I had had doubts if I would ever continue writing in this blog again, or if anyone would still be following, checking on my blog every weekend, having that tiny little hope that she or he may see an update.
And if anyone still does, I greatly appreciate your appreciation, and I'm also awfully sorry for deserting this blog for more than three months.
But I'm back today, again. Things I'll be writing here may be different from what I've always been writing though; it's been a long time, and people changes from time to time. After all, the world is dynamic, life is dynamic, people are dynamic.
Change is always for the better, I believe.
My return today is a very simple one - I just have these quotes from significant figures that I really like to share. Writing in facebook status or windows live messenger's personal message can only include that many - and I have read so many good lines today that I really like people to know.
They've made my day. Hope they do the same to you too, whoever is reading.
Mark Twain (American humorist, writer and lecturer. 1835-1910)
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
“Sing like no one's listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching, and live like its heaven on earth.”
Maya Angelou (American poet, memoirist, actress and an important figure in the American Civil Rights Movement. 1928-present)
"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."
I only learned about this great woman, Maya Angelou, today. And yes, I'm going to check out her famous book "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" soon!
When I've got the time to hit the bookstore.
I hate this but I'm having so little time to be spent on going out. It's a dangerous place we're living in, but I guess once in a while, we all need some fresh air, somewhere else.
A bookstore, a restaurant, or a movie.
2012 was good in terms of graphics, moderately heart-gripping, but somehow it's also commercialised, if you know what I mean. It could have been better, if it could go deeper than just surface.
Humanity. The best test I've ever seen on movies was in Batman: The Dark Knight; where two ships were installed with bombs. If you've seen that movie, you know what I meant.
Thanks for reading Eternal Baroque. Good evening, and have a great weekend. :)
I believe most of you who have followed Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci's Code" story closely would be familiar with; or at least heard of it more than just once - Phi, the golden ratio.
In spite of its significance in mathematics and arts, the definition of a golden ratio is rather simple actually. Take one line here, and then we cut the line into two segments in different length in a special way. Say we name the longer line segment as line segment a, and the shorter one, b.
What is so special with it is that we have to make sure the ratio of the length of the entire line (a + b) to the length of the longer line segment (a), is the same with the ratio of the length of the longer line segment (a) to the shorter one (b). Get that right, and we will already be looking at the magic number, the golden ratio, a.k.a. Phi.
The golden ratio is often denoted by the Greek letter phi (Φ or φ). Phi is a ratio, and moreover, an irrational mathematical constant; which approximately equals to 1.6180339887. When expressed algebraically:
In one of his books, Stephen Hawking once mentioned the more numbers of mathematical formulas are printed in a book, the less popular it will be selling. Thus let's leave that algebraic expression as the one and only mathematical formula you will see in this article, to prevent further boredom. :)
Well, back to the heart-gripping fiction. The handsome Harvard lecturer Robert Langdon gave a mathematics lecture on golden ratio in his class, trying to tell his students how special, and how really close the number is, to human beings. Fibonacci's sequence, ratio of female bees to male bees in a hive, ratio of one spiral to the next spiral on a nautilus, ratio of the diameter of a rotation to the next in a sunflower's growth, even to the ratio between different human body parts.
"Measure the distance from the tip of your head to the floor. Then divide that by the distance from your belly button to the floor. Guess what number you get," says Langdon in the class. And we don't have to guess like his students here; the answer by Langdon, is Phi; no surprise here. To top it off, he claims that Leonardo da Vinci has shown belief in golden ratio as the ratio of the height of a perfect human face to its width; that the artist used Phi in his artwork, Vitruvian Man. - Discovermagazine.com
Of course, we have much to thank Langdon, or Brown, for indirectly giving such a mathematical revelation to the readers who may or may not know about Phi before. However, Brown is a fiction writer, and there are certainly a lot of disputable claims in this book; and some are more fiction than fact. And thus as critical-thinking readers, we have to ask: how much are the claims about Phi is true in the story?
