Canadian iPhone, Finally!

According to tech-news site, Gizmodo, the Jesus-phone is finally making its way across the border into the land of igloos and penguins. Who cares, you ask? Well, being someone who has been looking into buying one once High School is over, this means that I won’t have to pay some greedy merchanting idiot who charges $200 extra just to get it unlocked and shipped over.

Plus, by the time it is released, it will be the next-gen iPhone, which as been rumoured to not only have a 3G connection, but GPS as well. Good news all around, right?

Gizmodo: iPhone Finally Announced in Canada

Something Everyone Should See

In my opinion, there are too many people on this earth that think that the whole Universe revolves around them. I’m not trying to be mean or rude, but it’s the truth. It’s human nature to think that everything around us was indeed, made just for us. There’s an image that I think everyone on this Earth should see, and should really, really think about. Here it is:

That dot, that minuscule pixel in the image, is earth.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you have ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” ~ Carl Sagan

Just reading Sagan’s words blows my mind. Here we are, sitting on this massive chunk of rock, and we think that we run the show. I think the world would be a better place if people wouldn’t take things so seriously. If someone does something to someone else, or something bad happens in their life, who cares? In the ‘big picture’, these things happening are so tiny, so totally overlookable that it’s like they’ve never happened.

The size of our planet, in comparison to the rest of the Universe, is so small, so close to zero, that it can be accepted as such. What does that make us? A figment of some higher power’s imagination? A tiny speck of dust upon another tiny speck of dust, so insignificant that it’s like we don’t even exist? Everyone needs to think about this. Now, once you’re really wrapped your mind around life as we know it, put your problems in perspective: not so bad, right?

I think that the key to true happiness and enjoyment of life is to simply put yourself in perspective. Looking at the size and magnitude of the Universe, and then comparing your own size to it is really humbling. It really puts life in perspective, and you realize that you are the one in charge of your own life, and it’s up to you to decide what that means.

Laptop Woes!

Here’s my situation. There’s about two months left to go as far as High School goes, then it’s summer break. After that, I go to University for four years, working to achieve my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. So, I told my parents about halfway through the year that I would need a laptop for University, and that I would pay for the majority of it if they could pitch in a couple hundred bucks. To my surprise, they told me that they had already planned on getting me a laptop as a grad gift.

You can probably imagine my elation when I heard this. Since then, I scoured both the Internet and any retail store with laptops for the perfect notebook. Whenever I found one that would suit my needs, my parents always had a reason not to buy it. This confused me, because some of the deals I found were really, really good. Unphased, I continued my quest.

Then, about a week ago, I was looking through the Walmart flyer and I saw a deal, so I slid the newspaper over to my mom. She looked at it for a minute, looked back at my dad, looked at me, and sighed. She told me that my grandparents had already purchased me a laptop at Christmas, and were going to give it to me as a grad present. They wanted to keep it a secret, but to quote her, “We couldn’t think up any more excuses.”.

I was so happy. I had originally hoped that with constant reminding and nagging, I may be able to secure one before grad, but the thought that a laptop is sitting at my grandparent’s abode, silent and waiting for the day it’s introduced to me is enough to keep my technology-lusting wants at bay.

Now here’s the thorn on the beautiful, portable computing, dual core processing rose. Every time my grandparents come in to visit (which is fairly often), there’s a part of me that thinks, hopes, prays that they will surprise me and give it to me early. It hasn’t happened yet, and probably won’t happen until the day of grad, but I can’t help but hope that the next time they come in they’ll greet me with more than a kiss and a ‘You’re growing like a weed!” comment.

Why Does It Matter, Anyway?

Over Easter, I was at church with some of my extended family. I was surprised to see that one of my younger cousins took to singing the songs and hymns very enthusiastically. He’s nine years old, and it was all I could do to keep myself from laughing out loud when I heard his less-than-perfect singing voice belting out the words at what must have been the top of his lungs.

After the initial humour of the event passed, I began to wonder. Why doesn’t he feel embarrassed? He was gathering both stares and smiles from everyone in the audible vicinity, yet he remained completely unphased; happily singing like he was the only one in the church. I then became very jealous. How awesome would it be, I thought, to be able to act in such a way that make one’s self perfectly happy and content, without having to worry about what other people thought of you? The thought left me speechless. The reality that our actions are shaped, pressured, even chosen by the ones around us really blew me away. We say that we don’t give into peer pressure when topics such as drug, sex, and alcohol come up, but I had never realized how much pressure we receive from our peers without even noticing it.

It really makes me envious of young children. They can act in whatever way they want (to an extent), without anyone seeing anything wrong. It really makes you wonder what point in time society deems a person to be ‘too old’ or ‘too mature’ to do something. Could you put a number on such a thing? If the general public chose an age, and said that once you reach it, you must act like an adult, would people obey? Is society so brainwashed, so zombified that we sacrifice our own pleasure and happiness to fit into some sort of twisted ‘clique’? I wish I could say it wasn’t true, and have my conscience remain innocent, but I’m afraid I can’t.

Look around. Stand on a sidewalk, downtown in a major city. People bustle by, talking on phones, engaged in conversation, often too busy to utter a simple ‘excuse me’ or ’sorry’. How different do you think their lives are from one day to the next? Do you think that they make unique choices and decisions on an everyday basis, or are they just following the flow that’s followed, in turn, by the rest of their colleagues and acquaintances? Can we all still be called unique? Do we all still possess qualities and traits that can identify us from one another, or are we so buried beneath our careers and jobs that we have trouble seeing life outside the office?

Just some thoughts that were running through my mind.

Stop Motion Animation!

My first stop-motion project is complete. Enjoy!