Define Imagine

Sleeplessness

2012-01-10T00:16:00.000-08:00

Well hello world...

This seems to be a theme with me. Once again midnight, lying in bed, unable to sleep. Sometimes I really just can't turn my brain off.

So I promised myself that I would start writing at least 300 words of my story every day this year. Not happening yet... If only it was easier to translate feelings and emotions into words. I bought myself a couple nice clean journals the other day. One is to collect character sketches, descriptions, and ideas. The other is to write down my story once it's been finished. Hopefully that will inspire me to get working.

Part of the problem us that I am working though. Which I am very grateful for by the way. (Have I mentioned I really love my job?)

Sometimes I feel just like I'm swimming in circles. Always having the same problems and needs and always promising myself the same thing. What I really need to do is to stop procrastinating and thinking so much and just get to work.

One thing I gave been thinking about a lot lately though is people and our dependence on each other. I'm thinking about doing a full post on it sometime. We'll see.

Anyhow here goes yet again another sleep attempt.

Another post hopefully upcoming-Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows movie review.

Love and Hugs!

What

Imagine...

2012-01-08T13:10:00.000-08:00

Imagine being able to completely accept who we are, to never experience moments of despair that we will never be what we believe we 'ought' to be. To never torment ourselves with accusations of why we are not thinner, more attractive, more popular, more witty, more successful, more...anything but who we are. Imagine being able to be oblivious of ourselves, to just live, taking on challenges and experiencing failures with equal aplomb. Imagine having unmitigated presence - when we walk into a room, we are noticed simply because we are radiating something that everyone craves. Contentment. Acceptance. Peace.

Imagine being able to move forward to embrace life and everything it has to offer, leaving our 'idealised' images behind to watch us do what we believed we never could without 'changing'. Imagine leaping and bounding into the world to embrace both success and failure knowing that these experiences are just part of our unique experience of being alive, with none of it defining who we are.

Imagine that we would make some wonderful discoveries, that we would be surprised to find that we would no longer be interested in focussing on how others perceive us or wasting our time and energy on dressing to impress - rather we would choose to wear what we like. Our choice of garments would not define us, but complement us. We would only buy what we needed, no longer feeling subjected to the painful and costly addiction of 'want'. We would never look at a clever marketing campaign and believe that lasting contentment could be found by spending two weeks at an exclusive beach house on the coast of Bali. We would no longer be possessed by our possessions. Rather those things would merely be part of our lives to perform a function, not to represent who we wanted others to believe we were.

Unlike the photo above of the poor rhino trying to become a unicorn, we would know ourselves and accept ourselves just as we are, being simultaneously aware of both our strengths and weaknesses. We would know that so long as we refuse to accept ourselves just as we are, we will not be able to fully enjoy life, or even know what we like or do not like with any certainty. We will have ripped down the image taped to the walls of our minds of who we are not and replaced it with an image of who we are, an honest, true, beautiful image of us in all our wonder.

Each and every one of us are utterly unique with our own set of towering strengths and humbling weaknesses, and this uniqueness makes us amazing, and interesting, and special. We are much more spectacular and complex than anything we could ever imagine we ought to be. When we rip away the image we have been holding in our mind's eye of who we should be and replace it with who we really are, we stop the cycle of torture, accusations, blame and self-hate against the wonderful person huddling deep inside of us that just wants to live.

Imagine a life unmarred by the manipulations of magazines, advertisements and gossip columns - a life uncomplicated by the continual uncertainty the media doles out to us. Imagine living a life without constant and unnecessary material hunger, a life that allows us to find true fulfillment just by being the astounding individual each one of us already is. That life is right there, a mere heartbeat away, reaching out to us from behind the glass wall we have imprisoned it behind...

Imagine letting go of the person you are not. Imagine that the real you is free...

Just imagine...

My Song

2012-01-04T15:52:00.000-08:00

Still sick… it kind of sucks, I'm almost never sick for this long. But I *have* to be better by tomorrow because I'm working.

I know I've mentioned this before but I just have to say it again.

I LOVE NICKEL CREEK

I can go for months without listening to them once but then I just get this random craving and I have to go and listen to every single one of their songs several times.

Chris Thile is right up there with Thom Yorke in my opinion. Actually it was listening to Radiohead that made me want to look Nickel Creek up again. They once did a cover of Radiohead's Morning Bell and it's pretty awesome.

I am a huge music person. I would shrivel up and die if I didn't have music. Music speaks to my heart and soul and mind. That sounds corny but I really can't think of a way to explain what good music does to me.

I have my favorites-Radiohead, Wilco, Modest Mouse, Muse, A Fine Frenzy, Keane, Arcade Fire, Blue October- and many many others. And I love them all. They all have their own special meanings, favorite lines, best songs.

Radiohead is probably my top favorite followed closely by Muse. But Nickel Creek is my band. I love every one of their songs so much. They all mean things to me and the beauty of them satisfies my musical cravings. No other band brings tears to my eyes with their music the way they do.

The title of my blog is from my favorite song, Hanging By a Thread. This song is my song.

I'm going to give up rambling and trying to put my confused feelings into words now and just enjoy the music.

Much love,
Shay

New Years Resolutions

2012-01-02T15:00:00.000-08:00

Today is the first Monday of the new year. A great day to get up, take charge, and conquer the world right?
Wrong!
Apparently it's a great day to wake up with a killer headache and an upset stomach...

Oh well... I've been consoling myself with no food, lots of coffee and Advil, Christmas letters, and The Apocalypse War. I may even get some writing done today!

So it's 2012 now. It didn't really hit me till I was sitting in Church listening to the sermon. New Years has never really meant that much to me till now. But you know what? It's a clean slate! A new year is like a blank sheet of paper and now I need to decide what to write on it.

I'm twenty, I have a job, fantastic friends, a great Church, and my family. So what are my goals for this year? What am I going to do with myself? I hardly even thought about making resolutions till yesterday but then I came up with a whole bunch.

Basically it comes down to this. Last year was pretty good. Actually the best year I've ever had. So, now I'm going to make this year the best I've ever had! This may sound silly or cliche but I'm going to be a better person this year.

Anyways, here are my 2012 resolutions.

1. Start a savings account with a certain percentage of every paycheck orig into it. Now that I've finally got a job I can really start saving for my future.

2. Read my Bible every day. This was my only resolution last year and I've kept it. I'm in the middle of Jeremiah now.

3. No regrets. I may not be able to keep this one completely but I know I can do better.

4. Be healthier. Drink more water specifically...

5. Finish my book. And start research on the next one I have planned.

I think that's it for now... But it's a good start. :-)

Happy New Years everyone!

Premediation

2012-01-01T06:35:00.000-08:00

The condition of the photographic image has been worrying me. So much so that I wrote on twitter on January 1st 2012: ‘In a world where anyone can make an image: Refuse.’

I have been noting the proliferation of commercial images and more, the way that software programmes have taken on a professionalisation of the generation of images. And the public through the lesser programmes, with their lesser tendency to professionalisation is generating near professional images - Another way of saying this is that the public is beginning to know what the hidden tropes of image making are.

A trope is of course not hidden, it’s there for all to see. It’s the cliche in action, the tendency towards order in a sea of chaos. Where we, the one hundred thousand monkeys, press the keys of the typewriters a sufficient number of times to imitate something that was once considered great.

A hidden trope is the mechanics behind the magicians art. It’s the quotidian gestures that put together seem to be magical. Saying that, there are of course photographers and cinematographers, who transcend the tricks and tropes of the form - but only a few.

So if we know how to generate impossibly beautiful images and saturate the world with them, do we then risk desensitising ourselves to the beauty of the image?

Of course we do, so then we re-invent the form again and again - and this reinvention takes the form of the opposite tendencies to create new tropes and tricks to create something new. The cinematographer or photographer who realises this eternal round of invention and reinvention innovates and creates the new form first.

'Remediation' is the word used to describe how an incoming media form is met with the thinking of the paradigm conditions by the prior media form - but what word would describe the atrophying of the medium just before the introduction of the new medium" Premediation? And is one of the conditions necessary for the formulation of the new medium its rendition as cliched by overuse?

A Kind of Wonder

2011-12-02T01:22:00.000-08:00

In the last century the iconic image was more prolific due to the lower level of production of images generally. Now the tsunami of images and the fact that the nature of the iconic has been identified and therefore disempowered by both its own ubiquity and the ubiquity of the image in general, renders the newly iconic almost impossible to produce.

Cartier-Bressons ‘definitive moment’, that moment that identifies the essential image that characterises the moment that is available to the photographer had she or he the technique to capture it, and Conrad Hall’s confusingly titled ‘photographic moment’, given that he was a cinematographer, are available for all to achieve as technique has been quantised, digitaised and made ready for popular use via an availability through the 'professionalisation' of software. Naturally, when software developers could increase functionality in software, they did and this lead to the software outputting the semblance of the professional with the person addressing the software having very little professionalism - as professionalism is much more that 'the look of a thing'. Training in higher educational institutions took on the need to familiarise their student with 'the look of the qualitative' and utilised these software solutions so that an apparently ‘more professional’ trainee might be produced for the job market place. Equally trainees met this new level of training with enthusiasm and mass technique and mass aspiration to be the single producer of the iconic rose to meet the challenge. But as the Italians rightly say: 'Pochi sono chiamati, ancora rispondere a molte' - Meaning:

‘Few are called, yet many answer’.

Conrad Hall maintained that each still frame in a shot should have photographic quality (approaching Cartier's Definitive Moment in certain senses) but mainly in compositional quality, so that between the beginning frame of a shot and its end frame, all frames in between as the cameras eye roams across the scene should have the highest compositional quality, as well as the ‘correct’ play of light and subject activity. Hall was saying that even when the cameras eye roams across what could be called abstract compositions, because the subject cannot always be in frame, if the camera when behind a post for instance then the image produced should be like that of an abstract painter, perfect in all of its attributes.It should follow that the ubiquity and availability of high quality equipment and training to a high skill level makes available to all, this level of awareness of the construction of the image.

If the craft cannot be applied whilst in the act of capture - it’s ok as new functionalities of composition are available in programmes that fix reality. Take 'After Effects' for instance, there’s not much that cannot be rearranged in this programme when aligned and data exchanged with Photoshop, so that what was not achieved in the craft act can be genrated in ‘post’. Post meaning: the situation when one has time to think and dwell on construction of all the elements so that they appear to have been produced in the act of capture. This is of course both tautological and impossible.

But the world calls us to act when acts are necessary and craft acts need be realised when that moment calls. Post construction of the iconic is false as it is pre-conceived and post-conceived - realised from a position of understanding ubiquity and cliche, yet without the discriminative ability that stops its production. It speaks of what once was iconic and tries to duplicate what others have done before and in its replication in a plastic medium and renders images non-iconic from lack of application of the taste that would be the very thing in the moment of capture that resisted cliche.

But post analysis is simply that and it is a form of dull and stultifying practice which renders its compositions also dull and that itself stultifies the production of the sense in us that is a response to the observation of the iconic. A kind of wonder.

The ready ability to respond to the world at the moment when the world produces the circumstances for the production of the iconic comes from continuous practice and a conscious awareness and the desire to stand on the verge of excitement at the possibility of its production. This excitement to visit this moment through the medium of realisation is what any craftsperson can utilise to elevate their practice to art.

The Tipping Point

2011-12-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

Two hundred thousand years ago, in a land none of us would recognise, ancient modern humans emerged and began to roam the planet Earth, leaving behind hauntingly beautiful cave paintings tens of thousands of years old. Paintings we still do not understand. Sadly they shed no clear light on the lives of our oldest ancestors, we do not know how they really lived, what they truly believed, or if they were even trying to tell us something with their paintings - deemed by most experts to be nothing more than abstract art. Perhaps one day we will find a key to decipher their paintings, but until then, their distant lives continue to remain a shadowy mystery to us, their descendants.

Giving Thanks at a ridiculous hour…

2011-11-24T00:58:00.000-08:00

So much for getting a good nights sleep tonight… :P I'm hoping to go Good Friday shopping on Friday, possibly staying up all night Thursday night so I wanted to sleep well tonight. Not working out so well right now.

So… I thought I'd wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving!

Also, here's my list of things that I'm thankful for.

