Friday, December 31, 2010

2=0+1+1!

Oh yah, resolutions!

I'll see what I can steal from my holiday resolutions first.
-Hold breath to inhuman limits (I did try, but progress has been slow. A recent breakthrough involved imagining myself as some creature that didn't need to breathe air. Results were very successful. Really a mind over matter thing, it seems.)
-Learn knots (Indispensable for the navy, says the father)
-Learn languages
-Polyphasic sleep (Could be especially useful for NS. The initial sleep deprivation stages, that is.)

Now to think of newbies.
Oh, wait. I can still steal from last year's.

3: Start running regularly again.
7: Read a German book with full comprehension.

8: Read a Mandarin book beyond the primary 3 level with full comprehension.

Kay NOW to conjure n00bs.
Ahem.

-Befriend at least two students from Vic's school. Or the area.
-Write a short story. Bonus pride points if it's a comic.
-Master the drawing of no less than three different animal species.
-Keep a journal that AT LEAST lasts 30 consecutive days. Please.
-Survive NDU's "Hell week".
-Work for money during February.
-If NS permits, go vegetarian for at least a month.
-get grail
-Do best to demolish what politics may arise in my NS experience.
-Learn coin tricks. Minimum of 4.
-Not get my blog deleted.

-Zan

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Christmas Conceptions

I sat in the pews at ORPC for their Christmas service, family-tradition dictate, and contemplated the presence of those without pew-seats, standing/sitting in the back. And how they could be cured of their predicament.
Observation told me that only a small fraction of the huge indoor space was being used for the audience - the floor. Gravity-dictate. Unused space existed! Also, there was a lot of empty space in the volume of air above us that could have been used for audience-spaces.

Trying to fix the latter cause (of the space-waste problem) first, I imagined a second floor above the audience, where more seats could be filled. The problem with this hypothetical, of course, was that members further back on the ground level would be obstructed by the new 'ceiling' formed by the second floor.
This could be rectified by lifting the second floor higher, but that would cost the top-floor audience their proper view of the stage. This wasn't good enough. I wanted a solution with no re-allocated costs to the audience.
I imagined antigravity, to simplify things. People could just float around anywhere to view the service at the spatial location of their choosing. Still, in this case, there would inevitably be some people blocking others as they hovered in front of them. Bah!
How would I fix that?
I came to the conclusion that resolving the wastage of space by using the free space within the volume of the room would only be simple if there was some way to render people transparent. Then, people could more efficiently utilise the room as an audience and wouldn't have their view blocked.

But I didn't want to delve into that problem (making people temporarily transparent). So instead I battled with the former cause of the problem - unused surfaces. If other surfaces could be filled, it would cause benefit by adding more audience seats without costing the existing audience their view of the stage (in this case, the choir).

The problem was like a cube. One interior side was being used for the choir, and another side - the bottom - was being used for the audience. If we could fill the other sides with audience, the problem would be greatly lessened.





















click to zoom in, by the way.
Now that I think of it, an antigravity-based solution isn't really necessary.. but whatever. I'll continue.
SO.
What popped into mind was that the church hall could instead be a cylindrical shape in a simulated symmetrical gravity. The great cylinder-church would spin to simulate gravity towards the inner surface of the tube. Like a-this:











Way more surface-efficient!
But one last problem. This way, there would be people seeing the choir upside down. To solve this, the choir would have to be organised a different way - a circular arrangement, as opposed to the usual horizontal columns. Their song would resonate through the tube in a circular symmetry.

Then I extrapolated a bit.
Say this structure of building was commonly used in a world where humans habitated space (i.e. in antigravity, woop). for buildings where a large audience was needed in front of a common "message-giver" (a choir, a musical band, a presentation, a talk, etc.) . There would exist a new problem: Text. For all of the people in the circularly-arranged audience to read the same text without tilting their heads at some angle to the side, lots of copies of that same text would have to be made, and arranged in a circle.











Whether this is done with screens or print, the same problem arises: It's pretty costly, especially if all you want to say is one letter (in the case of the illustration, ''A''). The messagers aren't getting much bang for their buck.
Then I thought: A new text/language that could be developed to suit this circular style of presenting a message. One that could be read from all angles of reading. It would have to be read vertically, for all spectators can see the text's "radius", but text lying on the circumference could only be read partially. And would have to scroll I guess. So.. example!












