Smiley in the Sky

My last dance class was on Monday (1st Dec) and as I was making my way home I looked up in the western sky and saw the smiley in the sky. I wished I had of had a camera, yet then I remember my camera is not good enough to shoot in the sky. It was pretty magical to see it. I remember reading earlier in the day that the next time this event will happen is in 5 years. I am glad I did see it, as I did forget.

Melbourne was a little warm and clear which added to the magic. I felt impressed by the way the pattern of the two planets, Jupiter and Venus formed the eyes and the cresent moon made a smile. I had always wondered if I had seen planets and what they looked like and now I discovered that I had seen many planets before. The photo is ok, yet seeing it with my naked eye was breathtaking and a memory I will cherish (until I see it again in 5 years).

Photo from here

You might have missed ...

With all the tragic news coming out of Asia in most particularly India and Thailand at the moment it might have been easy to overlook this piece of news from Singapore -

Singapore jails 3 for kangaroo T-shirts.

Reuters - Thursday, November 27

SINGAPORE, Nov 27 - Three Singaporeans were jailed on Thursday after being charged with contempt of court for showing up at Singapore's Supreme Court wearing T-shirts depicting kangaroos in judges robes.

Isrizal Bin Mohamed Isa and Muhammad Shafi'ie Syahmi Bin Sariman were sentenced to seven days' jail, while Tan Liang Joo John received 15 days imprisonment. They were each ordered to pay S$5,000 in costs.

Tan is the Assistant Secretary-General of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party, led by Chee Soon Juan.

The three had worn the T-shirts at a court hearing in May to determine the damages that Chee Soon Juan and his sister Chee Siok Chin were to pay after being found guilty of defaming Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and former leader Lee Kuan Yew.

Singapore's attorney-general said in bringing the case to court the trio had "scandalised the Singapore judiciary".

Singapore bans gatherings and protests in all public areas without a permit except Speakers' Corner, the country's equivalent of the historic free-speech haven in London's Hyde Park.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20081127/tap-singapore-kangaroo-c3bb44c.html

Dance Free

A couple of weeks ago I had to leave the dance class early and gave my entry ticket to a friend. The next time I saw him I had a funny feeling, and he said to me that he has good news. I had won the free class, call it intuition or esp or excitement, I am not sure yet I got to dance for free, which I thought was cool.

Okra

Something I have never seen in the supermarket before - Okra. In an attempt to overdose I cooked these three meals over a week. All were delicious.

Chicken with okra served on spinach rice

Corn rice with grilled okra and grilled spiced chicken

Grilled Cajun chicken served with okra fried rice and eggplant in tomatoes

Pasta Disasta

Well not quite, I am practicing to be a journalist. I made pasta often as a child and remember how much fun it was. So when I saw a pasta machine (roller and cutter) at a fairly cheap price I thought why not.

So I prepared the dough with eggs and flour and proceeded to knead it into a nice ball. I always feel that there is something enjoyable about preparing food, I am not sure if it is the dough between the fingers or the reward from working hard. I let it rest, wondering what is the right time to wait. After about 1.5 hours I rolled the pasta out. I was a little frustrated at first as the machine did not want to stick to the bench. Yet, after a while I worked out how to get it all done and from there was able to make some fettuccine.

I waited until dinner time (which was about 4 hours away) and went back to cook the pasta. It had all stuck together again and needed rolling. It went much smoother this time and went straight into the boiling water. Taking a little longer to cook than packet pasta I was able to clean up and prepare a sauce. I was feeling hungry and a little lazy so I went with a simple garlic and parsley sauce with cheese added on. I found the pasta tasted a lot like egg noodles (not surprising since they are the same). The sauce gave the pasta a much needed boost. Next time when I make pasta will definitely move away from strands towards shapes. Now, got to go and find out how to make pasta bow ties.

Pasta in 8 steps

Yahoo vs. Google

I have mentioned how Google modifies their logos for celebrating special events, yet I just noticed that Yahoo does it sometimes as well. Here it is a Halloween standoff.