1. Calms… I took four. Hopefully they'll help me get to sleep.
2. This touchpad which enables me to do this post.
3. My family of course.
4. My fantastic, fantabulous, wonderful friends. Benny, Katy, Daniel, Wes, Nathan, Caleb, Bethany, Beka, Juli, Scott, Suzy-I love you guys!
5. My amazing job!
6. My Church
7. Portland
8. Turkey
9. Coffee :P
10. Christmas music :D

Ok, I'm going to try sleeping again. :P

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Gave up...

2011-11-21T00:16:00.000-08:00

I sort of gave up. :P

Today I not only watched White Christmas, I also set up my Pandora Christmas stations.

So.... I can spread the cheating here are some pictures. I hope they make you as excited as they made me!

Merry Early Christmas everyone!!!

♥♥♥

Shay

I can't wait…

2011-11-20T00:20:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm kind of really cheating right now… The radio station that's playing in my room right now is the Christmas music station. I'm terrible. You're not supposed to listen to Christmas music till the day after Thanksgiving. Now, just for the record, I myself did not actually turn this on. My sister Fiona did. But I'm still quite guilty because instead of getting up and switching the station I'm sitting here revelling in its beautiful awesomeness…… sigh…

my co-worker mentioned to my today that it felt like this year Christmas seemed to have been rushing in even more than last year. I've been thinking maybe it's because we need it more this year than we did last year. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and starting to notice more things but it seems to me that our country is especially messed up and depressed this year. And December and Christmas is the month with "Peace on earth and good will towards men." How could you not want to rush that along? I mean it is "The most wonderful time of the year…"

I know that I am rather obsessed with Christmas. Every year about this time I start getting this antsy feeling and then the first time I hear a Christmas song or see a Christmas tree, or hear those Salvation Army bells I get so excited it's almost impossible to keep it all inside.

I love Christmas. Absolutely adore it. Every year the morning after Thanksgiving I get the house all cleaned and I unpack all of the decorations. I spend the day wrestling with Christmas lights and drinking hot chocolate and listening to Christmas music.

Needless to say I am super excited for Christmas. Especially since this year I have a job and can actually afford to buy people good presents. :-P

Soon to come… a post packed full of Christmas gorgeousness…

Ultimate Christmas Wishlist

2011-11-15T23:17:00.000-08:00

Daniel from The Anonymous Antagonist was reminding me that I had not done my Ultimate Christmas Wishlist yet, so.... Here goes! (By the way, if I haven't said so already... You should really go visit his blog! It's awesome!)

$100 American Eagle gift card. Is that lame? :P

Nebulous Kingdom's 2012 Calender

An iheartfink dress

A pretty camera.......

A pretty computer............

A pretty car......................

Clinique :P

Dominion

And.... that's all I can think of right now. :P

At the moment I'm enjoying a cup of hot chocolate. The first cup of the season. It's SO GOOD!

Now! I am off to go work on my book some more. :)

Shay ♥

Disposable Life

2011-11-15T07:25:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make. I used to be different...quite a bit different to the person I am today. What makes writing this blog so powerful for me personally is that every day I am forced to remember the person I used to be, the choices I made and the beliefs I upheld, even when others shared good reasons with me to choose and believe otherwise. It is very hard to write this post, because no one likes to be seen in a bad light, but I believe the grief I feel in sharing how I used to be is less important than the message of this post. So I will do this, I will share how I used to be, and what happened to change me, and why I cannot ever return to the person I used to be.

Six years ago...
Read more »

Creating Prosperity - How To Imagine Your Desires to Be True

2011-10-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

What is it you desire to have in your life? Do you want wealth, fame, love, etc? You can have what you desire, but you must take some very clear and concrete steps in order to bring these desires into reality for your own life. The key to being able to create prosperity and turn your desires into reality is to follow these steps all the way through to the end and never stop believing it will happen. If you are specific in your desires, state them in the present and in the positive, know and feel it before you have it and celebrate along the way your desires will manifest into reality for you.

Be specific
Whenever you begin the process of manifesting a desire into reality you must first start by making the desire as clear and specific as possible. I want more money is not a specific desire. I am thankful for having $10,000 in extra passive income by September 1st 2011 is specific. The more specific you are in the desire the easier it will be to manifest it. Give an exact amount, or the exact color, make and year of the car, etc. Give a date by which you will have manifested this desire. Always be as specific and clear as possible.

Be Present
The second key when stating your desires is to make sure you are stating them in the present. If you want to manifest a desire you must act as if you already have it and if you already have it you would not be talking about it in the future. I know I said to give a deadline in the previous section, which is still true, but you still want the wording to be in the present. Not "I will have an extra $10,000..." but "I am grateful that I have an extra $10,000...". That simple little difference in wording can be the difference between successful manifestation and not getting what it is you desire.

Be Positive
In the world of manifestation we receive what we focus on. Too often, when people are defining their desires they define it as what they no longer want to have. "I want to lose 40 pounds" or "I will have my debt paid off..." etc. These do not work because you are still focused on what you do not want. If you desire is to lose weight do not focus on the weight you will loose, focus on the weight you will weigh. "I am grateful that I weigh 135 pounds" or for paying of debt "I am grateful that all of my income is free to be spent as I desire." Do not focus on what you do not want any longer, only focus on that which you want.

Know it before you have it
The three steps above lead to this, knowing you have fully manifested and actually have the item you desire, before you see its reality in your life. We only receive that which we know we already have. I know that can be a challenge for some, but trust me, it is the truth when it comes to manifestation. So do not think you have your desire, do not hope you have it, do not even believe you have it, you must KNOW you have it, only then will it appear in your life.

Feel it before you have it
Going along with knowing you have it is the emotional and feeling aspect of manifestation. In order to manifest your desire you must know you have it at a visceral level. You cannot just know you have it intellectually, you have to have emotionally experienced that it means to have your desire manifest real for you. How does it feel opening your mailbox and having it full of checks each day? How does it feel sitting behind the wheel of that car with the top down cruising down the road? How does it feel holding the one you love in your arms? Feel it and then you will have it.

Celebrate along the way
I know you are planning to celebrate when your desire is fully manifest in your life, but that is not the only time you should be celebrating. You need to celebrate each time a small step towards your desire occurs. If you see the exact car you desire drive by, celebrate the fact that it is that much closer to being in your hands. If you get an extra $50 in the mail one day, celebrate like mad, it is the first installment of that $10,000. So no matter how small, be sure to celebrate each and every step along the way.

If you put into action these 6 simple steps you will start to see the law of attraction become a reality and see your dreams become reality for you. All you have to do is know it will happen and follow these steps and get out of your own way, because all your desires are on their way.

Limitation As a Means of Learning To Be Free

2011-10-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

In anything you do you impose a set of limits upon yourself. Those limits define what you are trying to do.

Driving a car you are limited to a car and the road you are on unless you are driving off road. By doing the act of driving you restrict yourself to being in a car. However, you also free yourself so that you can get from one place to another quickly... assuming you are using roads and the roads are relatively clear.

In the act of creating roads, we create limits. We define or divide the countryside into parcels. Those same limits help us to define places, and they help us to move between them.

Imagine creating a series of roads so that you could go easily from one place to another and in the process learn what was in between each place. Imagine then that once you knew the lay of the land you could get rid of the roads and go to each place by walking, flying or teleporting. You and the land would no longer be encumbered with roads, but because you used the roads to explore, you now know where you can go, and even better, those places serve as a jumping of point for further exploration.

While it is difficult to get rid of roads once they are in place, we can use our mind to create limits so that we can learn within those limits and then afterward we can get rid of them.

Learning Clearly Defined Ideas
In learning the idea of driving, you can learn efficiently, with a minimum of effort but not "no effort" by breaking down what you are trying to learn into meaningful elements. You can learn those elements to the point that you don't have to think about them in order to do them. As an example, practice using the brakes, then the steering wheel, the gearbox and clutch and then the accelerator.

The important thing is to clearly define what you are learning so that you can recognize when you have learned it and so that you can use what you have learned.

To make this process more efficient, practice grouping what you are learning into small enough packages that you can retain what you are practicing in your short term memory. Then as you practice, what you are learning then becomes a part of you. You move what you are learning into your "permanent memory."

Once you've learned how to do each action independent of each other you no longer need to divide them from each other. Instead you can use them individually or together depending on the situation at the time.
In part this is because you clearly defined "small units of meaning" which you then made a part of yourself.

The idea of creating limits is so that we can learn what is within those limits so that we no longer need the limits. You can make each thing a part of yourself so that it is no longer limited. Limits are a way of learning so that you can use what you have learned freely.

Getting back to the idea of learning how to steer, brake and accelerate, once learned you can use these elements while driving. Because you don't have to think about them in order to do them you can thus handle the change that is on the road whether it is a curve in the road or the traffic that is on it.

Frameworks for Learning
In yoga or martial arts, we learn a way of doing a pose or action according to a "well defined" idea. That idea is limited but the idea itself isn't the goal. It can be a framework for learning a pose which afterward we can vary from. It is a starting point. Real freedom is when we can define the pose or action depending on our circumstances at the time.

In martial arts we practice forms, but the form itself is a means of practicing the elements it contains. In a real fight you would use the elements as the circumstances dictate. Imagine each technique you learn becoming a part of you, unlimited so that you can use it freely as the circumstances dictate.

The Dance of Shiva
In dance of shiva the limits are a set of positions and the movements between them. The positions are clearly defined, delineated, a set of limits, and these positions in turn help to define the movements between them.

The goal of the dance of shiva is to learn the movements necessary so that you can connect each position to each other. Then you can freely "dance" between these positions. The more positions you learn, the more connections you create within your brain. All points pertinent to dance of shiva become connected to each other.

The positions and movements of the dance of shiva can be learned in small easy to practice packages. The more you learn the more free you become, but because the dance of shiva is so simple (and yet so complex) the freedom you develop in learning the dance of shiva makes it easier to learn things like martial arts. The practice itself lends itself to the ability to being able to quickly define and redefine limits so that you can learn and understand more efficiently.

You may find that your ability to be present is greater, especially when doing the dance of shiva regularly.

Eventually, with enough practice, you learn all possible movements to the point where you can do them freely, without having to think about them. This "patterning" is reflected in the brain. You may notice as a result the ability to define limits clearly and to think within those limits freely. And if those limits are inappropriate, you can then select new limits without getting stuck in the notion of one way of looking at things.

In martial arts, as well as in life in general, this mental rewiring, courtesy of the dance of shiva, can make handling change as well as creating change easier whether you are battling an opponent, learning a form, solving a problem or creating a piece of art.

We Are The 99%

2011-10-24T08:10:00.000-07:00

'These protestors, who are actually few in number, have contributed nothing. They're parasites. They're pure, genuine parasites. Many of them are bored, trust-funded kids, obsessed with being something, being somebody. Meaningless lives, they want to matter.'

Rush Limbaugh

Everything we know about our history - everything man has recorded up until this present moment - all of it has taken six thousand years. Every single one of those years were based on greed. Every one of those years functioned under the mandate of a priviledged few controlling entire nations. The entire history of man has been centered on the tenets of greed, corruption and destruction; every century rife with its own particular injustices, cruelties and murder.

Fashion Loves

2011-10-22T23:39:00.000-07:00

One place I would love to own a dress from is Shabby Apple. They've got so many adorable designs!

After Class

Overboard

Syncopation

Boogie Woogie

V.P.

Beauty Mark

I can't believe I don't own a black dress yet....

But I think my favorite at the moment is the Extra Credit dress. SO CUTE!!!

Extra Credit

Midnight

2011-10-22T04:37:00.000-07:00

Impossibly, something absolutely perfect happened yesterday night whist watching Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’.

For years film and video has been trying to be self-reflexive, to truly encode the fact of the making in relation to the audience. This is about how the subject, the makers and the audience are bound together in a group agreement to suspend disbelief about the act of watching a fiction of some kind, about how the cleverer works encoded this into the subject matter to reveal some deeper truth when you are in the depths of immersion in the fiction of the piece.

In the middle of the film Gil Peters goes back in time and meets Salvador Dali, Man Ray and Louis Bunuel.

Gil: I'm Gil, nice to meet you. It's a pretty name.
Bunuel responds: A man in love with a woman from a different era. I see a photograph!
Man Ray: I see a film!
Gil: I see an insurmountable problem!

At that exact moment the projector in the cinema turned off and the safety lights came up and I was amazed that Woody Allen had arranged for thousands of cinemas across the globe to do this in every performance of the film. We sat for a moment and I mused on the nature of going to see films and engaging in fictions and what immersion and suspension of disbelief means.

