Click on the gear sphere and tell me what you think.
This seems an extraordinary image worth of M C Escher. Paul Nylander has also produced some other striking mathematical works.
Click on the gear sphere and tell me what you think.
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Another morning 5.am and I am wakened as the rooms fills with light. I go back to trying to turn that damn where inside out. I give up in frustration and turn the sphere into a small squealing piglet and then I was suddenly with Alice in the smoke filled kitchen and the Duchess was there too sitting on a three-legged stool. Only I thought she was the Red Queen, or was she the White? I couldn't remember so she flashed red and white like a beacon as I juggled the wriggling piglet.
It seems to me that if we have any free will at all then it exists there in the mutable imagination, the waking world feels entirely determined down to the smallest detail. I then moved on to thinking of the cruelty and depravity of the first Ming Emperor Hongwu or Zhu Yuanzhang, - Chinese Emperors have several names which can very confusing unless you are familiar with them. -. Yet despite his absolutism and all the dreadful cruelty the Emperor did much to alleviate the conditions of the peasant farmers and the slaves, and laid the foundations for the flourishing of the arts and sciences and the growth of trade during the Ming Dynasty. One famous example of this spirit of curiosity and enterprise is Wan Hoo who tried to fly to the sky by sitting in a chair propelled by gunpowder sticks. If only the Darwin Awards had been around then! But you have to admire the spirit of the man. Michel Tournier in his novel The Erl King (Le Roi des Aulnes) talked of malign inversion, the elevation of evil deeds and the denigration of the good. I remember he talks of the many war memorials as an example of this. The way we view the cruelty of kings may be another. The criminal is usually a figure to be feared and extirpated in society and popular culture and yet even the worst serial killer seems insignificant when compared with deeds of those who have ruled over us. Yet we remain far more terrified of the shambling inarticulate monster than we do of the urbane articulate tyrant, and I think there are a lot more of those around. But I suppose the difference is that the shambling monster lives in a box just beyond the car park whilst the urbane tyrant lives in a palace far away on the hill top. Time to get up and work on my flying chair . And feed the pigeon. And, going back to it later on, I finally managed to turn the sphere inside out. Though I'm not sure I could do it again. At four o'clock this morning I was trying to turn a sphere inside out like it was done in the video clip I put up yesterday. I couldn't do it, and just go frustrated and irritable. The sphere either got squeezed in the middle or became a twisted mess. Then my mind dropped the sphere which bounced away into darkness and my thoughts started slipping away in all kinds directions, the way they do at that hour of the morning when one is still not fully awake. I found myself thinking about history and the problems of imagining the past. I have been reading J D Legge's The Writing of South East Asian History that introduces the Cambridge History of South East Asia. He gives a good scholarly account of the changing attitudes that have been taken by historians and the problems of studying another culture. Post Structuralism and Edward Said's Orientalism have been hugely influential among modern historians and though when I was at SOAS students were expected to read Orientalism the others were seldom mentioned but ran like an undercurrent beneath much of the teaching and the savvy student knew that there were points to be got by mentioning Barthes and Derrida, even if you hadn't a clue what they were talking about. And in the case of Derrida, who had? But unless you try to turn your back on history altogether then you need a narrative of some kind to pull it all together. And Lazlo Montgomery's China History Podcast from “lovely and quaint Claremont, California” is one of these. Lazlo is not an historian or academic but someone who has worked and lived in China and has a huge enthusiasm for Chinese History. His podcasts have a world wide following, partly because of the extraordinary fluency with which he leads the listener through the many dynasties, emperors, warlords, adventurers and all the rest of the characters who come and go in the course of Chinese history.