Was I in a movie?

It is a good time to be a Liverpool fan. Not only did they beat MU for the first time in a while, they also comprehensively sent a message to Chelsea on the Weekend. Unfortunately news that good was hard to keep secret, and when I got home to watch the replay of the game knowing the result detracted a bit from the game. Overall, i found the game exciting to watch, and I feel confident that next year a large hangover might be required.

Lately I have been getting back into salsa, and tonight I went to the school which confused me so much previously. This time I am not so confused, or maybe I am and don't know it yet. Anyway, on the way back I walked home and came across a situation.

As I approached with shopping in hand, I saw 8 men. Big men, mean looking, all in bomber jackets laughing and talking, no I think it was acting,,leaning against silver cars. All the cars were the same make, and looked like two men per car. There was something odd about them, I noticed at any one time one of them was eying me as walked. As I walked I felt a constant glare the kind that said don't look here, unless...

There was definitely something in the air, a vibe or was it more like a stench. The stench was one in which the prevailing mood was we don't give a .... A new car pulled up, exactly the same as the others, two guys in "the uniform" got out and started talking, non threatening yelling, and catching up. Both these guys glanced in my direction with a serious get out of my way look. Then I saw a bulge in the pant leg, and another quick look revealed a holster or something on the belt. I just felt like I had walked onto the movie set of Training Day or another cop drama as the cops were waiting to GTA some one's butt tonight.

All I know someone is going to get it tonight.

Its in the Game

I am not one usually for politics, yet I would like to see Obama become the President of the USA. It would be good to see the first black president in the US and CTU come into the action. I bring this up as this year their seems to be large amount of American politics in the news, more than I can remember anytime previous [I might just be more aware now :)]. One story I read this morning said that political advertising has proved itself to be in the game.

How the Obama ad appears in the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise.

In other US news, one of my favorite DJs (DJ Z-Trip) had some parties to change. He released his mixes to the public along with some pics. Listen here http://downloads.djztrip.com/Z-Trip_ObamaMix.zip (84mbs). A mix of hip hop and other pop songs with a political bent. Some nice Bush outakes.

From the website:

Recently, Shepard Fairey and I threw some fundraisers for the Obama campaign. We called them "The Party for Change". (If you don't know who Shepard is--among many other things--he is the one responsible for the image on the right).

I've been wanting to put the mix I've been doing at these shows online, in hopes of spreading the word to people who need to hear it most. So, here it is:

http://djztrip.com/obama/

I encourage you to download it and pass it along to anyone you think should hear it. Feel free to burn copies, share it with friends, family, co-workers, strangers, and especially anyone you know is on the fence about this election. I'm also putting out a radio friendly version, in case anyone wants to broadcast it.

Please share the message. Educate those who may not know what is really going on. There is still time.

If you, or anyone you know, isn't registered to vote, I encourage you to make it a priority and fix that before it's too late. This election is WAY too important for anyone to not get involved. If you need more information on how and where to register, vote, or participate, please check the links below.

I honestly feel if we make our voices heard, this time WILL be different.

Peace,

Z-TRIP

For more Information, check out these links:

The Official Obama Campaign Site - http://barackobama.com/

MoveOn.org Political Action Group - http://moveon.org/

Rock the Vote - http://rockthevote.com/

OBEY - http://obeygiant.com/

Z-Trip News, Downloads, More - http://djztrip.com


http://downloads.djztrip.com/Z-Trip_ObamaMix.zip

Google UK

He's heating up!

Yesterday I had the privilige of watching my boss in action. He was on fire, I had never seen him like he was today. Usually we, me, him, and whoever else is in the meeting, yet today he had a mission. I am not sure if it is due to the size of the project and its complexity, with the deadline coming closer fast, yet I left the (long) meeting with a sense of awe with the powerful organising vision. The bar has been set high now on how to run the show and inspire your workers. It was magical, watching an artist create a masterpiece or watching a sunset over the ocean.

