Need some drano. Anyway, lots of interesting things are happening, just haven't had time to write them up properly, especially what happened on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday (particularly Wednesday though).

I desperately want to forgo all other work to put together two more experimental film ideas - but I still need to make a living, so that will have to pester me from the back of my brain for a bit longer.

I also need to write up a physics article, argh!

As promised, here is the new video:




I finally exported it from iMovie in a format youTube likes (mp4), and the uploaded video has sound. Without the sound it just looked really dumb (well, technically, it was dumb or rather mute). I created the music in GarageBand, and all of the photos are of me. 3 minutes of me, me, me! Anyway, need sleep.

Arrived a little late, but finally got this train down the tracks. The new article is on alternative energy. I was trying to write an article on polarized sunglasses but it just wasn't interesting to me at the time. Luckily it's Earth Day, so this makes alternative energy a timely topic at least. Still feels like a cop-out to write an overview article, but I blew my word cap by 38 words even so.

Anyway, Happy Earth Day! May we continue to have a livable planet in a century.

This is hopeless. I hate writer's block. I took a nap, then watched two episodes of "The Office" on iTunes, pottered around on YouTube, and now I've discovered this guy's music. He was in a band with Michel Gondry way back when, which is why I came across him (yeah, still on the Gondry kick, but boy is his mind adorable). The thing is, this is exactly the type of music I like. I particularly like 36 Erreurs. Apparently it had been performed as a puppet show of some kind - so cool! He and Gondry it seems met in high school. Why couldn't I have found my eccentric equals in high school? Well, I did write a couple of songs for a band, but that was about it. And there was Matt Pearson the eccentric sax player, but we didn't do much more together than mock our calculus teacher.

I know, I know - but I was on Google and when you do a search their logo on the results page is a melting iceberg - in honor of Earth day of course. How cool and subversive (submmersive)! I love the great Oracular One.

Okay, I just inadvertently did a braindump on this poor guy over here. It's just procrastination rearing it's ugly head. I MUST write a new physics article, and my brain is just squirming to get out of doing it.

This has been bugging me for awhile, but I finally reapplied to about.com. This time, for the category of science fiction and fantasy (oddly movies and TV only). I had previously applied for classic movies which wasn't as good a fit, though I probably wasn't even considered since the position went to someone internal. I don't honestly know what my chances are, but I wrote an article about the top ten female role models in science fiction movies and television. I wanted to write something a bit offbeat and less obvious (plus I had been thinking about it for a very long time). Hopefully it will catch the editor's eye.

What sort of broke my writer's block (sort of because I still somehow need to write a physics article today), was this older guy who was studying a bible in the chair next to me at Starbucks last night. We got to chatting (strangers talk in this strange land of Hawaii - so I no longer assume a stranger striking up a conversation with me is an axe-murderer), and apparently he considers himself some sort of writer. He told me about his foot-tall stack of notebooks at home (he intended to impress me, but I got him beat on that count. I wonder how long it him to unspool a foot's worth of notebooks). He also said that he has "about six books" in him. This was interesting. it got me to thinking that I don't ever want to end up saying that when I'm that age (ideally I'd like to have 100 published by that time, but that's probably unreasonable). The point is, I want my books to come out. I don't want to pretend to be a writer and brag that my books are still pending in my mind. I feel exhausted pretty much all the time, but I have to keep pushing everything out, despite everything, including my own productive procrastination (BTW, I completed another short film using stop motion - having trouble getting it up to YouTube with sound intact, but I'll post about it soon).

Anyway, it turned out that this dude had run for senate, not sure if it was state or national though. He didn't win, probably because he ran as a Republican and Hawaii is a very blue state. Knowing that, and seeing the bible he was pouring over, he probably would have despised me if he knew I was a freethinker with liberal/libertarian leanings. It probably would have made steam come out of his ears at the very least. Maybe I should have told him about my idea for making abortions obsolete by giving every newborn baby boy a vasectomy. "DOES NOT COMPUTE". Then he would have blipped out of existence. The sarcasm is creeping in so I think that's my cue to get some sleep.

I think I'm coming down with a bit of "rock fever" - cabin fever Hawaiian style. I seriously started thinking "maybe I should move to Africa.... cheaper at least." I had to get out of my house (and out of my dark room), so I came to Starbucks to force myself to write. Starbucks happens to be affliated with TMobile, and you can get wireless here if you pay. However, when I arrived, the pay system was down, but they still let me on the network. Woohoo! Small victories, small victories.