So my thoughts flittered about until I felt it was time to get up and have a coffee and finally pay an instalment of my Council Tax. It is extraordinary how difficult these things can be, I have been trying to do this simple thing for three days. It takes less than five minutes online yet I was paralysed with fear and found it almost impossible. i know there are other simple things that people find hard, often pleasant or exciting things like flying or bungee jumping, but it is difficult to understand how other people find the things that I find hard, simple. I would put it all down to money and power but there are rich people who still dislike flying. Would they find form filling as difficult as I do? But it is done. I bought myself a cinnamon roll as a breakfast bribe. Now I will listen to Lazlo who has now brought me up to the fall of the Ming and the final Manchu Dynasty. I have always thought computer generated art is rather undervalued so when I came across these fractal animations I wanted to share them. http://www.fractal-recursions.com/ Best viewed in full screen. I was also taken with this explanation of how to turn a sphere inside out. There is a part two if you are interested. Some of you who read this blog might be interested in the Channel 4 programme Inside Natures Giants filmed in the most beautiful place on Earth, Danum Valley. You also get a glimpse of Mike who originally started as a guide and now works with the scientists. I'm not sure if he has any formal qualifications but his knowledge of the flora and fauna in the forest is second to none. He was born in the Philippines and ended in Danum where his love and knowledge of the forest led him to be the favourite guide of scientists and visitors. He took Kit and I out on a couple of times and on one of the trips we were lucky enough to see the Argus Pheasant doing its display dance. It was Mike who taught Kit to call the Argus Pheasants and showed me what wild fruits I could eat. He is only on the TV or a second, but it was good to see his face again, and it made me want to be back in Borneo again. Click the link to Channel 4 to see the programme, http://www.channel4.com/programmes/inside-natures-giants/4od I knead bread. I should be working but instead I'm making an experimental pizza base. from which I hope to take over the whole of Pizzaland. And while I'm at it an experimental rhubarb crumble with secret Chinese ingredient. We'll see how it all works out tonight. I have also made chapatis recently to go with what seemed a never-ending curry. It seemed that way after three days but the last was eaten last night. I remember eating chapatis cooked in the ashes of a campfire on the banks of the Kali Gandaki shivering and damp from the cold river mist before the sun was strong enough it away. Bread, honey and strong black coffee. few breakfasts have tasted so good. Why I never made chapatis before now I can't understand. They're so easy. As I'm sure you all know. First build a camp fire....
The New Scientist has just dropped through my letterbox and promises to tell me Earth's Deepest Secrets and Why Too Much Self-esteem is Bad for Teens. As if I needed a scientist to tell me that! How much do these people get paid? Why I'd have told him that for less than a fiver. Before I go off and read my magazine I'll share an old joke I stumbled across when checking up on Joseph Jacobs. A rather stuffy Englishman has been learning French and is travelling on a French train for the first time. Sitting opposite him is a middle-aged Frenchman. The Englishman is eager to try out his French, but being English can think of no way to open a conversation. Then a large bluebottle flies into the carriage and buzzes loudly against the window. 'Ah, un mouche!' says the Englishman, pointing at the fly. The Frenchman looks up from his newspaper, gazes at the Englishman and says firmly, 'Non. Une mouche!' The Englishman looks at the fly again and turning back to the Frenchman says, 'Amazing! What extraordinarily good eyesight you French people have!' I had long forgotten the joke but seeing it again reminded me that I thought it was hilarious when I was about fifteen years old. As I'm sure you do now. Hobyah! Hobyah! Hobyah! I heard the shouts outside my window very late last night. I pulled back the curtains to glimpse thin white figures dash into the shadows. But I knew it was only foxes. I think heard them giggling as I climbed back into bed. I watched the film Black Pond last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is not without faults, the variety of narrative techniques, flashback, cut scenes, documentary, plot and sub-plot, do not always fit together well. But the film was made with a tiny budget and is an extraordinary achievement for the young directors. It is odd mixture of comedy and pathos with some wonderful character acting. The poetry of John Clare and a three legged dog - played by Bonzo - are bonuses. Try to see it if you have not already done so and let me know what you think. The search for work drags on and I have spent the last few days designing and sending off course outlines. Today I must force myself to send try and sell some workshops as I was told there might be some work with some of the Library Services in the Midlands. On with it. You can click the picture to read the Hobbyah story if you don't know it. The link takes you to Joseph Jacobs book More English Fairy Tales at Project Guttenberg. It has some of my favourites as well as a version of The Hobbyahs. I recommend the Hedley Kow for its optimism, glasshalffullness and for spelling cow with a K. If you follow through the links you will come to some interesting stuff on the origins of animal stories into Europe. Soft warm ache the cat curled on my lap claws and teeth hidden for now but should I leave the room should I disturb it then what it takes my freedom from me how can I work or think with this distraction where is my courage standing on the pavement in the rain in the shuffling queue just to hit the keys move and damn the waiting Last Saturday I went with Viv and stayed overnight at Liz's to see the giants walk through the city. They were certainly spectacular, as you can tell from the pictures. The crowds were enormous and there was a lot of hanging around in the cold and damp waiting for something to happen. But that's life! my life at least. Waiting around gave us plenty of time to think about the event and how we felt about it. Most reviews have been highly favourable but often it seemed rather confused and chaotic as the online review at Click Liverpool points out. The same review quotes a cost of £300,000 but I suspect that if all the costs including policing, rerouting buses and all the other extras are included the true price would be an awful lot more. Most of the crowd seemed to be made up of local families and I don't think the argument that such events bring new money into the centre is a very strong one. The event was staged by Royal De Luxe, a French theatre company, and there was very little local involvement. Still, I got the impression that most of Liverpool was very proud of the event and thoroughly enjoyed it though I could not help having reservations about spending so much public money on a huge prestige event when services to some of the poorest people in city are being cut in the name of austerity. If the giants had been built in Liverpool or many more local artists had been involved I might have felt differently, but standing there among the crowd watching the giants the phrase 'bread and circuses' drifted into my mind. Something more typically Liverpudlian is this sign we passed on the way home.