A voice emitted from the projection box that ‘we’ll get the film on as soon as possible’. How amazing that Woody had issued dialogue for the cinemas to speak. Then the sound came up to let us back into the film gently, then the image, then the lights went down. What orchestration. I got back into the film.

Later I went to the box office and they told me that the electricity in the small city where I live had gone off at that exact moment.

You couldn’t have planned it...

Got a job!!!

2011-10-18T20:49:00.000-07:00

So finally, after two years of looking, I have got a job. It's at Things Remembered and it still seems strange to me...

But I've worked two days so far. Well, I've trained for two days. I really love it so far. My position is engraver which means I work the engraving machines and put the messages on the jewelry and boxes and watches and whatever else.

So far in my training I've learned to use the machines, engrave on metal, engrave on plastic, and engrave pens. I've also learned how to engrave on different shapes like hearts and stars. But it's a lot of fun and I really like my manager and the assistant manager.

But yeah, that's about my only update at the moment...

After talking to Daniel from The Anonymous Antagonist, (Which you should totally check out because I think he writes one of the best blogs in existence!) I'm thinking about writing a short story and posting it here. I think it would help my inspiration and motivation a lot if I actually finished something. Maybe then I would be able to get farther on my main story...

Oh! Also this Friday I'm putting together a costume dance as a fundraiser for my Church's school. I'm making Benny and I gypsy costumes for it. Hopefully I'll get them done in time... :P Actually not hopefully! I know I'll get them done in time. So there!

:P I'll try and get pictures of them on Friday.

And now... Because it is Tuesday!!!

Oh my gosh I love this song and video so much!!! :D It's kind of like our house. :D Except that we live on the corner of our street.

Have a fantastic week all!

2011-10-16T18:38:00.000-07:00

I finally finished Clannad After Story the day before yesterday. I don't think I have ever seen a tv show series that moved me the way this one did. I was literally sobbing through all of the last five episodes. Well, actually through most of the second half. But the ending wasn't sad, it was beautiful. That may sound weird when talking about an anime series but... It really was.

And the music for it is lovely. :)

I don't want to give anything away, but if you do watch it and get to a certain point and want to stop... Don't! Go all the way through to the end. :)

Anyways, I really loved that show and recommend it to anyone who doesn't mind crying a little. Or a lot as in my case...

I have a longer post coming soon hopefully. :)

Love!
Shay

Apocalyptia?

2011-10-13T11:52:00.000-07:00

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

The Sign of the Four

At the beginning of this year, the media began reporting on the phenomenon of mass animal deaths that were occuring almost simultaneously all over the world. Frightening to read, the articles and photos strongly resembled the tension building scenes from a typical Hollywood apocalyptic blockbuster - the scenes that occur right before the destruction of the planet unfolds on an epic scale.

In countries all around the world hundreds to thousands of dead birds fell out of their skies, for no obvious reason. Reports poured in daily of thousands to millions of dead fish washing up onto beaches in both hemispheres. And there was more to come - mysterious livestock deaths would occur in the hundreds and whales dead of starvation would wash ashore in waters far from their natural habitat. During the most bountiful season, inexplicably starving animals would attack humans as food and sharks would attack swimmers in unprecendented numbers. This was bad. Really bad. And we weren't sitting in a comfortable cinema chair with popcorn in one hand and a Coke in the other, this was happening for real.

Catching up

2011-10-05T16:17:00.000-07:00

So I think I've killed my muse... killed it stone dead.

I thought when Autumn came I would start being able to write again... The smell of the air, the rain, and the color of the leaves almost always make me need to write.

Like right now... I'm forcing myself to write this. I have a cup of warm coffee next to me, a fire going in the fireplace, and my inspirational playlist going. Usually that should be all it takes! Especially since it's raining outside at the moment.

Well, I guess I just need to try and work past this.

Choir started again two weeks ago. It's amazing to think how different this year is from when I first started it. In a good way completely.

So far the songs we're learning aren't all that interesting though.

The choir will be singing at the Grotto for the second year in a row which means we have to learn about 45 minutes worth or music. Normally I adore starting choir and learning Christmas music straight off. It's like cheating since normally I don't allow myself to indulge in any Christmas music till the day after Thanksgiving. But this year none of the music has that distinct Christmas feel to it... Hopefully some of the stuff we start tonight will be more like it.

So far we've started learning:

And the Glory of the Lord from The Messiah Choruses by Handel
In the Bleak Mid-Winter (but the melody isn't the same as the traditional one)

Shepherd's Star

Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring by Bach

Ok, that last one is a little more fun. Also it's pretty easy.

We're also learning Sing to the Lord by Vivaldi

We All Believe in One True God

and

Except the Lord Build the House based on Psalm 127

It's kind of a lonely season of choir for me this year since my best friend has moved to Washington for his new job. He comes back most weekends but he can't come back for choir...

Anyways

Today I walked up to Joann's to try and find a gypsy pattern for a costume I'm going to make. I found one but it isn't quite what I was looking for so I'm going to look through the old costumes we've got around here and see if I can find anything I can piece together. Hopefully I'll be able to finish it before the party which is on the 21st... I'm putting together a costume dance as a fundraiser for the private school that my Church runs. Hoping plenty of people show up!

Last weekend Benny came back from Washington and Wes, Caleb, Forrest, Elisa, Benny, and I went to Portland. It was Wes' first time and Benny's second. We went to Saturday Market, Everyday Music, and ate lunch at Pizzicato.

Caleb and Wesley's first time on the bus! :D

The taco plate Benny and I split at Saturday Market :D

Benny bought a hat to keep his ears warm at his job in Washington. :) It's getting pretty cold up there.

Wesley bought a new hat that is cool.

Benny, Elisa, and Wesley being hypnotized by the spinning porch decorations.

Elisa is scarred by the singing marionettes...

Trying on cute hats :D

Caleb and Elisa :D

Benny got vinyl albums of the Shins and Wilco. He was pretty pleased with them. :)

Bus ride home

So other than the Doctor Who season ending not much has happened that I can think of... :P

Love!

Shay

Breaking Light Speed

2011-09-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

"The neutrinos had travelled at 299,798km per second, 6km a second faster than the speed of light. 'It is a tiny difference but conceptually it is incredibly important,' said Professor Antonio Ereditato, an OPERA spokesman.

September 23, 2011 ~ Just another ordinary day? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Time will tell, but if the findings presented today stand up to the rigors of peer review this otherwise insignificant date could become one of the most pivotal dates in the historical timeline of scientific discoveries.

Today, in a seminar at CERN a group of European scientists who have been running accelerator neutrino tests on the CERN CNGS beam presented the results of their findings between 2009-2011. The findings show the neutrinos to be travelling faster than the speed of light.

The Developing Language of Digital Technologies

2011-09-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

On 7th September 2011 in Los Angeles, the Directors Guild of America exhibited the new Sony F65 Camera to the Movie Industry. This is the newest flagship Digital 4k camera with an 8k imaging sensor (where 4K refers to 4000 lines of resolution - this is the gold standard because it comes near to what a 35mm negative can do in terms of resolution and detail). It is only the third 4K camera to have been made after the Red One and the Red Epic. So Why an 8k sensor though? According to the Niquist/Shannon Sampling Theorem, to derive an actual and accurate measurement of (in this case) resolution, you need twice the sampling rate to achieve a true measurement. Therefore an 8K chip delivers 4k resolution. With the F65 Sony is seeking to take the high ground of Digital Cinematography with an act constructed to displace all of its competitors.

In what follows want I want to examine this growing description of this work, a developing language with accompanying development of ideas that even the most blasé film or media student is to some degree conversant with, though their level of familiarity with the language does not necessarily mean they would understand the subject - especially as a lot of what is said by professionals is said within within metaphor. So to reveal as much of the indicators and referents to true meaning I wish to use some of the flurry of posts on the Cinematographers Mailing list on the day after the presentation of the Sony F65 as a snapshot to examine the attitudes and the developing language of those at the coal f`ce of this developing technology as well as the developing language itself.

The CML was created by well-respected UK Director of Photography. Geoff Boyle’s respect comes from amongst other things his maxim: ‘test, test, test’ which is itself pure scientific materialist values. There are various professionally oriented lists online, like the absurdly named but hugely useful (and respected) Creative Cow which deals with most professional software programmes, plus there are many other lists that are full of ‘wannabees’ or students or ex-students who wish themselves to be in professional company. Of course as these people mature then those lists also become more professional. CML however, takes no prisoners and excels at ‘flaming’: there is zero tolerance for professional stupidity - that is, asserting something if you do not know it to be true yourself through having tested the logic, or citing peer-agreed and unquestionable professional reference.

The professional practitioner has a peer-review process as stringent as the academic model, with the same outcome of loss of respect from your peers if you get this wrong. In the early days of the groundbreaking company, Red Cameras, Red used the enthusiasm of its early adopter community as a PR space to broadcast its product. CML participants looked on initially, then challenged the claims of the adherents and some would argue that this in itself was to Red’s greatest benefit - because when the CML community itself had tested and then did praise the product, the approval was worth that much more when it did approve because of its initial with-holding of approval.CML has many different Cinematography lists from lenses to grip gear, from 70mm cameras to Digital Cinematography lists and these are visited daily by people at the very top of the professional sector and who are themselves practicing in the industry, through to people who mostly stay silent to learn - from feature film cinematographers down to second or third level camera assistants or edit assistants.

In attempting to reveal the meaning within the language of these professionals my intent is to disclose what will become important for theorists and later users of the technology when it filters down to educational or commercial or domestic use. It is becoming clear that the gap between professionals and then on the bell curve, the early adopters, or early users is closing.There is a set of reasons within this function, chief amongst them is the simple fact that mass-production eventually contributed to mass-availability and then mass-demand for higher quality. There’s also Gordon Moore’s Law which states:

“The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year... Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer”. Gordon Moore, Electronics Magazine, 19th April 1965.In 1975 Moore altered his projection to a doubling every two years (1975: Progress in Digital Integrated Electronics).

Theorists seek to sit outside the bell curve of adoption of technology, sometimes between research labs and research initiatives and professionals. Sometimes they create ideas prior to the research labs. Theorists evoke what happens in the world or in a specific domain through the use of language and the issue in this article is language, how it develops, who uses it, whether it informs thought, or whether new ideas generate new language - in a co-dependency of arising, as Noam Chomsky would have it.So we’re now at a moment in September 2011 where we have larger chips, faster recording mechanisms that handle what data those chips output. But higher resolution isn’t everything (as we’ll see within the comments that I’ll present you with below). Colour bit depth, accuracy of rendition in both capture in photosites and how those photosites are ‘read’ - for instance was the recording 8, 10, 12, 14 or 16 bits of colour - or higher? And frame rate for smoothness of movement plus increased immersion in the display device - but also what the dynamic range of the entire image is. Does it replicate the functions of the eye? If the camera does, does the display device? And so on and so forth.

LANGUAGE, REFERENCES, NOTES
So there’ll be a degree of jargon in what follows, meta-language and meta-ideas. I’ll not annotate at every moment, but occasionally I will try explain the ideas, plus I’ll summarise at the end. Please pursue the information even if the numbers go beyond your attention span (or will to live) and these will be revealed to be either true, sleight of hand or untrue (due to a distortion of truth). If you can stay with the argument, I shall seek to reveal the discourse between professionals and shine a light on the potential future meaning of the exchange between them.Please also refer to my online oral history research resource: A Verbatim History of the Aesthetics, Technologies and Techniques of Digital CInematography, which catalogues a global view of the developments in this new subject area by asking practitioners, theorists, Cinematographers, Artists and Professionals who use this technology what they think this technology is, what it does and what changes it is causing to happen. It can be found at: http://www.flaxton.btinternet.co.uk/indexHDresource.htmLastly, I found myself writing extensive notes in the text to make what was written understandable, then I realised that these interrupted the narrative of the professionals musing on what was going on and what would arise from these technological developments. I pulled them out and placed them in the typical footnote position, then as asterisked notes at the end of this article - yet again the interruption was huge.

So I’ve now reorganised the entire article so that the days exchange is followed by a section called: Preliminary Summation, then a section entitled ‘Technical Notes as an Element of the Argument’ which is followed by a conclusion (or Coda), which itself is a set of parameters, to be read as just as informational or revealing as the rest of the language. I note this all here because I’m seeing the form that I’m writing within, changing before my eyes.