I brought "Factory Day" with me, but I'd also like to pound out a physics article. We'll see. Even with all my obligations, the biggest obligation I have is the one I've been neglecting - fiction. This seems trivial to most people, and if you don't have the impulse to write fiction it is completely trivial. But I know that writing fiction is one of the things I need to do (some people call it the purpose, or the calling, or destiny, though I'm too much of a freethinker to call it that myself, but hopefully you get the point).

Yay! I've actually not been posting for awhile because I wanted something extra special to say for my 200th blog post (on this blog anyway), so of course I couldn't come up with anything spectacular. However, 200 posts in 2 years isn't bad - that averages out to about 2 posts a week. Early on I posted very infrequently, so it works out to more posts per week now. Wow, that was very unspectacular!

My physics column has gotten a lot of new links - it seems my new strategy is working. There have been a few forum posts where someone argues something about the nature of reality, and then they refer to something I've written for backup. Three new ones in the past two days in addition to the Drudge Report (see below). I am so honored to be used as ammunition in the endless online philosophical flame wars.

In other news, I brought my short story "Factory Day" to the guild meeting, and totally confused a few of my fellow writers. The other hard-core sci-fi person "dug it", and understood my world immediately. The romance writers were flummoxed, I hadn't given them enough of a hook at the beginning. This is not at all upsetting. Instead of writing in the dark, trapped in my own mind, I can now get some badly needed perspective, and I have lots of great ideas for making the story, well, spectacular.

Just a total aside, Smokey the cat (my roommates' cat) is totally entranced by the power cord of my new mac. It has a little light on it that he is attracted to. He also loves to watch me type, and sometimes he'll watch the screen if I am playing video. I'm just fascinated by animal behavior.

Let's see, what else - check my latest blog post on my column. More to come!

After trying to wrangle a different article into existence over two days, I finally quit and wrote this one about lasers instead. The other article was merely a list of famous physicists, and you would think that would be easier that explaining how a laser works, without diagrams or equations. Oh no, you see, lasers are interesting, while listing the facts about famous physicists is really quite boring. I probably won't get top rank in google on this one, but my articles that answer questions tend to get more hits, and I think I explained it more clearly than anywhere else.

I've been referenced on the famous Drudge Report (about halfway down the page).

I got cast in a feature film (just as an extra), but I had to turn it down. It would have been for three days, but the middle one is the day I'll be in Maui. I figured that would happen when I auditioned! They did say that they really wanted me and that they'd call back. I've always had the impression that Hollywood people were mean and stuck up, but these guys (and a British woman) have been nothing but nice. I partially based that stereotype on the mean director of a certain theatre company back in Mesa that I auditioned for (even the people that were working for him rolled their eyes at his nasty antics). My friend Leslee from the writing group (who I encouraged to try out), was also cast in that scene. Now even if I'm not in the movie, I'll know someone who is and that will be really cool. So, hopefully more info to come!

I finally got a response on my application to About.com saying that the category I applied to write for had been given to someone internal. They encouraged me to apply again for a different category. I'll probably drop the City blog because the payment system got a little weird after they had to deal with the aftermath of some idiot's click fraud. This would make having an About guide position a little more feasible.

"You will become a political penguin on a smaller and smaller ice floe, drifting out to sea. Goodbye, my little friend."

- California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger about fellow politicians who do not make the environment a priority.

Here is an old photo from White Sands taken in 2003. I meant to scan it in with a bunch of other stuff before I left Arizona. It's been on the back-back burner behind the stove.

My main task for today (MY day, which is your yesterday, which doesn't end for me until I go to sleep, in my little world) was to book my flight to Maui for later in the month (this is going to be so totally cool, a once in a lifetime thing, but I'll save the details for later). Anyway, my favorite airfare place, Cheaptickets, let me down. I could book the flight I was planning on, but the airline only offered paper tickets (I didn't know there was such a thing anymore). Cheaptickets wanted to deliver the tickets for $26 more! Why?

I jumped the fence to Expedia.com. I don't really like their website as much, but I was able to book a slightly higher fair. Without the delivery fee, it was considerably cheaper than Cheaptickets. I've decided to get a rental car, and I padded the trip with some extra hours so I can explore Maui a bit. Unfortunately I won't be able to take my camera, I don't want to leave it in the car and I won't be able to take it inside with me, but I will probably pick up a disposable camera.

This is so cool - I would never have been able to do this if I hadn't moved to Hawaii. One more goal to cross off the life goal list!

