ebay surfing

wine poster tim and i were reading the latest LCBO food & drink journal today, and we were talking about one particular ad. the ad showed how much difference the paint can make, where as they actually have not only repainted the room but changed the bed, side tables, added a headboard, absolutely new matching modern set of linens, side lamps, a huge vintage/art deco ish poster instead of the smallish awkwardly framed smaller ones, a new white armchair… and of course they want us to think a $30 can of paint did all that.

regardless.

the poster in particular caught my eye. so i did some brave ebaying, and now i’m drooling over these:

WORLD´S FAIR CHICAGO OLD – POSTER.
ROSSLI CIGARS OLD AD – POSTER.
LOVE this one SO much: POWDER PUFF NUDE GIRL ITALIAN VINTAGE POSTER!
MELE ITALIAN SHOPPING FASHION – great shapes, colors (!)
these are small, but would look fantastic in a kitchen area: 2 VINTAGE ITALIAN KITCHEN PASTA CHEF SPAGHETTI POSTERS

maybe i can shoot something closer to this. but i like the abstractness of that style of drawing! (this picture is not mine:)

wine

responses re multiple dimensions

us in a petri dish

i think the notion of us being in a petri dish being equivalent to us being in a different dimension is erroneous. specifically, if we are discussing dimensions, universes are related on a subset level, not on an equivalent level.

if we are in a petri dish ran by mice, then we are still within that universe and dimension. the dimensions which we find within this universe exist for us as well as for the mice. a concrete example on which to compare:
say we have 2 universes – one, in which a baby becomes a painter and one where the same baby becomes a businesswoman. say both of these universes have the baby actually being in a world that is inside a petri dish. they are still in the same dimension! one dimension, but 2 possible universes with in it.

hmm, on rereading i guess i’m agreeing with scarf’s 2nd last paragraph precisely.

a.i. and argument for matrix

hesi, i mentioned this to you. everyone else, here you go, someone far smarter than us argues The Simulation Argument: Why the Probability that You Are Living in a Matrix is Quite High.
i don’t want to go into discussing that possibility, except to say that in my opinion the discussion of artificial life or intelligence does not relate to the notion of multiple dimensions and universes. it is a seperate argument, for the sheer reason that it is possible logically for any combination of ideas on the above to exist without being contradictory. since we do not have clear evidence for one particular combination of “we are a petri dish” + “there are no alternative universes”, it is out of bounds to argue that from one, the other can follow.

in other words, there is no correlation between the two questions.

notion of folding

while i cannot possibly say that i am able to explain folding back to anyone coherently, it seems to make sense to me to draw parallels between 2-3 dimensions, to 3-4, etc. i.e. the folding of time and space must be allowed if we even want to argue that there is such a thing as a 2nd and a 3rd dimension.

more, more!

water drops on tree
ha, didn’t expect this, did you :P

welcome back hesi!

water sculpture -my favourite

here, to assist in your time wastage are some awesometastic links.

the 10th dimension – click on “Imagining the Tenth Dimension” on the left and watch the short explanation. mind totally boggled. w00t!
coke advertisement – (no, not that kind, scarf) from collision detection, the amazing thing is not the fact that coke refers to GTA (the all-evil game, etc.), but the fact that they refer to it without stating it explicitly – viewers “get it” effortlessly.

the water photos are of flowing water on the side of a boat.

we’re almost there

road into the mountains

well, we are in airlie beach, aka the area of whitsundays islands. can’t wait for our trip tomorrow, everything looks gorgeous.

we have safely made our way up the coast, with a large haul over 600~ kms from rockhampton to airlie beach yesterday. today, we’re just chilling in airlie – found wireless internet and so i bring you lots-a-photos!
sydney to brisbane (KOALA HOLDING IS HERE)
brisbane to fraser
fraser to day before yesterday (eurimbola national park or something like that)

australia is definitely looking more australian – we still haven’t seen any “real” big kangoroos, although hope is not yet lost. lots of wallabies by this point, which is really nice. on the drive to bunya mountains (it was on the drive that the above photograph was taken), we saw wallabies crossing the road, and when we woke up there was one right outside our door, munching on grass. snapshots are available on the first link.

queensland is supposedly famous for the red sand, which is also getting more common. i even got to hold a koala at this point! (as you might have read).

we tanned, i swam (in a lake, swimming in the ocean is too dangerous, there are small nuances like sharks and killer tides), and tomorrow more swimming shall be done at the reef!

highlights of the trip so far are:

  • our incredible obsession with beef jerky
  • an enroumous choice of amazing wines that all cost less than $9CAD
  • hangovers after consuming those enourmous choices ;)
  • wallabie roadkill. so weird!
  • our campervan is kick ass. we can live off the grid for 2 days, providing an external water supply for washing dishes.
  • on a particularly bumpy road, after wishing to take photographs of the passing views, my microdrive burping and deciding all my photos (400 images .. fraser island, and the park where we just spent 2 days) are not there anymore. thankfully, it was all restored by tim and checkdisk. why did i not copy, you ask? because my laptop battery without electricity only lasts ~30 minutes, and it takes about 30 minutes to copy a full card. we get electricity when we stay at campervan parks, so i do my copying, editing and charging up there. i also could charge on the road from the adaptor, but i usually only copy music to and from my mp3 player on the road.
  • we both got hooked on rumpole series. fun, awesome writing, very funny, and we managed to score all the books but one from another 2nd hand book shop for $5 plus exchange of our silly, have read, cheapass books. we saved like $12 there. the math is a bit fuzzy, but basically, we have a tonn of good read, (and even mediocre reading, i bought some junk reading ala king + grisham only scifi-ish, don’t remember the name), for cheap, or even profitable, and we are both getting a kick reading in the morning, evenings, beach, tanning, etc.
  • my mp3 player + tape deck adaptor + laptop every 3 hours to supply more music == fresh music so far! i’m afraid we’re starting to push the limits of my music collection though. i don’t think tim is a big fan of russian pop dance, which i ashamedly posses in large quantities, or the instrumental collections i got off my mom’s disks.
  • switching to rising at like 8-9am naturally after having spent 3 days in fraser rising at 6am daily
  • now, fraser is a seperate story. we have shared a 4×4 car with 9 other people, and spent 2 nights and 1 whole day (and half another day in start and half another day in the end) on this huge beach dune which has awesome fresh water lakes (freezing, but gorgeous), and generally a very awesome natural landscape. the downside of it being a sanddune and sharing one car with 11 people is that SAND. GETS. EVERYWHERE. those of you who know how picky i am about my camera’s cleanliness, will know that traces of sand inside my LENSCAP mean it literally was everywhere. i didn’t even switch lenses (shot sigma12-24 and mini canon) the entire time.
    on that note i should have more photos off the canon tomorrow.
    we have bought food together, bought meat from the butcher offered by the place (koala adventures), and bought cheap liquer. oh. my. god. we have not eaten worse meat and drank worse alcohol in AGES. it was so disgusting! and it was such a joy to get back to normal, great-wine, great-food, no-sand world afterwards! but even despite that, fraser was pretty fun. pretty, at least :D

    Hi mom!

    hi mom!

    Fraser island Reflections of sunrise Rain and sunrise tim against the sunrise
    tree outlines