Deep Field World

India #2

2011-05-03T05:00:00.001-07:00

India, Journal 2: This city is trying to kill me. I’m not sure, but it could be because I have red hair. On the other hand, the fear of death seems primary motivating factor out here sometimes. So far, I’ve had three different sicknesses, multiple near death experiences, and I’ve breathed a poisonous fume that would rival the darkest lands of Mordor. Never before have I seen so many awesome things and so many insane things all at once.

The first day was a bit of a stress test. I have become accustomed to the toilet with two buttons to flush it and the combination garden/kitchen hose in the bathroom. I’ve gotten used to housekeeping coming in at all hours with my underpants. Freshly ironed underpants.

So that’s all good. What I haven’t been prepared for is all the different ways India tries to KILL you. The first day was really a test of death by traffic. Nothing about the traffic makes any sense. People drive the wrong way ON THE FREEWAY. I hope you fully understand the gravity of what I’m staying. People hurtle at oncoming traffic AT googledyplex infinity kilometers per hour. I have no idea how fast a kilometer is. But we lots of them per hour. Cars there are nice, except I think they were all created before the invention of modern vehicle suspension. My head now tilts about twenty degrees to the right from frequent collisions with the roof of the car. Meridian in the way of an easy turn to your exit? SMASH IT TO THE GROUND AND DRIVE OVER THE CRATER. That’s right. If you can’t turn somewhere because of something, you destroy the something.

The other problem is the noxious gas. At five o’clock in the morning, all of the smog from the sky sinks to the ground. It really smells as if a collection of rabid, infected dogs died in the drain of a sewage treatment plant. On a good day, that’s what it smells like. This might have something to do with the fact we drive past a river that also serves as a toilet, bathtub, and day spa. What blows me away is how happy these people are. Never before have I seen people who have so little who are so happy. Even our drivers are thrilled, and they work six days a week. Plus I’m pretty sure they pick us up at 5 AM and drop one of the crews off at 11:30 PM. I have no idea when those guys sleep, but I have never seen them unalert on the freeway. The drivers communicate with car horns. Every major vehicle has fancy calligraphy on the back that says exactly these words – over and over again: “Horn Okay Please.” Over and over again on the freeway – big trucks, usually filled to overcapacity, with five guys sitting in the back and the words “Horn Okay Please.” Occasionally, we’ll see an Elephant with facepaint, and sometimes we’ll see a family of four on a motorcycle. My favorite so far was a guy riding a motorcycle wearing an 1850’s style Samurai Helmet, complete with awesome dragon facemask and golden crescent moon shaped horn-ornament on top. He’s probably the coolest guy in India. That said, with characters like this, it’s amazing we survive. Truly.

That brings me to the second day. I learned very quickly that the head of Reliance’s Media Division is a passionate vegetarian. So passionate is he, in fact, that he serves everyone at the building ONLY vegetarian foods. Imagine my joy at learning that meat would not be served during at least two of my three meals per day. On the second day of work, I had for breakfast several pieces of banana bread. I actually asked for toast, but got none. I have asked for toast every morning. I have asked for toast each DAY I have been in India. My waiter clearly understands. He always asks if I want white bread. Then he asks if I want butter. But no toast ever arrives. I don’t know what happens to my toast. I assume it vanished to the mysteriously absent 4^th or 5^th floors of the building, but one can never be too sure of toast.

Having eaten my banana bread and muffin flavored with double bland, I headed to the office, where I was treated to four different kinds of rice for lunch. To be fair, the rice was actually pretty good.

Now, I’m not sure if it was the banana bread from the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet no toast guy or the rice, but I began to feel a little ill. Slightly queasy, as it were – as if my stomach were punching me in the ribs begging me for something simple and easy to digest – something mild – something like toast, I guess. But since it was lunchtime, and toast was not available, I had to make do. I immediately took one of my pills. This particular one was called cipromaximus stomachus deathus. Or something. This gave whatever virulent, evil, son-of-a-bitch strain of viral death something to laugh at. Upon returning home, I drank water. Upon arriving in my bathroom, I un-drank water. To put it as mildly as possible, I decided to carefully review the lunch menu.

