Vuelo Nocturno
Just finished reading the Spanish translation of “Vol De Nuit” (Vuelo Nocturno) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry as it was suggested to me by an old friend; Everything the author relates in the book he does with full knowledge of what he writes, Exupéry himself was a pilot during most of his adult life, in fact he died while in a reconnaissance mission during World War II.
After having read another work from the same author (Le Petit Prince) which is actually a widely acclaimed masterpiece and not precisely liking the aeronautics topic myself, I have to say that it was indeed a little hard for me to finish reading the book, however the work in my opinion has a great literary value because of its very well organized narrative, amazingly deep created metaphors and a great documental weight. rarely in literature you can find literary quality and documental value along side each other, so this gives “Vuelo Nocturno” a special lift among other books I have read, I believe the book is probably one of the best works in modern french literature, I recommend anyone to read it.
A Few Things We Know About Windows 7
Microsoft has had its lips sealed about the next version of Windows so far, however there are few things we know at this point about Windows 7, according to Microsoft’s own statements the following is true for the next version of Windows unless MS changes its mind later on in the game:
There won’t be a new kernel
The next version of Windows will not be modular
The GUI (Graphical User Interface) will not be a radical change from Vista, however MS will introduce some welcomed changes that will certainly improve the user experience, for instance: a thicker dock like task bar where icons appear to be bigger, The new task bar might indeed have a lot more functionality than the existing one in Vista and will probably either do away with legacy features such as the quick launch and system tray areas, or improve those areas significantly.
The Windows 7 team is busy at work dedicated and all about fixing problems existing today in Vista
UAC (User Account Control) will be improved and won’t be as annoying in Windows 7
Win 7 will feature a multitouch (Touch Screen capable) GUI subset
In the following screenshot taken from a recent Windows 7 demonstration shown at D6 Conference you can appreciate the thicker task bar and multi touch features:
There are also two videos one taken at the D6 conference and officially released by Microsoft, while a second video is floating around which appears to be legitimate but I’m unable to identify its source, Check them out:
New Look
Today I introduced a new theme for my blog, the old one was getting old and I wanted to do something for a change.
Because of the skin change I also had to remove some of the gadgets I had that didn’t work with it, so the Digg’s latest headlines is gone; and so is the little forum since it also had a security problem and it appears the forum software creator is not maintaining it anymore, hopefully he will update it in the near future so I can re-enable the forum, anyway I hope you like the new looks.
Gnarls Barkley Loving…
This is a nice video by “Gnarls Barkley” I recorded it live rencently while watching the Saturday Night Live Show on NBC; The song is called “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul” After watching this I couldn’t do less than buying the band’s latest CD, I think this song will defenately be a classic, what do you think?
The lyrics go like this:
New Understanding
This has been an important, and what many would call historic week, for all of us Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Watchtower society has enlighten us with new light regarding the understanding of the 1914 generation, We also learned from the Discrete and Faithful Slave that one of our oldest weekly meetings (The Book Study) is being eliminated. Even though these events might pass by unnoticed by many, they are in fact major developments for others who like me have been in truth for a while now, May Jehovah guide us through these changing times, may he also lead us in the right direction from this point forward through our holy faith and toward this our Pursuit of Truth. (Watchtower’s Feb 15 2008 Personal Study Magazine)
Remembering Jesus
27 “My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 And I give them everlasting life, and they will by no means ever be destroyed, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 What my Father has given me is something greater than all other things, and no one can snatch them out of the hand of the Father. ” Jn 10, 27-30. Those are probably the most important words ever stated, and directed to people of all nations of the earth, they were pronounced by the good shepherd, the ever loving Christ Jesus.
1,975 years ago Jesus Christ finally accomplished the mission his father had commended him to do; that is to lead mankind to its salvation, Jesus was the Logos, the word of God - his God.
No love have ever been greater than that, why? because he proved it by means of offering his own life in exchange for the sins of all men, his poured blood cleaned us in the eyes of God, our transgressions against the almighty, and our wrong doing against our own brothers are all but forgotten because of it, if it wasn’t for Jesus we wouldn’t be worthy of eternal life. Let us rejoice in peace because of him, Let us scream aloud that he is our hope, let’s be happy for he can resurrect the dead, and because he himself lives for ever!
I invite you to remember the greatest man who ever lived on the anniversary of his death. This year the anniversary of Jesus death happens on Saturday the 22nd of March after sunset. I invite you to visit a location near you where this remembrance will be held, visiting will help you learn why the person of Jesus as well as what he did when he was on earth is so important for us today. at this meeting you will learn answers to many questions related to Jesus, the following questions will be answered: Who was really Jesus? Is there a relation between his death and our possibility to live eternally? If you want to be part of this remembrance let me know by contacting me.
Intellectual Inabilities
“The vision that you glorify in your mind, the idea that you enthrone in your heart this you will build your life by, and this you will become.” That’s one of my favorite phrases of all time, James Allen was so right with that one. Most people will tell you they are happy with their lives, in fact people go to great lengths to hide failures and physical or intellectual disabilities they might have, Yes I said intellectual disabilities, even though this article does not relate to mental disabilities, that’s a whole different sort of thing, I don’t intend to write about people who are mentally disabled or ill, instead the story here is about people with very poor “human relations” skills.
An Intellectual inability is that which obstructs an individual from taking or exercising good judgment or actions when behaving in public, or within the community in general due to the fact of such individual not having points of reference or in deep knowledge about specific topics or situations, therefore doing things that adversely effect their environment and those within it.
