A barrel full of fish

Ah yes the desire to post.

What makes an adult an adult and a kid a kid? More specifically, why do adults not behave like kids? Or at least, disregarding all the bits about work, why do adults have fun in the ways they do? (no that's not a reference, shut up those of you sniggering in the background) If doing stupidly kiddy stuff is such fun, why don't more people do it? Does it have anything to do with a loss of innocence? (ditto) Are some things just not funny anymore after you've seen the real world? Will the rhetorical questions never end?

Maybe it's got to do with how adults are afraid of being judged. Do adults still think that doing crazy stuff is fun? Somewhere along the timeline of growing up, people start to try and 'act their age'. It's partly peer pressure and herd mentality, isn't it? Somewhere along the line you decide that certain loutish behaviour is irresponsible and selfish. So out go all the mischievous behaviour. or. or...or....

*horrified realisation* maybe adults do have fun like kids do, just that all the adults i know are really incredibly stiff and boring.

I'm only rambling and scratching the surface with my confusicated thoughts. What even gives us the moral authority to judge others? Why should we let the judgement of others influence our actions? Obviously in a practical sense you shouldn't go to work acting like a fish, because chances are you'd get fired, even if you can work twice as well as everyone else. But outside of the usual organisational jobs, if you're the boss of your own company, or, say, a scientist or a film director, people probably tolerate your behaviour if you can produce good stuff. Hmm. I guess it depends if the value of your output outweighs the mental anguish they suffer from having to listen to sounds of "bloob bloob" all day long.

Now that post didn't quite make any sense, did it? I'm just basically trying to figure out what sort of twisted director would make a movie such as kill bill, and actually manage to get it shown in cinemas. Perhaps the value of the movie was lost on me, but as arthouse flicks go, that one was really quite..... a waste of money. That movie seemed to be created more for the scriptwriter/director Quentin Tarantino than for audiences. There were some cool fight scenes, one set in a very zen landscaped jap garden covered in snow, complete with a mood setting miniature waterfall with a swinging automatically-overbalancing hollow bamboo! WOW! which was i think as good as the movie got. It reminded me a bit of the animatrix, not just coz of the jap influence and the anime-inspired sequence.... but also the fascination with spurting blood that featured in some of the animatrix eps. Also, the movie seems to be rather segmented, with rather different stories of uma vs girl 1, girl 2, etc. Which do try to redeem themselves by being arranged in a non-linear way, but still.... it didn't quite achieve the usual objective of making people go "huh?" and then "OHHHHHHHH!" later on in the movie.

I need a good cunning movie. Like The Usual Suspects. One that has an ending which will make you want to watch the whole movie again to see it in a new light. oh well.

Dolphins!

For those of you looking at the pic and wondering about the title going WTF....

you corrupt jerks, don't tell me you can't see the dolphins??

Research shows that young kids with no prior associations with such a scenario see the dolphins, instead of that moment of intimacy. Dunno what sort of researcher goes around designing these pics, though....

Boing!

So there i was trying to look for amusing cute laugh-track sounds for my video. and so, like any self-respecting foley artist would do, i went and searched it on google. Search terms? "boing sounds" of course. And guess what turned up....

--
Gerald McBoing Boing Sound Book

Book by: Dr. Seuss Enterprises

Just suppose," said Ted "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, "there was a little kid who didn't speak words but only weird sounds?" Thus Gerald McBoing Boing was born, brought to life by a studio called United Productions of America as an animated cartoon...... back in hardcover and, here, as an interactive board book that produces a delightful boing-ing sound when you press the button on the right-hand top corner of the book.

Gerald McBoing Boing Sound Book!

oh and for those of you aspiring to similar comic heights (or depths) i eventually found nice sound effects here:
the absolute sound effects archive

Brownian traffic

Singaporean traffic behaves in very strange ways. Traffic engineers unfortunately produce theories of limited exportability.... somehow Singaporeans always seem in a rush to get somewhere, and do strangely irrational things even if it means they'll cut about 4 seconds from their travelling time. (travelling time to the next red light, that is) and the one thing that traffic analysts don't account for, of course, is 4D numbers. Possibly because the license plate numbers in other countries sometimes have more than 4 numbers on them....

http://www.smartmotorist.com/wav/wav.htm is a theory on traffic waves, for those of you who're interested/bored. It's the phenomenon of there being traffic jams even when there's no obvious obstruction to traffic.... The only thing is, if you follow their advice and try to keep a constant speed instead of that typical stop-go behaviour in traffic jams..... some Singaporean driver's gonna think "AHA! an EMPTY SPACE!" and then cut right in front of you.

==

In other news, the obedient dog in the photo was spotted again, this time much closer to the entrance of the food centre. He's probably obediently tempted.

I must lead a really boring life.

There is no spoon.

Chanced upon this little nugget



which is a cute parody of the original house of stairs. Which, btw, is one of my fave escher works, of which i have a nice imported poster in my room. *grins*

Bikkit!

LONDON (AFP) - Scientists in Britain have discovered why biscuits seem to break so easily. Using sophisticated laser techniques, physicists at the University of Loughborough, in the north of England, found that a biscuit develops "fault lines" a few hours after it comes out of the oven. As it cools down, it picks up moisture around the rim, causing it to expand -- while at the same time, moisture at the centre makes it contract. The result is a build-up of strain forces which pulls the biscuit apart, making them vulnerable when handled, moved or packaged.

Doctoral student Qasim Saleem said the findings -- published Thursday by the scientific journal Measurement, Science and Technology -- could revolutionize the cookie industry.
"This will help biscuit manufacturers adjust the humidity or temperature of their factory production lines to change the cooling process in such a way that the biscuits won't break up due to normal handling, and hence producing the perfect biscuit," he said.

with thanks to filbie

West Side story

Obedient Singaporean dog



Yea it's always dangerous with us around....



more pics incoming, guys. After i get out of camp next week. Enjoy.