I must have thrown up for a solid six hours. After this point, there couldn’t possibly have been food in my stomach, but I threw up anyway. If I had to guess, my bowels somehow moved into the future during the time-zone change and I was actually vomiting food I hadn’t even eaten yet. I may have been delirious, but I’m pretty sure at one point my feet were coming out of my mouth.

After collecting my shoes from the toilet, I proceeded to get two painful, short hours of rest, give or take. Despite this unfortunate near death experience, I STILL woke up at five AM and I STILL went to work. It was the hardest day of work I’ve ever put in during my lifetime. Imagine throwing up so much your entire body structure aches. Now imagine your stomach is at it’s weakest point in ten years. Now imagine taking that broken body and weak stomach inside of an SUV death box barreling down the freeway with literally no suspension over destroyed freeway medians. There was a bright side though – the frequent collisions between my head and the top of the SUV made it so I didn’t even have to turn my head – if I needed to puke, I could just roll down the window and easily unleash a rainbow yawn all over the samurai warrior motorcycle rider next to us.

That didn’t happen. And thankfully, my life was saved by the most unlikely of characters. Not a man, not a doctor, not an angel, but something far more amazing – a true miracle of our world. A McNugget. Bless McDonalds – they do have some crap food out here – I don’t think I have to mention the Maharaja Mac or the Veg McPuff (oh yes – both very real) but damned if they didn’t have Chicken McNuggets and French fries. And they were delicious. I will admit that in America, nuggets and fries both have a mild taste of beef, which these McNuggets lacked, but they were still so good, the non-beefiness was easily forgiven. Though eating McNuggets can sometimes be like swallowing a handful of full sized razorblades (the McNugget is a harsh Mistress) these were like eating the first Snickers bar of Easter – only good things could happen from here. Religious connotations aside, the McNugget was my intestinal messiah.

I was proven correct. So far, the food quality has maintained a reasonable amount of safety and were palatable, as well. Breakfast was also a fine meal. However, the worst vomiting I have ever had was replaced with the worst COLD I ever had. I can only guess that no-toast guy is gathering up some of the sick guys from the street, checking their symptoms, and having each of them lick my banana bread before it has been served to me. There really is no other explanation. I swear to you, he hates me because I have red hair. It’s because I am a wealthy, red haired American giant. I have a fairly large class in India – in fact, I had the opportunity to present to a class of around one hundred people, and I’m pretty sure I was a head above all of them.

India #1

2011-05-03T04:59:00.000-07:00

Somehow, somewhere in the Universe, several planets aligned. I don’t know why, I’m not entirely sure HOW, but someone somewhere decided, “Hey – lets send Chris Scott to India.” This will chronicle my descent into what I have discovered may be a sauna somewhere in hell. I don’t mean to imply that India is an unpleasant place, only that the devil probably visits here when he needs a spa day. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself – lets start from the beginning.

It started with a delightful limo ride to the airport. Everything was packed – toothbrushes, socks, passport, and a large bag of hot Cheetos. This was great. I shared the vehicle with my housemate and coworker Ellen Cuny. That was a lot of fun. The car ride was quick and there was almost no fear of death. The things I take for granted…

So, we hopped out of our vehicle and into the Tom Bradley International Terminal, where in lies the Emirates (that’s our plane) lounge. Which was great. The business lounge was a nice, comfy huge room with internet access, delicious sandwiches of every kind (I ate as many of the roast beef ones as they put out, as I anticipated there would be no roast beef for me for quite some time after this) plenty of free alcohol, cookies (Brussels, I think they’re called – I grabbed several small packs of these for emergency India Dining purposes) and tested out a beer – I think it was called OB and was Korean. I imagine this was because Emirates shares a lounge with Korean Air. In any case, its flavor was not bad for a beer named for a feminine product. There must be some marketing brilliance behind the name.