For instance; someone with little knowledge about a task at work might give a co-worker who just started in the job wrong advice regarding an assignment when unexpectedly asked about it, this person did not give the erroneous instructions with malice, he or she was not wrong intentioned, they however got out of their way and gave advice about something they had slight insight just for the sake of looking good among peers, he or she will not allow others to be under the impression that their old time co-worker knows as little much as an entry level associate themselves and will resort to unfounded baseless tutoring thus causing trouble to the company and the new co-worker himself.
The greatest and most constant feature that differentiates humans from animals is our ability to be self aware, to know we are here and that we have a purpose. Still many cannot find this purpose and strive their whole lives trying different paths to that end; more or less we are all aware of the place we have in society. We all take notice of things such as what a friend was able to accomplish and that we would so much love to attain too. We as humans are clear on what the society establishes in front our eyes as being right or wrong, we fight our whole life following a path that will look good in our eyes and at the same time allows us to have an average civil standing that will fit right among others.
That’s when in my opinion intellectual disabilities as I like to call them play a negative role within the society in general, people trying to fill that gap to fit the “standard thinking” which that same society imposes often do things that will hurt others or themselves.
LOVE THE WILD SWAN
“LOVE THE WILD SWAN“
by Luis Rogelio Nogueras
Translation by Ely
Do not try to settle your hands on its innocent
neck (even the softest caress would seem to her
like the brutal handling of the executioner).
do not try to whisper your love or your sorrow to her
(your voice would scare her as a thunder in the middle of the night).
Do not touch the water of the lagoon do not breathe
To be yours it would have to die.
Be content with its wild distance
with her foreign beauty
(if it turns the head hide between the grass).
Do not break the charm of this summer evening.
Swallow your impossible love.
Love it like it is, free.
Love the way in which it ignores that you exist.
Love the wild swan.
What Is Truth?
Would it be the opposite of lie? perhaps it means just what we see, but then it would be different from person to person, then maybe truth is what we perceive as being the truth? maybe there’s more than one truth. would truth be absolute? or is truth relative to the space and time it is on?
Depending on their believes and cultural environments people will have different points of view about specific topics, usually those believes and social-cultural backgrounds will be founded on serious ideologies and centuries old studies of either sacred books, history or scientific evidence.
The fact of truth being relative then bring us to the conclusion that right and wrong concepts become blurry and obscure, still if that’s a fact then only inconclusive or maybe even wrong answers exist for the meaning of life. so is there any complete and real truth in this uncertain world we live in? That’s a simple question, however an answer to it is far from simple.
To find out if a truth really exists we would need to have two concepts in mind: “Time” and “Actuality” now what does Time mean here? to authenticate something as real you would need to see exactly “When” something happened,”How” it happened and “Who” witnessed it.
The second aspect to have into consideration when about to take something as real is “Actuality”. facts, rather than things that people believe or imagine, the state of the given event being real or really existing.
But how does perception effect truth? in order for truth to be properly 
defined , it would need to be factually and logically stated. in other words, it would need to be real. There can never be two sets of truths, when one does not come into agreement with the other. Only one can be true, not both. perhaps by digging deeper into a statement or report you could conclude what is not true, truth is not error and is not contradictory. truth cannot be deceptive.
If truth really exists then we should be able to find it, and if it cannot be known then it probably doesn’t exist, but it does exist, for example you know that is true that you are reading this, you know is true that you can see, those are two undeniable truths. it is also truth that your computer display came into existence by means of a creator, the monitor could not have created itself because if something doesn’t exist then it cannot execute an action, ie: creating itself. those are logical and factual truths, they are all absolute truths.
At this point we have concluded by undeniable logic that truth exists, but can truth really exist as factual all the time? does truth change over time? If we are hoping to ever discover an eternal and absolute truth which is beyond our cultural, religious and personal preferences, we must understand that we are looking for a truth greater than ourselves, something that goes above and beyond our native environment, something above our cultural and individual inclinations.
Imagine centuries ago you and me are seating somewhere debating and talking about the universe, I say: “wow how interesting the earth is flat and is seating on these elephants!” and you look at me and say: ” Well wait a minute, did you know there’s a different concept out there ? some believe the earth is actually round, that it is hanging on nothingness! your statement would had been really hard for me to grasp or even believed as truth, however some centuries later here we are, now we know for sure that the earth is not flat but round and that it indeed hangs in space by nothing but gravity as it circles around the sun.
However did this new understanding of truth change the fact that the earth was round and hanging onto nothing in space centuries earlier? No. truth was always there, it was real, it did not change, it was just our understanding of truth that changed.
So because on this undeniable truth based on logical facts we must conclude 
that truth indeed exists and that is out there, ready to be found, it is up to us how we look for this truth, what journey we take to find it, how we let our minds to be molded by our cultural, geographical, religious and or scientific studies.
Only with the limitations of the human scientific and spiritual knowledge of our space and time in mind we should be able to truly define what truth is.
Giving Linux A Second Chance.
Once again I’m giving Linux a try, I’m posting this entry from my Unbuntu Linux 7.10 desktop and using the BloGTK blog Editor to post this entry, BloGTK is a program which compares to Microsoft Windows Live Writer and it allows you to post entries to mostly any blog software out there.
I have attached a screenshot of my current desktop, I can see Linux has come a long way since I last tried it back in 2001; everything seems to be working properly on my computer, video, sound and even updated drivers for my NVidia video card. Next I’m installing Win4Lin so I’m able to run certain applications such as “SocialFM” which corrently has no Linux clone and in a few days I’ll be writing a review on how things are going with me and Linux, I’m NOT abandoning Windows (I love it too much) just taking some time to learn more about this OS.