By Russell Conwell

In 1870 we went down the Tigris River. We hired a guide at Bagdad to show us Persepolis, Nineveh and Babylon, and the ancient countries of Assyria as far as the Arabian Gulf. He was well acquainted with the land, but he was one of those guides who love to entertain their patrons; he was like a barber that tells you many stories in order to keep your mind off the scratching and the scraping. He told me so many stories that I grew tired of his telling them and I refused to listen — looked away whenever he commenced; that made the guide quite angry.

I remember that toward evening he took his Turkish cap off his head and swung it around in the air. The gesture I did not understand and I did not dare look at him for fear I should become the victim of another story. But, although I am not a woman, I did look, and the instant I turned my eyes upon that worthy guide, he was off again. Said he, “I will tell you a story now which I reserve for my particular friends!” So then, counting myself a particular friend, I listened, and I have always been glad I did.

He said there once lived not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the name of Al Hafed. He said that Al Hafed owned a very large farm with orchards, grain fields and gardens. He was a contented and wealthy man — contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented. One day there visited this old farmer one of those ancient Buddhist priests, and he sat down by Al Hafed’s fire and told that old farmer how this world of ours was made.

He said that this world was once a mere bank of fog, which is scientifically true, and he said that the Almighty thrust his finger into the bank of fog and then began slowly to move his finger around and gradually to increase the speed of his finger until at last he whirled that bank of fog into a solid ball of fire, and it went rolling through the universe, burning its way through other cosmic banks of fog, until it condensed the moisture without, and fell in floods of rain upon the heated surface and cooled the outward crust. Then the internal flames burst through the cooling crust and threw up the mountains and made the hills and the valleys of this wonderful world of ours. If this internal melted mass burst out and cooled very quickly it became granite; that which cooled less quickly became silver; and less quickly, gold; and after gold diamonds were made. Said the old priest, “A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight.”

This is a scientific truth also. You all know that a diamond is pure carbon, actually deposited sunlight — and he said another thing I would not forget: he declared that a diamond is the last and highest of God’s mineral creations, as a woman is the last and highest of God’s animal creations. I suppose that is the reason why the two have such a liking for each other. And the old priest told Al Hafed that if he had a handful of diamonds he could purchase a whole country, and with a mine of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the influence of their great wealth.

Al Hafed heard all about diamonds and how much they were worth, and went to his bed that night a poor man — not that he had lost anything, but poor because he was discontented – because he thought he was poor. He said: “I want a mine of diamonds!” So he lay awake all night, and early in the morning sought out the priest.

Now I know from experience that a priest, when awakened early in the morning, is cross. He awoke that priest out of his dreams and said to him, “Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?” The priest said, “Diamonds? What do you want with diamonds?” “I want to be immensely rich,” said Al Hafed, “but I don’t know where to go.” “Well,” said the priest, “if you will find a river that runs over white sand between high mountains, in those sands you will always see diamonds.” “Do you really believe that there is such a river?” “Plenty of them, plenty of them; all you have to do is just go and find them, then you have them.” Al Hafed said, “I will go.” So he sold his farm, collected his money at interest, left his family in charge of a neighbour, and away he went in search of diamonds.

He began very properly, to my mind, at the Mountains of the Moon. Afterwards he went around into Palestine, then wandered on into Europe, and at last, when his money was all spent, and he was in rags, wretchedness and poverty, he stood on the shore of that bay in Barcelona, Spain, when a tidal wave came rolling in through the Pillars of Hercules and the poor, afflicted, suffering man could not resist the awful temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again.

When that old guide had told me that very sad story, he stopped the camel I was riding and went back to fix the baggage on one of the other camels, and I remember thinking to myself, “Why did he reserve that for his particular friends?” There seemed to be no beginning, middle or end — nothing to it. That was the first story I ever heard told or read in which the hero was killed in the first chapter. I had but one chapter of that story and the hero was dead.

