Improv Everywhere

These guys do some great stunts....

Improv Everywhere


Here's a novel take on using the free Wi-Fi in Starbucks.



This is just cool

Other peoples thoughts on pacifism

"Good men can sleep well in their beds because rough men stand ready to commit violence in their name."

I read this on the back of someone's t-shirt today, it's a variation of this quote by George Orwell.

"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."

Although, having dug around a bit more on Google, it isn't clear that he did say this... Winston Churchill might have said it... Anyhow, Orwell did say this about pacifism.

"Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."


Just made me think a bit about various pacifist arguments.... not think decisively mind you, just think.

Signs and portents....

From Kent Ridge Park... in order:
Do not threaten the monkeys
Do not kill birds

Simple Addictions....

For anyone who was curious, this is what S$100 worth of coffee looks like (there are actually 7 tins). Or about a two month supply for Adam and Minna....
At least the Rørth lab can continue to function now...

Kent Ridge Park

Went wandering around Kent Ridge Park today. There's quite a fun little bridge walk through the canopy and it's a pretty relaxing place....

Suckers....

Only true fashion whores queue just to get in a shop....

Respect

I have a huge amount of respect for anyone who can work dressed like this in midday heat...

Self portrait

Not in a v.talkative mood at the moment, this kind of sums it up...

Hugs don't work over the internet....

I really hope this is real...

I really, really hope this is real....

Green anti-cancer beer

Went to the Red Dot Brewhouse with Alan tonight. Its in Dempsy Green, which has a whole collection of restaurants and bars, as well as several furniture shops. We decided to have 'Monster Green Lager Beer', which was, to my surprise, actually green. The menu assured us that one of the ingredients had 'preliminarily' been shown to boost the immune system, fight cancer, viral infection and combat the HIV virus....

Yes, I was skeptical too, but I decided to have a pint just in case....

Didn't taste that great, but that could have been psychological (because it was green)

Targeted marketing.

A nice piece of targeted marketing.... aiming a snack bar so obviously at hungy fat girls
(ok, so I bought one for the novelty and shininess.. tastes a bit like cranberry cardboar)

A tiring night with Tallulah and Candy

Seeing as its Valentines day and I'm 'Geographically Single' I decided to honor the night with a threesome. Me, Tallulah and Candy (its pronounced Ta-loo-la). Sadly this wasn't a trip to the famously legal Red Light districts of Singapore... Nope. I spent most of the night in the lab with two confocals (which I've now named) Need to get out more.

Paper of the week

This is part of the Supplementary information of the paper of the week. Its a paper about male aggression in Drosophila. High speed movies of flies fighting. Then if you remove Octopamine (a dopamine like neurotransmitter) the flies are less aggressive. Also, like with school kids, bigger flies tend to pick on smaller flies.

Octopamine in Male Aggression of Drosophila.

Current Biology, Volume 18, Issue 3, Pages 159-167

S. Hoyer, A. Eckart, A. Herrel, T. Zars, S. Fischer, S. Hardie, M. Heisenberg

Reproduced from Current Biology.

FaceBot

As I'm still refusing to join the millions of 14 year old girls of the world on Facebook, I'm contemplating a compromise. This is a hypothetical program called FaceBot. Its a bit like the Turing Test, which is a test of a machine's ability to imitate a human. In the test a person sits in one room posing questions to 'someone' in the next room (either by typewriter or computer). The responder could be a real person or a computer. The test is to see whether a computer could fool the interrogator.

My variant of this would be to set up a Facebook account and have a bot accept invitations of others (I guess I might have to 'seed' it with a few contacts) then ingage in some of the random crap which Facebook is good at... so send people beer, play games of scrabble etc... I could also have it either post pictures from my Flickr account at random or simply add random images of Singapore). It would also change my mood intermittently (possibly with the lunar cycle, or based on my heartrate or something).

This would serve several purposes. Firstly it would test current programming capabilities and secondly it would stop people bugging me to join facebook while saving me the time of having to constantly tinker with it. Also it would be interesting to see how long it would go unnoticed.


Note. have just Googled 'FaceBot', turns out there's already a program (FaceBotPro) which does something along these lines (although looks more like a mass Facebook spamming device that a Turing Engine) Perhaps there is still a market for this.

Famous Finns....

Having grievously slandered Finnish science today (actually Minna slandered it, I just agreed too much) I've decided, by way of an apology, to dedicate a moment to a few famous Finns.









(no, I'm not going to tell you who they are)

Book butchery

Ok, so this is the follow up to my previous post (which thinking about it you probably haven't scrolled down to yet). Anyhow, in one of my 'making stuff' moods which actually got finished, I decided to make a hollow book. I made one for Kat when I was at home at Christmas and decided I wanted one too. I managed to find this book, which has quite a pleasing old style cover and then following a useful tutorial I glued some of the pages together and hollowed out the middle. Here's the results. It quite pleasingly holds passports and money (ok, so one of the passports is my old one, but it looks more like spy stuff with two and some cash!)

Just read....