Look at the human body proportion example Langdon proposes. Measure the distance from the tip of your head to the floor. Then divide that by the distance from your belly buttion to the floor. What answers, we will actually get? I bet it's something close to 1.6. But what is 1.6? When we compare the number 1.6, to the irrational number of Phi, 1.6180339887... , we can see why this claim is impractical, weak in foundation. There are a lot of ratios we can get that, when simplified, is 1.6. But that can be derived from a numerous possibility of exact numbers - 1.623, 1.607, 1.572, etc. And these numbers I just gave as examples cannot be said to be anywhere close to 1.6180339887... . - Discovermagazine.com
Besides, if you spend time measuring your body parts, you might get numbers like 1.2, 1.8, other than 1.6. It's more coincidence than predetermined. - Discovermagazine.com
Similarly, the claims on Vitruvian Man doesn't seem to be very solid either. According to Keith Devlin in his article "Cracking the Da Vinci Code", the equally common claims that Sandro Botticelli used φ to proportion Venus in his famous painting The Birth of Venus and that Georges Seurat based his painting The Side Show on φ, are also seem to be without foundation. Painters who definitely did make use of φ include the 20th-century artists Louis-Paul-Henri Sérusier, Juan Gris, Gino Severini, and Salvador Dalí; but all four seem to have been experimenting with φ for its own sake rather than for some intrinsic aesthetic reason. - Discovermagazine.com
There are so many false claims made about the golden ratio, and so many surprising truths, that it can be hard to separate fact from fiction. Here are some of the most common statements you will find in the literature, besides the ones mentioned in the article. See how many you can correctly guess are true or false. (True means known for sure to be true; false means there is insufficient evidence to justify the statement.)
1. The Egyptian pyramids were constructed using the golden ratio.
2. Some Egyptian tombs were constructed using the golden ratio.
3. Some stone tablets show the Babylonians knew about the golden ratio.
4. The cubists based much of their work on the golden ratio.
5. The famous French architect Le Corbusier advocated and used the golden ratio in architecture.
6. The Secretariat building at the United Nations headquarters in New York comprises a stack of three golden rectangles.
7. Some Gregorian chants are based on the golden ratio.
8. Mozart used the golden ratio in some of his music.
9. Béla Bartók used the golden ratio in some of his music.
10. When a falcon attacks its prey, it swoops in along a path that is mathematically related to the golden ratio.
11. The poet Virgil based the meter of his poem The Aeneid on the golden ratio.
12. Some 12th-century Sanskrit poems have a meter based on the Fibonacci sequence (and hence are related to the golden ratio).
13. The golden ratio occurs in certain crystal structures.
14. There is a Fibonacci number with exactly 666 digits.
15. If you square any Fibonacci number, the answer will differ by at most 1 from the product of the two adjacent Fibonacci numbers.
Answers:
1. F 2. F 3. F 4. F 5. T 6. F 7. F 8. F 9. F 10. T 11. F 12. T 13. T 14. T 15. T
Now I'm sure you have a clearer, more-examined, less-disputable views about Phi. Although there is a lot of claims in Brown's novel that seems to lack viable justification, but a few points Langdon proposes are true anyway. At least the part about plants.
According to Devlin, to achieve maximum efficiency, flower heads and plant leaves grow in a spiral fashion governed by the golden ratio. Since φ is an irrational number and the number of petals, spirals, or stamens in any plant or flower has to be a whole number, nature “rounds off” to the nearest whole number. - Discovermagazine.com
He also explained that in the case of leaves, each new leaf is added so that it least obscures the leaves already below and is least obscured by any future leaves above it. Hence the leaves spiral around the stem. For seeds in the seed head of a plant, nature wants to pack in as many as possible. The way to do this is to add new seeds in a spiral fashion. - Discovermagazine.com
As such, we come to see why Phi is so significant in science - it's the ratio that gives optimal solution to plant growth equations. - Discovermagazine.com
Like how Devlin puts it, "It’s a question of nature being efficient".
As readers living in a society "exquisitely dependent" on science and technology, we have to sharpen our eyes and logical senses when we read. I certainly do not hope people in our era live up to fulfill Dr. Carl Sagan's expectation that "hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology".
Hence we just have to be critical, and check, and double-check every fact we are absorbing.
"There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, news ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny."
And there we go, Dr. Sagan's quote has quite sum the whole thing up. :)
*Dr. Carl Sagan, 1934-1996, American astronomer, writer and scientist.
The Dark Knight was great, but Slumdog Millionaire is already far better on a whole different level.