THE DAYS EXCHANGE BEGINS
On Wednesday, 7th Sep 2011 00:53:38 -0400 (EDT) the strand of exchange of ideas began on the cml-digital-raw-log digest recipients cml-digital-raw-log. Tim Sassoon, a respected professional grader or colorist, begins the exchange by quoting an online mail-out from Bandpro, suppliers of professional equipment:

"Band Pro is now accepting pre-orders for the new Sony F65 digital cinema camera. With Sony's F65 Introductory Pack you can be one of the first to get their new 4K camera when it starts shipping in January 2012. And, with the full compliment of accessories that are included in the pack price of $85,000 you'll be ready to shoot 16-bit 4K footage out of the box. The Sony F65 camera utilizes an 8K difital sensor..."Tim comments:“I gotta say, that's pretty aggressive pricing for Sony. Will Arri step up to the 4K plate? I'd be willing to bet that by 2014, shooting or posting features at 2K will be very passe”.

So here Tim is predicting the end of 2k by 2014 - and yet for most people who are still shooting at around 1920 x 1080, they’re shooting with equipment using Gop structured pictures (where only some of the data is passed in Groups of Pictures from capture into processing before being falsely recombined into full frames to display - but of course, it may again then be torn apart back into GoP structures for internet streaming before display). So for the more purist data engineer, these are heavily compressed images at the outset and therefore not worthy of use.

Here Carlos Acosta Date: Tuesday, 6th Sep 2011 22:25:45 -0700 talks about the levels of data this sort of device (the F65) will generate and how we deal with that. He also compliments and chides Sony on being formerly a closed organisation but also compliments Red Cameras on opening Sony up (against their will!). He corrects the comment supposedly from Mike Most:

“My favorite comment at the event (from, I believe, Mike Most): Jim Jannardknocked $100,000 off what would have been the price of the F65."Carlos answers: ‘That was me Bob ;-) What I saw tonight is Sony descending from the clouds looking to join the boots on the ground. It's kind of about face for them to even offer an "open" architecture. Of course we really don't know what the promise of openness really means any more than we know how much time fits on a 1TB data card. Being realistic, if it was totally done, it would be delivering right now. They obviously covered the lack of critical details with slick power point and and funny jokes. Kidding aside, $85k for a system of this caliber ain’t bad at all. The images were really fantastic. I suspect the Mike Most will have his questions about data format and other workflow issues answered. It will generate stunning quantities of data pushing many users to shoot in HD anyway”.

Within this paragraph is held the information that Sony are now following Red in the development of their cameras. Preciously they used to ‘prove’ the product befoire releasing it. The response from the professional users was often that engineers had designed the camera and consequently professionals had to make all sorts of adjustments to make the equipment fit for use. Here Sony are now releasing beta level equipment as evinced by there being a lack of a complete post-production path, but like Red they’ll now rely on the good offices of the professional community to sort this out. The euphemism one could use here is ‘consulting with the community’ to bring it on side - equally one could criticise both Red and now Sony for releasing equipment into professional usage that doesn’t actually work!

Michael Most on Tue, 06th September 2011 22:05:36 -0700 quotes Bob Kertesz:“My favorite comment at the event (from, I believe, Mike Most): Jim Jannardknocked $100,000 off what would have been the price of the F65." (note: Jim Jannard owns Red Cameras)”.

Mike Most then responds:“Actually, I didn't say that. But I agree with it. The economics are changing, no doubt about it. But the nature of the Moore's Law rate of technical advancement has now dictated very different economies of scale with regard to technical devices like modern digital cinema cameras. Since these things are effectively obsoleted in a relatively short time, the purchase price has to be considerably lower to account for the shorter shelf life. I've never really talked to Jim Jannard about that, but despite his "obsolescence obsolete" statement, I think he foresaw this, and one of the reasons he came up with his dramatically lower price points is because he understands it. He has been remarkably generous in his upgrade policies, but I think he understands the implications of faster development creating faster obsolescence very, very well”.

Another post from Mike Most, Date: Tuesday, 06th September 2011 22:17:56 -0700 quotes Tim Sassoon:“I seriously hope they don't roll their own de-Bayering accelerator, as threatened at Cinegear and like RED, and instead write to NVidia CUDA engines”.Most carries on: .”..And BTW, since Sony is claiming that the sensor doesn't actually use a Bayer pattern, we probably shouldn't be calling in debayering in the first place. Maybe we should call it de-rotation debayering. Or maybe de-Hyper Hadding. Or maybe just image reconstruction, although that just sounds so SMPTE....”

Here Mike Most is reconstructing or inventing language to try to deal with the changes. Debayering is the system used to reconstruct colour information from a Black and White signal (effectively). Color filters are placed over the photosites in a specific pattern and then read back in post and reconstructed into a colour set within a certain colour space. The colour space of a printer, your optical system whist reading this, and a plasma display are all entirely different. So coherent systems that maintain colour throughout the chain are a necessity. Hyper Hading is a reference to early chips that where enabled with hole accumulation iode Sensors - it’s another strategy to turn light into data, into displayed light once more. In fact his reference to image reconstruction, though he jokes about it sounding like the SMPTE organisational way of referring to things, is quite apposite in this instance. It describes what actually happens.

Sony have always played this kind of game however - in the early days in it’s tussle with Kodak it named it’s Digital Video system: Cine Alta. The use of ‘Cine’ being a direct reference to film to create the beginnings of commercial displacement that would eventually win the commercial electronic corporations war against the photo-chemical corporations.It’s important to discuss Sony’s camera naming policy as it’s a key component of their commercial strategy to supersede the photochemical corporations by referring back to a film past. The two preceding cameras were the F23 and then the F35. Both these cameras costs hundreds of thousands of dollars - but as you’ll see, the F65 is under $100,000. For years Cinematographers had clamored for a 35mm sized chip so that all the benefits of 35mm could be exploited - after all, that had been the optical proactive in Hollywood since the beginning. 35mm optics automatically gave the kind of cinema we were used too. You know the shot where the two lovers kiss and the background is out of focus thus placing a spotlight and emphasis on the moment? That was due mostly to the physical pathway derived from 35mm optics. Though any Cinematographer could produce that shot on any format film or video (using different techniques to limit depth of focus).

Up to and including the F23 Sony had been wedded to a smaller chip size (usually half inch but in this case 3 x two thirds of an inch chips) and they’d also been wedded to CCD’s as opposed to CMOS chips. CCD’s discharge line by line and CMOS discharge the whole sensor in one go - there are various physical artifacts related to both processes. When Sony created the F35 they adopted a 35mm sensor CCD sensor - thus coming into line with both Red Cameras and Arriflex with their D21 and latterly the much praised Alexa system in terms of optics. But the F65 changes to a CMOS sensor and also refers to the double size of 35mm which is 70 mm, but abbreviated to 65mm. In industrial film production 70mm was physically slashed into 35mm, then into 16mm, then into 8mm. All of the variants which use the term ‘Super’, simply get rid of one row of perforations and therefore enable the frame size to become larger taking up the space where one row of perforations used to exist - surprisingly this renders an extra 40 per cent imaging area.However, the confusion employed by Sony is that the F65 is in fact a 35mm sized Sensor.

There is currently one type of digital cinema camera with a 65 mm sensor, the Phantom 65 made by Vision Research. Paradoxically this has a 34K sensor of 4096 x 2440 pixels and of course this has larger photosites due to the sensor size.

Mitch Gross on the same listing comments on Alan Lasky’s comment:On September 7th , 2011, at 1:10 AM, "Alan Lasky" wrote:“It is good to see Sony loosening up a bit”. “I think the Reason there is not a clear message on post path is that Sony has chosen not to ram one down everyone's throat. Unlike the past, Sony's mission this time is to be very open in how the system can be supported. Yes you can integrate with current SR workflows, but you can also use all of the various 3rd party systems because Sony will provide SDK information for them to ingest the files. This is very much like Phantom CINE files or ARRIRAW, but a bit different than REDRAW because RED makes everyone incorporate their de-Bayering engine to insure that the process is consistent. One other difference with F65 is that it is a different pattern than Bayer mask, so that might take some more math work from the various processing systems out there, but again, Sony will provide the information. It's obvious that they have a way to extract the information beautifully. The download station has 10G Ethernet. We have an onset download station we built for The Phantom CineStation download dock that can empty a 512G CineMag in under an hour using 10GE. I would expect similar times from the Sony system. And $85K for the complete camera with the shutter, VF, recorder, a mag and the download station? Yowsa, compare that to the $300K system of the F35 a few years back! Killer deal, Sony”.

So here in amongst the detail is the debate on the way technology is taking up the call for faster, more qualitative technological response to the demands of the professionals who want better and better images. When Jim Jannard introduced the Red camera, it was as if in an irritated response to corporations like Sony who kept their systems to themselves. Here it becomes clear that these technicians: Cinematographers, colourists, graders, digital imaging technicians and editors truly understand the medium and are completely competent to understand the problems of the designers. It just might be that the cultural production of analogue and digital video, within the Asian market place suffered from the lack of openness of the societies that produced the technology. Equally however, the early European and American versions of that same technology were less user friendly than the Asian - or rather, Japanese, versions. So in the comment above Mitch Gross is discussing both cultural and technological issues - not to mention that both these strands of discussions are in the end in service to the aesthetic delivery of images into our world.

Michael Brennan a DP from Melbourne and also the editor of High Definition Magazine takes first the cultural and then the technological points up on Wed, 7 Sep 2011 20:56:08 +0100:“Of course we really don't know what the promise of openness really means any more than we know how much time fits on a 1TB data cardHe then quotes from various Sony pdfs;

“Series S55 cards (capable of 5.5 Gbps) will work at 2k/HD as well as 4k, "non 4k cards" series S25 (2.5 Gbs) will work at 2k and HD but apparently 4k at 23.98psf only.1TB SR-1TS55 card can store:59 minutes of f65 raw 16bit 4k 23.98psf29 minutes of f65 raw (4k x 1k) 16 bit 120fps572 minutes of HD SR lite 422, 23.98psf160 minutes of HD SR HQ 444, 23.98psfIn case of 3D recording record time will be halved”.

This is of course very technical and requires one to have a mathematical bent - but one is listening in to the metalanguage of the technicians - the twitter of the birds - that seek to bring advanced technology to us. He goes on (read this as if concrete poetry):“So three hours of SR HQ on a card that can be transferred in around 30 minutes. Note that there a two recorders one that does HD/2k the other that does 4K (and maybe HD too??) The SR-R 1000 is a portable 8TB drive with 4 x card slots. Takes 30 minutes to transfer 1 TB, can transfer 4 x cards at a time, looks like a tape deck. The SRPC-5 "transfer station" is a 1U form factor card reader with gigabit ethernet "to compliment existing on set data ingest" and a HDSDI out (if you want to transfer to HDCAM SR deck). Compact card reader is SR-PC4 with one slot and Gbe or optional 10Gbe (third party) and has optional F65 raw monitoring. Can copy direct to Esata drive via optional Esata interface. This is the one of most interest for use in the field, not sure of what the transfer time would be.....”...and then the characteristic joke to alleviate the compression of attention:“At last a Dcinema camera with a ND filter wheel :)”

This is all difficult to read - perhaps like a translator of the early mesopotamian writings, or middle Egyptian, the translator has to find the kinds of meanings the language delivers, And no, this is not deconstruction, this is reconstruction. This is in a sense pure language that cannot deliver all of its meaning when translated. This means something in a certain kind of way to people who speak meta-language.

Mike Most sends a comment from his iPad (he’s on the move) Date: Wed, 07 Sep 2011 09:43:16 -0700 He quotes Alan Lasky who wrote:“So, I have another question regarding the F65: considering the current state of acquisition, what is the realistic target market vertical for the F65? Features? Television?”Mike responds: “Yes. Add in commercials and corporate production. Maybe even the military”. And again quotes Lasky: “My concern is that with current economic conditions being what they are the F65 may be perceived to be "too much dog for the fight" in something like episodic television”.

