Exploring....

Went to Labrador Nature Reserve today (south of Singapore, between the lab and Vivo City). Its a strange little place, with a small amount of pretty unspoiled beach (apart from the damn long jetty). In the middle is a hill with a small piece of jungle. Dug into the top is a series of tunnels and gun emplacements made by the British in the 1880s, which are quite interesting to wander around. Kat also got a 'lite' version of Singapore WWII history.

Holiday Reading....

Despite all the diving, I managed to read a couple of good books on holiday. The first, Grotesque by the excellent Natsuo Kirino is billed as a
crime novel, which in my opinion is complete crap (in the same way that War and Peace is an action novel). It starts with the narrator's younger sister, a prostitute being killed, followed a year later by a classmate, who had a highly respectable day job. The book flits between the narrator's opinions, diaries of both murdered women and court testimony of the accused murderer. The author manages to go into the lives of these people, hinting at their motivations and at the same time keep the story going. It works especially well as you slowly become aware of the bias of each story, especially the narrator's.

I also loved her earlier book 'Out'. Definitely an author I'm going to keep following.


My other Japanese author was Hitomi Kanehara. I read both Snakes and Earrings, her first, highly acclaimed (in Japan) novel. Similar to Ryu Murakami, it is a dive into counter culture of Japan. In this case piercing, body modification and tattooing. Unlike Murakami, the book could easily be set in London or New York. This and here second book Autofiction both deal with obsession (to the point of madness). I liked both books especially Autofiction, which steps back through a writer's life explaining, through events, how she came to be a very very clingy paranoid girlfriend. Both books I'm glad I read.

Bali-hai

Just spent a week learning to scuba dive on Tioman. Considering several people had moaned about how touristy Tioman is supposed to be, I really loved the place. We were staying near Tekek which hardly had anyone there, just a couple of little dive shops and hut-on-a-beach places to stay. We spent four days with the Tioman Dive center learning to dive (we are now PADI open water divers). Our instuctor Kaj was fantastic and managed to coax us through all the tedious theory (v.bad DVDs) and we were in the water in no time. After two days of splashing around in the shallows (which is way better than a pool) we did 4 real dives.


Diving is absolutely amazing.... Ok, so I've always been hooked on the freedom of swimming, but floating several meters under water is like nothing else.

I'm sorry, I don't care how much fun you think you're having, but you aren't seeing anything when you're snorkeling. The feeling of being in the middle of a school of fish (or under them) is beautiful. At one point there were thousands of little fish around us, not particularly scared of us, but the whole school would react and twist in one direction whenever we made a sudden movement.

Tioman has some great reefs, teeming with fish, we spent quite a bit of time after each dive trying to identify the things we saw (Kaj did most of the identifying, we weren't as good at remembering what the fish looked like...) We also saw a pair of cuttlefish (which I love) mating and laying eggs in coral (the female plants each egg right into the coral). We swum round a shipwreck, which was damn cool. Saw a big school of barracuda with a huge (90cm) pufferfish in the middle. We found and followed a hawksbill turtle for a while. I want to go back again and again!!!

Singapore's most wanted

The talk of the fly room for the last few days has been who created this great piece of photoshopping and stuck it on the notice board in our lab (next to the original). So after spending several days grilling people, the original artist has come forward. (I just wanted to get a copy to post here...)
Thanks to Gu Ying in Feng Wei's lab for brighting up my week (and nearly getting me arrested).

If none of this makes any sense, here's some help.

Sculpture

I thought this was a great sculpture...

Beautifully pointless....

This is a great site.... I find it strangely beautiful, especially because it has no function

You've got to love the Finns....

Just read this....

Great ideas....

Here's a description of something which would be great to build....

Nothing could be simpler. It is merely a small wooden casket, the size and shape of a cigar box, with a single switch on one face. When you throw the switch, there is an angry, purposeful buzzing. The lid slowly rises, and from beneath it emerges a hand. The hand reaches down, turns the switch off and retreats into the box. With the finality of a closing coffin, the lid snaps shut, the buzzing ceases and peace reigns once more. The psychological effect, if you do not know what to expect, is devastating. There is something unspeakably sinister about a machine that does nothing -- absolutely nothing -- except switch itself off.

From this article

Just read....

I've just read 'Flowers for Algernon' by Daniel Keyes. Considering it is supposed to be a science fiction book, I thought it was very good (good in the way other people might get, not just good in the sense I find lots of geeky things). Turns out they also made an Oscar winning movie out of it in the '60s.