In any case, they loaded us aboard a brand new Boeing 777-200ER – one of the newest planes in the Boeing catalog, and took off.

This airplane could have been the coolest thing I’ve been in since the invention of the pantsuit. The seats recline… and by recline I mean TURN INTO A BED. So I sat down, turned on the front facing airplane webcam, leaned back, and relaxed.

I found the safety video highly entertaining. Apparently, the safest place for your young child is a body bag. I’m not kidding. In the event of a water landing, throw your kid in a body bag and ship him out to the proper authorities. The bright side? There’s a small, clear plastic window so you can watch your baby in the body bag.

It wasn’t long before they started throwing all manner of food at me. Champagne came before takeoff. I drank about a have flute – no need to get overly belligerent on the airplane. Then, there was a tea. Then a salmon with a dinner roll and some kind of lemon mayo. Then my food came out – I have pictures of all these meals. They were great!

The coolest part to me was the plane lighting. In addition to free razors, shaving cream, socks, eyepads, and perfume, the lighting was the best part. The cabin lighting at first reflected our departure colors, but after several hours, was set to match the lighting conditions of our destination. It was amazing. The hue changed, the lights dimmed and went from white to golden to a dusky orange to purple. Once the purple started to fade, the ceiling lit up… with STARS! Not just little holes with lights, there were CONSTELLATIONS on my ROOF! I clearly found Orion’s belt and the big dipper. This, to me, was badass. But not badass enough to keep me awake. Then, I fell asleep.

When I awoke, it was feeding time again. They made me a great French toast, tea, and a bunch of other stuff I ate but was far, far too groggy to remember. This is the part where things started to get weird on me.

The windows in the cabin are all operated by button. That by itself was pretty cool, but they were actually two layers to these blinds – one that merely blocked the view but allowed light in and one that blocked out the sun. For some reason, my window only closed about 95% percent of the way, which allowed a bit of light from the outside to reach me. It turns out that flying over the polar icecaps removes your nighttime. There was no night. So we left in the afternoon or late evening, flew INTO the day. However, when we began to land, it became apparent that it was actually nearly late afternoon/early evening.

Swell. So we left at dusk, fell asleep for a couple hours during lunch, and woke up AT DUSK AGAIN. On paper, that sounds simple. While in an airplane hurtling across the planet, it messes with your mind. Solution: watch bad movies. I think I watched as much of G.I. Joe as I could before I became mindlessly bored.

Thankfully, the flight was over much sooner than I anticipated. We offloaded into the Dubai International Terminal.

For those of you who don’t know, Terminal 3 in Dubai is amazing. It’s huge. It’s comfortable. There are showers. There are beers. There are eighteen different places to eat. I ate at least one of everything (and there was a lot) and went on a bit of exploring. I noticed every clock was from ROLEX, which seemed to have sponsored the wing of the airport. I must say, that airport was nice. I’m pretty sure it was created with bricks of 100$ bills.

So, after freshening up with a brisk morning/afternoon/evening/outer space shower, I once again rejoined my cronies for a little exploration. We then heard an announcement over the P.A. that our flight, EK500, had been delayed from 10:30 to 11:00. This was excellent (though most of my coworkers disagreed). So we went over to the big digital LCD boards that told us our departure times. These had not been updated at all. No big deal, I thought. I’ll just hang out for a while. Then we heard a P.A. announcement saying our flight was BOARDING. So we ran back to all of the coworkers and rustled them up. Needless to say they were not happy about being hustled along so early in the morning/late in the evening/years in the future. We left the opulent, comfortable Middle Eastern style couch-bench-seats and went to the terminal. Which wasn’t boarding. This may have caused some employee disgruntling. In these situations, I simply pull my fedora over my face and take a quick morning/afternoon/Christmas nap.

Boarding actually didn’t begin until just after 11:00. This worried me, but not enough to roust me from my evening/leap year nap.