Mike Most again: “Not a chance. Television is it's most likely immediate market, IMHO. It's basically being positioned as a superior file based image capture device, using a familiar and respected codec, at what is essentially an Alexa-compatible price point. If you look at it as a substitute for the Alexa in the television market, you can look at recording directly to HD resolution SR files using either S-log or ACES and passing it through a rather straightforward pipeline. Despite Red's protests and despite the 8K/4K nature of the product, that's probably more than enough to get it heavily used this coming pilot season, provided Sony can produce and provided the first units prove to be as reliable as the prototypes seem to be. If anything, it's the requirements of the feature market that are more of a work in progress for the F65, in part because those workflows can be very unique on a per-picture basis, and in part because I'm far from convinced that there will be any simple, economical way to handle that amount of data. Nothing I heard last night changes that view. My feeling is that going forward, Sony will ultimately come up with at least a mathematically lossless compression scheme for the RAW data, perhaps multiple levels of compression a la Red. But I have to agree with my friend Jim Jannard that the uncompressed-only ship has already sailed.Only my opinion, though. YMMV.”

He signs: Mike Most, Colorist/Technologist, Level 3 Post, Burbank, CA.As he says at the beginning of this post: IMHO - “In my humble opinion”, which is a caveat phrase which says : I really know what I’m talking about, I have the experience and the expertise - however, I do accept that sometimes I can be wrong and please let me know if I am. There’s a lot of clues in this post. Sony has missed the uncompressed ship as it sailed three years or more ago when Jim Jannard of Red piloted the boat from the shore. Arriflex with the Alexa has grabbed the high ground because they’ve manufactured a camera more akin to Panasonic’s manufacturing response to Sony’s cameras in a previous era - the Alexa is a camera that delivers good pictures from the outset whereas Red needs work. It’s the difference between a stable mare and an unstable stallion. The other acronym Mike Most uses here is YMMV which means roughly ‘your mileage may vary’ which basically means your experience may be different, better or worse than what is described.

Here, Most responds to Jim Houston. On Sep 7, 2011, at 9:02 AM, Jim Houston wrote: “I thought the description of the strategy was very clear. There is no one-size-fits-all workflow. ... Yes, lots of vendors have lots of work to do, but the strategic approach was very clear.Most responds: “I think my original statement was a bit stronger than it should have been. I do see that Sony is basically making the data available and also making tools to interpret it available, and bringing in third party partners to do the specific implementations, and that's a strategy I can certainly agree with. I think my only real problem with what's been presented so far is that if one wants to record and preserve the original RAW data, there's nothing currently on the table to do that short of investing in petabytes of storage (an exaggeration, but for certain projects maybe not much of one). No matter how cheap storage is getting, it's still an awful lot of data to ingest, keep track of, and restore. And perhaps I've had too much Kool-Aid in the last 2 years or so, but I no longer see the need to adhere so completely to the "uncompressed is the only way" mantra. Even mathematically lossless compression would cut down those storage requirements by many terabytes on a typical feature project. And that has to be done at the camera/recording level. I still hold out hope that Sony is going to offer such a path, but I didn't hear any evidence of that last night, at least not on the RAW recording”.

And here he steps up to the mark and begins to comment on the current situation:“Like it or not, we no longer live in a world where big facilities are the sole province of high end work. And we no longer live in a world where big iron can be the only solution. One of the lessons of both Red and Alexa is that when products are brought to the market that can be handled by both big iron and desktop solutions, the market is widened, acceptance is faster, and products are championed. I think that will likely be the case with F65 recording HD sized SR files, but I'd like to see a similar path for the higher resolution material that the camera can produce, allowing smaller shops and individuals to produce 4K projects with sensible storage requirements. Red has already shown that it can be done. I'd like to see Sony take that ball and run with it a bit.Competition can be a beautiful thing.”

Here’s one of the critical issues with the development and availability of uncompressed and RAW technologies: That big iron solutions (i.e. multi-million pound post houses in the worlds capitals) are in parallel with desktop solutions (once only every MAC computers, but now as PC’s have emulated MAC developments they also can be used, as well as Linux and other platforms). Wavelet Transforms have underpinned s called lossless or Raw data and mid-2008 suddenly 4k images could be played back with only three standard hard drives ganged together, in 2006 it had taken me 8 hard drives ganged together to produce the same outcome. Wavelet’s had been available in 2005, but not with this efficacy. We are in the middle of an onward rush, a tsunami of technology.But this technology, in delivering greater resolution (as well as dynamic range and also frame rates) is alleviating some of the earlier anxieties of the move from film to video to data cinematography.

Here, Tim Sassoon comments on Mike Mosts earlier point and then brings up a critical point:In a message dated 9/7/11 11:43:49 AM, Most writes:“Sony will ultimately come up with at least a mathematically lossless compression scheme for the RAW data”Sassoon’s response is:“Remember that the larger the frame, the less significant compression artifacts are, and the more important higher bit depth is”.

This is a very important comment as it shows that anxiety is a response relative to the conditions of the time. In the early days of HD and 2K the idea of an artifact within the image produced a complete and total adherence to the idea of lossless data amongst the most serious professionals. This was related to the fact that they did have experience of the highest levels of image generation in 35mm and 65mm film. They had a history of dedication to methodologies that avoided any kind of compromise of the image generation, development and display process. This evinces itself latterly for instance, in Christopher Nolan’s adherence to the use of 65mm to generate high quality entertainment features.But of course lossless data is an impossibility because it is never really achievable: even if one retained all of the data generated (at massive storage cost), the particular criteria adopted defeats the notion of lossless-ness. What I mean here is that the paradigm governing the technical thinking of the time says that data is a costly thing to generatd. Not in monetary terms (although high levels of data do generate actual cost) but costly in terms of storage and the ability to manipulate the data for editing, grading compositing etc. Consequently generating 8 bit data with 256 samples (of a data criteria like YUV - so that’s 3 times 256) obviously generates less data than 10 bit (with 1024 samples per channel) - and so on. The real point here is that one would need an infinite bit depth to truly represent the world - but then one would reproduce the world - so what in effect, would be the point?

Mike Most comments on Tim Sassoon’s point:“Remember that the larger the frame, the less significant compression artifacts are, and the more important higher bit depth is.I think you and I are basically saying the same thing (no surprise there ;-D ), with one of us pointing out that even mathematically lossless compression is really not a requirement at these frame sizes.”Mike Most is saying that with the human optical system there might in fact be a limit far below the infinite horizon of data that the purist originally sought, that will work for the discerning eye.

PRELIMINARY SUMMATION
So, here we are again at one of those seemingly watershed moments, which actually do not have the power of metaphor associated with a watershed with further inspection. In hindsight it might have seemed very dramatic at the time. With the Sony announcement of the F65, it might have seemed as if a distant horizon has rushed forward towards us and simply looked like they were very near indeed. What looked technically impossible before now looks technically not only achievable but far surpassable.But here I’d like to step back into film’s past to generate a sense of scale for the present. In his book ‘Using the View Camera: A Creative Guide to Large Format Photography’, Steve Simmons describes the relationship and also advantage between the larger still image film formats of camera over and above 35mm SLR cameras:

“The film used with the various view-camera formats is much larger than 35mm film. Film for the 2.5 x 3.25 camera is 5 times larger, 4 x 5 film is more than 13 times larger, and 8 x 10 film is 53 times larger. The increased film size produces clean, crisp images with a captivating sharpness. The surface textures of such materials as stone, brick and wood look almost three-dimensional in view-camera prints and transparencies. Large display prints have unblemished clarity and depth because the negative doesn’t have to be over-enlarged.”

This immediately refers to Tim Sassoon’s point: “Remember that the larger the frame, the less significant compression artifacts are, and the more important higher bit depth is.Also, if you work through the figures, 8 x 10 film (using the Canon Rebel as a guide) is 53 x 18 megapixels: that’s 954 megapixels! As you’ll guess, I’m being disingenuous and playing somewhat (but even if you used the Red One camera, that would be 440 megapixels). Steve Simmons talks about a ‘captivating sharpness’. ‘unblemished clarity’ and the images of materials look ‘almost three-dimensional’. This is all about increase of verisimilitude as our current technological tendency is about a series of increases in capacities which produce clues that translate as verisimilitude - hence the other phrase Steve Simmons uses ‘looks almost three-dimensional’*(See note at end).

So for a long time now we’ve had the ability to capture very, very detailed high resolution images. The difference now with Digital Cinematography is that we can fire these off at 24 frames, 25, 30, 48, 60 - in fact the capabilities of frame rate display is continuously increasing. We are effectively enabling still photography rapid fire to allow it to join cinematography, and by being digitally enabled we must append the title to Digital or Data Cinematography. I would conclude from the above that we are in the very early days of what is to become possible. And what eventually arrives will be far outside what we can currently imagine.This brings to mind some experiments conducted at the University of Bristol where Tom Troscianko in the department of Experimental Psychology has produced data that shows that current 3D techniques only generate 7 per cent more immersion than standard 2D images of the same subject matter. The technique used to measure ‘immersion’ is related to arousal. In fact, increased technological capacities, such as higher frame rates, higher dynamic range capture and display together with increased resolution produce more depth clues and generate a deeper level of engagement than 3D technologies.

So I myself have been guilty of believing in the digital revolution and given many papers on it - even the idea of the post digital. I’ve ruminated and written on the notion of data as being too closely related with digitality which many signal engineers regard simply as actually an enhanced analogue method. After all, Fourier presciently invented the Wavelet transform in 1807 and the ‘meat-grinder’ Discrete Cosine Transform in 1800 - way before digitality in the middle of the analogue era. I’ve written before on the idea of data as being pure and unmediated by numerical remediation - after all the data captured within the medium of the hologram is not mathematical, nor mediated (except in the strict sense that it’s held within a medium). But it is quantum and photonic in nature - both appendages or descriptions deny the notion of the mathematical - where mathematics is a telescope or viewing device into the ‘stuff’ of the universe and photons are of the stuff of the universe and light behavior appears to be quantum (in this perceptual realm at least).

It would seem that the idea of a technological revolution is a human gesture towards a paradigm change. It would seem that the reinvention and use of language is part of the strategy. To call something that’s happening ‘Digital’ when all you’ve know previously is analogue functionality, is very similar as the gesture of naming something ‘High Definition’ - which albeit can be seen to be a PR gesture, might also be an actual necessity for innovation and development (again thinking of Noam Chomsky in relationship to thought and language being two halves of the same coin) It’s the use of language where you aspire to something beyond the now. ‘The Truth’ and the idea of ‘now’ are of course dubious notions, unless you believe in the idea of the direction of entropy and therefore accept the forward notion of ‘Time’s Arrow’, (when there’s always a ‘next’).

On the same list the day after the F65 was launched, this post arrived from Harry Dawson: Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 10:43:19 -0700“With film "going away" in a few years, there needs to be a 4K replacement, right? I'm shooting a project where we are doing 4K scans from 35mm. Not doing SFX but spanning three vertical plasma screens. Seems like SFX are going to need a higher resolution answer than Alexa. Here might be an answer, right?”

Harry is posing the question of ‘next’. In this case I won’t go in to what he’s suggesting technically as I’ll leave that to your own researches. Digitality now sits where ‘the Modern’ used to sit. It’s here right now and it feels good, because it suggests we’re in a period of movement, that we are materially achieving the dreams of our imagineers, science fiction writers beginning somewhere in the 7th century BC with the writer of the Epic of Gilgamesh, who’s original title was “He who saw the Deep”. I’m speaking here of an actual ‘writer’ who used text and of course I do accept that human’s have created forward looking stories from the beginning of language (and in the case of images in the cave paintings of Lascaux - who’s to say these were not imagined bountiful futures rather than ‘movies’ about the past?)

So in a sense I’m arguing that future imagining, via science fiction writers of the 1950’s and sci-fi television shows like Star Trek that posited warp drive and holodecks were the original acts of scientific theorising, that then created a vision for everyday scientists to work towards; that possibly at this point in time, where the world seems a little out of control, ‘the church of future hope’ is actively proposing that technically we can do anything - and given that our optical system is perhaps the most powerful and overwhelming sensory system - and somehow ontologically characterise what we actually are - then digital imaging is the place where the forward thinking work which seeks to usher in a new paradigm is taking place - it seems to me therefore, that the language and the conversations of those people that truly understand the technology, the possibilities it makes available, the developing practice and the following technical developments is a determinant of what will actually occur.

TECHNICAL NOTES AS AN ELEMENT OF THE ARGUMENT
I will now outline some of the ideas that may not have been fully described earlier (because I didn’t want to limit the progression of the above narrative). I’m now proposing that though these are informational, that they also or revealing imminent technical, cultural and aesthetic developments.In the early days of HD where the naming of terminology described the aspiration for something better than what we’d been used to, High Definition simply meant ‘better’ at 1920 x 1080 photosites rather than 768 x 576. In 2007 when I started my Creative Research Fellowship the technology was very clunky, the recording mechanisms seemed incapable of recording the data generated and the idea of recording a truly lossless stream of data seemed impossible.