I was really impressed and am inspired that one day I will be able to do something like this on a project that I work on.

You never walk alone

It has taken 7 years to win at Anfield, 5 years in the Premier League, and me 3 attempts over 5 days to see Liverpool finally beat Manchester United. It was worth the wait to saviour the taste. I feel that this year is going to be different.

Concrete canvas

I got to watch what I think is a pretty cool documentary yesterday. It was called concrete canvas and it was about a street artist who specialised in 3d Chalk art. I have seen some of this in Melbourne before, yet nothing quite like in this show.

The show basically takes you through what the artist is thinking. It talks about the infamous Banksy and his art all over London, as well as some of the graffiti art that is under threat due to the Olympics. I was amazed at the creativity of the whole piece. I must admit when he showed me (or us the viewer) the wall and started talking about extending this here and that there I was like what? Yet after he started to put some of the sketches down between bouts of rain showers, I started to anticipate that something pretty cool was about to happen.

The art was pieced together slowly, and as time went on it was revealed what was going on, why certain things were being done. It also cut away to give the effect of time lapse. I searched on You Tube for the video and only came across this one (see below). Here are some photos off flickr and a web search that I was able to find to see the finished product.

You can view other works by Julian Beever here.

Angels and Demons

Today, the artwork for Google is based on the large Hadron Collider. Now I have no idea what this thing does yet it sounds impressive. I read in paper today that we should not be messing around with this thing anyway. After I read Angels and Demons, I found the name CERN everywhere and prior to that book, I had never even heard of CERN. Now I like my cocoon yet what these guys do is pretty out there stuff. What I can gather is that they are trying to create a universe under the Alps. I think this is probably not the best place for such a thing, yet I really am clueless about creating universes and such. I am reassured by Steven Hawking's comment that it is vital for the survival of humanity. I know we are in danger with global warming and the day after tomorrow world, yet that is quite far fetched from what I understood. I may have been a bit too quick there, I am already feeling a sense of doom falling on me, I just read that they are making Angels and Demons into a movie now.

GTArt

I am amazed still by the impact of the GTA series, it is everywhere. I was reloading my music to my computer and found in one of the folders this image. Clearly from GTA San Andreas, in one of the splash screens loading the game infact. Also, was reading about it in the newspaper. I feel it might be the star wars of the video game generation.

More GTA art this time from GTA San Andreas

The journey to the north

A while back I went to my home town. A road trip with a full car to help my friend settle into a new town. Being there really brought back memories, and unlike being in Melbourne, which is beautiful, cosmopolitan, and bustling, I really felt peaceful, a calmness that I hadn't felt since being in Long Xuyen.

Along the way I managed to shoot some photos and videos. On Sunday, I decided it was time to get cracking on one of my projects I had thought about for a while - Showing the world how different Australia is. And a journey from the bottom to the central eastern coast has a lot of variation. Unfortunately when we got to the mountains it was dark and raining so I didn't get any pictures of this variation in landscape. Just imagine mountains with rain forest and lots of steep winding roads.

This is my first decent project with the Premier Video editing software. I am pretty impressed with the way it turned out, yet couldn't find the Star Wars transitions, although some karaoke regulars might notice some of the karaoke transitions present. I wanted to do the Indiana Jones type maps where the map scrolls in the background over the foreground, yet I didn't have the patience to find out how to do it. I did a quick variation which I think does the job.

I opened the soundbooth program for the first time and found it a bit ordinary. I quickly reverted back to soundforge yet found that I forgot what i was looking to do and went back to the open soundbooth program. After a short look I found an icon which looked like what I wanted to do and by trial and error I got the basic results I was after. I have to say with all the functions in soundforge it was overwhelming, and soundforge still looks more versatile than soundbooth.

Also with this project I have worked out how to encode the final vidoes better and keep the quality a little higher than the first attempt at making a video. Well here it is a video diary of the journey north.

Enjoy!

Today's Google logo

Read all about agricultural technology in Australia here.