I went on a little photo expedition today (yesterday? earlier MY day) with the purpose in mind of 1. calibrating my camera's diopter more accurately, and 2. practice focusing at the right focal length.

Objective 1. is complicated I realized, by the fact that I use both eyes - one for horizontal pictures and the other for vertical pictures. This is a problem because my eyes have different prescriptions. I just going to have to fish out my latest prescription from somewhere, wiki the info on how to read it, and then estimate the difference between how my eyes see when I am actually looking through the viewfinder and adjusting the focus. This may seem like a (nerdy) rigmarole, but if I am to be serious about stock photography, or photography in general, I need to get it right every time.

Objective 2 fell apart because I lost the light a Waikiki. I had gotten downtown early enough but it was raining. I decided, what the heck, and ended up shooting some really neat (if out of focus) night time shots. I even figured out a new way to stabilize the camera without a tripod. I sat in the sand and held the camera firmly between my knees, feet splayed somewhat, and draped my forearm over the lens. I estimated the angle of the shot, and adjusted to a general focus (can't remember the term, but when everything more or less is in focus). It was import to relax and just let the mechanics of my skeleton hold the camera in place, otherwise my twitching muscles produced too much jitter.

Here are some of the photos. Most were taken at a 13 second exposure. In some, you might spot the ghostlike images of people that ran by.

Waikiki at night is a bit of a trip. I had never been there at night since there are so many tourists, but there is a lot going on. There are a lot of interesting street performers. There's this one guy who has painted himself silver and pretends to be a statue. I wonder if he makes a living at it or just does it for fun. Maybe someday I'll ask him to model for me. They would be interesting shots. I almost forgot, some Russian tourist asked me to take his picture on his little camera "You picture me too?" I should have asked him to pose for me, with my camera, then I could have emailed him the photograph. On Saturday I was asked to photograph someone on the street as well with their camera-phone. That's never happened to me before moving to Hawaii. Usually I'm invisible to people. Metaphorically. I don't have super powers (not yet).

I should have had this done two days ago:

Why do Power Lines Buzz?

Alas, I was focusing on photography (or rather not, which is more of a problem, see below). Anyway, this was an attempt to write something that people actually look for but can't find a simple, satisfactory answer. My star lifespan article is by far my most popular (How long do stars live?) followed by Theory vs. Hypothesis vs. Law, Branches of Physics, and Centripetal vs. Centrifugal. More technical, traditionally physicy stuff (not a word, but I'm tired and don't care) doesn't get nearly the hits. The research for this one was pretty widespread and took me many hours, but I think I did it justice.

Okay, a couple of days ago I submitted 10 photos to an online stock photography house (shall remain unnamed because I can resubmit in 30 days), and got rejected on every photograph for various reasons (usually lighting or focus, one on composition). I don't really care, but what bugs me is that they referred to every rejection with the internally generated number they gave to the photograph, not the filename or the title I had to submit. How am I supposed to know which criticism goes with which photo? That's maddening.

I've been going through old CDs looking for photos I can use for my stock photography portfolio, and came across some neat ones I kind of forgot about. Unfortunately, most of my paper photos were scanned badly, and at too low a resolution to be useful. I didn't bring my boxes of photos to Hawaii (it would have cost an arm and a leg). They're okay for the web though.

And no, the deus ex machina didn't tell me to write that. The All-Seeing One has added a trend feature so that you can track the popularity of search keywords back in time. Here's one (click to enlarge):
Apparently, war is more popular than peace. So sad.... Here's another:Christian values are much less popular than divorce and abortion (I can hear the faint bleating of conservatives). Despite the negative cultural attitudes towards pagans, Earth is more popular than God:

And finally, for fans of South Park:


I really ought to be doing laundry, not being distracted by the Great Oracle.

Since I've branched out and have been writing at a number of places, I've finally gone ahead and slapped together a database to hold everything. It is still a little rough, I need to add in some sorting features, plus I need to do the data entry (ugh, but that's the point of automating the thing). Enjoy!

Exploitation? Nah. Public service. Granted, I did write this one to see how far up the Squidoo rankings I could get, and to see if it is indeed possible to generate revenue from Squidoo (if this doesn't work, I'll lower myself to writing about Anna Nicole Smith), but I never saw the point of feeding a dog only one type of food. They're mammals! Furthermore, they co-evolved with humans. They can eat pretty much the same things as we do (though not chocolate or grapes). It annoys me that the FDA, news outlets, and food companies are basically saying that pets can only eat manufactured pet food. Errgh. Use some logic. Pet food is a convenience product only, like mac and cheese is for humans.

