Le Blogger

Last week was Thanksgiving. The most important thing about Thanksgiving, which is on a Thursday, at least in America, is the big sale after on Friday! Seriously! The second most important thing of course is the Turkey, then comes the mashed potatoes, etc. anyways, giving thanks is really quite low on the list of importance. Heh. I wanted to mention that we bought a GPS system during the biggest sale of the year. It's a Tomtom One, and actually they have this model in Taiwan. You can even purchase Taiwan maps and install them. I think it was a good purchase. GPS systems are indispensable these days, especially if you're traveling to somewhere you've never been. The paper maps of old are really going obsolete, and that's good and bad. It's good because GPS is just so much easier to use. It's bad because nobody will ever REMEMBER locations anymore, and we won't have beautifully drawn detailed and intricate maps like those from the 1600s, since everything is acc

Here's a nice poem I read recently. Strange Attractors /Robin S. Chapman/ How to find them, those regions Of space where the equation traces Over and over a kind of path, Like the moth that batters its way Back toward the light Or, hearing the high cry of the bat, Folds its wings in a rolling dive? And ourselves, fluttering toward and away In a pattern that, given enough Dimensions and point-of-view, Anyone living there could plainly see-- Dance and story, advance, retreat, A human chaos that some slight Early difference altered irretrievably? For one, the sound of her mother Crying. For this other, The hands that soothed When he was sick. For a third, The silence that collects Around certain facts. And this one, Sent to bed, longing for a nightlight. Though we think this time to escape, Holding a head up, nothing wrong, Finding a way to beat the system, Talking about anything else-- Travel, the weather, time At the flight simulator--for some The journey circles back To those stran

I was fortunate to be able to hear the Tokyo String Quartet with Leon Fleisher tonight. If you don't know who Leon Fleisher is, he is a very famous pianist. He won many awards as a youth, only to lose the ability to use his right hand in his prime. For the next 30 or so years, he performed essentially with only his left hand, on pieces that were more or less specifically written for a single hand. Recently, with the advance of medicine, someone realized that by injecting botox he could regain control, albeit this is not a full cure, of his right hand. So tonight, at the age of 79, we saw him perform, and it was still quite a performance. The Tokyo String Quartet is also very well known. They have fine control over the music, and play with such clarity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Fleisher

I've progressed to oil painting, and I love it. Oil is very different from water colour. Water colour seems more 2D, in the sense that you apply the paint, and dilute it to spread. Oil is thicker, and there's a third dimension to this, because sometimes you can have thicker parts of the painting, and thinner parts! Don't know if I'm making sense. This painting is somewhat similar in colour scheme to previous works of mine. I promise to try something more drastically different next. Also, this photo was taken before the piece was completed. I filled in the white spaces..

I haven't posted much lately as I'm trying to do a lot of work. That, and this is not necessarily good, takes away a lot of time for contemplation and writing. I was able to get away for a bit from the lab today by going to my first hockey game this evening. I originally viewed hockey as a violent, and don't get me wrong because it still is, sport for knuckleheads. But watching the game up close gave me a whole new perspective. The best part about hockey is the speed and intensity that is unmatched in sports like basketball and football. It's exciting to watch players speed down the ice rink chasing the puck that you know is there because they are chasing it but you can't see yourself because it's going too fast. We watched the hometown Carolina Hurricanes whoop the Washington Capitals 5-0. I got to see all the things that should happen in a hockey game, a hat trick (that means a single player scores three times in a game) where the fans in attendance all threw