Google

Whenever I go to google for the first time during the day, I am always eager to see the logo. I have always noted that the logo changes, and in most cases I learn something about that day (like a day in history or youth day or something). I have been collecting a few of the logos lately so that I can see them for inspiration in design ideas (for the website and other artistic projects under planning) and share them here (dissappointned that I lost a heap when transferring data to the new computer, I dream of a simple world).

Google in Lego

To try to collect some old ones I used with "google logos (and doodles are what they are called)" and came across quite a few places to get them. There are plenty of other sites which collect the logos as well. Well I collected a bunch for the Olympics logos only to find that they are now all on that website and all together in one image below (not in order).

Beijing Olympics

And here is a video of how he does it.

Well duh!

I can not believe that this made the news.

Absent-minded drivers to

blame for crashes

More revelations can be found here.

Tis the season

Tis the season for EPL. This season I will be able to watch games in English, in high quality when I want (during the week). The last time I got to watch a long series of EPL games in English was in 2003, the year before it was taken to cable tv, and never to be seen again. My internet connection enables me 9 games per week. (4 live and 5 on demand). I feel this is a cool deal, and the price? FREE, well the marginal price is. I will get to watch them for no additional cost, free with my internet.


When I learnt this I was excited for the first day of the season, this weekend. The first games did not feature Liverpool, yet I was able to watch Arsenal play West Brom. Exiting game in the first half, yet after a while it started to lose its way as the Gunners couldn't finish.

That leaves me with only one problem, a good problem to have given recent years, when can I watch all this football.

Adobe Master Collection

I have been lucky enough to get a hold of the Adobe CS3 Master collection. This suite is the bomb. It has Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, Flash, and Acrobat. I have been playing around with these for a couple of hours or so and have found them to be highly addictive.

The first photo I edited in Photoshop is the box the stuff came in. Nothing really new has happened in Photoshop, or it is with the features that I don't use, which appears to be most of them.

I have created some artwork for my thesis highlighting the hypothesis that I am testing - fuel/ feed/ food. The basis of the thesis is that biofuel production is pushing up food prices, along with the current drought in Australia and the Mekong rice basin (An Giang and provincial friends). I used some of the microsoft clipart photos and modified them in Illustrator, as trying to create my own images seemed to difficult at present.

For some reason all the colours changed and labels disappeared

I have also messed around with the flash tutorial yet haven't included that here as I don't know how to put it into the webpage. Lastly, I mucked around with premier and put this together in about 20 minutes. There are tonnes of features yet to be explored yet I feel like I will be making Star Wars transitions in my videos really soon. The quality of the uploaded video is not so hot as I had to reduce the file size from 220 mbs to less than 100 (I got to excited and dropped it to 7mb). Things to improve include video matching soundtrack smoothing between videos. I think it has a lot of potential and definately was fun to play around with and eager to do a few more, once I shoot some more videos.

Driving around Melb to Deep Purple ;)

I really got to get some books as the suite came with only the online help, yet until then it is experiment, experiment, experiment. Oh yeah, I need CAN BAND VIDEO.

Looking the wrong way.

Now i see the problem.

I thought it was that the system was way to complex and that no-one really knew anything. I now feel that I have been enlightened to the problem and realise that, as the song says, nothing can save us.

The three main protagonists are representative of the somewhat different foci of paleo-climatologists, climate modellers and economists. Very broadly speaking, paleo-climate science is built around the analysis of single location time series (often from holes that are drilled). Climate modellers spend a lot of time trying to see what is coming up in all it's complexity, while economists tend to eschew complexity and look for insight in highly idealised situations. But in order to increase the credibility of models, they have to do well at simulating past climates and what might happen in the future is certainly informed by what has happened in the past. And in order to better understand the impacts of climate change and various proposed policies, economists will need to embrace the complexity of human-climate interactions while modellers need to better understand what aspects of climate really do make a difference. None of these things will happen if we continue to all look in different directions, and more problematically, fail to support and reward those scientists who want to bridge the divides. Sea monsters notwithstanding.

