Test projection

I'm working on something for Amy and Arthur's wedding...you'll find out.

Iki Piki's splanch

EDIT: Just realized that if I'd read all the way to the bottom, my scenario (b) is the same as described by the last bullet-point list on the page. One splanch, travelling back in time twice, resulting in a period of time where the same splanch exists in three different locations.

David Morgan-Mar is an Australian physicist who does a comic called Irregular Webcomic, with good reason. The graphics are mostly done by taking photos of Lego minifigs or tabletop game miniatures. It's updated more or less daily, which makes it one of the most regular webcomics in terms of timing. The "irregular" bits are his truly loopy sense of humour and the several totally unrelated storylines alternating with one another at will.

One of the storylines involves a couple of incompetents called Iki Piki and Serron, gambling on sports, and illegal organ trafficking. At this point it's so mixed up that the transmigrations of their organs have become a talking point on the IW forums. Click here and scroll down for the discussion.

The issue that's being discussed goes sort of like this:

1. Iki Piki and Serron end up in jail and have their organs forcibly removed.
2. While in jail, they meet their future selves who have travelled back in time, and these future selves also have their organs removed.
3. The "first" IP & S are dumped in an alleyway to die, but they find a set of organs that conveniently match their species and blood types in a suitcase.
4. Later Iki Piki steals a second set of organs, so now they have extras.
5. They travel back in time...goto 2.
6. They now have one set since they acquired the extras at step 4.

The discussion center around how you get THREE sets of organs in the jail cell at step 2, while there are only two sets of Iki Pikis and Serrons. Several people assumed that organs were going around in an infinite loop.

I think I've got it. You either have
a) one splanch that was "born" with Iki Piki and travels back in time ONCE, and another splanch that exists in a closed loop which probably wouldn't work since the organs would become infinitely old; or
b) one splanch that travels back in time TWICE.

You get b) if the set of organs that's removed from the future Iki Piki and Serron are the ones that were originally removed from the earlier Iki Piki and Serron. The future-IP&S-who-traveled-back retain a set of organs that has traveled back twice, removing these from further loops.

If the set of organs that they RETAIN are the original set, the other set which is retrieved and removed must be floating around forever.

Order of organ retrieval (i.e. which one is the set they find in the alley which saves them from death, or the "extras" IP steals later) does not matter.

And why am I analysing webcomics past 1 am...

PowerPhluff

There's something remarkably perverse about taking study breaks from composing a PowerPoint presentation of a paper, to read a book where the author tells you how PowerPoint makes presenters stupid, holds audiences captive, sucks for technical data in general, and was responsible in part for the deaths of 7 astronauts on the Columbia shuttle.

I'm not kidding. Read Edward Tufte's Beautiful Evidence. It's a great book, spurring me to think about what I'll need to do to best present my work in the future, and its publication is responsible for the resurrection of Minard's map of Napoleon's Russia campaign that's being bandied around by the mass media. But I think it's sort of funny that he hates PowerPoint so much that he devoted an entire chapter to it, but I can see his - 'scuse me - points very well. I've had some professors who, when their laptop won't talk to the projector, can't flipping remember what that big whiteboard hiding behind the screen is for.

Minard's map:

Barisan Rakyat

I really like the Barisan Rakyat poster. I think it's well-balanced in terms of colour and lines...composition is overall nice and I like the font, but it's a bit the weird that the second "RAKYAT" is glued to the top of the picture.

I'm planning to print it out big and attach it to my backpack so people will see it as I walk around...there are quite a few Malaysian students in town (especially undergrads on Public Service Department scholarships haha), so SOMEbody will know. Click for big size:

Superflat Kitty

So last week when I went to Massachusetts to visit my sister in college, I took 1 day to go to Boston to see an old friend. Also to see Boston, since I'd never been there before, and had been told by several people that I'd like it. I did. 24 hours wasn't enough by FAR.

We went to the Museum of Fine Arts and I was very excited to see this: OMGOMGOMGOMG TAKASHI MURAKAMI SUPERFLAT!!!!!
(I had to do the Japanese thing and hold up the "V" sign. This painting is "If the Double Helix Wakes Up..." )

And next to it OMGWTFBBQ CHIHO AOSHIMA I DIE NOW.
(Moral of the story: If your boyfriend says he wants to eat your beloved goldfish, ditch the jerk or lose an eye.)

Long story...back in college I worked in the library part-time during the school year, and full-time during the summer after my freshman year. One of the summer jobs was inventory, going up and down the stacks with a list of call numbers, to make sure that every single book was there. It would have been boring if I wasn't a voracious reader...which on the other hand meant that I was highly inefficient at the task.

I ended up browsing a lot in the art section (the "N"s in the Library of Congress system). Even though I love the visual arts, I'm usually too lazy to seek out artwork to look at, so I got bogged down there. I discovered a Japanese artist called Takashi Murakami who paints really weird surreal, cartoony stuff in bright colours that I can't tear my eyes from, and also some strangely funny/cute but obscene statues.

