Monthly Archives: September 2008

When we think of the present, we think of what is happening at the current moment in time.
Therein lies the problem. Our perception of time is directly related to two things: the speed at which our brains process information and the speed of light. I guess the speed of sound could factor in there as well.
Case in point:
The speed of light is estimated to be 186,000 miles per second. I always thought it was 126,000 but did a few Google searches; scientists must have recalculated it since my middle school days. At any rate 186,000 miles per second equals 982,080,000 feet per second.
Last I checked 982,080,000 feet per second is pretty damn fast. So fast, in fact, that our brains don’t even work fast enough to process it.
To make a long story short, put this in your pipe and smoke on it a little while.
Imagine someone is standing in front of you at a distance of ten feet. Suddenly a bee lands on their nose. The image you see is actually in the past due to, as previously mentioned, the speed at which our brains process information and the speed of light.
I did some calculations yesterday and came up with the following. Light travels so fast that it takes it only .001385807991028 seconds to travel ten feet. That’s a mere 1/134,217,728 of a second!
Therefore when you see that bee land on your friend’s nose, that bee actually landed 1/134,217,728 of a second before you even saw it. Our eyes work faster than our brains do. As we all know, it takes roughly a second or so for our brains to process the information and make us realize that a bee just landed on our friend’s nose. If you want to delve even deeper, factor in the refresh rate of our ocular system (our eyes).
Our eyes don’t work in a continuous feed. They have a refresh rate, not unlike a computer monitor. What you’re actually seeing every day is a movie, made up of countless individual images.Factor in the time it takes for our brains to process the information and the refresh rate of our eyes and you find the event actually happened further in the past than we originally calculated.
Because of my findings, I have to surmise that the present does not actually exist. Everything about our lives exists in the past. It’s just that everything we see and experience has happened at such in infinitesimally small amount of time ago, we perceive it as being in the present.

I played around with my new camera some more this afternoon. I’m absolutely in love with this thing!
This is a small portion of my back yard.

And this is my favorite macro wanna-be shot.

I haven’t actually played with the macro setting yet. This is actually me with the lens 4″ from the leaf, zoomed in to 55mm. Maybe I’ll start playing around with it tomorrow. Today consisted mainly of me experimenting with the “No Flash” setting. I managed to get some really good shots in the woods using that setting.
The rest of today’s pics are here.

We found an ad from HH Gregg in this morning’s paper for a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi with the 18-55mm lens and a free starter kit that consisted of a rather large carrying case, an extra battery, and a haze filter. I was waiting for Christmas, but this deal was just too good to pass up so we headed over to the Mall of Georgia store and bought it. I also picked up a 4G Compact Flash card for only $40. I don’t know if that’s a good deal or not, as I’m only familiar with pricing on SD cards.
I ended up with sixty-six pictures before retiring for the evening. Here are some of my more favorite shots.

I’ve been following a blog by one Amanda Christine Williams from East Tennessee since July. It’s only been a couple of months, but she only started the blog in June of this year. As you can plainly see by the title, it’s a photo blog. And there are photos a-plenty.

It appears my life long obsession with clocks has recently taken on a new direction.
As I mentioned in a previous post, my obsession borders on the insane. I’m like Mel Gibson’s character in Conspiracy Theory. In the movie, he has an uncontrollable urge to buy a copy of The Catcher in the Rye whenever he sees it and as a result had amassed an extensive collection of them. In fact, I think I remember him saying that he had never actually read it. I could be wrong though, it’s been eleven years since I saw its release in 1997.
My Catcher in the Rye is clocks.
Clocks call out to me. I don’t go around buying one of every clock I see, mind you. I can (thankfully) walk through a clock section at a store and not even skip a beat. I do sneak peeks though, to partake in their construction and beauty. Every once in a while though, one will speak to me and I have to buy it; no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I can’t leave the store without it in my hands. I might even be looking at several of the same clocks sitting on a shelf. While that particular style might call out to me, I might pick through them until I find “the one”.
Certain clocks give off certain vibes. Thusly, I can’t just pick one and go with it. Each and every clock in my house is special to me, all fifty-plus of them.
Most are unassuming, quietly running in their little corner of a bookshelf or atop the fireplace mantle or on the end table. My office is a whole other story. Many of the louder ones are in here. They soothe me. I don’t know what it is about that gentle tick-tock sound that puts my soul at ease. There’s no rhyme or reason behind it. It just does. I even have one in my office at work so I can keep that feeling of calm with me throughout the day.
Perhaps I should call my mother. Maybe she believed the old wive’s tale of putting a clock in a baby’s crib to mimic the mother’s heartbeat and keep them satiated. Maybe it does go back that far, I don’t know. I would be interested to find out regardless. I do know my dad’s grandmother had this obsession as well. I was fortunate enough to have known her long enough to see her buried just four short years ago at the age of ninety-nine. I’m guessing it was passed through the blood lines from her and I just happened to inherit it.
It really is an addiction.
Recently I’ve become interested in spending my time creating them. I want to make them. This uncontrollable need has filled me to create. I want to take every day, unassuming objects and turn them into things of beauty, making them the backdrops of simple little clocks. I want to display them and sell them.
That’s where my life is leading me now. I’ve made the decision to start making them and trying to sell them. If I sell them, then great. It’s always nice to be able to make a little money doing something you love doing. If I don’t sell many, then that’s great too. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you want to look at it, all of the unsold ones will end up in my personal collection.
I would be perfectly content and my life would be on what I feel is the path that I am supposed to be on if I could open a small store and just sit there and sell clocks and watches all day.
I’ve already warned my wife. When we build our next house, I’m dedicating a room solely to my collection. I’ll have to soundproof it. If you’ve ever seen the movie Hook, you know what I’m talking about. Try to imagine every alarm clock you have set to go off at exactly the same time.
From the fifty-plus clocks that inhabit my domicile to the pocket watch I have tattooed on my right shoulder commemorating my grandmother’s time of death two years ago, clocks are forever an integral facet of my life. Without them, I believe my will to live would cease to exist.