A great quote

The Titanic 100

On April 11, most of my family went up to Branson, MO to participate in the “Titanic 100”, the 100 year celebration of the sinking of the Titanic. Samuel, Claire, Shea, Grace, and I were able to be in a play on Friday night. 

On Friday night, we also watched the film, “A Night To Remember”, made in 19??, which is based on first-hand accounts of the Titanic. So, overall, it is pretty accurate to the actual event. 

On Saturday night, we boarded a showboat, the Branson Belle, which we were glad did not sink. :D We listened to talks, enjoyed music by Charlie Zahm, and we even had a countdown to the minute the Titanic struck an iceberg, and the minute she actually went down. (They factored in Naval time, daylight savings, and all that other good stuff.)

It was a time to really proclaim the message, “Women and Children First!” Today as a culture, that message is lost. Men no longer hold the door for ladies, they no longer pull chairs out for them. 

We also related the men who died for their wives to how Christ died for his bride, the church. 

“You and I will be better in life and death because of the men’s good example. The real message of this great and overwhelming affliction is that it is the latest revelation of the power of the cross. The men who stood on the deck in the presence of disaster exhibited a power of self restraint. Exhibited it so quietly too, that it cannot be explained on any ground of mere evolution. But the son of man who came into a world that was lost. And so, the men of the Titanic sacrificed themselves for the women and children. The women did not ask for the sacrifice, but it was made.” - Rev. Dr. Leighton Parks

Shea as Miss Eva Hart

The Teach Them Diligently Convention

This month has been a REALLY busy month for our family. I’ll start back at the end of March. By the way, this might take up a couple of posts. :D

Well, back in March, Mom, Dad, Shea, and I went to the “Teach Them Diligently Convention” in South Carolina. The conference lasted over a 3 day period: Thursday-Saturday. Some of the speakers included Voddie Baucham, Doug Phillips, Ken Ham, and Stephen Kendrick. We had a great time listening to talks, and visiting with friends. On Saturday night, we went to the Kendall’s house, and spent some time with multiple families that we knew. 

Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of the event because we forgot the camera. I know, I know, but you can slap me later.

Filming At Jamestown

Panorama of Jamestown

Last Monday we went to Jamestown, Virginia to finish up some filming for the video series. We filmed at Jamestown Settlement, a recreation of the original fort and town. It is right across the street from Historic Jamestown, which is the National Park containing the original site. The settlement is a really neat place. They have costumed reenactors there to explain the history. We filmed in the morning, doing a scene at the boats and three others at the fort. Here are some pictures

Setting up the jib

Sunrise over the ship

On the way back we stopped at a nice little country church. It was very old, and several presidents attended there, including George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and John Tyler, whose house was very close by. During the Civil War services were stopped and it was used as a stable, but later it was reoccupied. 

Picture from Instagram

This is a picture I took with Instagram, a free iPhone app. For all you iPod Touch and iPhone users, you really should get this app if you don't have it already. It's really neat. Anyway, here it is:

A pretty great quote

Three apples that changed the world: 


One that Eve ate, 
One that fell on Isaac Newtons head, 
And one that Steve Jobs built.

You Know You're a Designer When:

You know you're a designer when:

You wake up in the middle of the night wanting to change that one thing in your design.

Or when:

You hear "good", and understand, "could be better".

Free Trial Button

This is just a simple button I came up with in my spare time.

7 Lies about Homeschoolers DEBUNKED!

This is a great video everyone should watch called, "7 Lies about Homeschoolers DEBUNKED". It's really funny and you'll get more than a few laughs out of it. Enjoy!

A Great Party

This past weekend, Megan, Anna and Jake came down for a joint Birthday party for Jake and Grace (their Birthdays are less than a month apart). We had SO much fun- we played games, watched Foyle's Warand played airsoft. Here are some pics of airsoft, we took a few of playing games, which I might post later, but for now, here are the airsoft pics.

Crossing the creek to get to our battlefield (Notice me in the background trying to pick the log up and flip Jake into the creek... it didn't work)

Afterward, we posed for a few pics. We were trying to do a kind of "Men/Women in Black" theme, hence the black clothes

This shot was SO much fun to do... I'm glad that the guns weren't loaded :D

I love this pic; it was candid, but sometimes those are the best

I think that this has to be my favorite of them all.

Thank you Megan for taking the pictures!

A Great Quote

This is a great quote from the movie, "The Count of Monte Cristo", the 2002 version. I thought I'd post it because it really stood out to me:

"Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine!"

Sound Doctrine Conference

I'm currently at the Sound Doctrine Conference, a conference on the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, at the Brown's barn. The conference is about a week long. James Fletcher, Jake Dohm, and I have been running sound in the back. We have a table where all of us are working, and since we all have Macs, it's pretty hilarious to see al four of them lined up on the table. It's been fun, but also really tiring at the same time. I'm SO glad that today the conference ends at 6:00. Here are some pictures we took of our "work station."