My worries were unfounded, as we again found ourselves in a nearly identical plane, complete with the automatically folding robot chair/bed. The only differences I could see were a lack of starlight built into the roof (which makes sense, in retrospect, as I don’t think stars exist in Mumbai) and a manual, classic style pull down window shutter. I was really disappointed in that shutter. I much preferred the glowing up/down button shutter to classic style version, and besides, I was far to busy having food, goodie bags, and hand creams thrown at my face to worry about such things for too long.

Landing in Mumbai wasn’t nearly as horrible as I’d imagined it would be. From the stories I heard, I imagined that you walked out into a mosquito breading zone so thick with the bugs they would become stuck in your teeth with every breath. It turns out it wasn’t even remotely that bad. It was more like being stuck in the everglades whilst coated with a thick layer of bee honey. I was more of an aperitif to them, I think, and less of a feedbag. That was good.

Another expectation I had shattered was the general number of people in the airport. I had envisioned men stacked upon men – hundreds at a time, all attempting to stand in each other’s space. This is not the case. No one wants to be where you are, and there was plenty of space for everyone.

Instead, I discovered everyone wants to be ahead of you. Small moving electric vehicles. Juice vendors. Sandwich wielding Frenchmen. Pilots. They all want the space DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF WHERE YOU ARE. These leads to an important cultural difference: In America, we call this a line. In the UK, India, Honduras, South Africa, and other civilized parts of the world, they call this a Que.

We Americans, with our sense of social propriety, decide who goes next by standing in a single file line. In India, there is no single file line. There are 3,117 lines that all end in front of a single place.

This is where Indian Martial Arts come into play. You must learn to vanish between people, squeeze around them, and politely avoid them while smiling but not making eye contact. This ‘Que-Fu’ as I call it is probably the martial art most used by five year old children attempting to escape the clutches of their evil parents, overprivelaged supermodels, and trash collectors. More on the latter of the group later.

There are two reasons you want to be in and out of these lines quickly. The first is because if you aren’t careful, the entire population of Indiawill jump in front of you. The second is the smell. The reason trash collectors and Indians appear to be so good at Que-Fu is the odor. You don’t want to be around this many smelly people all the time. The odor, as I discovered upon stepping outside, isn’t really the fault of the Indians. It’s more the fault of the weather. The moment I stepped outside, my glasses turned completely foggy. We’re talking 100%. I was without the ability to see. I also noticed that my pants, which I thought were a fine khaki material, were actually a lovely beige form of moist spandex clinging to my body with reckless abandon. Never before would I have suspected that one day I would look up to God longingly and ask him to bestow upon me a squeegee for my ass.

The next fun step was the car ride. Thankfully, Emirates provided us with lovely luxury cars. However, the driver is on the opposite side of the vehicle, which screwed with me. Once every five minutes I’d look up and to the left and a little voice in my head would scream “BUT WHO’S DRIVING THE CAR?!?!”

This leads me to another aspect of Indian Que-Fu – traffic. Firstly, it drives on the other side of the road. Having been awake for some number of hours I can’t fully articulate due to the effects of time travel, every time I looked out the window, I panicked a little. OH MY GOD WE’RE GOING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE…oh. Repeat that in your head about 500 times and you’ll have some idea of what it was like. Then came the cows. Big ass cows. Male cows. Female cows. Lots of cows. At the airport. Hanging out. No people leading them, just generally having a blast in the foggy/smoggy weather. We dodged those. Then came the dogs. If you are a dog lover, there about 5,234,523,211 dogs per.square.foot.of.space.in.India. And they don’t really care about cars. At all. In some cases, they were just hanging out in the street. Some sat down right in front of us. God knows how they survive the way cars barrel around each other. Cars in Mumbai compete for position on the road. It’s unbelievable. To top that off, there were cabs everywhere, plus HUGE trucks. Guys were awake on top of the trucks… having tea or some such. Cab drivers were asleep hanging out the door. These things boggle my mind.

