A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

While I was away, I got a very interesting email. This sort of thing simply wouldn't have ever happened in the days before the Internet. We can easily take these changes for granted but they really are extrordinary. Everyday folks are now easily able to influence large numbers of others on the opposite side of the earth.

I dashed off a quick reply thanking the sender for the message. Here's the photo that prompted it.

Dear Mr. Dennis,

I was so excited to see the photos you published on flicker the ones on Kuwait, particularly those of Al-Bayan school.

I am in the second class photo (1981/82 Second Graders 2/3), that's me with short hair wearing pink and white sitting in the center.

The photos have been circulating in Kuwait by email over the past couple of months and everyone who recognizes anyone in the photos gets all excited. Most of my classmates are living successful lives with great careers. Many of them have MBAs from the US or UK. I myself am a journalist working with the Kuwait News Agency.

Seeing those pictures gave me goose bumps and some mixed feelings especially after noticing that three of my classmates have died. Two of them are with you in the picture. One has died in a car accident. One in a diving accident and the other I'm not really sure I think it was health problems. That kind of frightened me.

I remember that corner in the gym so vividly it's as if it was yesterday.

Al-Bayan has grown into a bigger establishment with another school for special needs. Thank you again for bringing back such wonderful memories.

Besma

Labels: Kuwait, scanned, students

Friends suggested going to Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds 3 at Science World in Vancouver. It'll probably make my old biology textbook seem a bit boring. It's not likely that they've changed many of the parts since I formerly studied the subject though.

Because we all want to go tomorrow, I checked the website. It seems that the tickets are for specific times so had we just shown up at six o'clock, we would have had to wait a really long time in a queue. Thankfully, with the net, I was just able to purchase tickets for the 6:45 PM showing. Now, we're assured of a place. For an extra five bucks, I added the related OMNIMax film entitled, The Human Body.

The process of ordering was very simple even though I had to take an extra second or two to fill out the membership procedures. I was able to print out the tickets directly. It seems nice to have them in hand now. The only thing that irks me a bit is the $2 convenience fee charge. As I'm paying for the ink, instead of charging extra, they should have credited me at least 25 cents! Am I just too cheap, or what?

Labels: Tim

If one uploads to Flickr and ensures the photo is kept public, it could show up just about anywhere.

Even India!

Labels: Flickr, India

... but there are over 200 photos with me in them. As of today, they start in Wendell, New Hampshire USA in 1961, and end in Hong Kong last week.

I've been busy uploading photos from our recent 5-week vacation and the more I work with Flickr, the more indispensable it becomes. If the net term, mashing-up, means "to tie together web data from different sources", then this blog and Flickr are a mash made in heaven. I can now point you off to a Flickr page to show you most anything.

Here, for example, is a photo of a now deceased grandmother.

Or I could show you all my photos that have the topic of winter.

How about a view of my bathroom?

I have 380 images of the city in which I now live.

In addition, you may simply see what I've uploaded most recently.

Everything from apples to zebras are included.

I can even directly embed a photo without having to make a copy for my server. For example, here's last month's photo of Jinka the cat asking auntie for a handout. It's running on Flickr but loads when this page does. Cool, eh?

Labels: Flickr, Sri Lanka

Posted by: Dennis S Hurd / 11:31 AM 0 comments

To "canosponsorvisit@worldvision.ca"
Subject Re: #2837-9295 visit in Sri Lanka- confirmed

Diane,

We've been back in Vancouver since Sunday. I'm afraid that my head is still functioning in another time zone. Yet, I wanted to thank you so much for your assistance in letting us get to meet our sponsored child in Sri Lanka.

I am extremely impressed with the entire organization. It was a wonderful experience.

We brought along a number of Jay's family and made quite a day of it. The area is so completely different than from where we stayed. It's amazing how much geography can be packed into a little island.

I am so grateful to the staff in the Anamaduwa office. I was extremely impressed with how the day was organized. Special thanks to Ruvini who acted as our translator and guide. She is the perfect example of a woman in the 'helping professions'.

If possible please forward our heartfelt thanks to the entire office there. It was a part of our journey that we shall never forget.

Dennis S. Hurd
(View More Photos)

Labels: World Vision

Posted by: Dennis S Hurd / 2:25 PM 0 comments

It's going to take a while to get digital me back up to speed after being offline for about five weeks.

I felt no withdrawal symptoms at all while unconnected. Perhaps having my notebook along during vacation time helped me avoid problems involving the discontinuation. After all, I was able to hear Windows start. I copied photos off my camera's xD card daily. I saved the blog entries that I entered yesterday. Yet without the Internet a computer isn't useful anymore.

While gone, Google did well keeping spam out of my inbox. Yet, my BCIT email address contained hundreds of advertisements. I went wild while deleting. I surely hope nothing important ended up in the digital dump.

Labels: flash memory, Google

We spent September in Sri Lanka. This blog rested while I was doing the same in jungles and on the tops of mountains. In reality, actually, all four weeks of data were written as they occurred. The fact is simply that I saved the words and images on my notebook computer and uploaded today!

If you feel inclined you may read them now. The stay was from September 3rd to 30th. I'll start you at the third but you'll have to read up the pages. You should see that each page's top entry begins with a little arrow. It'll allow you to jump to the proceeding week. To take a look, click the road below. I hope you have as much fun reading as I did writing.

Or better yet, simply load the page that contains all entries from this year's trip.

Labels: Sri Lanka

Yes! We came back through YVR!

Although CX 888 left Hong Kong at 3:00 pm, we were walking through the airport here at 11:20 am. It's a bit like magic but we were just making up for the lost day back at the beginning of September.



It's nice to be home. I'm exhausted. I got zero sleep on the twelve hours of the flight last night. My body's also still on HK time.

Oh, surely my blog will start to show some of the dozens of text files that are sitting on the Gateway notebook. I will backfill the missing data later in the week. It'll be worth it to look about but right now I can only yawn.

Labels: flying