Then I became aware of various critical issues which determined the parameters of generating, recording and displaying digital images: Modular Transfer Function, which describes a chain of delivery from capture to display where resolution is defined by the lowest resolution link in the chain (like plumbing where flow is derived from the thinnest of pipes in the system); Wavelet Transforms which power everything digital by being that bit cleverer than discrete cosine transforms: the first being linked to the functions of a circle and the second being linked to the square. Clearly the smoothness of a circle as a metaphor is more gradual and gentler than the hard right angles of the square. Therefore reconstructions of data that’s been compressed with the functions of arcs and circles is more delicate than those compressed and uncompressed using the functions of a square wave. Wavelets just seem intuitively more reconstructable. I’ve used the term photosite rather than pixel as it is a more accurate description of the light receptor that generates a voltage which is then processed into data than the word ‘pixel’ on a CCD or CMOS sensor, (as it is where the basic data for a ‘display pixel’ is generated).

With regard the denominator ’2K’, HD is often referred to inaccurately as 2K, as 1920 is near to 2 thousand) - HD is 1920 x 1080 photosites, but one of the more true variants of 2K cinema, which uses a 2:1 aspect ratio is 2048 x 1024 photosites. The true 35mm sensor however might better be described as being in the region of 2000 x 1500 photosites because this generates an aspect ratio of around 4:3, which is the original 35mm academy ratio, which can also be expressed - if you divide 4 by to get 1.33 (Academy was actually 1.375).If you take a 35mm sized sensor that is 2k, then of course it has larger photosites than those on a same-sized 4k sensor - as there have to be 4 times as many packed in to the same space - and as with all things, when you do this sort of thing, there are drawbacks (which is for another article).The 4K variant using a 35mm sensor is 4096 x 2048 (double the 2k variant which uses a 2:1 aspect ratio). So using the 4K variant that would equate to 8.3 million photosites - so the Red Camera has a sensor (speaking in DSLR terms) which is less than half the recent cheap Canon EOS Rebel, which retails for about $900 and is 18 megapixels.

You get the point though - and importantly when you shoot in megapixel amounts of photosites this is then multiplied by how many frames per second you can shoot - so whilst Peter Jackson shoots the Hobbit Movie at 48 frames per second - at 4k and in sterographic 3D (i.e. two streams of 4K at 48 fps) the data streams are huge.Colour bit depth is typically talked about as 8, 10, 12 etc. What this refers to is the amount of samples taken - therefore how subtle the colouration is. 8 bits describes a sample of 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 which as a sum equals 256 samples. 10 bits is two more times 2 which equals 1024 (and so on). Incidentally each byte of data is comprised of 8 bits of data.Colour bit depth sits within a Colour Space (which is the term that describes what the parameters are for the gathering of and display of data). Clearly a printer has an entirely different colour space than either the human eye, or a plasma screen, or the newer Higher Dynamic Range Display technology that you will be seeing shortly.I could carry on and this ‘argument’ would also seem to transmute into a ‘glossary’. In fact the language and the thought become the same. In time of course these will again separate as we gain distance on the subject area.

It’s always been a difficult practice to theorise what is happening when it is happening.We’re now post-digital (so some claim) which I read as meaning: ‘we’re no longer confused about what it is and now we feel comfortable’. This means that people are looking to the horizon as if it’s the present. 4k now - 64k tomorrow - and why not? There’s a changing paradigm to be witnessed here. Digitality requires numerical representations of whatever the digital device is dealing with. Numerical equals mathematical. But there are ways of generating data that are not mathematical - within the hologram for instance. Pure data captured without mediating light through maths.

CODA
To try to make all of this that little bit more clear, here are what I offer some defining criteria for Digital or Data Cinematography:

a) The optical pathway is 35mm or above (if you research the reason that 35mm film was set at 35mm, you’ll see it could have been derived from manufacturing techniques for photographic usage - that is what was technically and industrially possible at the time).
b) it generates a progressively based image flow relating to a specific time-base as opposed to an interlaced image flow (one full frame of information at a time rather than a field-based workflow)
c) like one of its predecessors, film, it holds the image in a latent state until an act of development (or rendering) is applied - but unlike film is non-destructive of its prior material state)
d) it’s capture mechanism though generating a nondestructive, non-compressed data pathway from which an image can be reconstructed, is not its sole intent as a medium or method of capture (but is distinguished from digital video who’s sole intent is to generate images in a compressed manner from less than 35mm optical pathways)
e) the latter three qualities are also base characteristics of many developing digital technologies – for instance real time mapping of environments requires a capture of at least 3 infra-red imaging sources (Cameras used as sonar devices) running at 25 fps at a 'reasonable' resolution

Digital cinematography is more than just capturing images - it's a portal onto the digital landscape so far unexplored due to its apparent function as an image capture medium i.e. remediation.As a conclusion this short list may be satisfying or unsatisfying. There are many other ideas to work through and many developments coming that will need similar examination as this technology grows and changes.

and the point of a DP is?

2011-09-08T05:23:00.000-07:00

I wrote this some while back, when Benjamin Button came on our small screens - and then forgot to post - but here it is anyway:I work with data or digital cinematography, but I'm a film sympathiser, or should I say cinema sympathiser? It's an aesthetic thing and there's some Digital Cinematography footage I see that looks like video in its worst most 'live' state. Benjamin Button for instance. Or maybe it was the re-interlacing it went through to get to TV that did it, but it was painful to watch even though it was lit well.

As digital cinematography develops the new HDR function is ok but it's represented in standard viewing space on any normal display and there's the rub. If light in the visible spectrum can be said to be of (say) 15 orders of magnitude and the eyes in the human system are instantly capable of 5 orders of instantaneous magnitude (and this is utilised throughout the 15 orders depending on time of day, levels of luminance and a lot of other factors - like a searchlight of conscious perception sliding up and down the scale) then the average standardly available display is around 2 - 3 orders of magnitude (at best).

With new HDRx on Red, If you shoot 5 orders of magnitude then compress it into standard display space, then everything is lost. The HDR display technology that Dolby is working with, is around 5 orders so HDR capture - 10 levels of black and 30 levels of white above normal displays - correctly displays all of the gathered light. This is far better than exhibiting a conjuring trick: 'look no lights to achieve what was only possible by lighting'. If you are looking at a CRT, LCD or Plasma when you view the now famous red barn shot: http://camerarentalz.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/hdrx-barn.jpg you'll see that everything that HDR truly is - is missing.

In 5 years proper HDR will be available generally (given Moore's law). When you see real HDR Display, that doorway in the shot is hard to look at because it's 2 orders of magnitude higher than what you're looking at in standard display space. People originally got excited about HDRx for the wrong reasons which were to do with an advance in their technique that would be made possible - almost as if the average DP is searching simply for natural light to solve their basic aesthetic problem - and for me that basic problem lay closer to the experiments and work of people like Dziga Vertov than it does to, say, Billy Bitzer. I buy Conrad Hall's assessment of the necessary search of the longtime cinematographer that is to find the photographic moment in every frame of the still - not it's technicalities, but in the aesthetic demand to make every frame as good as every other.

The Human Gaze

2011-09-08T05:13:00.000-07:00

One of the UK’s national treasures, David Hockney, is experimenting with the human gaze by gathering together 9 HD cameras (consumer and therefore heavily compressed) to generate a single shot of the English countryside to produce one very high resolution image. My own experiments with the human gaze also addressed the issue Hockney is addressing by the act of looking, which he sometimes terms as ‘drawing’. This being the language of his enlightenment about making art. The art work itself is a metaphor for seeing. There is a shot of the countryside. There is no cutting. He does in fact use different moments of time from the different cameras and also slightly different angles of view (slightly more zoomed in or out) which in fact refers to his earlier polaroid recombinations of the world which somehow evoke cubist styles of painting and thought as expounded by Braque and Picasso. Hockney says that he idea of drawing is about looking and seeing - you simply have to look if you're going to draw. You have to engage. Meditate. Clear the mind of ratiocination so that there is only perception - and for the artist then give a clear response. Hockney is effectively arguing that art is a mediation between the world and the public. Warhol before him said look at the mundane things in the world around you - they too are art. Koons upped the ante towards kitsch. Hirst said value is the thing (his platinum skull). All along Hockney is saying: 'Beauty'. All of this refutes the idea of ‘interpretation’ as a way of deriving meaning, as espoused by those that critique or theorise the work. This is becoming a time when artist and audience no longer need the high priests, the theorists and the curators to tell them how to respond to art. Digitality and post digitality is enabling ‘entrainment to succeed where interpretation failed. The Artist, the artwork and the audience all become one, from the moment of creation, to the moment of perception - all entrain together. This is an entirely valid way of being, as valid as interpretation was for its time.

80's Tuesday - Naked Eyes

2011-09-06T01:19:00.000-07:00

I've decided to start a new thing. Every Tuesday I'll post an 80's song that I like. Because... I love 80's music! :D

The Fear We Create

2011-09-05T04:44:00.000-07:00

Probably each of us can recall a time when as a child we believed with utter certainty that there was a monster hiding close by our bed. We were so afraid we couldn't close our eyes, and every shadow in the darkness and creak of the house was attended to with adrenaline fuelled vigilance. Finally we would be unable to take another moment of our own terror and we would work up the vast amount of courage required to call out for our mother or father to come to us, a huge risk because we knew we would have to reveal our position to the unseen enemy. Those moments until our parent arrived felt endless and only when they finally came into our room and turned on the light did we realise we had been holding our breath.

Keep Calm and.... EXTERMINATE!!!

2011-08-26T01:39:00.000-07:00

You know all those "Keep Calm and..." posters? Here's the ones I like. :D

So yeah... August 27th is the day that the first episode of the mid season premiere comes out. Eeeeeeee! !!!!!!

Just a tad excited.

Are you a Whovian?

I AM

http://il0vejellybabies.tumblr.com/
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—————
^^BEST FRIEND ALERT^^ that’d be the very Whovian that got me into Doctor Who in the first place." height="200" src="http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lq7iqpeIz31r1mujpo1_500.png" width="200" />

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Major geeking out going on... Sorry :P

Anyhow... Looking forward to Saturday! I promise to do a real post soon... One last picture to leave you with...

What Does it Take to Make a Difference?

2011-08-24T07:22:00.000-07:00

A man was walking down a deserted beach at sunrise. As he walked along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he grew nearer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and, one at a time, he was throwing them back in the water. Intrigued, he walked over to him asked the man why he was doing this.

"I'm throwing them back in because the sun is up and the tide is going out. If they don't get back in the water they will die."

"But...there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can't possibly get to all of them. There are too many. And anyway, don't you realise this is happening for miles up and down this beach? Don't you see that you can't possibly make a difference?"

The other man smiled, bent down and picked up yet another starfish, as he threw it out into the sea, he replied, "Made a difference to that one."

*****

It's an enduring misconception that a difference of any real significance cannot be manifested unless it is implemented on a large scale. A mere glimpse through the daily news provides plenty of evidence that we are living in a world of rampant injustice, greed, corruption and cruelty.

Food?

2011-07-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

Back during the Reagan administration of the 1980's, a significant amount of press was invested in articles discussing the real possibility of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In 1984, when arms talks failed, the Doomsday Clock was moved to 3 minutes to midnight. At the time, as a teenager, it was deeply troubling to hear people talk seriously of the costs and practicalities of building their own nuclear fallout shelters. Then I learned that even if one survived the 'nuclear holocaust' as it was called, the nuclear winter that would follow it could go on for years.

Perspective

2011-07-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

During the week I came across this message and was so moved by it that I felt it deserved a posting just for itself. Below are the words the Hopi elder speaks.

The 13th Bak'tun

2011-07-05T05:03:00.000-07:00

As we approach the year 2012, there is an increasing amount of interest online about the ancient Mayan Calendar; about its connection with Dec 21, 2012; and about it somehow heralding the end of the world as we know it. All of this is very sad and disturbing. Mainly because it is not right. Today's post has nothing to do with climate change or global warming, but it does have a lot to do with hope.

Climate Change, Conspiracy Theories and Control ~ An Allegory

2011-06-30T07:12:00.000-07:00

One man with a gun can control 100 without one.

