I could not even imagine living without you
Ten years since I became your daddy
Ten years since you became my little girl

My Maria Gabriela, when you look forward, ten years seem like an eternity. But when you look back, ten years seemed just like a sigh. Happy Birthday my baby, I love you very much.

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Free Mojtaba and Arash!

"The Committee to Protect Bloggers has set Tuesday, February 22nd as 'Free Mojtaba and Arash Day.'

Arash Sigarchi is still in Lakan prison in the Iranian city of Rashat.

Fellow Iranian blogger Mojtaba Saminejad has been released from prison in Tehran but still faces charges.

They have both been deprived of their liberty by the Iranian government for expressing opinions on their blogs. "

Freedom of Speech is the Right of all the people in the World. This is my little contribution.

Link

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Poisonous Everglades

A friend of mine went hiking and camping to Florida's Everglades and found this sign. It says:

WARNING.
Health Hazard.
Do not eat more than one Bass per week per adult, due to high mercury content.
Children and pregnant women should not eat Bass.
-----
AVISO.
Peligro Contra La Salud.
No se debe comer mas de una Lobina por adulto por semana, debido al alto contenido de mercurio.
Los niños y las mujeres embarazadas no deberán comer Lobina.

Creepy, isn't it?. And you thought going into the wild and fishing your own food would be a healthy experience for you and your family.

Poisonuos Everglades

(Thanks Orlando)

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Children 'harmed' by vegan diets

That doesn't mean I have to give my children plenty of fast food instead.

Putting children on strict vegan diets is 'unethical' and could harm their development, a US scientist has argued.
Lindsay Allen, of the US Agricultural Research Service, attacked parents who insisted their children lived by the maxim 'meat is murder'.
Animal source foods have some nutrients not found anywhere else, she told a Washington science conference.
She was especially critical of parents who imposed a vegan lifestyle on their children, denying them milk, cheese, butter and meat.

Meat isn't murder, give your kids juicy steaks for lunch and they'll grow stronger.
Link

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How the Sun shines for Google Maps?

I've read many articles and reviews about Google Maps. It's quite amazing how these guys have made such great product using almost only common browser based programming.

While playing with it and looking at the way it pinpoints places on the map, I realized a little detail that got my attention... the shadows.

When you see a shadow it necessarily doesn’t mean we will have six more weeks of winter, but there must be a light source projecting that shadow. Thus, taking in account the maps show geographical locations then the more obvious source for this light is the Sun.

I'm not and astronomer or a scientist, as I stated before, I’m just a wannabe photographer who knows a little bit about lighting sources and shadows. I pasted a screenshot in Photoshop and tried to figure out the more I could about the facts that caused the projection of the shadows. (No publicity was intended for the places shown in this map, I just made a generic search within my city and that’s what came out)

As a fact, the light source always come from the opposite side of the shadow, so I measured the angle of the light source with respect to the cardinal points, and it gave me the shadow has a deviation of 43º from East to North (all calculations here are based on aproximated values), which means the Sun must be at 43º from West to South or, as is the same, 47º from South to West. I googled and found out this angle is called Azimuth.

Then, I tried to figure out what the elevation of the Sun was. I googled again and found a Shadow Length Calculator, which uses the height of an object and Sun’s elevation for the calculation.

Using photoshop, I determined the virtual height of the pin plus the balloon, and the length of their shadow (Note to Google: Your maps don’t show the scale ruler, so I had to copy it from Mappoint). From this, I could determine the elevation of the Sun was approximately 52º.

Furthermore, I wanted to calculate the date and time when the Sun was in that specific position, but I couldn’t find anything out there in the internet that let me calculate exactly those values, because they depend on the latitude, longitude and other parameters I barely understood. All I was able to determine was the time was in some moment in the afternoon and the date was when the Sun followed its winter path.

Finally, after my rudimentary analysis of Google Maps’ shadows in any given location, I found they are not being projected based on the Sun’s position for such specific place's latitude and longitude, neither for the current date/time in that place.... but that would have been a nice feature to be considered by Google.

click to see a bigger image

Note to readers: If you want to add anything to my analysis, or even correct something I did wrong, please feel free to write me to explicitexposure[at]gmail[dot]com and I'll post it with pleasure.

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What's next?

I started this blog two months ago with the intention of being a photoblog, where I could post my works as a wannabe photographer.

It started pretty well, posting one picture every day, but after all this time I ran out of previously taken photos and my daily posts just stopped. I haven't taken new photos ever since, and now I don't have anything new to post.

So, what happened?. Who can I blame for that?

Maybe I can blame all people's favorite excuse: lack of time!, or perhaps I should assume my guilt and blame myself for not paying this project all the time it deserves.

At this point I asked myself the question, what's next? what can I do to avoid this blog to die and be forever forgotten. The only answer I could think of was a change of scope.

I will post about everything I can, photography, gadgets, computers, technology, curiosities, cars, my photos, my kids, my family, my community, my city, my world.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Explicit Exposure has reborn.

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