In any case, watching hundreds of other cars hurtle at me at these insane speeds was enough to throw me for a loop. Once we arrived through the hotel and completed the Security Masterpiece Theater, I road the McDeath elevator up to my room. I have dubbed it this because power to the elevator drops—apparently randomly—and the elevator drops about 2 feet quite suddenly before the breaks kick in. This is something I really, really don’t want to experience first hand, thanks.

I’m on the 12^th floor of I don’t know how man floors. There is 1,2,3, 10,12,14,15, and 16. I assume someone broke through the crack squad of savy, motivated personel working security and stole all the missing floors. Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe the other floors are vacationing in America or visiting the Eiffel Tower.

A security guard greeted me at the elevator. He looked like he wanted to break me in twain, but instead grabbed my bags, showed me to my room, opened it and powered it up for me. Very kind of him. I stepped into the room to discover something else odd. There is a window into my shower from my bedroom. A HUGE window. I assume that there are circumstances in which this would could be awesome. However, the shower door is glass and looks into the bathroom as well. I effectively have a view from my bedroom clear into my toilet. I can think of a lot of circumstances in which this could be terrifying, and so have decided to dub this toilet-window the ‘Smell-O-Vision’ viewspace.

I decided to take a look out the window. The sun was coming up. This bothered me because in my mind, the sun should be going down at this hour, but instead seemed to have had one too many drinks, forgotten where his apartment was, and stumbled out into the street in the middle of the night to give it another go.

I shut the curtains and passed out for just about the best three odd hours of rest I’ve ever had. Am I still tired? Oh my god yes. But I have things to do tomorrow, so I’m going to try to stick it out until about 10:00 tonight. If I can manage that, then dose myself with some Tylenol PM, I should be okay.

I will send pictures along as soon as I can get my Mac and Camera back on speaking terms.

Comic Con comes with an extra D this year.

