2022
Name: Paul
Location: Beautiful; Pismo Beach, California, USA
What I love about being a Local Guide: Showing people how beautiful my local area is & how bless I am to live in such an area. Out of all places that I have lived, including Hawaii, this area is my favorite by far. Via Maps & reviews, I can show people both nature & comforts. Since we live right by zillions of miles of Ocean & beaches, there are endless pics that you can take.
I also am starting to enjoy some the interactions with other people on Connect. Since I had made some friends in the past on other social media [e.g. Yelp], this is a welcomed
additional way to meet people from almost anywhere in the world & experience their unique views of the world [all this without even a Passport!]
My favorite things to explore: Everything from the Microcosm {e.g. Protozoa} to the Macrocosm [e.g. Galaxies], and everything in-between.
My favorite forms of Photography: I love nature, landscapes, food, places [e.g. restaurants], and Astrophotography. I hope to learn about & do more forms of Photography, such as Microphotography of Protozoa [I have used various microscopes thru the years to explore some of the near infinite world of the small. You can find a literal Zoo in even on drop
of water from a non-polluted Pond. That one drop hosts an amazing variety of one-celled & multi-celled creatures of near countless varieties & species. Even an extensive book on
Protozoology barely taps a fraction of this hidden wonderful world. While I have seen it many a time over my life, only with current technology will I be able to do this as an amateur.
Only with the current advance tech in top-of-the-line Pentax Cameras, can you also find ways to capture the oppositely large Macrocosmic objects, such as the huge Andromeda Galaxy
which is a million or so light years away, headed toward a collision with us in the far future, and contains many billions of stars. Few know that it is the largest visible object in the sky and
it's width is equal to about 4-5 Moons in diameter! Sadly, due to increasingly severe light pollution [ironically cause by more cheap LEDs], much of the legendary celestial features that
our ancestors new, loved, and even worshipped is "invisible" in most urban, suburban, and even more "rural" areas. Since Tech can "cut" both ways, the Camera that I use links the GPS
information with the sensor mirror, so that it can counter-rotate the mirror to compensate for the distorting of the earth's rotation on a 5 second to 5 minute exposure....such tech allows
the Camera to gather thousands of times more light of those objects so that it increases the signal to noise ratio.
My favorite Photo's: I have one of the Andromeda galaxy which I took my Porch with the Astrotrack feature of a Pentax K-series camera [300mm, exposure for 1-3 minutes]. I "blow-up" one of the pics as the background desktop image for my iMac. My other favorite, is one of my little Niece, while wind goes thru her hair, while walking on a Santa Barbara, CA Ocean Pier, one day. I think I used my Pentax K-3 for that shot, & successfully had it enlarged to poster sized, with no visible pixelation. I will also attach some pics to this post.
Fun Facts about me: In my many careers, I have explored everything from pioneering using early computers, measuring millionth of a volt micro-brain waves [ Evoked Potentials] to
help assist in complex brain/spinal surgery to prevent blindness, deafness, paralysis, and even death, for many thousands of people [the tech that I helped pioneer is now used
in most major medical centers around the world & even helped save me when I broke my spine & needed surgery]....to...developing new medications that help relieve those suffering
from Mental Illness...to...helping treat, or even cure, severe Mental Illness. I have always dedicated much of my life to helping advance Science, Health, and Mankind.
As I age, I need more relaxing & therapeutic hobbies that can help me have a mini-vacation from the usual stressors [i.e. work, bills, taxes, health issues, pain, suffering, Politics, etc...].
These include contributing to Google Maps, LG, and other on-line services. I also am proud to use my hoard of computers to contribute valuable computer time, not to
create wealth via Cryptocurrency, but to donate it to help find cures for Ebola, Cancer, Zika, and more via the World Community Grid's distributed cloud "super-computer" [
I have donated over 70 years of virtual computer time in the last few years & help heat the house with the "waste" heat. BTW- Anyone can do this using a fraction of your unused
multi-core computer systems].