~ Vladimir Lenin

Control needs one thing to exist. Just one thing. Fear. Pointing the finger at a common enemy makes sense, and appeals to our earliest set of survival instincts. First we must locate the thing that is "bad" or "wrong" according to our commonly accepted paradigms and then we must isolate it by fearing it or attempting to destroy it. Or both.

But what happens when what we fear is no longer seen as the enemy but as part of the control mechanism? And what has this subject to do with climate change? Please read on.

Not Without My Animals

2011-05-09T03:10:00.000-07:00

"This kitty seemed to be waiting for someone to come home...She is emaciated and suffering from a respiratory infection...she is now receiving medical attention at the shelter in Niigata" JEARS rescuer

Sometimes there are just not enough hours in the day, and as much as I enjoy writing posts for this blog, it generally takes a day to complete a post which has meant a policy of quality over quantity. I hope that my readers feel that this is a worthwhile policy and will bear with me until I have time again to write more posts. I do have plenty of subjects prepared in my mind to write about, I just need the time to sit down and invest that energy.

Part of the reason for the delay in posts is that in March I began teaching English part time until the end of June and with the onset of spring here in Sweden, there has been quite a lot of garden work that needed to be done in a short span of time.

However, just when the gardening was done and there seemed to be some time becoming available for writing posts, something very important presented itself that must occupy my time for the next while. While it is true that "the pen is mightier than the sword" and great works can begin just with a few well written words, sometimes one must take their efforts to the next level.

Courage

2011-04-14T07:25:00.000-07:00

Courage is knowing what not to fear ~ Plato

What does it take to stand in front of oncoming army tanks and halt their progress with nothing more than one's body and the desire to stop gross injustice? How does one stand against the System telling the ugly truth over and over in the unshakeable belief that one day their efforts will bring change for the better? What kind of person can resist society's "norms" and remain true to what they know is right even in the face of ridicule, exclusion and disdain? Every good thing that we enjoy in today's world has been brought to us by the determination and efforts of people such as these. In all the billions only a handful stand out, but that mere handful changed the way the entire world was shaped politically, geographically, culturally and civilly.

Compassion. All That's Needed to Change Our World.

2011-03-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Australian firefighter gives water to a thirsty koala during their recent forest fires.

Photo Source

Compassion ~ a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.

What would happen if every man, woman and child on earth was able to experience true compassion for just one day, at the same time? What a staggering thought. True compassion does not need to be an act of magnitude, it can be as small as suddenly seeing that one's fish aquarium is covered in algae and deciding there and then to immediately do something to improve the situation. Or one could stop thinking about their everyday woes and for the first time in weeks see that their plants are parched and cramped in tiny, old pots and quickly give them a drink, before finding new pots to plant them into. The ripple effect would see owners taking their dogs out to the forest or beach for a good, long walk, instead of just accepting that letting it out into a small yard twice a day is good enough.

Were The Mayans Climate Scientists?

2011-03-15T09:01:00.000-07:00

Impossible. Not with the iconic images we currently hold of this long vanished civilisation. Images of ancient crumbling stone cities with their massive step pyramids; brutal human sacrifices made to strange feathered dragon gods; and men peering at the night sky from their observatory, making detailed (and impeccible) records of the movements of the constellations. But while these give colour and life to a world long gone, none of these visuals are needed. Simply mention the words Mayan Civilisation to anyone and without a moment's hesitation most will think of a particularly complex calendar that happens to have an inconvenient end date in the not too distant future.

But climate scientists? Not a chance.

The Real Fear Story...Apathy

2011-03-07T07:17:00.000-08:00

"Be the change you want to see in the world"

Gandhi

The other day, while discussing how to make climate change issues more engaging for Paradigm's Bend's readers, a brilliant friend of mine sadly pointed out that the trouble with climate change isn't whether it is happening or not, it is that everyone is tired of being bludgeoned to death with fear stories wherever they turn. Over an extended period of time desensitisation occurs and not too long after, apathy follows. In a recent email exchange with an American collaborator, I learned that in the US while 30% accept climate change as a real issue, 30% do not accept climate change or see it as a hoax and another 30% don't even care. The other 10% must have been too apathetic to even answer the climate change survey. Forget about climate change deniers, it is apathy that is the real enemy of climate change.

NASA Earth Observatory ~ Melting Snow and Ice Warm Northern Hemisphere

2011-03-07T04:19:00.000-08:00

Article and image source: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=49440

How could melting ice thousands of miles away possibly affect you? A recent study published in Nature Geoscience provides one answer to that question. Mark Flanner at the University of Michigan and his collaborators used satellite data to measure how much changes in snow and ice in the Northern Hemisphere have contributed to rising temperatures in the last 30 years. The loss of snow and ice warmed the planet more than models predicted it would.

Snow and ice help control how much of the Sun’s energy Earth soaks up. Bright white snow and ice reflect energy back to space. Because that energy does not get absorbed, it does not go into Earth’s climate. As a result, snow and ice cool the planet. This effect is called a climate forcing because snow and ice directly influence the climate.

Burn Baby Burn...Carbon Inferno

2011-02-24T04:58:00.000-08:00

"One thing must surely be obvious though: The problem is largely a Western one. It is the Western countries who are leading the way in CO2 emissions, and when non-Western countries have high CO2 emission rates themselves, it's usually because they are adopting Western habits. Since we, the West, have been a leading cause of the CO2 emissions problem, surely it is we who must step up and be the leaders in the solution." ~ David Bleja

There is an amazing page online called Breathingearth that uses reputable sources to show real-time data via an interactive world map that displays country by country population stats and CO2 emissions. A bird's-eye view that allows the viewer to drill down into each country to see their individual and per capita CO2 contributions. One can take as little or as much as they like from this piece, from simply checking what their own country's status is to comparing their output with other countries and discovering who the real greenies and carbon monsters are.

Blood of the Innocent. The True Price of Climate Change.

2011-02-18T06:19:00.000-08:00

"Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change."

Jonathan Safran Foer ~ Author of Eating Animals

I remember the first time I saw a truck full of livestock heading for the slaughterhouse. I was a nine year old child, riding in the car with my parents on our way to visit relatives in Ontario, Canada. Due to the traffic congestion, our car rode alongside the trailer for several minutes. Those minutes were long enough for me to look into the eyes of the animals crammed in there like holocaust victims. I saw the terror in their eyes, I saw that they were unable to move even a centimeter, one of the calves caught my eye for more than ten seconds and in that ten seconds that animal let me know everything I didn't want to know. That animal was feeling its reality as hard as any human being ever could. I shudder as I write this, because somehow I think it felt it even more than we could. In the backseat, I began to cry. Up in the front seat, locked into their own world of oblivion, my parents heard me and asked me what was wrong. I told them to look at the trailer full of miserable creatures beside us, suffering in the subzero temperature, their terror radiating out of them like a neutron bomb.

Where will you be on March 26, 8.30pm?

2011-02-13T04:48:00.000-08:00

Watch the video. Feel amazing. Earth Hour.

Double Standards and Denial

2011-02-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

Today, as I was researching for my latest article about oceans and their relationship to global warming, I was listening to a BBC radio interview and the interviewee mentioned that he often liked to pose this question to climate scientists and eco warriors alike whenever he met them. His question?

A Tale of Two Zax

2011-02-08T07:47:00.000-08:00

There is a Dr Seuss tale about two creatures called Zax, one north-going and one south-going who while travelling along their paths one day meet face to face on the plains of Prax. Neither is willing to step to the side so that they may continue in their paths; instead they vow to stand there face to face as the days, seasons and years pass them by. Eventually a city and highway is built around them and the tale ends with them still standing there refusing to budge.

Why Should Global Warming = No More Cold Winters? Because. That's Why.

2011-02-06T04:56:00.000-08:00

This week I discovered that apparently I am retarded and if that wasn't enough I also have severe mental problems. This according to someone whom I have never even met; who doesn't know I exist, but along with thousands of others I was still fair game for his armchair judgement. Who was this person? He is a blogger with a following of several hundred on Twitter who doesn't "believe" in man-made global warming (AGW). I won't link to his blog because I prefer not to drive traffic to a blogger who speaks purely from a personal bias that directly contradicts tested scientific evidence on the subject he wrote about - in this case the current cold winters being proof that global warming is a hoax (see link at bottom of post for scientific explanation of negative Arctic oscilliation and the weakened polar vortex). In comparison to other bloggers on the subject, he was relatively tame with his rant. Some are virulent in their hate speak. Some have the hallmarks of extremism. To these "believers" of anti climate change if you subscribe to the possibility of AGW then you are automatically judged in the most derogatory terms. Those of us who want to ask reasonable questions and look to the scientific community for answers are relegated to the realms of the simple; the unthinking; the gullible and the outright stupid. That's a lot of insults from people I haven't even had a chance to express my views to.

Irresponsible Reporting. The Damage. The Consequences.

2011-02-01T09:09:00.000-08:00

"The thing about science is first of all it's after the way the universe really is and not what makes us feel good. And a lot of the competing doctrines are after what feels good and not what's known."

Carl Sagan

Today in Japan, there is a volcano experiencing one of its biggest explosions since it became active again after 52 years. Today there is an evacuation of the low lying parts of North Queensland and its off shore islands in advance of Cyclone Yasi, a category 4 cyclone that is due to hit what has already been designated as a disaster area tomorrow or the next day. Today the US National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning for Chicago. Yesterday 2 people died and 29,000 were evacuated because of floods in Johor, Malaysia. The media has not been short of fodder for articles concerning the heatwaves, floods, droughts and heavy snowfalls that have recently plagued mankind. So many things are happening all at once that it's likely not practical for all of it to be widely reported. This means only a percentage of what is happening in the world due Climate Change is being made common knowledge. There are things happening we will never know about. But even if those of us trawling the Internet for information don't know about it, the scientists do, and later on we'll realise why that's more important than most people realise. But first let's talk about responsible reporting.

In the Silence of the Beaufort Sea, a Polar Bear Cub Drowns Beside Its Mother

2011-01-27T04:47:00.000-08:00

Last night I couldn't sleep. I kept replaying in my mind the nine day endurance swim a polar bear and her cub attempted, due at least in part to climate change. I kept imagining the mother swimming on and on, through water as deep as 3400m for 232 hours straight. She never stopped, and was not carried by currents; rather she was continuously pushed away from her path and had to fight the current. No one knows when her cub died, but the scientists who reported the findings concur that the most reasonable explanation was that the cub likely died from exhaustion before the 687km swim was completed. Imagine the scenario. A lone polar bear swimming through an endless dark blue sea with her young cub following her, valiantly trying to keep up. Somewhere out there in that deep sea, where the ice used to be she must turn her head and watch her cub succumb to the depths and there is nothing she can do. To survive she must keep on swimming, hoping that the ice will appear on the horizon soon. Imagine her grief. Her baby is gone, her constant companion, lost to her. Don't believe it didn't hurt her. It did.

SRES. Something You Might Want To Know About

2011-01-26T05:51:00.000-08:00

As I journey up the steep learning curve of Climate Change, using the tools of rationality, logic and scientific fact to guide me, I become more and more uncomfortable with my findings. Yesterday was a long day of research, hence the lack of posts online. I managed to get a few Tweets posted but mainly I was learning, sorting my thoughts and contemplating where I was going to go next with my upcoming blogs.

Before we start, allow me to review the modus operandi of Paradigm's Bend. As I research I wish to share what I learn with others, so long as it falls under the header of being useful, relevant and enlightening information, whether I do so by posting other people's articles or by writing my own posts which I have researched and tested with critical questioning. My constant view is that while the Internet and Media are both wonderful resources in and of themselves, they tend to come at a price. They grant vast knowledge and awareness, while at the same time with one or two misclicks, the promising path followed can rapidly confuse the seeker with poorly researched information that should be labelled as deceptive, misleading or even downright nonsense. This blog focusses on distilling balanced, straight forward information and posting the best and clearest information gleaned from the Internet, science journals and government papers.

Today's blog is a little like taking a step back. I want to have a post on PB that benchmarks Climate Change in a realistic and measurable way. In a way that impacts on humans personally. Something that can be referred back to in future posts. That is where SRES comes in. Until recently I hadn't heard about SRES, it's not discussed much in the media but it should be. In my humble opinion, this shouldn't be the fodder of only the policy makers, little kids should be taught this in school. It should be ingrained into our lives and made part of our cultural consciousness. Soon you will see why.