The statues are just too weird for me but I really like the 2D art. In fact, it's extra 2D because Murakami's labelled his style "Superflat". According to him, Japanese art, including the ukiyo-e prints from the 19th century, tends to have a quality that makes elements at all depths look like they're smushed together. There is perspective but things in the distance are perfectly sharp, they don't fade away.

Anyway, I was browing the net for pictures of his stuff idly one day when I ran across pictures by one of his proteges, Chiho Aoshima. I love her pictures even more - sweet young girls with bewildered eyes in dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, situations, drawn in organic curves, and strange cities of the same dreamworld where buildings with faces blink at each other nestled among giant trees.

So anyway, I'm really happy I got to see Murakami and Aoshima works "for real" (even though Aoshima's prints are drawn on computer, obviously seeing them on a 15-inch monitor is quite different from a full-sized poster).

One of her prints has been my desktop wallpaper for most of the past year. Which one, I ain't sayin' nuthin'. ;)

2008 New Year's Resolution

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions (e.g. "I will not bite my nails" has been a historical failure since age eight or so) but I've come up with what I think is a viable one this year:

• To match any amount I spend aside from regular groceries, household, and toiletry supplies with donations to NGOs doing food aid, health, education, social justice, or women's issues - both secular and Christian.
• To match ALL spending on my cat with donations to animal welfare (not animal rights) and wildlife conservation organizations.

This way I'll probably spend less money this year on silly stuff and waste less time Internet shopping.

Maybe it sounds a bit extreme to some people but I've found since leaving home and starting to earn my own money at age 18, that the less stuff I buy, the less stuff I want. Materialism is a self-perpetuating lust, and most of the hobbies I really enjoy require very little material.

Other things I'd like to do:

• Write at least 2 short fiction stories and submit at least 1 to Writers of the Future or a science fiction magazine.
• Draw more, and spontaneously.
• Reinstall Creatures 3/Docking Station on my computer and start tinkering with the CAOS (Creatures Agent Object Scripting) language.
• Call parents and sisters and "small" boy more often (sometimes I forget my brother has a phone because he never calls me...)
• Clean my bike more often.
• Cook for my boyfriend and make him take his vitamins regularly.
• Watch more movies.

It's gonna be a personally interesting year...my project is going to get into animal studies...I'll have to write a thesis and hopefully graduate...my parents just got transferred to Penang...two of my London cousins are getting married in the summer so I'll finally have a chance to go to England...a couple of Phases kakis are getting married in Malaysia...another couple is having a baby, which makes them the first friends my age to reproduce...my boyfriend is taking 2/3 of a year off school for an internship...his mum wants to show our respective cats in the summer (TICA lets you show household pets)...

Et cetera. 'Tis life. =)

Old art: Doodles

While talking to Amy on phone, some time in spring 2005

Seen in Hauert's Pet and Garden (which no longer exists) in downtown Appleton, 2002

During my uncle's sermon, TRAC 2006

Technically not a doodle, since my classmate asked me to do it for him, but it's based on a doodle I drew the first time I heard this piece of his played. The "t=" labels are a reference to his being a music-physics double-degree student. You haven't heard music until you've heard "The Incy-Wincy [Itsy-Bitsy if you're American] Spider" on a tuba.

Old art: Imaginary Lovers

This is based on a storyline between Jeremy's character Tashya and Zedeck's character...argh, forgot his name. Frankly I think Dek made him up because he had a crush on Tashya himself...for quite a while there were several Phases guys who had a thing for this imaginary girl. One time one of the newbies asked me for Tash's ICQ number and my response was something like "Er...you'd better ask Jeremy."

Actually, I think Tash DID have an ICQ number...

Words on the border are from Bruce Cockburn's "Look How Far" and "The Embers of Eden".

[Click for larger versions]

InterVarsity last night

Steve and I went to the IV grad Christian Fellowship meeting last night (they're fortnightly). At the end of the meeting we split up into groups by fields of study to pray.

I noticed something really funny: completely contrary to the layman's belief that science and reason have[are] abolished[ing] religion, the engineering and math group had the most people in it, followed by physical sciences, biology, social sciences (a.k.a. "people who think P<0.3 is good"), and last of all, arts and humanities.

Tim, who's the advisor of Lawrence University's CF, commented that he thinks the arts are the most hostile to Christianity. Steven Pinker in How the Mind Works wrote that the reason modern art holds little interest for the lay public is that it's really an esoteric status competition among artists and aficionados that really has little to do with what the human brain tends to find beautiful.

So there we have our explanation, ladies and gentlemen: professional artists are a bunch of wankers. >D

Silly Icons

Those of you who are on my contact lists may have noticed my Patrick Stewart icon:

The image is from the movie The Lion in Winter, which has him playing King Henry II opposite Glenn Close. I like it also because it has Jonathan Rhys Meyers doing a gay kiss. (Given my predilection for skinny guys, you can see why I like the near-skeletal JRM.)

Here's another one featuring Amanda Tapping as Major Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1:

I love Carter because SG-1 is one of the few shows where it's the woman spouting technobabble oblivious to the confusion of the people around her.

Feel free to use my icons if you like, please just don't re-post them anywhere else.