Archive for February, 2009
A fairy tale romance
February 26th, 2009 Uncategorized
“In 1993, I was doing my first straight play,” Barrowman says, and winks. “You know, no singing or dancing.” The play was Rope (the same adapted for film by Alfred Hitchcock), and a mutual friend dragged Gill to a performance.
“The lights went up and there’s John and two other guys naked,” Gill says. Barrowman was nude for seven minutes, and Gill recalls his stage presence, without a shred of irony, as being “like a lighthouse on a dark night.” He remembers thinking, “That’s the guy I’d like to have a relationship with.”
Their friend brought Gill backstage, where Barrowman was still getting changed. “I was pulling my pants up,” Barrowman says, “but then again, he’d already seen it all. When I turned around and saw him, that was it. I just knew as soon as I looked at him: That’s the man I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.”
TWT-Notes
February 23rd, 2009 atschool
Oh http://twt-notes.tiddlyspot.com/!
I couldn’t have written about The World According to Garp Until I found you. Not even if I had four hands! *VBG*
Marvel at its HTML & Equation editor!
Go on, marvel away. I’ll wait.
This is a bloody relief. I’ve been fussing all weekend since the notes typed up on my OpenOffice Writer doesn’t move well to MS Word even – the equations and formatting become weird. The best thing about this is with a bit of tweak, I managed to shoved it onto tiddlyspot.com. What I did: downloaded the whole thing. If you’re interested: search all for ‘twt-notes’ (easy using the search box) and replaced it with the name of my spot on tiddlyspot.com
I don’t particularly like this No Brainer Notes flavour of tiddlywiki but it beats plain vanilla.
*I wish I could name all my topics based on a John Irving theme. It would be fantastic and I would be more excited about my learning.
Horace “Woody” Brock’s Theory of Beauty
February 22nd, 2009 books
In truth, it’s satisfyingly simple. Designed objects, Brock writes, can be broken down into “themes” and “transformations.” A theme is a motif, such as an S-curve; a transformation might see that curve appear elsewhere in the design, but stretched, rotated 90 degrees, mirrored, or otherwise reworked.
Aesthetic satisfaction comes from an apprehension of how those themes and transformations relate to each other, or of what Brock calls their “relative complexity.” Basically – and this is the nub of it – “if the theme is simple, then we are most satisfied when its echoes are complex . . . and vice versa.”
He gives the example of a chair in his collection designed by the English Regency architect Henry Holland. The dominant design motif, which can be found in the chair’s arm, is an S-curve. (Mathematically, an S-curve, which twists in space, is complex when compared to a straight line or unidirectional curve.) The back of the chair, writes Brock, sees that S-curve first reversed and then rotated 90 degrees – a simple two-step transformation.
Complex theme, simple transformation: Voila! The chair is beautiful.
Garp is a four letter word 1
February 21st, 2009 atschool
Fantasy: Up at 5am, finish 1 topic by 7am. Watch TV, a bit of #wriYe
Reality: Up at 5am, fell asleep at 7.30am (topic half done). Woke at 10am and continued working until 3pm because I didn’t get it.
What fun?
Cycle of life
February 16th, 2009 Uncategorized
I’m going to do my FRM. I’m thinking now, it might be interesting. Yes, I am in fact, crazy.
Even before it begins, my hand has started to hurt.
2 out of 5 Thought Experiments That Might Change Your Life
February 16th, 2009 Uncategorized
4. Bill Gates, bored after recently stepping down at Microsoft, decides to offer you $1,000,000 if you can maintain an ‘A’ average in the upcoming fall semester. Here’s the catch: you’re not allowed to study more than 8 hours a week outside of the classroom. What would you do? Would you give up and say it’s impossible? Or, with the right planning, do you think you could make it work? If so, what would happen if you lived every semester that way?
Impossible!
5. Due to a complicated inheritance, you’ll receive $100,000 a year, but, in exchange, you’re not allowed to have a job. What would your lifestyle be like? If you didn’t have this inheritance, what career path, available to you now, would get you closest to this lifestyle? Is this a career path you’re considering? If not, why not?
I would put a down payment for a house, with enough money put aside for loan repayments, meals, internet, television. Hopefully, the house could be rented out for some income. With that much spare time, I think I would do some superficial broad studying, some blogging, some writing and some gardening. I think I would volunteer at a school and the zoo for a bit of fun. I’m not sure what kind of career would give me free time to do all these. Er tai tai-hood? Researching?
BTT: Too Much Information?
February 15th, 2009 books
Have you ever been put off an author’s books after reading a biography of them? Or the reverse – a biography has made you love an author more?
I would feel slightly guilty as if I had pried into their private life of the author after reading his/her bio. But coming across a favourite author’s bio, in my excitement, I would forget, buy the book, read and feel guilty. It’s a bit of a rinse, lather, repeat for me.
BTT: Electronic vs Paper
February 15th, 2009 books
Easy!
Paper.
I do own electronic readers. I use to have a palm reader. Now, I am using a mobile reader called Wattpad on the BB. It autoscrolls and everything but I don’t know, I’m used to reading paper books. I would love to own a kindle or a Sony Reader but I don’t see myself actually doing a lot of reading on them because of the screen. (I may be wrong.) I would probably use an electronic reader to get through online magazines and blogs.
Walking to my grandma’s
February 15th, 2009 Uncategorized
By car the route seems eminently walkable: down a jogging track next to a dry canal, cross a large park, pass my old kindergarten, cross some blocks of HDB.
By foot, it takes an hour. I don’t know if I would do it again.
Infatuation with Interiors
February 15th, 2009 Uncategorized
I’ve been rather unproductive and preoccupied with building fantasy homes on www.floorplanner.com. Playing house means I get to do whatever I want – a window here, a door there – without burdens: a mortgage, furniture shopping, thinking about colours and texture.
I picked up some ideas from apartmenttherapy.com about decorating. I found a few lovely wall murals:
This is amazing but I think a living room would be too overwhelmed by the tree. This might be better in a large lobby with enormous windows to balance the drama.
I began with an approximation of a 3 room HDB – I couldn’t find other floor plans online – and drew 5 versions (warning: slow loading!) progressing from rooms made by ego (what I think a home should have) to rooms with thought to the function of the space. It’s as if I am peeling away pretensions. Task oriented rooms like the kitchen, toilet and bedroom, have less pretensions and reach a ’stable’ state rather quickly. The living room is most prone to egotistical mistakes. The 5th version is still too much pretension – I think the 10th version would be much better. I’m not sure, however, if I have enough excitment to continue. Already, it is beginning to feel like piano lessons: practice, practice, practice.