James Fletcher's Mac

The soundboard, where we do all of our recording.

The awesome line-up of Macs!

The piano that's right behind us.

The gateway to the good life.

Do you believe in Santa Claus?

Now this is a really funny article I came across about Santa Claus. I know most of you, and I hope all of you, don't believe in him, but if you still do, (yikes!), READ THE TEXT BELOW. Actually, even if you don't believe in him, (hooray for you!), you can still read it. :D

Santa Claus: An Engineers Perspective

I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau).
At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second --- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them--- Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance --- this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.

The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accellerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Updating my RAM

So today, I worked on a fun project, replacing my RAM. For those of you who don't know, RAM stands for Random Access Memory. The easiest way to explain what RAM does is that is makes the overall experience on the computer faster and much more enjoyable.

Anyway, I took some pictures of the inside of my MacBook Pro and thought that I would share them with you.

The RAM.

The SSD (Solid State Drive)

And the entire inside.

Now, my computer is way faster. And it was pretty fun being able to see the inside of my MacBook Pro.

Stand Strong,

Stephen

Smorrs

Hey Guys!
Sorry I haven't posted in so long. Anyway, here's a site for you to check out for a project that my friends started called "Smorrs." I'm part of the project to help, learn, and all that other stuff. So, if you'll be so kind as to click Here, you won't regret it. :)

Follow Me

I haven't posted this in a while, but if you want to follow me, (not that anyone ever would), you

can find me on:

Or you can just use plain old e-mail:

Photo-shoot

So today I went on a photo-shoot, mainly just because I felt motivated by looking at some great photos. And also I couldn't remember the last time I had actually posted pictures I had taken. Anyway, here are the best ones of the bunch:

Yes, this is my dog: Titus Warrior Chief

You guys have no idea how dangerous this was. I felt like I was going to drop this in the water every second. I'm glad no one was looking. :)

This is Grace's goat, who took a keen interest in the camera.

New E-mail

Friends and Family,
I have changed my e-mail address. You can now contact me at sbreagy@me.com. You can still e-mail me using my old e-mail, but it'll just forward to my new one. By the way, just to clear up the confusion, this would be Stephen Breagy the Younger (well duh, cause it's not my dad's blog!) Thank you!

Stephen Breagy
sbreagy@me.com

Steve Jobs Dies

Steve Jobs died today. Here is an article on the subject.

SAN FRANCISCO – Steve Jobs, the innovative co-founder of Apple who transformed personal use of technology as well as entire industries with products such as the iPod, iPad, iPhone, Macintosh computer and the iTunes music store, has died.

• 

  By Jeff Chiu, AP

  CEO Steve Jobs holds up the new MacBook Air after giving the keynote address at the Apple MacWorld Conference in San Francisco. Apple on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011 said Jobs has died.

Enlarge

By Jeff Chiu, AP

CEO Steve Jobs holds up the new MacBook Air after giving the keynote address at the Apple MacWorld Conference in San Francisco. Apple on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011 said Jobs has died.

The Apple chairman was 56.

The iconic American CEO, whose impact many have compared to auto magnate Henry Ford and Walt Disney— whom Jobs openly admired — abruptly stepped down from his position as CEO of Apple in August because of health concerns. He had been suffering from pancreatic cancer.

• PHOTOS: The life of Steve Jobs

• PHOTOS: Images of Jobs over the years

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, a former Apple board member, called Jobs the best CEO of the past 50 years — perhaps 100 years.

A seminal business and technology leader, Jobs' success flowed from a relentless focus on making products that were easy and intuitive for the average consumer to use. His products were characterized by groundbreaking design and style that, along with their technological usefulness, made them objects of intense desire by consumers around the world.

He was known as a demanding, mercurial boss and an almost mystical figure in technology circles as well as American popular culture. Author and business consultantJim Collins once called Jobs the "Beethoven of business."

He was one of the figures who made Silicon Valley the capital of technological innovation and related venture capital fortunes.

His creation of iTunes as an online way to purchase music digitally helped transform the music industry and delivered a blow to the standard industry practice of packaging music in albums or CDs. With iTunes, consumers could buy individual songs for 99 cents. The music industry didn't welcome the change at first, but, after waging an intense battle against illegal music downloads, it came to rely on the business model iTunes created.

Jobs' work at Apple and other projects made him a fortune estimated by Forbesmagazine in 2011 at $8.3 billion. He was No.110 on Forbes' list of billionaires worldwide and No.34 in the United States, as of the magazine's March 2011 estimates.

Unlike tech rival Bill Gates of Microsoft or business leader Warren Buffett, Jobs did not make a practice of public philanthropy. While he may have made anonymous gifts to charity, he did not publicly embrace Gates' and Buffett's call for the wealthiest Americans to pledge to donate half their fortunes.

Jobs was married to Laurene Powell Jobs, 47. He had four children, three with Powell Jobs. A fourth child, Lisa, had an early Apple computer -- a predecessor to the Macintosh -- named after her. though the family succeeded in keeping the children out of the spotlight and largely unknown to the public. He was Buddhist.