I do think the picture is really clever.


Source

Cartoons Part 2

I was introduced to the rut today. I was quite amused by the cartoons I read there (more are available with content not suited for here). Here are some of the more tame cartoons. The topics I chose to share are varied from pirate fashion, Pacman, James Bond, and Star Trek to reflect different themes discussed in the blog.

Pirate fashion

Video Games



James Bond

Star Trek

Cartoons

A while back I came across some cartoons from the climate change cartoon competition. I think the second place should have been first, and the runner up shown second. I don't quite understand the significance of the first place, then again I don't really understand political and artistic expression anyway. As they say, light does not penetrate dense wood.

Winner

Second

Third

Runner Up

More Cartoons

Climate Change Science

New climate change research from Argentina.

Melbourne Southbank at Dusk

The view from my office last night.

Game On

A while back in June I was lucky enough to go see an exhibition on video games. Now as most people who know me I do have a thing for them. I did my honours thesis on the economics of video games, and although I pretty much bombed it I definitely enjoyed learning all about the video game industry. Since that time I have seen quite an evolution in the industry and in particular the understanding the effects of platform choice and technology really shape the video game industry and provide a testing ground for graphics and sound technology for compters.

During my thesis I encountered some systems that I had never heard of and it was good to see what they actually looked like. These early systems were the first consoles that I encountered once I descended into the dungeon of video games. They had the classic Pong - the first actual arcade game machine - on display. It looked so ancient! The early games on display were classics for each system and brought back memories from my childhood as I begged my parents to buy an Atari and later a NES games system. I was pretty surprised that I never saw Super Mario Brothers at a game station, only the original Mario Bros..

Part of the fun of the exhibition was that you were allowed to play the games. I watched my friend play Tetris and was amazed at how good she was. It was like appreciating art. I also played Pro Evolution Soccer 5 000 000 or whatever the latest version is now. The graphics were pretty amazing on this (comparing it to my version of PES 9) and I felt the difficulty was from trying to adjust to the way the camera now operates. Lastly I played puzzle game against my friend and got whipped, and learnt that I am probably a little competitive .

Besides classics, they had lots of background information on video games. They had a music section (just like Borders), an art section (sonic and mario/ pokemon art), and a game design area. In the game design area they had a layout of two games - Max Payne and GTA III. Looking at the layouts I got a feel for how complicated it is to design the virtual worlds seen in the games. You can see my wonderment of the next GTA game San Andreas here (it looks like some of the pics have been deleted from the web). The amount of detail that the artists use start from photographs and then transcribed into digital art and mathematics, pretty amazing stuff, in a nerdy way :).

The last part of the museum had the most modern games. They had the dancing craze games as well as the new HALO. That HALO looked pretty amazing and fun to play, providing you didn't play against the teenagers there who were just kicking everyone's butt.

They had the Nintendo WII on display and a range of sports games. They had tennis on display and it looked pretty cool. You take the controller and swing it round like an actual tennis racket. It looked like it would take a while to get used to, yet once the skill was acquired lots of good games would follow. The experience difference between books and games was interaction, in the game you get sucked into action, unlike a book which tends to be more passive. I guess the next step in game technology is be in the game itself.

It wouldn't be a Nintendo themepark without a Mario on display, and here you see me in the next genration of games as I try to escape from the clutches of Mario and video game exhibition.


PS: Cameras weren't allowed inside the exhibition so I wasn't able to take any photos. Something about copyright blah blah blah. Doesn't this just get old!

The tickets and free game to keep me occupied for hours

Seriously

Are they for real?

In the news

Well not really. Yet kind of. It's like the role of an employee of a bar was vital in giving a singer a drink before a live performance, who rocked a sold out concert was important to the overall picture. And that is me and my contribution to the Garnaut Review (sounds like the Stern Review). The review is a draft report on climate change and has just been released and is making the news. I spent numerous days before christmas collecting the data and passed it on to be adjusted as needs be. If you look closely you can see absolutely none of my contribution in chapter 4 , and actually I am not sure where my work went, however chapter 4 was the most likely place (having read a bit of it [it is over 500 pages]).

