i tried to find a SFW image by him, but apparently most of his photographs involve naked people.
but, they are awesome.
Category: photography
more of gemma
i just really like the look! someone, shoot me like that, i’ll even band-aid my fingers and paint one of them black! (or red, depending on the filters used)
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!
ha, didn’t expect this, did you :P
gemma ward
she has an awesome “look”.
welcome back hesi!
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
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:
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!
out into the wild
im in the process of trying to upload photographs. cant remember my ftp password! grr
we are in brisbane, which is the last real large city before the “end” of our trip, in cairns, which is about 3 weeks away. isn’t that crazy?
we left on sunday afternoon, almost evening, and spent our first night at a rest stop on the side of the road. it is surprinsigly awesome, squatting. the van has a sink, a stove, a microwave (that operates only if we’re connected to a power supply), a fridge, and 2 benches + a table that fold into a bed. plus 2 shelves for storage, and storage underneath each bench. all in all, pretty damn spacious for 2 people. we still have to shuffle stuff around, but its not really all that painful.
we’ve bought around 11 or 12 books at a salvation army shop, each for around $2, $1 or $0.50. (total: $16). some of them turned out to be total garbage (same author as “i know what you did last summer” … finished it in about 4 hours, blergh), and some are totally sweet (“no, we don’t have neutrons”, about failures of science to be proper science). each evening we spend reading books and drinking wine until we fall asleep.
sleep is incredibly comfortable, especially given how i haven’t slept on a properly wide bed in like … AGES. i packed my pillows with us (will just throw them out in cairns before our flights), so we’re super comfy.
tonight we’re staying in a campervan park site, which is essentially is a huge parking lot, with plug points where we can get power (that way we’ve got electricity for laptops, and microwave power), and water points for refilling our water tank. there is no sewage system as its only a sink that we have, meaning that whenever we use the sink there’s a tiny puddle that forms underneath the van. everyone seems to be pretty used to that thought!
our initial plan today was to go to brisbane downtown, but i felt incredibly tired and weary after sleeping poorly last night (shows me to not think of water supply in advance… i got thirsty and all we had was coke, so i slept terribly due to all the sugar and such in my system). good go too, it started raining 10 minutes after we parked.
the campvervan site has internet, unfortunately as it turns out only one computer can log in, and once you’re logged in another computer can’t log in, even if you are logged out. since tim logged in first, he has internet, and i’m stuck with copying pictures over usb key.
regardless of that inconvinience, life is awesometastic. australia turns out to be an incredibly pretty place, and people are ridiculously nice to us. i’m not all upons it as i’ve heard some first hand accounts of racism in this country.
some memorable highlights so far include:
-> FINALLY LEARNING TO LIKE MUSSELS. mom, dad, i hope you’re happy. it only took 10 years after i first tried them :D
-> seeing some magnificent skies over the ocean
-> catching some whales at a few different points (no pictures, they were too far away anyway, still… so cool!)
-> not getting a tan :( yet. i hope.
-> HOLDING A KOALA (see pictures!). they are as soft and fuzzy and warm and adorable as they look. seriously. i officially want to be a koala when i’m reborn. they are loved by all; all they do is sleep and eat. too awesome.
-> feeding kangoroos!
-> seeing surfers’ paradise – what an adorable town! touristy, yeah, but ohmygosh its all so cute
-> buying some awesometastic strawberries at a road market
-> one of the most awesome parts so far was the awesomeness of tim who has cooked breakfast (eggs, bacon and toast and coffee!) each morning. i wash the dishes afterwards, but there were occurances where his cooking was … leaving me speechless. example: we wake up at 10am in some campersite lot somewhere between here and sydney. i’m sleepy, hungover, tired, and more like a stone than a person. we pack up quickly, get out by 10am (check out time), and i fall asleep at the back. tim drives us to a beach (!), cooks breakfast and makes coffee, and then wakes me up to the view of the ocean, blue skies and smell of coffee. i believe i may have found the last perfect man on earth.
full of fantastic fun
(get a flickr account and let me add you as family to see above photos)
it is week 12 here in unsw there are 3 weeks left of studying, and then 2 exams, and then tim and i are off to drive up the australian coast.
hesi is arriving tomorrow! and so i will finally drag her and tim to see various sights around sydney and in sydney.
last night smita, lesley ann, tim, roshan and moi went out to sushi to some local place. it was the first japanese experience for lesley ann and smita – i was promising lesley ann to take her to sushi for a while and this was it. they both seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, liking the small rolls and nigiri sushi the most. (they did have problems figuring out how to eat the larger rolls – i’m still unconvinced, are you supposed to eat it in parts or just stuff it in?)
i realized i haven’t been writing much about my so called “australian experience”. to be honest, looking back at the past 3 months since tim has left it doesn’t feel like there was much of an experience, at least towards the beginning. the last month and a half were better in terms of fun as i have gotten closer with my flatmates, and thus ended up going out and doing interesting things far more.
the brighter experiences up until this moment was the day of the “races”, which i still failed to blog about. let me make a short attempt at it here.
the races
racing seems to be a huge australian phenonenon. apparently, there is this melbourne cup when the entire country shuts down to watch that race. of course, there is a huge race track just north of the university. and on one particular weekend in april, there was a large race occuring there, or rather a number of important races, to which barker apartment number 9 (that is the apartment in which i live) decided to head out to see. it was actually me, lesley ann, kevin (all of us from 9) and a bunch of other people who they have met from their earlier residence here in sydney.