Here's the link:
http://www.squidoo.com/safepetfood/

That's right, I am now a mac user. My old PC was dying a slow death, and I needed something reliable. I wrote "Data and Text Processing for Business Intelligence" on a mac at my publisher's insistence, and I decided then that my next computer would be a mac. So, thanks to my parents (and my "wedding fund" they rightfully gave up on), I have a sweet new laptop!

Right now I'm having difficulty getting used to typing on a keyboard that works properly - my spacebar on my PC went out a couple of months ago and I was using one of the windows keys instead, and I had to curl my pinky into it's own unnatural yoga pose to type a space. It's strange to be typing normally again!

The laptop worked straight out of the box with a minimum of fidgeting. I even got on the house's network automatically, without any work at all - and networking is the main chink in my geek armor. When I moved in it took two days and the assistance of the neighbor kid to get my PC connected.

I took this after a recent photoshoot on the windward side:
After close inspection of the several photos I took of this fine avian specimen, I determined that it was in fact, a one-legged bird.

Ahhh. I remember why I bought a car back in Arizona. I was fed up with riding a bus.

When I moved to Oahu, I decided to leave my car behind and go green. Oahu has one of the best public transit systems in the world, and gas is up to almost $3/gal. I don't have to commute, so a car (and insurance) doesn't make economic sense.

However. Last night I was riding the bus back from Honolulu (checking out photography books at B&N), and a surfer in hospital booties got on the bus. Should have taken that as a sign. He was acting a bit weird, but he decided to wait until the bus was on the freeway before he started screaming at the bus driver (not to mention the rest of us). As he explained at the top of his voice - he had be just released from the psych ward and he didn't know why. He knew enough that he wanted medication. He was clearly having a bad panic attack. Everyone tried to look away, which made it worse, because he thought he didn't exist when people didn't look at him. I thought there was a good chance the bus was going to crash (I hope the driver gets a few days off).

Fortunately, there was a security guard on the bus (TheBus seems to be very good about security, there are usually guards posted at the major transfer points, but still). This guy was a big imposing dude - in Hawaiian a "kane". He talked to the surfer and got him reasonably calmed down, and most importantly, away from the driver. He even sat down next to him, and put a comforting arm around the guy, and phoned the surfer's daughter to tell her that her father was out. The driver made arrangements with the police to pick the guy up. I got off at the first possible stop, which happens to be the ridiculously steep hill up to my neighborhood (so did everybody else), so I assume that the police met them at the next transfer point. It was all very scary. The only upside is that I found out I can now walk up the hill at a brisk pace without having to stop for breath (I may actually get into Antarctica shape fairly soon).

I hope the security guard gets a raise or something. He really dealt well with the surfer. What really upsets me is why this guy got released. What idiot doctor approved that? The guy *knew* he wasn't well enough to be out. Is it a funding thing?

I'm getting my taxes done later today, and if it's not too bad, I may start car-hunting. I want my private bubble back. I'll go green some other way.

April's physics poll tests your knowledge of falling objects:

http://physics.suite101.com/polls.cfm

You can also see all the past polls on this page.

There's actually more to the story about Kapo than what I wrote here:

http://www.hotelsbycity.net/blog/usa_hawaii_kapolei/2007/04/01/the-statue-of-kapo/

In some interesting insight into pre-western Hawaiian culture, Kapo was known to aid her sister Pele - she confused Pele's abusive husband (can't remember who at the moment), by lending Pele her, um, detachable vagina. As funny and uncomfortable that seems to western conditioned eyes, it shows that men weren't valued above women (I mean, Pele's husband had to be pretty stupid to fall for that legerdemain (er, they may be another word for that but nevermind)). This parallels other pre-monotheistic cultures throughout the world. More fuel for the controversial Alphabet vs. the Goddess concept.

Everytime I do a review I feel like I've copped out - but I really did like the show "Parallel Universe", and I was drawing a blank on what to write about. The article is here:

http://particle-physics.suite101.com/article.cfm/review_parallel_universe

Suite has suddenly had a change of heart, and has increased article length requirements from a minimum of 200 words and a max of 400, to a min of 400 and a max of 600. Sigh. This makes writing about complex ideas easier, but it was a bit sudden. I'll just have to switch gears again.

Oh yeah, and I got my Suite business cards today (yesterday? In the past 24 hour period). Some of the info is wrong, but at least my name is spelled correctly! I think that's the first time that has happened with any business cards I've gotten. My phone number is incorrect, but since I have phone phobia, that's really a plus.