I visited Leng & Lisa recently, and got to spend some time with their cats Tobey and Bon Bon. That's Tobey up there. I can't remember Bon Bon's real name...Leng, help!
Tobey was a hard cat to know. He tolerated my presence and occassional petting.
Bon Bon, on the other hand, was a very persistent and vocal cat. I had several length conversations with him. "Meow", I would say, and he would quickly respond with a "meow!" of his own! We could go back and forth, modulating our tones in response to the previous meow. His meow reminded me of an old jewish man from New York who'd spent a lot of time smoking and drinking martinis back in the 1940s.
Bon Bon is also very dog-like in that he liked to be roughhoused. You couldn't pick him up because he doesn't drop very well due to age and weight. He also had very interesting white wiskers that showed up in stark contrast to his face. He resembled a seal or walrus at times, beached on top of the bed meowing for attention.
I was at ActiveEdge during lunch the other day, when Diane discovered that her banana had been fatally bruised at the supermarket. The irresponsible fruit wranglers at Shaw's had apparently used handling techniques that left no marks on the outer skin while doing massive internal damage, marring the inner fruit with scabbrous mushy brown spots. Diane ranted righteously for a few minutes, then consumed the remaining edible parts with an air of resignation.
It's pure serendipity that I stumbled upon the BananaGuard on BoingBoing this Thanksgiving morning. A sturdy plastic shell keeps your banana safe from harm. It won't protect your fruit from the nameless torturers in the back of the supermarket, but remember: vigillance starts at home! :-)
Here's a nice new picture of Tommy, of Orange County, California.
Jeff over at Scintus passes along yet another fascinating link regarding the structure of music. Special software reads a MIDI file (a form of digital music transcription) and draws arcs to connect repeated sections. Most music has repetition in some form, and it's fascinating to see how classical, pop, and modern music have strikingly different patterns.
The visualization itself is graphically quite interesting, but I find myself wishing that I could also hear the accompanying passage, or see some additional color coding. It would also be interesting to assign mood colors to particular chords or ascending / descending progressions, but the visualization would probably look pretty chaotic. Another thing that bugs me about the visualization is how the height of the arc tends to perhaps overdramatize its role in the music, but still it's pretty cool.
In this age of digitally processed photography, it's nice to come across a device that helps you achieve that artsy blurred look completely in-camera. Behold, The Lensbaby!
From what I understand, it's a little bellows lens system that can attach to your SLR. You can manually adjust the focus point by wobbling it around. The result is very interesting blurry patterns. It sort of simulates the bizarre photos you get with those cheap russian Lomos, the Holga among other toy cameras of artistic merit.
My sister, of course, is into all of the above, which is how I even know about this stuff. She's so much cooler than I am :-)
The new issue of Scientific American has a neat article on The Neuroscience of Music, which summarizes some of the recent studies regarding how the brain processes music. In particular, I'm into the emotional response to music; I have a lot of analytical mental processes that run constantly in my head, which tends to de-emotionalize a lot of my responses to external stimuli. However, well-crafted and emotive music rises above the intellectual static and puts me into a profoundly different mood. So next time you're talking to me and I'm making too much sense, stick an iPod in my ear and initiate a logic override.
Most people will find this article a bit dry (Scientific American is the kind of magazine that never seems to have enough gravy). For you hedonists out there, here's the juiciest excerpt:
[...] Blood and Zatorre added a further clue to how music evokes pleasure. When they scanned the brains of musicians who had chills of euphoria when listening to music, they found that music activated some of the same reward systems that are stimulated by food, sex and addictive drugs.
Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll...cognitively, it's all the same :-)
Spied via BoingBoing
Jeff over at Scintus forwarded me this FastCompany article about the most innovative company in America. Is it Apple, with their amazing string of products? Pixar? IBM? Nope! It's W.L. Gore & Associates, the company that makes GoreTex:
Gore is a strikingly contradictory company: a place where nerds can be mavericks; a place that's impatient with the standard way of working, but more than patient with nurturing ideas and giving them time to flourish; a place that's humble in its origins, yet ravenous for breakthrough ideas and, ultimately, growth.
It's an interesting article...thanks Jeff!
After taking on a tight project that had already slipped by a week, I've been too busy to blog very much. With travel, projects, and my Dad coming to visit on Thanksgiving day, I have to get a lot of stuff out of the way. I'm a little stressed out by it. Hopefully thing will settle down by Christmas.
It's been a while since I've watched any good Japanese television animation. Today, however, I stumbled upon Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (GITS:SAC) on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.
A lot of people have seen Mamoru Oshii's movie version of Ghost in the Shell. I didn't much like it because it was, tonally, a deviation from the original manga from creator/artist Masumune Shirow. I found the movie to be aesthetically slow and ponderous...while it was interesting philosophically, I felt like my eyelids were being forceably strapped open with "art tape".
Shirow's original manga featured characters that were part of an ensemble, and delivered the philosophical themes through action-oriented plotting balanced by moments of introspection. There is a tension between events that just doesn't come across in the movie versions. Television, with its episodic nature, is probably the better delivery medium for a faithful interpretation. As I watched the episode "Testation", I was struck by how close it captured that feeling, and particularly how good the action detail was.
The production values for this episode are not like those of the movie, of course... this is television animation. However, being for TV didn't limit series like Cowboy Bebop, where every frame exuded character. A lot of the shots in GITS:SAC were somewhat dull, except when there's mecha or action started. Even then, the animatin had a sense of detail, sequencing of action, and timing that captured my attention. The character designs, though, are an improvment: a compromise between the movie and the manga character designs that I prefer.
What's particularly interesting is to see Shirow-style mecha designs animated. They're quite different from the usual humanoid mecha. Seeing the tanks in action was a revelation. I didn'understand the urban mobile tank concept before, but now it makes sense.
There's some interesting cross-pollination of production talent too:
* The music is by Yoko Kanno, who also composed the music for Cowboy Bebop and Macross Plus. It's a very pleasing cut above what you'd usually get in an anime series (particularly in the case of Cowboy Bebop, which my very-particular cousin Ben also enjoys, so that's saying something).
* The production company is Production I.G., which is Mamoru Oshii's company, having done the two Ghost In The Shell movies and the animated sequence in Kill Bill Vol 1 among other things.
I've only seen one episode so far, but I'm hoping for more. It's the most faithful adaptation of the original Ghost in the Shell manga out there, and to Shirow's style of storytelling in general.
My sister sent me an authentic Joyce Chen "Dumplings Plus" non-stick plastic dumpling press. Makes Postickers! Empanadas! Kreplachs! Poroshki! Raviolis! and Pasties! I have no idea what these last things are, but you can make them quicky and easily! It's a plastic form that allows you to crimp perfect dumplings. Can't wait to try it. Pictures later.
Since Sis likes themes, she included a Pocket Guide to Dim Sum, with a picture of every dish and a pronunciation guide. It's awesome... I had been toying with doing something like this myself with some friends, but now we can just concentrate on eating.
Lastly, she included Volume 1 of Iron Wok Jan. So far it's great...and no crotch shots yet either.