Winning six Oscars of the night, Slumdog Millionaire proves itself as not just an Indian movie but a movie about life, brothers, love, death and money - completes with the three all-time best-selling issues: death, money, and sex - but not the exposed kind of sex.
The movie began with a young man being tortured by a police officer, who was so convinced that the under-educated, low-income boy had cheated his way up to the place next to being a millionaire in the popular TV show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire".
However the boy Jamal wouldn't succumb: "It doesn't take a genius to answer those questions."
His story began to unfold as the police officer asked him how did he managed to answer each and every question in the game. Village rivalries, mother's death, beggars syndiket, gangster, and trapped lover - Jamal's life was filled with terror, disappointment and also lost love, but all of these had somehow given him the clue to answer the questions in the game later.
Jamal's life had not been a pleasant one, even almost too harsh a reality of a lower level Indian's life to be shown on the big screen. The visual impact was so huge, so deep, and audience are forced to see the darker side of Indian's street - the good thing is, finally, we're not spoonfed with all the Bollywood's happy-dancing dramas anymore.
Someone has to show us what is really happening.
Yet the success of this movie doesn't lie only in its honest depiction of the dark side of Indian street, but also it's empathy on the characters to give them a chance to break out.
Maybe it wasn't the best or the most fulfilled ending for the movie, but at least when so much had happened and so many wounds had been inflicted, it's the realistic and better ending for Jamal.
On another note, the ending of the movie had been touching - and the Oscar results proves that it's not just about the storyline - it won Best Original Soundtrack score and the Best Song categories besides Best Sound Mixing.
The movie gave another thought for me - It would have been so much better if things never happened, if one never let go, if they hadn't looked back; Yet sometimes we have to go through so much only to realize, shed so much tears (and blood, probably) to see, and lost so much to get back to the initial point.
Overall, I would have to say: "Good job, Danny Boyle, and all the cast and crew!". Many have a lot to thank you for, and I thank you for such a movie enjoyment!
We all have obsessions - be it that adorable laces, that creepy tune or that Keanu Reeves; We all have crave for something or someone at one time.
And my obsessions currently would have to be the smoking hot devil Chuck Bass, the insanely humourous Dr. Walter Bishop and everything about the two extremely definitive persona.
TV series Gossip Girl made a huge come back in end of last year, airing its Season 2, with Chuck Bass (played by Ed Westwick) ever more seductive and Serena Van Der Wurtsen ever more gorgeous. The series revolve around the lives of Manhattan elites, the upper-east side's glam and scandals of the filthy rich teens.
Serena with her on-and-off relationship with Dan, Nate with his high fidelity currently hooking up with Vanessa for god-knows-how-many-days-it'll-last (I bet he will hit on to another girl the next few episodes), Jenny with her competitive side coming back to school after quitting fashion job, Blair with her love-and-hate relationship with Chuck - now it's already episode 16 and I'm still craving for more and more DRAMAS!
Chuck Bass is certainly the devil, the bad boy, the mephisto who is never ashamed of being filthy rich and using those money for filthy pleasures. Drugs, women, alcohol - this guy has all sorts of problems but he still pulls it off looking metrosexually seductive. When you thought he's just a heartless mean bastard, the next second he's showing his mercy on things and people he treasures; And yet, the next minute he puts on his devilish smirk on his face again, heartlessly and heart-breakingly saying : "'Cause I'm Chuck Bass", watching the world burn in his hands.
Maybe it's true that women are naturally blessed with "maternal instinct" that when triggered, couldn't stop but fall to save the man who is god-knows-if-he-himself-even-wants-to-be-saved. Chuck, as problematic as he is, Blair falls hard for him, trying to save him even though it turns her world upside-down, destroys her own life, makes her suffer. And yes, I bet there are also a whole lot of girls out there queuing up to save this gorgeous guy, hoping that this guy can be saved. And yeah, that is what makes Chuck the guy so sought after - the maternal-instinct trigger-puller. Voila!
Fringe is another sure-to-make-the-headline series first aired in September last year. Created by Lost creator J. J. Abrams, with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, Fringe is a sci-fi series that explores the realms of fringe science - a type of science that is debatable, possibly-destructive and questionable, yet, theoretically possible to realize. Levitation, teleportation, telepathy - these might seem bizarre and probably more spiritual than scientific, yet the series pulls it all together possible with fringe science, making science the new God.
