My Love Hate Relationship

Thematic photographic #303- Whats your tech?

Another thought provoking theme from Carmi.  As I am in the somewhat older age group, I have seen technology come into my life in leaps and bounds, but I am also still young enough to enjoy the benefits.  I must confess that I have a real love-hate relationship with the way affects our lives.  Looking at picture of my grandsons and their Kindles I see two kids wrapped up in their own little Kindle worlds.  While they have learned lots from the alphabet, to early reading and all kinds of things about dinosaurs and their Kindle makes this easier and more fun, but they are not learning about playing together or even about sharing since they each have one.  These are important skills that an autistic child needs as much as academic learning.  Personally I feel all children need more of this, but this is especially true for autistic children.
  

This problem has become pervasive in our culture with groups of people glue to their devices where once there might have been lively conversation and it is so pervasive it is showing up on popular television programs

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who and today I was watching the episode, 'Midnight' that kind of points out my biggest pet peeve with technology and that is with all the media that bombards us we no longer talk to own another.  Anyway The Doctor is on a tourist transport and the hostess is putting up all the media to entertain them for the 4 hour trip.  The transport is noisy and chaotic with all the choices bothering some, so The Doctor serendipitously pulls out his sonic screwdriver and this is what follows:

HOBBES: Well, that's a mercy. 

HOSTESS: I do apologize, ladies and gentlemen, and variations thereupon. We seem to had a failure of the Entertainment System.
DOCTOR: Oh.
VAL: But what do we do?
BIFF: We've got four hours of this? Four hours of just sitting here?
DOCTOR: Tell you what. We'll have to talk to each other instead.
[98 kliks later...]
(The idea has caught on. Everyone is listening to Val and Biff's stories.

Personally I say HOORAY for the Doctor

While the internet can bring use closer to some of our friends and family that we are separated from by distance.  It could just as easily separate us from those who are close to us and keep us from having deep meaningful relationships .

That being said I am a big fan of blogging and below is my set-up here at my daughters. This is a temporary set up but I wouldn't have come up here without.  I will admit that it is hard for me to think about being without it as I have come to depend on it for many things; quick research, maps, music (notice the speakers), youtube videos that show me how to do almost anything I want to learn,on and on and on.  Like I said this is a real love-hate relationship.  However through my life I have found that most things in life with a few exceptions are not either wholly good or wholly bad and finding a balance among the different options, the trade-offs offered is the most important part in choosing how to spend your life.

I do not have the newest computer, nor mouse, nor phone or even speaker but I love what I've got; I'm comfortable with them  all I would want would be more memory to store all my photos, but then getting a new computer would mean learning Windows 8 which I do not want to do.  Like I said we need to find balance and also work with the trade-offs in our lives .  Big time sigh! 

☻☻☻Enjoy☻☻☻

Johnina

Sunrise after the rain

Good morning!!!

Although this was taken several days ago and I am just now getting around to downloading it; we get a lot of sunrises here that look like this.   In Tennessee, in the summer we get a lot of rainy nights followed by breaking clouds in the morning.  This makes for beautiful sunrises.  Every time I see these beautiful sunrises, I am reminded that in order to have that kind of beauty you need both the clouds and the sun.  In our lives we often want only the sun, the bright, cheerful times but to have the beautiful colors of the sunrise you need the clouds,the darker more somber times, with the bright shining through and reflecting off of the dark.

Now this is completely off that subject but, I've been thinking that since I love blogging so much that I would like to introduce you to some of my favorite blogs and websites.  I've already introduced you to Written Inc and today I am going to introduce you to www.srossi.net.  I met Max and started following his blog through writteninc. and found his posts delightful.  He is a school teacher who lives in Utah.  He is a dedicated teacher whose posts and photos I enjoy.  He quite often posts about his students and his somewhat creative teaching style. When I read his blog I can tell that he loves his students and the profession he has chosen.  I enjoy these but what I like most about his blog is his capture of the flavor of living in Utah.  He shows his love for Utah and it's people in his blog using lot of wonderful photos.  I've lived in Utah a couple of times in my life and miss the uniqueness of living there from the mountains to the people.  Last week he did 3 posts on living in Utah and these made me rather nostalgic.  Sigh and sigh again. 

 I've been thinking about doing this once a week.  I am very visual and can't seem to do a post without pictures and since I have no idea how to get illustrations that are appropriate for the blogs I review; I think I will be doing some of my photos, a couple of thoughts that they invoke in me, then a review.  Even though I do a blog and edit photos it doesn't mean I am tech savvy and so until someone rescues me.....

Hope you

Enjoy

Johnina 

    

Thematic Photographic #301 -Dirty

Dirty

One of my favorite sites that I used to visit and participate in is Carmi's writteninc. Now that I am back in the blogging world it is one of my first visits.  He gives out a photo theme for the week and any of his readers can take photos and do a post on the theme and then leave a link to that post in his comment section.  It is delightful to see what other bloggers do with his theme.  No prize just sharing among bloggers which is so much better.  I like getting to know my fellow bloggers and the exchange of interpretations and ideas is fun.  This exchange is what draws me to blogging and keeps me coming back.

The top photo was actually taken for a contest on MyShutterspace.com (which at the moment is having problems).  This particular photo contest had the theme of minimalism and since I didn't really understand the theme, I just took lots of photos and guessed.  The top photo did not qualify as the dirt kept it from having clean lines (no pun intended, of course), one of the qualities of a minimalist photo. 

However, I did like the photo of the dirty vents so I decided to play around with them and came up with a couple of fun pieces of abstract art.  Still did not qualify for the contest, but it came in handy here.

If you would like to check out how others have interpreted this theme click here. 

Enjoy

Johnina