Fabulous article

2011-01-24T11:39:00.000-08:00

Perfectly encapsulating the complexities of how difficult it is to pinpoint what is really happening to our climate even when things are changing very quickly. Also a very good review of the unbelieveable weather 2010 brought to the planet. Props to IHT for posting such balanced reporting of this subject.

Excerpt from Tospy-Turvy Weather Tied to Weaker Arctic 'Fence'

"Since satellites began tracking it in 1979, the ice on the Arctic Ocean’s surface in the bellwether month of September has declined by more than 30 percent. It is the most striking change in the terrain of the planet in recent decades, and a major question is whether it is starting to have an effect on broad weather patterns."

Read the full article from International Herald Tribune's Justin Gillis "Topsy-Turvy Weather Tied to Weaker Arctic ‘Fence’"

Shades of Grey

2011-01-24T06:24:00.000-08:00

People like duality. Hitler is bad. Mother Teresa is good. Finger pointing is one of the best ways humans separate themselves from others, whether the identifier is a religious affiliation; a lifestyle choice; a cultural preference; a political view; or a sports team. Amazingly this need to belong to a certain "side" funnels right down to the insignificance of choices like whether one drinks Coca Cola or Pepsi. Let's face it, life is easier if we can label things and then pick our camp. Then we know where we belong and depending on our choices the finger pointing can be as laid back or radical as we like. I remember I once worked for a boss who drank Pepsi. Being a Diet Coke drinker I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea that I worked for "one of them", loyalty to my brand was so fierce that I even lost some respect for my boss because he drank the "weaker" beverage. Division is a force to be reckoned with, but that's a subject for the anthropologists to discuss, not me.

Climate Change Event Tracker ~ January 2011

2011-01-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

This post has been moved to a permanent page since it has been made into a live document. To see the new page, please click the tab Climate Events at the top of the blog. Alternatively, you may click here to redirect.

Nova Friburgo, Brazil Flood, Jan 14, 2011

2011-01-17T03:39:00.000-08:00

Cited as one of the worst natural disasters in Brazil's history, the heavy rains caused flooding and landslides over a vast distance, not just in one area. The area affected takes one hour to drive across under normal circumstances, circling the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, where both the extremely wealthy have summer homes alongside those of lesser means. As of today the death toll is over 600 and climbing. The bodies are turning up so fast that graves are being dug with JCB diggers. Unlike Australia where the rain has stopped, the rain is continuing to fall and is deeply hampering rescue operations.

As discussed in my "beginning of the end" blog you will see footage of the devastation of the flood in Brazil, and having found this extended video today about the lady with the dog am deeply saddened to realise that the woman had at least two dogs, one which was not even around anymore by the time the rescue occurred. The dog's name was Beethoven and you can hear her yelling his name when she loses him. The rest of the footage shows the torrential flood waters which makes what happened in Queensland look tame by comparison.

A dog sits for a second consecutive day next to the grave of her owner, Cristina Maria Cesario Santana, who died in the week's catastrophic landslides, at the cemetery in Teresopolis, near Rio de Janiero, on January 15, 2011. Brazilians on Sunday prayed for victims of devastating floods after the death toll from the natural disaster rose to at least 610 and was predicted to climb again. Credit (AFP/Vanderlei Almeida)

Queensland Floods Dec 10, 2010 - Jan 11, 2011 & Mar 7, 2011

2011-01-17T02:45:00.000-08:00

A goanna clings to a barbed wire fence during the Queensland flood

Update note Mar 7, 2011 ~ Queensland is once again inundated by flood waters following record breaking rainfall. Photos

Update note Feb 7, 2011 ~ Since this blog was originally posted I have been spending a little time trying to get more photos and information about the flooding in Queensland. Boston.com posted some incredible photos of the floods on their Big Picture page here.

I have also amended the title of the blog to accurately reflect the time period of the flooding as best as I have been able to research it.

Footage below chosen as some of the best I have found showing the reality of the flooding that swept into Queensland following the torrential rains that caused the inundation of a landmass the size of Germany and France combined. The first video shows the floods that hit Toowoomba, and in real time shows how quickly the water covered the land.

The second video of the horse rescue may not seem that spectacular, but in fact the animal's hooves were caught in debris and the man stayed with the horse until it could be freed by emergency services. Considering how close the water was to its nose at the end, it would have surely drowned otherwise.

The last video is a glimpse into the brutal reality that faced those who survived the flood...what the media isn't interested in showing us...

the beginning of the end

2011-01-14T04:22:00.000-08:00

I want to be like Charlie Frost, the real hero from the movie 2012 who lived in a RV filled with computers, maps, newspaper articles, assorted low tech tracking equipment and whose fridge contained two basic items - beer and dill pickles. You know Charlie, he's the one who saw it all coming but nobody believed him since he looked and acted like a paranoid whack job. Yes, I want to be like him, only I'll be the female version. I will live in a remote setting on some high ground in nowhere, Sweden and I will watch the world carefully from my office, delving into the net using the skill of asking it the right questions, to get to the interesting answers (usually found in boring places like science journals). And I will eat pickles and talk to my cats. But you know why I think Charlie is the true hero? Because he had the balls to follow his instincts and ultimately was the one who saved the Jackson's life (and a few others too by mere dint of association to him). If Jackson hadn't run into Charlie, he wouldnt have known what he needed to know to get to safety. When the end came Charlie died in a rather spectacular way, but he went the way he wanted to go, with his mind and eyes wide open to the truth, there was no fear, shock, terror or surprise, just blissful acceptance of his fate, which he welcomed with open arms.

The V Word

2010-12-02T02:20:00.000-08:00

Validation. These days it's scarce, and like anything during a shortage, it becomes more valuable and sought after when it can't be easily had.

Everyone is crying out for it. Look at me!! Like me!! Comment on me!! Notice me and then for gods sake post something about it, even if it's a crap comment...it keeps the wolves of epic fail at bay. So profilers keep on making noise until they shanghai their "friends" into leaving remarks. However the reality is that the commenters usually have either a) too much time on their hands and spend it all in FB anyway or b) are bored at work with nothing better to do than surfing FB and posting what they think are "amusing" comments on their "friend"s profiles ~ invariably with a lot of extra vowels thrown in, cause it if takes up more space it makes meeeeee moreeee noticeeableeeee!!!! (ahem the commenter that is). Everyone is at it. No one really gives a damn about anyone else's profile...except maybe some profiler's parents but probably half the stuff people post is not parent friendly anyway and ends up upsetting said parents more than making them feel proud of their child.

Stop. Right. There. In the succinct phraseology of online gamers....WTF???
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South Park's Episode on Facebook

2010-12-02T01:28:00.000-08:00

You Have 0 Friends (Click link to start episode)

Following on from my De-Volution of Socialising Blog this little gem is amusing and terrifying at the same time. Love the way they combined Facebook and Tron in one episode...pure win.

Of Feathers and Snow

2010-11-25T04:59:00.000-08:00

Winter has arrived in Sweden! The snow started on the evening of the 23rd after an incredible ten days of mild weather and heavy rain ~ and it hasn't stopped snowing since! It is a winter wonderland of white, with around twelve inches of snow already on the ground.

Last year was one of the harshest winters on record with extremely low temperatures lasting for days. A "warm" day would be when the thermometor showed a balmy -7C. Most days it was about -20C, which made it almost impossible to be outside for more than ten minutes at a time. Record levels of snowfall meant that it had to be constantly plowed into small hills and then loaded into containers on trucks to be hauled away to the snow dump ~ to put some perspective on it, there was still a sizeable hill of snow that hadn't melted at the snow dump in July when the temperatures were at 30C every day.

A Russian Biography ~ Vladimir V Putin

2010-11-23T03:37:00.000-08:00

Vladimir Putin. May 2000 ~ May 2008. President of Russia. May 2008 ~ Present Day. Prime Minister of Russia.

Vladimir was born Oct 7, 1952 in Leningrad, to Maria Ivanovna Shelomova, a factory worker and Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, who was a conscript in the Soviet Navy. His parents died within one year of each other in 1998 and 1999. Vladimir was their youngest son and only surviving child. His paternal grandfather, Spiridon Ivanovich Putin worked as a cook for Lenin at Gorki and after Lenin died, for Lenin's wife. He also cooked for Stalin when he visited one of his dachas.

From his humble beginnings,
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The De-volution of Socialising

2010-11-22T07:25:00.000-08:00

Times change. Do you remember when socialising was meeting up with people you had known for a long time and passing the afternoon or evening pleasantly chatting about shared interests or memories, or maybe going on a little day trip together? Do you remember when you were a kid how you played with actual toys, hanging out in the playground or riding your bike on the street with the other kids until your mom called you in for dinner?

And now? Communication between "best" friends is more commonly reduced to generic Facebook wall posts that look something like this ...

The Speed of Light, Going a Little Less Fast...

2010-11-22T05:01:00.000-08:00

Oklo, Gabon ~ this relatively unknown place is tucked away inland on the west coast of Africa, where for nearly the last 40 years it has been revealing more and more data that questions our fundamental concepts of science. What is known (and accepted) so far is that between 2 billion to 1.5 billion earth years ago, deep underground in Oklo a series of natural nuclear reactions took place over several hundred thousand years. According to scientists (and this is a very basic explanation, a proper scientific explanation can be found here) a small amount of water would seep into a vein of Uranium causing an imbalance in the amount of neutrons needed to keep U235 stable causing a chain of reactions to happen until the water was all boiled away. This would repeat as new water seeped in. So far so good.

Here's where it becomes interesting, a pair of scientists (Steve Lamoreaux and Justin Thorgerson of Los Alamos National Laboratories) who had been using the measurements in Oklo to prove that Alpha (the speed of light) was constant with our current measurements published a paper in 2004 showing evidence that Alpha as we know it had decreased by 45 parts in a billion, from 2 billion years ago. This supports what scientist L. Riofrio has been suggesting all along.

Of course, the gloves are off and academics are keen to defend the fine-structure constant which is an incredibly complicated mathematical formula for a fundamental physical constant, which is a dimensionless universal constant. For the scientific community to accept that Alpha is not constant (even within a small fluctuation) would turn fundamental physical science on its head and leave us with more questions and even less answers.

With all of that said, it's fun to wonder about what is making light slow down, if it indeed is doing so. Thoughts about the possiblilty it could be related to the hitherto mysterious dark energy scientists know is out there but can't explain; whether the data the hadron collider collected earlier this year will shed any light (ahem) on the subject or whether it will somehow tie in with the expanding universe theory all remains to be seen.

But what's most fun to wonder about, is if the speed of light is slowing down, does that mean that if we put a flashlight on the front of a spaceship and send it out into the universe will it shine ahead of it...or not?

Where Do "You" Come From?

2010-11-22T04:08:00.000-08:00

Easy question. Answer = "I'm from (insert town/country)" And that's true. We all are from somewhere. But what about the word "you" in the question? What does "you" mean? In this question it normally means "you" as in the subject of the sentence, identifying you as the person that needs to be indexed to a fixed geographic location in the questioner's mind, presumably so they can proceed to make further conversation with you that is relative to your shared experiences "Oh really? How nice! I once visited your home town on holiday..." etc etc.

But what if we think about the question another way. What if the word "you" identifies the very "you-ness" that makes you exactly who you are, individual and unique from all others? Now the question becomes a lot more interesting. "From" being the sum total of our experiences. Even though we can't see it, we are all travelling through time, what is known as the fourth dimension. It is intriguing to think that maybe our "you-ness" is a way to measure our passage through that dimension. Like a photograph records our age at a precise moment, we can think of a memory that shaped us and stick a pin in the time map of our "self" where we felt a major shift from one "you" to another "you". Getting married, giving birth, surviving loss, these things all move us from one place to another, and usually once you cross that bridge it is impossible to go back. Your "you" changes for better or worse.

So we are constantly changing, physically, mentally, and emotionally as we pass through time. But most importantly our "you" never stops adapting to all of these aspects. It is an incredible thing to realise that we are not static at all, and that if we were able to slow time down enough, instead of seeing a person we could suddenly see our true selves, a fluid collage made up of a shifting myriad of memories, perceptions, experiences, triumphs and tragedies.

We can't always control what happens to us which of course will influence how our "you" moves forward, however there are small things we can control, perceptions we hold of ourselves, so the next time you pass a mirror, or reflect on an experience you had remember whatever you think of yourself at that moment, because it will become a part of "you" forever, and ultimately....where you come from.