2009-07-31T06:15:00.000-07:00

To the uninitiated, San Diego’s Comic-Con appears to be a breeding ground for teenage kids dressed as comic book characters, vampires, and robots. While plenty of that still swirls around the event, it has grown beyond the maelstrom of geeks. The last few years have seen extraordinary growth for film, television, and video games. Major studios and publishers use Comic-Con has a launching board for new and latest in pop culture franchises and entertainment technologies. Previous years have seen big moves toward comic book and science fiction films. However, thanks in part to a rapidly growing number of directors, the big reveal this year was the dawn of a new golden age in stereoscopic 3D.
This year, Comic-Con was home to six stereoscopic films: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, a new version of A Christmas Carol staring Jim Carrey, Toy Story 3D, Tron: Legacy based on the 1980’s cult video game film, Alice in Wonderland, a unique spin on the tale by director Tim Burton, andAvatar, James Cameron’s top-secret 3D opus.
The stunning thing is how different each of these films are from the others, in terms of texture, tone, and animation style. The bright and unique shapes of Pixar’s film contrast with the dark, surreal light cycles of Tron.
While the sheer number of films alone speaks to the legitimacy of stereoscopic 3D as a tool for creating cinema, only one film really took advantage of 3D as a true artists tool. By a factor of ten, James Cameron’s Avatar promises to be the single most advanced piece of cinema ever seen on the silver screen.
Most 3D movies released today, whether they be 2D films converted to 3D (like the recently released Geforce) or shot in 3D (like the forthcoming Tron) have used the tech to enhance the immersion, allowing the audience to become a part of the movie. However, the drawback isn’t the technology anymore - it’s the artists. For too long directors have been the architects of 2D films. While they may have mastered the second dimension, it has limited their ability to see into the third.
Cameron showed off a full 25 minutes of Avatar at the convention. The story revolves around a group of soldiers and scientists that are out to mine an alien planet. However, their main obstacle is a dangerous species of blue alien called the Na’vi. To combat this issue, scientists have created "avatars," or human/Na’vi hybrids, which can be linked to and controlled by humans.
Avatar is a step above the 3D world. Previous directors have placed the vast majority of their films beyond the screen, as if it’s a window we can only see out of, save for a few gimmicks – like the extending ladder or the opening tape measure – but Cameron’s film isn’t afraid to live on the audience’s side of the screen. Bulkheads, technology, and creatures exist inside the theater and well outside your typical comfort zone.
The film has subtle flavors of previous Cameron outings, including Aliens and the first twoTerminator films. Since those films, Cameron has grown tremendously as a director. The motion capture technology of visual effects powerhouse Weta Workshop has taken its 3D motion capture technology from Gollum and cranked it to eleven. The blue Na’vi make subtle gestures and eye movements that quickly make you forget that you’re watching a movie and make you worry one of the bizarre animals in Cameron’s world might actually turn suddenly and attack you. To top that off, it’s clear Cameron learned valuable lessons with 2003's Ghosts of the Abyss 3D IMAX film, which have been applied to the camerawork, creating a phenomenal effect. Needless to say, when James Cameron puts you inside a five ton walking robot with machine guns, the raw power of the experience is unprecedented and impossible to describe. Much of Cameron's information can be found online in a recent interview with Reuters.
Huge metal suits, an intriguing, unique alien landscape will bring to the screen a cinematic experience like never before. However – if you missed it, no worries! In an unprecedented move for the industry, the ever forward-thinking Cameron has declared August 21st Avatar Day. IMAX screens around the world will be screening fifteen minutes of Avatar – free! So if you missed it before, now you’ve got a second chance to see what an alien world really feels like.
According to Cameron, the biggest holdback is the number of screens capable of 3D. Currently, there are around 1,500 screens. Cameron maintains that for stereoscopic 3D to really become a part of the film experience there needs to be a nation-wide saturation of at least 3,000 screens. Not only will it further distinguish theaters from home cinemas, 3D is nearly impossible to pirate – even if there were some way to record the left and right eye images perfectly (which there currently isn’t) you would have to have special equipment to view the footage at home. This means more butts back in theater seats – and more dollars into production companies.
In fact, several directors voiced interest in doing major 3D work on future films – including Jon Favreau, director of the upcoming Iron Man 2. While he’s currently considering an IMAX 3D release for Robert Downey Jr.’s next outing as playboy tycoon Tony Stark, he’s considering doing Iron Man 3 or the upcoming Avengers movie completely in 3D. An interview with Favreau on the subject can be foundhere.
While it’s certainly true that forward thinking directors like Cameron and Favreau are driving 3D into theaters, what’s keeping it there is the fans. On its opening weekend, Geforce managed to oust the hotly anticipated sixth Harry Potter film, which arrived in theaters one week prior. Additionally, Pixar’sUp has raked in over $280 million so far. And with other 3D films on the way, including the newestFinal Destination horror film, sales of 3D films have been up like, well, a house tied to a thousand balloons. And its not just movies popping out at you these days, either - and not one, but TWO companies, including San Diego’s ComGraph, were selling on-the-spot lenticular 3D pictures for fans – complete with themed 3D backgrounds!
Sure, you may find Cobra Commander, Jack Sparrow, and Princess Leia in a metal bikini, but San Diego Comic-Con has a wealth of information on the industry – and every now and again, you also get a glimpse into the future of entertainment – aliens in your living room, meatballs on your sofa, and waves lapping against your footstool. The future looks like it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun.