Finished 'Gentlemen of the road' by Michael Chabon. Can't say I was overly impressed. Its kind of a simple adventure story set in around 990. It says a lot that the author admitted in some comments at the end of the book that he originally wanted to call it 'Jews with swords'. That pretty much sums it up.
Fortunately I wasn't greatly disappointed, as I didn't really buy this because I thought it would be a good read. (see next post.)

Filial Piety...

Went to Haw Par Villa today (couldn't actually find this statue, so had to use this picture from BoingBoing). Apparently it is a lesson in filial piety (which seems to mean letting your father-in-law suck your tits)
Anyhow... here are some pictures that I actually took....

Haw Par Villa

To aliviate worry...

For all you fans of Norwegian Seamen, don't worry, they are being cared for here. Not sure if it is a mission for seamen or run by seamen...

Amelia

Met Christan, Elisa and Amelia again today. She's still very cute, but I've only really seen her sleeping so far. Christian assures me she has a more demonic side when she's awake...

More random photos from around Singapore (NUS this time). I just like these long rain shelters which seem to be everywhere and look as if they go on for ever. This one even has the obligate 'non-safety' barriers. Like some of the other photos I've just posted I has some fun playing with them in Photoshop (has sudden pseudo-artistic impulses)

Unusual People

Here's one of the random things I keep noticing around town, but have only just photographed. This girl seems to be standing in the doorway of the Holland Village branch of Cold Storage most of the times I pass it. I'm not sure who she is, or if her mother works there, or if she just feels safe there. But she's usually there, peering around the door watching the world pass from safety.

Ghost town

Singapore is quite strange at the moment. Because of the Lunar New Year, places which would normally be bustling are completely dead. Its quite eerie.

New Year fun.

There have been lots of people selling traditional Chinese crafts (including really cool paper silhouettes), for some reason I didn't buy any, but as a form of protest I got this silhouette for my fridge.

Happy Lunar New Year

Have a happy a prosperous Lunar (Chinese) New Year.

May you prosper, get lots of money,
do well, become richer,
may plenty of cash come your way,
may you and your family become wealthier,
may you not be poor this year,
may you new car be a big shiny one,
Happy New Year!

















As a disclaimer, I don't want to imply that the new year is all about prosperity. There are also dragons. (Sadly the picture isn't mine, I couldn't face the amazing crowds of Chinatown).

Cloverfield...

Just been to see Cloverfield, the new film by J.J. Abrams, (who created Lost). Here are a few thoughts (before which I should say that I quite liked the film).

Ok, the film concept is the totally cool, original idea of being a video tape, shot of a series of events (which get increasingly more mysterious) which is discovered some time after the events happen. It's hard to express just how cool and original an idea this is... in fact it is almost as cool and original as when it was used (in exactly the same way) in The Blair Witch Project.

Ok, in principle, it is still a good idea, and it is a novel way to make a suspense/action movie (think Blair Witch meets Godzilla, in Manhattan). At times it does add quite a lot to the film, especially the beginning, which is a surprise leaving party for one of the main characters. The first half hour or so covers the party, lots of closeups and personal drama of the soon to be main characters.

The problem with this, like Blair Witch, is that the camera man seems to be suffering from late stage Parkinson's disease or thinks he's on a ship. (Interestingly the cinema here actually has a warning about potential motion sickness which some viewers may experience during the film). This gets kind of annoying at times, it was cute and clever the first time the camera guy shoots a piece and focuses entirely on two women's chests, but this gets irritating pretty quickly.

Having said that, the 'normal' part does managed to work up a bit of empathy for some of the characters (except the cameraman who is just dumb dumb dumb). Then things start getting strange, earthquakes, monsters, people running and screaming. This is pretty well done except I spend the last half hour wondering why the hell the (dumb) cameraman didn't drop the damn camera, especially while he's scrambling across a roof top and fighting for his life (it's because he's dumb, really dumb).

Still, it was a pretty well made film, not a classic, but good fun.

Also read...

I've also just read 'Popular Music' by Swedish writerMikael Niemi. The book is set in the cold, backwards, arse end of Sweden, near the border with Finnland. It gives flashes of teenage life from the 60s onwards. The author manages to convey the tedium and boredom of small town life, and also the effect of ultra-macho lumberjack Christians on their children, who want to drink, screw and listen to rock and roll.
I should probably start a more critical scoring system or something, because I seem to end all my reviews by saying what great books they are... perhaps another time. Read this as well

Just finished...

Got given 'Steal you away' By Niccolo Ammaniti (who also wrote the fabulous 'I'm not scared')

This is essentially a book about loosers. People who can't sort out their lives or control its direction at all. One of the things I love about it, is like films such as Magnolia, it is made up of a series of different stories, so doesn't really have a main character. The common link is the small village that they live in, or pass through. It works brilliantly, with some great segues as characters pass through (i.e. in a car, on a rainy night). Also it's a story about children and their parents (who often appear in different threads). This helps to highlight the inability of anyone to help themselves, an the tendency for children to be as screwed up as their parents. This is really a fantastic book, read it as soon as you can.

Great (old/free) TV series

Another great find by BoingBoing (Here's the post), a whole bunch of episodes of "Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends". A series made by BBC2, with a guy going off to investigate different lifestyles.... Here's one I've babbled about to various people recently.... the Thai Bride agency...

not really....