in case you are not aware of the general things that happen at races, here is the approximate list of interesting and notable moments:
after returning home, we have ate, relaxed, and went out dancing! and as the tale goes, we danced the night away, and it was good.
st patrick’s day
while it was not any different from many parties i’ve been to, it was awesome because:
kevin’s party
one of the most notable things about kevin’s birthday party was that it was 4 days before tim’s arrival here. (and i think that sentence summarizes how i felt the entire 3 months he wasn’t here). of course the dinner, the drinking and the dancing was also notable – and a load of fun!
there were many other moments. i tried curry (made by smita) – she made some specially for me without the spicy part. and she used all authentic indian ingridients. tonight, she’s making curry again – and this time tim has a chance to try it too!
each monday night lesley ann and i (and lately smita too) watch desperate housewives while eating a shared dinner, and having dessert afterwards.
before i got really sick at the end of the vacation week (end of april), i went to the gym, loads, together with LA again. unfortunately it stopped because there were 2 bad weeks which i spent mostly entirely in bed. after a few doctor trips, everything is now confirmed as being fine, which makes me very, very, happy.
baking – bread, cookies, carrot cake, my mom’s apple pie.
i got everyone here hooked on “oladushki” – thin slices of apple dipped in batter made from my grandma’s recipe.
i guess food was a major part of this experience. i really love food and cooking now, and bubble over with excitement of trying new recipes. in the last 2 days i learned how to make a kick ass goatcheese salad (add small cubes of peeled apple), and fettucine carbonara.
and of course, today tim has been here for more than a week. while sharing a tiny room as opposed to a whole apartment is interesting, thankfully he doesn’t have much clothes (although now the whole closet is taken up, and not just half ;) ), and we’re compatible people.
i’m very happy. life is falling back in place again; the next 3 months look to be full of fantastic fun again (how’s that for alliteration). almost a month of study and party and fun in sydney; then almost a month of travelling around australia and 10 days in japan, and then a month back in toronto, together with my friends and family who i miss oh so much.
too lazy? spring break (fall break?)
i’m having a week break and am too lazy to blog.
i have one important thing to write about: going to the races.
instead i will tell you how i made some rosemary and thyme bread with hummus. and it was good.
and then we went dancing. and it was awesome.
(i promise i’ll write when i finish my philosophy paper. im 300/2000 there!)
assignment end, break begin
she-crab soup made from this recipe (its awesome)
today was definitely a good day. first off, last night after making triply sure that the assignment works (thank you, dad!), it was handed in with no problems, and i went out to have some drinks – for the first time evah! (the drinking out that is). that was fantabulous fun, and i came home and crashed to sleep.
the morning of thursday was excellent. first off, dad confirmed everything is fine. thus this huge, terrible weight of that unbearable assignment fell off my shoulders. the linguistics assignment was almost done, so i spent my morning cleaning it up. (i also made scrambled eggs. yum!)
the constant question of where to print if you’re not really in possession of a printer can drive a student to do odd things, especially if they have to hand in the assignment by 2pm and its 1:50. i tried printing at the library (which smelled like smoke, and later i found out that it was evacuated!), but ended up crashing their computers. so, on kinda vagueish instructions from LA and Kevin i found the place where all the american students get their sponsored labs – its a gleaming, white, clean room, with lots of big macs with flat screens and pretty mice and fast computers and fast printers. i printed and was outta there under 1 minute. yay!
next problem was finding the drop off box. i got confused between two buildings, both of which intials begin with MB, so i ended up being at the hand in place at 2:10 or so. but they still took it on time!
i also spoke the prof, and wished him a good holiday. yay!
random memories on the walk home, when the world suddenly became bright and assignment free:
a bearded, white, curly haired professor at his desk going “hmmm” in a serious tone to a young naive first year student cowering in front of him.
“but i did everything i could!” “well my grandad was in the navy you know!” (as part of one conversation, very loud argument)
a guy eating a watermelon (like 1/4 of it) on the run.
the feeling joy surrounding the campus despite the rain as this was the last day of classes before the break (actually i felt the joy but didn’t know that second bit).
upon arrival home i found out i have no classes tomorrow, and that elin will be going to the gym 2 hours later, so i snacked, chatted, relaxed, and then went to the gym for a hard core workout!
this was my 4th time. i biked for 20 mins @ lv 5, elliptical for 20 mins @ lv 5, and for the first time, ran all 20 mins at 7kph (before i was 14 mins run and 6 walk, and then 16 mins run and 4 walk). then elin showed me some weights training, so i did about 40 sit ups on the big ball, some leg excersizes with the ball, some back excersizes with the ball, weight training for back and arms and legs, and stretched. it was good!
came home, made the she crab soup, and that’s where the day ended, basically.
i wont count the evening because i washed all of the dishes in the kitchen again for the 2nd time (not a single. clean. cup. 2nd. time. in. the. day. i washed almost all of them before the gym.) (so before sleep i went in and did a major clean up – washed majority of dishes that were “anonymos” – like not from LA’s baking – and finally cleaned off counters. yay!), and watched wolf creek which was scary. but that’s okay. it doesn’t count.
i want to be a food photographer! so much fun!