Boats, trains, and flying metal suits

2008-04-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

Ah, Los Angeles. When I first arrived in LA, I remember walking down the street and seeing a free newspaper with an article about women's shoes. The headline read, 'if it looks good, it doesn't hurt.' That rolled around in my head like the coffee table book in the trunk of my car - I was missing something there, somehow.
Soon afterwards, I experienced something else. I was working on the set of 'Iron Man' and my first task was security. At the time, I was far from convinced that a six foot tall man in a metal suit merited my protection. However, when discussing the film, I asked who was to play Mr. Tony Stark, the man in the Iron Mask himself, to which my friend responded, 'Robert Downey Jr.' Given his previous history and 'chemical personality' I began to understand.
So my first day, they told me not to let anyone through the gate without a badge, or a car badge in the case of a vehicle. Easy enough? Right? So the first guy came by - and I asked for his I.D. which, in his case, was apparently his middle finger. I got on the walkie. "He's good - that guys' just a dick. Ignore him."
Fair enough. The next day, some guys on motorcycles BLEW right past me. Again I pulled out my walkie. "Those guys are with effects - they're fine - just ignore them." Right on, okay.
The day after, it was payroll - I pulled my walkie and was answered by "don't mess with payroll or you're check will get donated to an Afghani refugee."
It continued like this for days like a joke with no punch line. "A guy walks up to a gate and gives you the finger, to which the man grabbed his walkie and said, 'what the hell do I do?' At one point, I went to pull out my walkie, missed, and pulled my hair out instead. To help me out, the guys reduced my workload to the following: If he looks suspicious, stop him.
Fair enough. Then the next day came. Now, at some point, Downey Jr. fights terrorists in Afghanistan. And who else might come up the road but a bunch of guys with Turbans, bazookas, and bad attitudes?
Me: "Guys, there are terrorists here with guns. They look unhappy and I'm not going to lie: I think they aim to kill me."
Walkie Talkie: "They work on the movie. They're fine."
Me: There are photographers coming in also. With cameras. They look like photographers and they're dressed like photographers.
Walkie Talkie: "Yea, we have a press scene today."
When this happened, to prevent my mind from collapsing into a black hole, I chucked my clipboard to the left, my walkie to the right, and went and had a sandwich. It was the best sandwich I've ever eaten, mainly because it had mustard, mayo, and a whole lot of bitter.
As I was eating my turkey, anger and bitter sandwich, I saw one of the female setpieces woble by in ridiculous high heels - she would have been cute if she hadn't been plastic. And suddenly it hit me. The high heels. The job at the gate. Los Angeles. Visual effects. It was all an illusion - somewhat like David Copperfield, but more like lunchtime. It wasn't real - everything here was about maintaining an illusion. It dawned on me then that my future should be in either visual effects or mushrooms.
After a brief but epic failure in fungus horticulture, I began looking for a visual effects job. Skip forward a few months and I found myself on a boat with my boss. The weathermen, bless there little heads, had predicted 10-15 knot winds. As I stood at the helm, I read the display, which noted 35 knot winds. When I first set out, I was mistakenly under the impression that a knot was something like 2.5 miles per hour, making the windspeed over sixty miles per hour, but judging by the way my stomach rolled with the ocean, I would guess the wind was at 500 miles per hour. When you're in a sail boat, and you have a postage stamp of sail up, and your primary concern is to not die, and your secondary concern is to stand up, it's kind of what I would imagine standing on the altar with the wrong girl just before I do - your knees are weak, at some point you consider abandoning ship, but in the end you know that if you can somehow survive the rollercoaster ride, as soon as you get off the ride onto a stable bit you're going to throw up.
Once we rounded the corner of the AnaCappa Islands, however, it was a completely different story. The seas were calm, the breeze was warm, and the food was great - after you've eluded death whilst simultaneously doing the polka in an attempt to stand level, a glass of pickle juice and a bowl of dried pasta would taste good - so when I say the sandwiches are good, I mean that it was if God himself dipped the sandwiches into his ambrosia and dropped them into the little meat locker for us to throw up later. I'm not even sure what was on the sandwich - I ate it to fast - I'm pretty sure I ate some kind of non-biodegradable material as well.
The rest of the trip was a breeze - the ride back was a little smoother and the winds calmer. In many ways, riding a sailboat is just like dancing - you have to move with your partner, responding to her whims and hang on with just enough force - to lightly and you find yourself down a flight of stairs sleeping on the floor of the boat, to stiff and the next dip will jerk you into the carefully positioned Obstruction of Pain (tm) all of which are located exactly at toe or knee level. For the most part, I managed to avoid serious injury, but the boat was simply a crappy dance partner this particular day - to much of the drink, me thinks.
All together, it was great experience. I think, in the future, I will seek out more adventures in which my primary objective is to not die, as so far as sporting goes, these are the sports I've been most successful, mainly because motivation is high, and if you lose a match, you retire. On the bright side, if you survive a few times and lose once, you're going to have a pretty awesome batting average, methinks.