In search of information about "the Pattern", FBI agent Olivia Dunham, highly intelligent fraud criminal Peter Bishop and institutionalized research scientist Dr. Walter Bishop team up to decode all the unusual incidents happening all around the world, looking for a scientific clue to understand "the Pattern".
In spite of the amazingly addictive plot lines, the Frankenstein-mixed-with-Albert-Einstein Dr. Walter Bishop is certainly one of the most interesting character in the show. He has been in a mental facility for 17 years before being granted permission to leave to help in the investigation of Olivia. This man, as highly intelligent as he is, has an almost humourous style of speaking and way of acting.
Dr. Walter has a personal lab at Harvard with a personal cow to milk for personal drink which he heats it with lab equipments - even though it seems really insane to drink milk from a laboratory-used measuring cup but John Noble (who plays the role Dr. Walter Bishop) makes it hilariously normal-looking.
Not to mention that seriously funny phone conversation with his son Peter Bishop : "Hello, This is me, your father, Walter Bishop," which is being replied indifferently by Peter : "Thank you, Walter. I know who you are." Wonder who would have come up with that line on the phone!
It's not too unusual when it comes to Dr. Walter to comment like this when he saw a bizarre parasite housing on the heart of a poor man : "This is spectacular"; Or him to reply like this when Peter told him the person they were looking for was dead : "Does he still have his head? Is it still attached to his body?"
You know he is somehow insane, yet that is what makes Walter such an interesting character - he doesn't feel out of place with his insanity and thinks that he is acting appropriately while milking a cow in his lab or saying that the onion soup beside victim's body looks tasty at the scene of a horrible deaths in a restaurant.
Thanks to Dr. Walter Bishop, Fringe has something to laugh about besides the addictive tension all over the show.
Dramas is brewing round the corner - I can't wait to have more of it! And you- are you ready4more?
I bet Dr. Walter Bishop will be saying over there : "Excellent! Let's make some LSD!"
It's high time to update my blog, I guess! I've been quite busy with work since my internship started on 5th January; almost caught me exhausted.
I'm currently assigned to the Fashion & Beauty department of The Sun newspapers. Normally this section will be published on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays. So check out extra careful on these days if you might catch my name there! (If you know my full name!)
I already had one on Wednesday for a very brief article. A good start!
Besides, the sun management will be rotating us interns - I'll be in Entertainment next month and newsdesk finally in March.
In spite of being busy with work, still, I try to keep my head above the water. :)
There's tons of things revolving inside my head; yet it also feels like there's nothing really significant that I have to spill it out - isn't that weird? hehe.
Well, while I take some time to clear my head up, I have two movie lines from "Hitch" to share with you here. Good day!
"Never lie, steal, cheat, or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away." - Hitch
And, always remember...
"Life is not the amount of breaths you take, it's the moments that take your breath away."
I know I've been procrastinating to upload the photos of the video shooting like weeks ago. And finally, I'm here to upload the photos. :)
Director Marco at the left, The girl Carmen, and Main character Chi Hou at the right, me as background. :P
Discussing about how the scene will look like...
Getting ready...Camera man Che Kian at right
Testing out.....Wonder how would have Carmen and Chi Hou felt, being camera-ed at such a close distance :P
And you can see me standing far away....
More takes of the same scene....
Examining the film we recorded...
Another scene.....director telling me to walk from point A to point B. @.@
Finally the video shooting for the day was done......took pictures to remember the day :) [notice : I was the only one not doing any pose at all in this picture....oopz :P]
The guys wanted to stand in front instead of behind the car....hehe
So that was it, the day I went to help out in a short film video shooting. Would have to thank Marco, Che Kian, Chi Hou, Callum and Carmen again for giving me this new experience.
And yeah, JcX....there you go....photos are here finally. :P
Differences. We are familiar with it. In life, we're constantly dealing with it. Getting your bread from the Indian grocery store, buying your nasi lemak at the Malay stall, having lunch and reading your newspapers in the Chinese restaurant. We are certainly no strangers with differences in Malaysia.
As Malaysians of a multi-racial country, we know, and should have known, that acknowledging differences is not the end of what we should do. The most important thing, far more important than acknowledging differences, is accepting differences.