I'm still not quite sure what is being offered. I also have my own plans to build a Giant and see if I can talk a UK city into giving me £300,000. It will be a giant lizard far more spectacular than the Liverpool giants, and it will smash its way through the city breathing fire and leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. I have made a small model of my planned event and include a photograph below. It would be a real day out to remember! While still messing around with speech applications and feeling very depressed last night I got a message from Kit to say that he has bought me a present. Botanicula the new game from Amanita Design. I won't describe it, click the link. That cheered me up no end and it was part of a Humble Bundle. I already have most of the bundle but nevertheless it is good to see all my favourites there. If any of you need to buy a present for a child or daft adult then try these. They are made by small independent companies and offered very cheaply. Just like the old days of the internet, so they deserve support. Looking for details about coding speech had become a chore. Nowadays searches seem swamped by commercialism. Even putting the word 'free' in does not help as the 'free' applications are usually crippled in some way. Just finding anything about writing scripts or codes for computer speech at the level I wanted proved very frustrating. I felt the days of the amateur who knew nothing but just wanted to mess about were almost gone. How often do we look at the html of our web pages these days? If you are interested, for the Panda I used the online cartoon maker Xtranormal that offers some free online facilities but the speech is very limited, though they offer a good range of voices. Cat and Dog I used Noodle Flix. I find this more interesting because it gives you access to some of the scripting language. There are no instructions so all one can do is tinker and work it out, but as you see at this level it is pretty simple. Note the vowels though, they are not so obvious, I should also warn that you will freeze up the application if you try it and make mistakes. So don't blame me. I don;t have access to the new voice software at present so my voices still sound very robotic. To make them more realistic each word needs editing and that takes so long it is not practical, but it is fun and I think one learns something about the nature of language and hearing. Can you work out what the script below says? [[slnc 1000]] [[inpt TUNE]] w {D 120; P 108.3:0 110.3:29 115.5:58 121.3:79} 1EH {D 125; P 131.5:0 140.9:68 139.9:80} l {D 85; P 133.6:0 120.9:53} k {D 80; P 106.1:0 102.7:19 102.7:38 106.2:69} AX {D 70; P 112.3:0} m {D 80; P 100.6:0} t {D 75; P 100.9:0 103:47} IX {D 75; P 112.6:0} n {D 70; P 97.7:0 99.8:29 103.2:50 109.8:71} 1UW {D 135; P 121:0 126.4:41 146.5:81 149:93} d {D 45; P 146.8:0 144.5:56} AX {D 65; P 146:0} l {D 70; P 137.5:0 132.4:50} f {D 110; P 121.4:0 120.8:23 123.2:36} l {D 65; P 161.4:0 165:69} 1IH {D 95; P 158.3:0 135.6:26 119.7:47 117.3:58 118.1:84} k {D 85; P 116.6:0 117.6:41} s {D 165; P 121.6:0 115.2:18 112.4:39 113:67 117.1:100} [[slnc 200]] D {D 75; P 99:0 101.3:53} IX {D 80; P 107.1:0 106.1:50 103:75} t {D 95; P 97.9:0 100.2:26 104.8:47 113.6:74} 1AO {D 110; P 125.6:0 120.7:14 119.1:32} k {D 85; P 124.8:0 138.5:35 164.8:88} =IH {D 65; P 169:0 165:23} N {D 80; P 144.5:0 131.7:56 122:81} h {D 65; P 112.8:0 111:15 115.5:38 127.1:69} 1EH {D 100; P 142.5:0 152.8:45 153.1:55 149.2:75} d {D 50; P 138.6:0} m {D 80; P 129.2:0 125.9:31 125.1:63 126.8:88} 1UW {D 105; P 131:0 141.2:71 141.5:86} v {D 55; P 138.2:0 136.7:55} IY {D 75; P 138.9:0 133.1:60} y {D 65; P 127.5:0 125.5:54} UW {D 85; P 126:0 121.6:41 114.1:82} t {D 85; P 113.3:0 120.1:24 130:47 142.7:71} 1IH {D 70; P 161.3:0 153.1:29} l {D 60; P 121.1:0 104.7:58} IX {D 65; P 96:0 88.2:31} t {D 65; P 85.5:0} IY {D 210; P 84.1:0 81.4:50 75:100} [[slnc 200]] [[inpt TEXT]] [[slnc 1000]] Haiku are now banned in any form on this blog until further notice.
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