Journal Entries

Most web developers I know share a common story. They start out developing websites for people in order to pay the bills, but after a while of churning sites out, they start to see themselves repeatedly solving the same problems. So they package things up into libraries and frameworks to make their lives a little easier. Eventually these projects start to get a life of their own, and at some point the developer thinks it reaches a level of maturity where it's worth making these available for the worl...

I wrote the Mayan Kingdom ebook after my 2008 trip down to see the Mayan archeological sites of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Their civilization really interested largely because it reached a height as technological advanced and social complex as ancient Rome, but somehow their culture was completely decimated and largely forgotten, and never really made it into most history books. Today there is a lot of renewed interest in Maya, largely due to the 2012 prophecy. While I do have an opinion on this, I f...

Singing Bowls Hang Drum Gamelan Taiko

I'm only half Kiwi, and after living primarily in the States over the past decade my ties to New Zealand aren't as strong as they once were. So instead of doing the post-college pilgrimage to Europe, i just travelled around North America, something that appears to be more of the norm over here. Unlike N.Z., I don't really know a lot of people from the U.S. who have spent a significant amount of time abroad.  In Portland I've met a lot more people who are into backpacking overseas, often to South Ameri...

"The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness." - Albert Einstein

"The Earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the Earth.All things are connected, like the blood that unites us all.Man did not weave the web of life, he is a strand in it; whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."- Chief Seattle ... Modernities commodification of nature stands in such sharp contrast to native peoples vision of a living, breathing earth.

"Art does not lie down on the bed that is made for it; it runs away as soon as one says its name; it loves to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what it is called." "Art addresses itself to the mind, and not to the eyes. It has always been considered in this way by primitive peoples, and they are right. Art is a language, instrument of knowledge, instrument of communication..." Quotes from the french artist Jean Dubuffet

I want to put a spotlight on the natural world, and to amplify the space it takes within the viewer's mind; to remind people that we share this planet with other species, fellow creatures that we evolved along side of; to share the remaining wild places, in hopes that they are protected instead of forgotten and lost.  

We humans tend to under-estimate the intelligence of other species, or at least the level of their awareness. They may lack a common language and the ability for complex thought to put exactly what they are feeling into words, but they are sentient.  Many of these creatures are capable of feeling the same emotions as we do, since we inherited an early form of our limbic and nervous systems from a common ancestor. These creatures have been shaped by time and nature, evolving along side of us, and posse...

Throughout each of our lives we each come to our own conclusion about the nature of our existence.  Some people accept the cultural narrative, which in the West tends to take the form of Christianity.  For many there's too much conflict between the Bible's archaic tales and what science and/or their direct experience tells them of world, and so they reject the teachings of the Church.  With a literal interpreation of the bible disproven by science, many unfortunately end up at the opposite e...