The book is written as a series of diary entries written by Charley, who is mentally retarded, but receives experimental surgery to make him smarter. As the book goes on Charley slowly becomes more normal (reflected by a gradual change in writing style). His intellect keeps developing, soon surpassing that of his doctors. From the beginning he is fascinated by Algernon (Al-gi-non) a lab mouse who used to prove the treatment works. Later in the book, the now genius, Charley watches Algernon's improved mind deteriorate and sees the mouse breakdown and become catatonic (no it isn't a talking mouse). Charley realizes that the same thing will happen to him and he will return to his original state.

I'm impressed by how well the book conveys the emotions of this arc. Firstly the really sad transition from 'retarded but innocently happy' to self aware. Charley discovers that the people he'd been working with aren't really his friends, they just like to laugh at him.

The second part of the arc, is also depressing, as Charley realizes he's loosing his mental faculties and soon everything he knows will be gone again. In some ways it is how I imagine neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's or severe mental illness. Knowing that you are going to degenerate to the level of a child makes it much more scary.

Voices inside my head......

I've just done a really disturbing thing... I was sitting at home practicing my talk for tomorrow and I discovered that Powerpoint will let you record your talk while you're giving it... So, stupidly I tried this. At the end of the practice it attaches whatever you've said to each slide, so when you flip through it again it plays your talk with it... Arrrgh!!!! I don't sound anything like the voice in my head... it really freaked me out (ok, I'm always freaked by hearing recordings of me), still it didn't sound like me... I want to know which version of my voice is real! I prefer the one in my head, so I'm not sure I want to here I sound like the semi-moron recording.

Things you could do while sick (but probably shouldn't)

During one of my less focused moments I found a program that turns your Macbook Pro into a Seismograph... Spent a happy 5 minutes discovering that there are currently no earthquakes in Singapore. (the big jolt is me picking up my laptop). Still fun...














Here's the program (SeisMac)

Talks....

I think many of the times I've wanted to quit science most are near when I have to give a talk... Its about this time that I discover that I hate how my data looks, I stop believing that any of it means anything and I become more convinced that I have no real project/direction. It also usually corresponds to the times when I do the most work and things go wrong the most (projects curl up and die)....

Hmmm..... I guess next week it will be done, then I can get on with life again.

Rain rain go away.....

It looks like the rainy season is catching up with us this week. I miss the age when rain was fun, it meant waterproofs and wellington boots and jumping in puddles...

Manfluenza

Am sick today, so I'm sitting around at home feeling sorry for myself (trying to write the talk I'm supposed to give on Friday).... So don't be surprised if I'm posting a lot, I'm just procrastinating.

Super high tech crime fighting....

Just got a multi-media text message from the Singapore Police, asking if I've seen Mas Selamat bin Kastari, who is apparently short (1.58m) and limps on left leg.

So please contact the Singapore Police if you have seen him.

(to make more sense of this read here)

Tiger Tiger...

Went to Mikiko's house for lunch on Saturday with a few people from the lab. I seemed to spend most of the time playing with her kids (who are very sweet and energetic). This is Nao (the middle child) she seemed to spend a lot of the time being a tiger. (yes, the arm is me, also being a tiger)

Scary children's toys

Would you buy your children this? Perhaps along with 'My First Body Cavity Search Kit'.

Fight Club....

You aren't alive anywhere like you're alive at fight club.... Fight club isn't about winning or losing fights. Fight club isn't about words. You see a guy come to fight club for the first time, and his ass is a loaf of white bread. You see this same guy here six months later, and he looks carved out of wood. This guy trusts himself to handle anything. There's grunting and noise at fight club like at the gym, but fight club isn't about looking good. There's hysterical shouting in tongues like at church, and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved. ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 6

I've been doing an exra training session of Arnis every week, which is dedicated to sparring. It is essentially an hour of conditioning (doing situps and pushups) followed by a three round fight (soon to be two fights). I was looking around for a quote from Fight Club (book or movie) which I remember. This was the closes I could find to it.... Essentially Ed Norton is at work, reflecting on fight club and observes 'at some point it starts taking over your life, your at work, and you're thinking about fight club, you're thinking about your next fight'.

I'm getting to this point now, the day after sparring I seem to spend a lot of my day wandering down the corridors thinking about things I'd do differently, moves I'd try next time. I also find myself swinging my arms and imagining I'm holding a stick.... Don't worry, I'm perfectly safe, just a bit absorbed... Another consequence of this is that I'm usually wearing three weeks worth of bruises of different colours and shapes... all part of the fun.

not a good forcast

hmmm.... gonna be a fun week

Interesting Design...

I like this bookshelf design. Very minimalist