If a tree falls in the woods...

2008-02-11T11:22:00.000-08:00

A new article over at ArsTechnica discusses something new: cloaking the audio behind objects - using principals discovered while attempting to bend light around both 2D and 3D objects. The cloak would work by creating a material that duplicates the wavelengths of the sounds bouncing into it - this would allow you to make something 'disappear' across a given sound wave.

In light bending, you need spatial coordinates applied to a given cloaking surface to bend around the material, however in sound doesn't require bending these coordinates, which means you could cloak a broad range of frequencies.

I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it could mean sound dampening applied to nuclear submarines and military enclosures. A more realistic idea would be to apply such a technology to a car, reducing engine noise, or possibly to computers and the ever humming 'fridge in your kitchen. Personally, I'd put it in my walls - my roommate could blast P-Diddy whilst I simultaneously cranked Led Zepplin up loud enough to blow my trousers clean off.

Our Deep Field World

2008-01-31T10:10:00.001-08:00

In 2004, a tiny piece of our sky changed our view of our planet-- and our galaxy-- forever. The guys at Hubble, who had been playing with their camera lenses, decide to try something new. The idea was to point the Hubble space telescope at an empty area of space for ten days to see what they could find. Like a camera, the longer you leave the lens open, the more light the camera will catch.

So the project began - an empty region of space in the vicinity of the constellation Ursa Major was found, a telescoped was pointed in its direction, and then they waited.

Prior to this experiment, the optics on the telescope were incapable of fully appreciating the sky, generaly leaving images somewhat blurry.

To make sure they saw whatever was out there, it was essential that they select as empty an area as possible - one with no infra red, ultra violet, or x-rays, no bright lights, as little as possible. To narrow the field, they selected an area roughly the size of a tennis ball across - equivalent to one part in millions - of our sky - for study. When completed, the image was assembled into HUDF, or Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

What they found was astounding.

An area previously thought to be devoid of anything was found to contain over ten thousand galaxies in an area that seemed completely empty.

I can think of nothing more awesome - in the true sense of the word - than discovering that even in the darkest, blackest reaches of our galaxy there are more galaxies than can be counted - stars and planets so vast and plentiful that the collective conscience of the world could never fully appreciate its awe and grandeur of it.

The project didn't just show galaxies - allowing the camera to sit for eleven days gave scientists the ability to peer thirteen billion years into the past, revealing galaxies that were born shortly after the beginning of the universe - back when time and existence itself was only eight hundred million years old.

Looking at the universe at such a grand scale, one can imagine that, relative to all that is, our planet is far, far less significant than the tiniest grain of sand on the beach, leaving you and I and everyone else on the planet a very, very small spot in the very grand history - one beyond our very comprehension.

There are as many ways to interpret and perceive this data as there are people in the world. The first instinct is the vast loneliness that stretches across empty space, but there is a second option - wonder. There is an entire universe so rich with opportunity no one could possibly take advantage of it all - but we can begin to appreciate it. We can probe the limitless depths of the mind, the science (and mystery) of love and the art of mathematics.

My goal here will be to point you in new directions, open small bits of the world up, and occasionally bring fuzzy, distant images into the clear. There's a lot to know out there - and as every single human being slowly incubates our knowledge, we all learn a single thing before all else - the more we learn, the more we realize there is so staggeringly much more to learn.

After all, the only thing expanding faster than our universe is the human thirst for knowledge.