When the guide came back and took up the halter of my camel again, he went right on with the same story. He said that Al Hafed’s successor led his camel out into the garden to drink, and as that camel put its nose down into the clear water of the garden brook Al Hafed’s successor noticed a curious flash of light from the sands of the shallow stream, and reaching in he pulled out a black stone having an eye of light that reflected all the colors of the rainbow, and he took that curious pebble into the house and left it on the mantel, then went on his way and forgot all about it.

A few days after that, this same old priest who told Al Hafed how diamonds were made, came in to visit his successor, when he saw that flash of light from the mantel. He rushed up and said, “Here is a diamond — here is a diamond! Has Al Hafed returned?” “No, no; Al Hafed has not returned and that is not a diamond; that is nothing but a stone; we found it right out here in our garden.” “But I know a diamond when I see it,” said he; “that is a diamond!”

Then together they rushed to the garden and stirred up the white sands with their fingers and found others more beautiful, more valuable diamonds than the first, and thus, said the guide to me, were discovered the diamond mines of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond mines in all the history of mankind, exceeding the Kimberley in its value. The great Kohinoor diamond in England’s crown jewels and the largest crown diamond on earth in Russia’s crown jewels, which I had often hoped she would have to sell before they had peace with Japan, came from that mine, and when the old guide had called my attention to that wonderful discovery, he took his Turkish cap off his head again and swung it around in the air to call my attention to the moral.

Those Arab guides have a moral to each story, though the stories are not always moral. He said had Al Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness, starvation, poverty and death — a strange land, he would have had “acres of diamonds” — for every acre, yes, every shovelful of that old farm afterwards revealed the gems which since have decorated the crowns of monarchs. When he had given the moral to his story, I saw why he had reserved this story for his “particular friends.” I didn’t tell him I could see it; I was not going to tell that old Arab that I could see it. For it was that mean old Arab’s way of going around such a thing, like a lawyer, and saying indirectly what he did not dare say directly, that there was a certain young man that day travelling down the Tigris River that might better be at home in America. I didn’t tell him I could see it.

Question. What do Shrek, Dreamworks, Avatar and Sinbad have in common?

Linux.

Yes, since the turn of the century Linux has featured heavily in the production process of mainstream animated films, and in the special effects arena.

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas was the first hollywood production created entirely on Linux. While the original Shrek used Linux entirely for the rendering process, in Sinbad, the animaters worked directly on 250 Linux workstations.

Not a Traditional Role

While having a Linux render farm may not seem that odd, having the animators use Linux workstations is certainly surprising.

Unix, the precursor to Linux, has been used in Hollywood render farms for years. The 80′s iconoclassic Tron used Unix render farms to bring the special effects to life.

Having Linux on servers is not strange – most of the worlds web and application servers run Linux – so having a Linux render farm is not out of the ordinary. It does much deeper than that though.

Today Linux is used in everything from the design process right through to the rendering and printing on film of the end product.

Right now, designers are using a wide array of Linux based operating systems to bring us world class special effects. Desktops running anything from the completely free Ubuntu to the proprietary Red Hat Linux can be seen in offices of the big hitters in the entertainment industry.

Avatar used an entirely Ubuntu driven render farm to deliver each crisp image, for instance.

More than the Operating System

It is one thing to have your people use a Linux based operating system, what about the tools they use? Things like designing characters to actually building the three dimensional models and scenes require sophisticated software.

A lot of the three dimensional work used to be done using Maya. Maya is a 3D modeling and rendering suite. It is mainly Windows based, but can be built for Mac OS. There are known issues with Maya on Mac though.

Maya is also rather expensive, precluding the adoption by smaller studios and private users.

Enter Blender. Blender is free, and very powerful. Blender is also a rendering suite capable of rendering in many formats. The strength of blender is that it is not platform specific. You can have blender on anything from Windows to Solaris or Mac. That means that even if your designers work on Mac, your servers will be rendering the scenes they create using the same toolset.

Similar alternatives to many popular proprietary products exist as well.

Low Cost of Entry

The cost of entry when using Linux and other open source software for rendering is very low. Let us break down a typical Open Source software suite that would be used for basic 3D modeling:

Operating system: Ubuntu (Used on servers for Avatar) – Free.