Yet what we understand here in this multi-cultural setting, might not be understood by the others in the world.
And I really wish they'd understood. Do understand. And will understand very soon.
Anyway, it seems like I've strayed too far away from what I really wanted to talk about initially. Things happened lately, world is falling in grey. But I do wish to believe in the good of people.
In fact I just wanted to say that I'd just watched a movie titled "Outsourced" on TV. The story was about an American salesman being sent to India to train the workers there.
It was a good movie, for it has successfully depicted the changes in the main character, from cultural shock, to learning to accept, and finally truly adapting. What was really good about this movie was that it gave a different look, a different light on India and the people in India.
That the child who stole the main character's phone returned it with hand-drawn paintings; that the fierce-looking man in poverty had the generous heart to invite the main character to dine with him; that the seemingly rules-and-norms-restricted country has its colourful side of fun and enjoy during festives.
Behind everything that doesn't look acceptable, there is one thing that connects - the warmth of the people.
Maybe it was just a movie - I'd not been to India myself, but what I really like about the movie was the message inside.
"Like you, I was reluctant with everything here. But once I gave up fighting with everything, it feels so much better,"said another foreigner the main character met eventually in India, in the movie.
Maybe we've been grown up learning the differences between us and the others; Maybe we've been grown up fighting with everything that is different from us. But have we tried to slow down, give up fighting, for a moment?
It could have been so much better.
Differences, it draws us apart. Acceptance, it connects people with differences. Citizens of the beloved Gaia, are we ready to accept differences? Even if we don't look the same, even if we don't talk the same, even if we don't dress the same, even if we don't eat the same, even if we don't pray the same...... Can we at least share one common faith in the miracles of acceptance?
In paranormal field they always say : "You can see, if you would believe."
And I shall say....We can accept, if we would believe.
How long do you need to standby for 15 seconds of appearance in a film?
No conversations, no monologue, even the face can barely be seen in the background - for 15 seconds of appearance.
You may think that it takes maybe like, half an hour? But no, the answer is ....TWO hours. And it takes a whole day from 12p.m. to 8p.m. outside for the pre-, the -ing, and the post-.
"Are you free tomorrow? We need a girl my height to act as my friend in a video," asked Carmen on Saturday night. And then a phone call from Carmen and the director himself.
Hence I agreed.
So yesterday I'd gone out to help out as an "anonymous-friend-of-main-actress" in a short film shooting near Sunway.
The short film is a work by the production team "Keep Moving", and it is meant for taking part in TVF (Tokyo Video Festival) next year.
"The story is about a guy who traps himself in his own music world, and shuts himself out of the real world outside," said the director cum script writer, Marco, as he explained the theme of his short film.
As I read through the script Marco has written, it was no doubt he must have a good sense of humour. I couldn't help but laughed when I read words like "main dude", and "become genki again" in his script.
Imagine the poor main character being referred to as "the main dude" again and again. LOL.
"The short film would be around ten minutes," added Marco.
The photographer of the day was Che Kian, who is also working for a professional photographing company. And he was also the one who came over to fetch me, thanks! :)
So my friend Carmen was "The Girl" in the short film, who seems to have slightly special relationship with the main guy character in the story.
The main character was played by Chi Hou (translated), a quite good-looking guy who I personally thought he looks like Leo Ku, the Hong Kong singer cum actor. Oh and yeah, he was the main dude then. :P
After like numerous time of retaking NGs, and I'd taken out my handphone and pretended to sms, and walked from point A to point B and turned to smile, for numerous time.....Finally, the part with Carmen and I was done.
Callum, the guy who was to help out during the scene, helped to take a few photos of the whole team working on that part that day.
And we all went off to a famous Ice Shop at Metroprima, Kepong. (Oh no, yet again for me. ) We all talked and then Marco and Che Kian drove Carmen and me back home.
Helping out as an "anonymous-friend-of-main-actress" was already so tiring, I could imagine how tired it could be for those actors and actresses. The video-shooting session today gave a whole new experience to me.
Thanks to Marco, Che Kian, Chi Hou and Callum - Best wishes to you all in TVF next year!
P/S : Stay tune for photos later, they're with Callum still. :P P.P/S: Personally I think this team Keep Moving is quite creative, do check them out at http://keepmoving5.blogspot.com