Apple, and a re-boot

Jobs dropped out of Reed College to build computers with high school friend Steve Wozniak, creating what became the Apple I computer in 1976.

With sales lagging by the 1980s, Jobs was ousted from the company's leadership in a 1985 boardroom coup led by then-Apple CEO John Sculley. He returned in 1996 after Apple bought his technology start-up, NeXT, for $400 million. Within months, Jobs took over as Apple CEO for the ousted Gil Amelio and led a major corporate turnaround.

Five years later, with the release of the iPod personal digital music player, Apple had leaped from computer maker to become the leading consumer electronics giant worldwide.

Millions of its computers and gadgets were produced in Asia and sold to U.S. and worldwide markets, making the company one of the most recognizable and beloved brand names ever.

Once on the brink of financial abyss, Apple had a market value of $350 billion — not far behind No.2 Exxon Mobil — by the time Jobs resigned as CEO in August 2011.

After his forced departure from Apple, Jobs bought what became Pixar from filmmakerGeorge Lucas. The digital animation movie company has produced box-office hits including Toy Story and Finding Nemo. Disney bought the company for $7.4 billion in 2006. Jobs held a 7.3% ownership stake in Disney.

Health concerns

He was known for creating a culture of secrecy at Apple that fueled intense media speculation about the company's next product. Jobs himself introduced major products with flair at highly anticipated events that proved to be one of the company's best marketing tools.

Jobs didn't hesitate to level caustic comments at competitors, particularly Microsoft in earlier years and later Google, which he ridiculed as evil, mediocre and lacking in taste. His skewering of Microsoft was parodied in a series of TV ads featuring the characters "Mac" and "PC."

Jobs was known for firing employees in profanity-laced tantrums and reducing some subordinates to tears. Yet many of his top deputies at Apple and Pixar worked with him for years.

Jobs is listed as an inventor or co-inventor on 313 Apple patents, including the iPod's user interface.

Though he brought simple, elegant technology to the masses, the reclusive Jobs was often uncomfortable around people and rarely spoke publicly. On rare occasions when he spoke with reporters, Jobs offered few or no personal insights.

Jobs' reluctance to appear publicly led to questions about his health, as did a dramatic loss in weight and gaunt appearance.

Jobs was diagnosed with a form of pancreatic cancer in 2003. He informed Apple employees in 2004.

"No one wants to die," he said in a commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005. "And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it."

Jobs' status as a corporate star put him on the covers of Time, Fortune and Forbes.

"Jobs led an enormous cultural shift of the businessman as a creative, even artistic, force," says Alan Deutschman, author of The Second Coming of Steve Jobs.

"When Jobs first came on the scene, it wasn't cool to be in business," Deutschman says. "Through the 1970s, the Dow hardly moved. Being in business was seen as being a total sellout. But Jobs was young and glamorous, and gave business that image. Now, young people aspire to be in business."

The early years

Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on Feb. 24, 1955, to unwed parents. He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, Calif.

The young Jobs contacted William Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, to ask for parts for a class project. Impressed, Hewlett offered Jobs a summer internship.

Upon graduating from Homestead High School in Cupertino, Calif., in 1972, Jobs briefly went to Reed College in Portland, Ore. After a stint as a video-game designer at Atari, Jobs trekked to India in 1974, where he embraced Eastern culture and religion. Shortly after that, he lived in a commune in California.

In 1975, Jobs began hanging out with the Homebrew Computer Club and a friend from high school, Steve Wozniak. Jobs, then 21, and Wozniak — the "two Steves," as they became known — co-founded Apple Computer in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976.

By 25, Jobs was a millionaire. Jobs' first go-around at Apple was highlighted by the creation and introduction, in 1984, of the Macintosh, a revolutionary personal computer with an inviting graphical user-interface and mouse that popularized PCs for the masses.

The influence of the Beatles ran deep to Apple's core, too. Jobs presented a Mac toYoko Ono, wife of the late John Lennon, and was ensnared in a long-running trademark lawsuit with the music group's Apple Corps label. It was settled in 2007.

In a 1996 interview in San Francisco, Jobs offered a glimpse of his hopes to mirror the success of Walt Disney and George Lucas. "Computers are commodities with a six-month shelf life," he said. "Classics like Snow White and Fantasia are passed from generation to generation."

Wozniak said Apple is a reflection of Jobs' creative daring.

"He helped it achieve incredible things in music, smartphones, tablets and retail, while still making great computers," said Wozniak, who said he and Jobs occasionally talk.

Leander Kahney, author of Inside Steve's Brain, said Jobs reconciled conflicting personality traits into an eclectic business philosophy.

"Jobs embraced the personality traits that some considered flaws — narcissism, perfectionism, total faith in his intuition — to lead Apple and Pixar to triumph against steep odds," Kahney says. "In the process, he became a self-made billionaire."