Graphics Design Suite: GIMP. (Similar use to Photoshop) – Free.

3D Modeling and Rendering: Blender (Used on Spiderman 2 and by History Channel) – Free

Dreamworks cited the low cost of using Open Source software when they were able to open a fourth graphics pipeline to extend their studio capabilities. They were also able to use Linux based machines to temporarily extend their capabilities as needed. They called this expendable animation.

Extendability

Some graphics studios also use the open source tools as platforms to build their own customised toolsets on. GIMP is very popular for this, and the GIMPA Animation Package is a good example.

Studios often write python or other programs to do certain automated tasks with the open source tools they use. Both GIMP and Blender are modular in design, and plugins can be built to do certain tasks like exporting to a certain format, for instance.

Conclusion

There used to be an advertising campaign that proclaimed “Linux is everywhere.” With the very public adoption of Linux by large companies this is certainly becoming a reality. Amazon.com reported a 25% saving in the first year after moving their infrastructure to Linux in 2001, and that saving is ongoing. They also use Ubuntu for their cloud services today.

When taking into account the immediate savings associated with using Linux and certain Free Open Source tools as well as the long term savings year on year, there is little surprise when another large project uses Linux in various steps of production. From the desktop to the server, Linux is here to stay.

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Ok, people… Its here, my new Ipad. I have had it now for a week, so sorry for the delay on the review. Ok, what can I say. WOW, WOW, WOW…… Wait…. More Wow’s coming soon.

Now this is a device that I can relate to. Thanks to Andre & Eben at Apple Stuff they have managed to get us some of the first Ipads in the country. And let me tell you Apple Stuff provides great service!

Back to the device…. I am going to be honest. This is not a toy. The first time I held the device I was scared I am going to drop it. The device is really sleek and has a strong feel to it. Its also carries a bit of weight to it.

The unit we bought is the 64gb Wifi, we didnt opt for the 3G device as this was not needed due to our lovely MiFi device.

The Mifi is a wireless 3G hotspot and gives you the freedom to make skype calls, something that the iphone lacks on its 3G due to the telecoms agreements. The Mifi gives you a wireless hub option and can connect 5 devices to the internet or data storage… All this cramped up in this small device. This makes the Ipad more fun.

Ipad Pro’s;

I downloaded some really cool apps from the Itunes store and cant leave this baby alone. My designers are currently designing a portfolio where I can showcase our design work to clients. Browsing websites is awesome and the everyday computer stuff is do-able. The graphics on this HD screen is AWESOME… Having watched the new lady gaga music video in HD, not that I am so fond of her music, it was really good.

The Angry birds and X-plane simulator is really fun and very much realistic.

The No no”s;

Well, what can I say, the only downside is the SA app store, but we have that covered through Apple Stuff’s US App store vouchers.

Oh, and the other downside is that you don’t have one .

Be sure to get yourself one of these babies and sure to read more about it as we explore its boundaries….

The Mighty Men conference started with a BANG. Myself and friend Gideon decided on 99 to attend the meeting, as Oom Angus would call it. We arrived at the blue camp with a funny looking car tent, a broken gas braai and some chops… Not to mention the half case of NON-alcoholic beers.

Personally I was a bit, whats the word,  Not “lus” for this whole men gathering as my mind hovered over WORK. Doing business in April is just an exhausting exercise. With all these public and school holidays its just a difficult time to do business. I am sure some of you might relate to my PAIN . 

The first meeting, we just made in time and knowing Gideon he wanted front row seats. So it was a battle to get in front to see Angus. We managed to get up, close and personal. Once we settled down in the pathway we were ready to get some SOUL FOOD.

Personally I have read one of Angus’s day piece books and wasn’t really blown away. I just compared him with all the other evangelists out there with a great way of sharing the gospel.

Ok, then this elderly man, not sure how old Oom Angus is started to tell us story after story and using THE WORD/Bible as reference. Something Jesus would do to attract the crowds. Once he got on a roll, my attention was all his and I could feel the HOLY SPIRIT working in me, making me understand the preach.

