Felipe Cruz

Felo's Music recommendations

Just sharing my favorite music

Oda de Rumi , Sobre la Muerte

Mucho se dice sobre la muerte, poco entendemos al final, sigue siendo creo yo uno de los temas que mas nos inquietan. Somos naturalmente sobrenaturales como dijera un buen teologo por ahi; a pesar de negar la marcha incesante de la muerte sobre nuestras vidas nos encontramos en su camino ...

Al fin y al cabo solamente les traigo uno de los pensamientos mas hermosos que he leido en torno a este misterio, por parte del poeta del alma , Rumi , en su Oda numero 833.

El poema solo lo tengo en ingles asi que la version en español a continuacion es mi inexperta traduccion, me disculpan si perdi algun detalle:

Nuestra muerte es nuestra boda con la eternidad
Cual es el secreto? ... "Dios esUno"
La luz del sol se dispersa y divide cuando entra por las ventanas de la casa
Esta misma multiplicidad existe en el racimo de uvas;
Pero no en el jugo hecho de las uvas.

Porque para aquel que vive bajo la luz de Dios,
La muerte del alma carnal es una bendicion.
Sobre el, no digan nada malo ni bueno,
Porque el ha ido mas alla del bien y del mal.
Fija tus ojos en Dios y no hables de lo que es invisible,
Para que El pueda darte otra mirada en tus ojos.
Es en la vision de los ojos fisicos
que ningun invisible o cosa secreta existe.

Pero cuando el ojo es puesto en torno a la Luz de Dios
Que cosa podria permanecer encubierta bajo semejante luz?
A pesar de que todas las luces emanan de la Luz Divina
No llames a todas estas luces "La Luz de Dios";
Es la luz Eterna la Luz de Dios,
La luz efimera es un atributo del cuerpo y de la carne ...
Oh Dios que das la gracia de la vision!
El ave de la vision vuela hacia Ti con sus alas del deseo.

Version Original en Ingles:

Mystic Odes 833 by Rumi:

Our death is our wedding with eternity.
What is the secret? "God is One."
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
 It is not in the juice made from the grapes.

For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.

But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don't call all these lights "the Light of God";
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh. ...
Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.

PHP function to check valid email addresses

Below you will find a small useful function on PHP that uses regular expressions to find out if a provided email address has a valid format or not.

<?PHP

function correctemail($emailtocheck) {

    if (! preg_match( '/^[A-Za-z0-9!#$%&\'*+-/=?^_`{|}~]+@[A-Za-z0-9-]+(\.[A-Za-z0-9-]+)+[A-Za-z]$/', $emailtocheck)) {

            return false;

    } else {

        return true;

    }

}

?>

The script wont check for valid domains but for RFC compliant type addresses, all in all you could combine this function with one that checks if a provided domain under an email is valid and that should do the trick.

An UFO on my picture?

On my last set of pictures taken on the Tuberculosis Hospital in Prusia, Cartago, Costa Rica I was checking if the Sigma 24-70mm HSM was showing any signs of vignetting, for this reason I started zooming on the corners of one of the pictures and then found this:

 

Now, I have to say im no ufologist but you have to admit it seems weird.

A 400% loupe on the object in question:

If anyone is interested in the original picture at high resolution you can download it from here:

DOWNLOAD ORIGINAL UFO PICTURE

You need to look the right top area of the picture, use the crop below as a guide of where to look, the object appears above an electrical pole.

All in all, this was an interesting detail to find on a picture, I showed it to several people already and the reactions are interesting, they are sure its an UFO. This in combination with the kind of spooky/mystical place where this photo was taken surely helps your mind roll along with the idea of an UFO.

All I know ... we will never know =)

Comments are welcome

Doing a manual disk format on Mac OS X

I found that the disk utility that is usually used while formatting hard drives works most of the times but has certain issues when you are trying to format Drives that have an existing windows partition. I havent been able to really pin point the issue, but in those cases the only way to format the drive is doing a manual format.

So ... how do you format a drive manually on Mac OS?

First of all, you need to have root access and need to do a sudo:

type

sudo sh

Then press ENTER ( you will get a prompt for the root password, go ahead)

Once you do that, then you will probably need to get a list of the available drives on the system.

type

diskutil list

Then press ENTER (you will get something similar to the image below)

Basically the command will give you a listing of all your drives, take note of the NAME of the drive you want to format which will be needed on the final and most important step.

Ok, so now you have the name of the drive you want to format, I suppose I dont need to warn you about what you are trying to do, any information stored on the drive will be completely wiped out and you will have a fresh clean new drive.

You are supposed to be under sudo to run the command.

The format command is:

diskutil eraseDisk "Journaled HFS+" name disk3

(where disk3 is the name of the drive you want to format)

Thats all =)

Felipe

Prusia Tuberculosis Hospital & Irazu Volcano with D700 & Sigma 24-70mm

On my last photography blog I said I would be making more tests on the Sigma 24-70mm with the new HSM motor on my new Nikon D700.

Although the test in itself is mostly focused on the lens, I have to mention the fact that the Nikon D700 is simply superb!, the color quality and detail even on higuer ISO's is simply amazing, the camera is super responsive, you just hear that huge CLICK!!! and voila!

So far I think the Sigma 24-70mm is a smart buy, im very happy with the results, sharpness on the lens is amazing, vignetting almost not visible in most pictures i've taken or simply minimal. All in all I will not jump into technical details since I dont have the proper background for that, but I will show you some of the pictures taken which I think show great color and detail.

Buy Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 HSM directly from Amazon Here (You can find both Nikon & Canon versions)

You can click on each picture to see a bigger version

 

Image taken on Irazu Volcano in Costa Rica, settings: Aperture f/7.1, Shutter Speed 1/250, ISO 200, Focal Length 38mm on Sigma 24-70mm HSM. No Post processing, image came like this from the camera.

Example number 2

Picture taken on the Prusia Tuberculosis Hospital (Sanatorio), Image details: Aperture f/5.6, Shutter Speed 1/2000, ISO 200, Focal Length 24mm. Post processing: used dodge and burn on the sky to make it show a darker blue.

Example 3

 

Picture taken on the Prusia Tuberculosis Hospital, image details: Aperture f/5.6, Shutter speed 1/2000, ISO 200, Focal Length 24mm. Post processing: None, picture came like this from the camera, the D700 has been set to take pictures in VIVID.

Example 4

Picture taken on the inside of the abandoned Tuberculosis Hospital in Prusia ( Cartago, Costa Rica), picture details: Aperture f/4.5, Shutter Speed 1/15, ISO 360, Focal Length 24mm, No post processing.

Example 5

Image taken on the Prusia Tuberculosis Hospital (Cartago, Costa Rica), image details: Aperture f/9, Shutte Speed 1/400, ISO 200, Focal Length 24mm

All in all I think that images speak for themselves, if you are interested on the Sigma 24-70mm these might give you a good idea. I think the lens is great, sharp, super fast, fast focusing, it simply works like a charm on the top of the line Nikon D700.

Im very glad I bought it instead of the Nikkor 24-70mm

All pictures have been taken using the VIVID setting on the Nikon D700, I love rich colors on pictures, I think they simply look better, but thats my taste.

I will probably bring more Sigma 24-70mm HSM examples in the near future.

By the way if you are interested about the Prusia abandoned Hospital, you can find a little more information on the link below:

http://www.costaricapages.com/blog/tico/spooky-haunts/1601

Some say its a haunted place =)

So long

Felipe