Liddat. Of course a more fluid text, easier to write in a circle, than mine would be developed.
I guess the circle language would have its limitations. The more letters, the more circles, and each letter would have to cover subsequently larger perimeters. So it's limited to shorter texts I suppose.
It was a cool idea in my head though. ._.

Then the thoughts ended there, and I continued paying attention. Woo! But I thought the circular text thing was a pretty neat idea. Had to save it here lest it be lost forever.

Had to get the tablet plugged up to the office to make some of this clear, would've been too confusing otherwise. FinallyI'm touching dearest tablet after SO LONG. WOOOOO


-Zan

Friday, December 17, 2010

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Something's up.

I've been feeling pretty darn awesome since around 6pm yesterday. Some sense of calm or peace or coolness has bud in me. Perhaps I have fully internalized the fact that the A levels are over - all the way down to the deepest psychological bone.
maybe I just jinxed it. lollerskates.

And for some reason I was being ridiculously jittery in bed last night, thinking about going to the library today. The excitement, the anticipation. The absolute bliss of getting a pile of books, sitting down and reading them without feeling pressured to read something relevant to school syllabi, without being pressured to study, using the library as a library should be used.

So my bag got really fat today; they let us borrow twice as many books now, since it's December.

Something weird happened during the walk up the hill home.
Somewhere ahead, I heard a faint wailing of a man's voice - "..enn"
I looked up. Must have come from the neighbours' house, they had people over this afternoon. The party's probably still on, or something. Look down. Walk.
"... enn"
Look up again. Walk.
"..N"
(it sounded like 'gwenn' or 'whenn' or something. some word ending with the syllable made when you say the letter N. and the voice sounded like it was calling from far away.)

Look up, catch a shadow to my right with my peripheral vision. It's the cat, standing there in the dark. Looking at me. I look at her. She's not usually this far down the road/hill.
I walk on.
I don't hear the voice any more for the rest of the walk.
Creepy.


-Zan

Friday, December 10, 2010

Paisley Bowtie, and an Outstretched Hand to the Whipping Post

Wake up.
Wake up.
See dead, dry, crackled up gecko hanging from its tail off the side of the upper bed bunk. Looking at me with hollowed eyes.
Grab book beside pillow, get to the living room. It's noon.
"It's alive!" Hi Daddy.
Read.
Read.
Eat fruit.
Eat lunch.
Computer.
Freaks & Geeks on Youtube.
Now.

Prom was pretty fun! Glad it didn't just end up being all "I'm only here to eat and take pictures"-ish. At least not for the bunch of us. Gotta be a good audience, you know? (I love my suit, though. Suits. Suuuuit.)
Post-prom was okay. Lively, yes, but I wouldn't give someone that experience if I were trying to convince him how fun clubbing was. My first time. And it was PACKED. Couldn't move anywhere without smashing oneself through the tight, fluctuating corridors between bodies that appeared once in a while.
But okay lah. Okay. Would go again, if only to seek a better time. Clubbing 'properly', har har har.

Gotta work on the cardio for the next judo training. I shan't let the old asthma get the better of me during the next uchikomi. SwimrunrunswimssuriwrLIBRARYrunsmwiunLIBRARYYYY

Oh, and presents. Gotta beat Claire. HOO HAH.


-Zan

Thursday, December 02, 2010





















ok list things to do.

-Clear the house of scattered papers and such
-Clear the desktop of MCQ files/Notes in pdf/SCHOOL STUFF
-Work on (and finish) that header.
-Work out!
-SUIT UP.
-Get NS phone
-Draw a whole buncha shit
-Prom!
-Post-prom!
-Do nothing!
-0JERO9UXMS2DCPS7OOS!
-Besuch des Vaterlandes
-Vegetate before Youtube
-Vegetate before Reddit
-Vegetate in various public libraries
-Behold in wonderment the hundreds of free tables at library study corners (lookingatyoubugis)
-Hold breath to inhuman limits
-Learn knots
-Learn languages yo
-Relearn judo!
-Get Xmas presents
-Beat Claire at getting Xmas presents
-ENJOY MUSIC
-Have a whack at polyphasic sleep again? Maybe?
-Convince myself that the Pacman moleskines aren't worth it!
-not finish this list!


-Zan