You can download the report here.

Well anyway, lets get back to rock music as I saw this clever sign recently.

Triple M - Australia's Classic Rock Radio Station

It's time

We need new food and energy systems.

Global warming: the real cause

Well having study some literature on this topic I have now discovered the real reason for global warming and it was so obvious that it is hard to see.

Quoted from the enlightening site:

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

For more enlightened results please see this journal- JIR (careful it is scientific).

Fight night round 1

Friday night is amateur night, and I head up to Coburg to support 5 guys from our club. It was mixed affair with karate and Thai boxing along with (traditional western) boxing. First fight was a Thai boxing fight of 3 rounds. It was fast and hard. I distinctly heard at one point in the second round shin pad against shin pad. They sounded very thin as the bone crunching sound echoed around the hall.

The boxing matches were a little more civilised. The first two fights involved our club and they were victories. Next was a first timer. He really didn’t look fit yet he seemed eager enough to go. The match started and it quickly became apparent that he was outclassed. His opponent was able to tag him from everywhere. He lost in a unanimous points decision. The last fight was best described by someone we met on the way home.

@$#*! Look at that guy. If I was to fight him I would be scared. He is huge, and rippling with his muscles shining with oil, he looks like Iron Mike Tyson, a vicious bulldog. His bicep is as big as a watermelon. The fight starts and the crowd hushes as the bell rings. The fight has been going for a minute yet no one has thrown a punch. It is a Mexican standoff, both waiting for the others. Oh no, counter punchers. Finally it is like someone pushes them together and a flurry of punches by our guy sees two connections, a body and head hook. Then some more standoffs then the end of the round.

Now the last two rounds were just as good. The big guy thought it was gridiron, and went on tackling our guy. After two rounds the judges had no idea how to score this match so they just called it a draw.

Anyway, yesterday I went to the club to do my usual training, and I had a reality check. I knew I wasn’t really ready to go the distance in any competitive way. The guy who lost I had a spar with and felt it. If it was real I think I would have been taken to hospital pretty quickly. There is a big difference between the guys I had been sparring previously. Also I feel so unfit; the injury really has taken a toll. Well I am just happy I found out that I still need more time in the gym.

The rematch of the 1991 classic is on tonight (24 June 2008)

Fat bomb!

Americans can't have all the supersized fun. Read about how we stole the crown from the Americans here.

AUSTRALIA has become the fattest nation in the world, with more than 9 million adults now rated as obese or overweight, according to an alarming new report.

Energy and food

There seems to be a lot about the relationship between energy and food being talked about in certain parts of the world. I wish I could get invited to sit around and do nothing for a few days in Rome, since this is the topic I am pursuing for my PhD. I didn’t mean nothing as I would be posing to act like I am doing something*.

Well since I wasn’t invited to that party, I decided to make my own. To ensure that I have food security, well bread security, I got myself a breadmaker. Just a few blocks from my house there is a factory shop for Breville electronics and a range of discount clothes outlets. Searching for the NIKE shop I found the electronics shop and wandered inside. I saw that the breadmakers were quite cheap compared to those at full retail price and impulse grabbed me as I remembered how good fresh bread tastes.

The new toy

That night I cranked it up and all went well. The first loaf I baked I put too much water, however that did not affect the taste. I think I will start to put on a tonne of weight over the coming months as I enjoy the fresh bread.

The first loaf

On the lighter side, my friend showed me this clip today which seems to cement the relationship between food and energy and solve the issue of high oil prices.

The new bread machine does have a jam/jelly setting so I am set to become the (John D) Rockefeller of the 21^st century.

* note my cynicism of such things arises on meeting a few experts from these types of organisations whom really are just interested in self promotion and travel, using the excuse of trying to help people without a specific cultural/ social understanding of the situation.