Wow, my heart went open instantly, tears started flowing as if it was set on a timer. My eyes went open again and I noticed that Jesus never left me, but I left him.

The feeling of +- 300 000 fellow believers just gave me that ARMY feeling. When the roar of AMEN soars across the mountains one can only get goosebumps. WOW, GOD IS GREAT. The everyday life has really broken me down and in actual fact distant me from JESUS and his Word. Being a new born Christian, I really felt ashamed when I started the weekend. How many times do I need to give my heart to Jesus? The answer only came to me at the end of the weekend. I realized that the answer was only, once. For years I punished myself for always diverting from the right path, always falling of the wagon. I was my worst enemy, guilt, the devels best friend kept me away of repenting my sins. AND GUESS what. I made truths with the LORD.

I made a deal with God. I needed to get back in the Rat Race, but not without my willingness to learn his Word like never before. My plans to slow down and listen more has become a priority, to be the man in my legion, in my marriage and spread the Gospel.

Why work so hard on earth and not prepare yourself for a life of eternity in Heaven. Why burn in hell, why would you want to smell the worsts smells ever and bare the unbelievable pain for eternity? Well, I would like to make GOD happy, I would like to be a soldier for my Savior. This can only be done through lifestyle and believing. I am sure we’re having a bunch of skeptics reading this and thinking WILLIE… NOOOOOO. . One thing I noticed is that living a life dedicated to Jesus, is no boring life. In fact, its a blessed life, a full life. Jesus died for your sins, why not give Him what he asks for and get blessed in the meantime. Its actually a win win situation.

Ok, back to my story. I was told that the weekend was a rainy one, and so it was… Except when the fellowship was meeting with OUR KING. This is why I know I am serving a living GOD, not allah, nor budha, nor elvis could have done this… I SERVE A REAL GOD! Men where healed of heart attacts, unfortunately for the man who lost his life when driving back… But let me tell you, God wanted his child to go Home.

The camp ended with a feeling of TRUST, LOVE and BELIEVE. Looking at South Africa, I am not worried at all anymore. Jesus will put in my path, what I can handle. I need to slow down, share and live as I am told by his Gospel.

Thanks for taking the time in reading this, I wanted to write a book… But I am no speller, nor writer. Feel free to contact me if you wish to chat about the camp. 082 586 6734.

And lets start  sharing the Gospel.

AMEN

I received this link from a colleague. “http://www.diyseo.com/” , I signed up and did a few hours of DIY SEO , WOW, SEO has never been more simplified and easy to do. I started with our logo design and web design company ThinkTank just to see how accurate this website would be! To my amusement it was very accurate.

SEO has been a recent focus, and I have started with the more advanced link building and social networking. I don’t think anybody can be the master of the mentioned fields as Search Engines keep on improving the algorithms and changing things. But all respect to DIYISEO, if I had the knowledge of this website a year ago I would  of saved hours and hours of work.

Work 4 the best!

We are looking for a experienced PHP developer that can develop custom solutions for our clients. We make use of popular open source technologies, but require customizations on the system from time to time, either by developing extensions for these popular open source system, or developing a new custom developed solution for the client.

The ideal developer will meet the following requirements:

2-3 years of hands-on PHP and Perl with WEB application development experience. (Object Orientated Development)
2-3 years of experience with MySQL
2-3 years of experience with HTML
2-3 years of experience with CSS
2-3 years of Javascript experience
Minimum 2 Years Joomla Experience (Creating Templates and Extensions)
Web 2.0 methodologies including AJAX

Items listed below are a big advantage and will most likely land you the job:

Experience with WordPress templates and development

Experience with Magento

Experience with Zend framework

This job will require you to:

Be able to manage projects to meet deadlines

Be able to work without supervision, with good self-discipline

Be able to solve problems quickly and effectively with or without manager’s input

Have the ability to work within a team as well as independently

Be very detailed oriented. Every pixel must be in place and all code must be tested thoroughly

This job offers great growth opportunities. We are a young company and growing by the day! International opportunities will be available in the near future.

email: willie@thinktank.co.za