The Topic of Great Randomness

[96bookworms]

oh! I forgot to mention this, and illiriam reminded me...SB...check at your local public library, they might have Mango set up. Mango is this online language learning course that you can take. I think it normally costs some money, but if you do it through the library you can do it for free!!

On a similar yet completely unrelated topic:

(I skipped my 'Intro to Language class in school and went straight to German I) I have a German test tomorrow, some math homework, a science question for, well, science...duh, a quiz in Home Ec. on Friday, an English paper due on Thursday, an art assignment due on Friday,and a Soc. Stud. article to write! Oh, I don't have any study halls, and I volunteer at the library tomorrow!!!

[illiriam]

Wow. I've been lurking lately. Lol.
My major term paper which is worth 25% of my grade is due Thursday, so I have been reading Durkheim's Rules of Sociological Method in my free time aka when I am not doing other school work. I can not wait until summer.

And SB, might I suggest some of the free podcasts on iTunes that provide mini language lessons? I know they have some basic French, and they might help you get ready for the class, and work on pronunciation. I discovered these during my Russian obsession after reading A Countess Below Stairs and a bit of War and Peace. They aren't bad lessons though. Short, and basic words, but a good start.

Estar, congrats on your placing! Fossils? Any explanation? Sounds interesting.

I liked the look of Longwood Gardens when I clicked on the link. I particularly liked the wisteria on the first picture I saw. It is pretty and smalls nice. Bees love it though.

Ugh. I suppose I should stop putting off these papers. I just want to sleep and watch NCIS and relax after my history test today ("Remember the Alamo!"). I used my lucky space pen, so hopefully it went well. La la la la. Not writing paper, not writing paper. Ok. I'll write my paper. *Sigh*

[96bookworms]

I was (almost) in Plillidelphia this weekend. It was lots of fun, even though we had to go for my aunt's 80th birthday and I didn't get to go to NYC and my sister sprained her ankle...

Yeah...anyways, we went to Longwood Gardens, which is this ENORMOUS garden-place-thingie. looking at the website, it says...it's over 1,050 acres!!!!! it has over 11,000 different types of plants, and a conservatory spanning almost 4.5 acres!!!!! it was amazing! I saw some adorable bonsai(s)*,and some really cool flowers and herbs that smelled AWESOME! Anyways, it was AMAZING!!!!!
Anybody near Philly, have you ever heard of Longwood Gardens?



*what's the plural of a bonsai? several bonsai,several bonsais...**
**what's the plural of caboose? caboose, cabooses, caboosi, cabooseses, cabeese?!?

[Trialia]

Now that AWoM is well and truly out, I am betting that the fanfics are (or soon will be) flying. LOL, just imagine- or no, never mind. I don't want to be blocked from blue food! I'll just do a troll of some fanfic sites by myself...*backs away slowly*

Or you could just ask Birdhead and I, since we happen to mod the biggest YW fan community outside of this one No, no fic yet that I've seen, but there may be some at fanfiction.net.

[SilveredBlue]

crazy_bookworm: Nearly right! It's Hatsaharu and Yuki. lol, I know what you mean about closure. Sooo many shoujo anime just leave you dangling...at the end of La Corda D'Oro, Shugo Chara (without the awful season 3) and Skip Beat, I was thinking, "Come ooooon! I've been watching this end bit to see the True Love's Kiss- where is it already??" Which is why three scanlation sites are bookmarked on my computer, because manga is better at finishing what it started.

um, randomness, randomness...

Now that AWoM is well and truly out, I am betting that the fanfics are (or soon will be) flying. LOL, just imagine- or no, never mind. I don't want to be blocked from blue food! I'll just do a troll of some fanfic sites by myself...*backs away slowly*

Yay! I just got signed up for a French class over the summer! And I know three whole words in French too! Oui, bonjour, and creme brulee. I'll be so far ahead...
...right.

But I'm excited! I've always liked French, ever since reading A Year in Provance at the age of ten. Fantastic book, but you have to read it while eating a snack, because all the luscious French food makes you hungry. *drools* French bread- grapes- pastries- omelettes with little nuggets of black truffle- Okay, now I'm hungry. I need a snack!

[kk]

Hello!

Emi! You're back! Yay! And it's okay that you haven't gotten AWoM yet. Neither have I. We'll just have the superpower skill to start hitting people with sticks if they try to give subtle spoilers. :P

Kathy: Oooooohhhhh... Pretty pictures.... *downloads MathMap, pokes it repeatedly*

Estar: Congrats on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places! That's really awesome!

SilveredBlue: Fruits Basket sounds extremely familiar... I think it may have been something that my friend was trying to get my sister addicted to... I'll have to ask him

Look, a picture!

This MathMap thing is gonna get addictive really fast... >D Thanks muchly, Kathy! ^_^

[crazy_bookworm]

I'm done!!!! Now to read AWOM!

Kathy Li: Thanks for the further explanation.

Garrett: Those look awesome too.

Emi: Welcome back! Come visit more! We miss you!

dorotheia and SilveredBlue: You watch Fruits Basket too? *squees* I love the manga! And the anime, but with the manga there's actual closure. I have all 23 mangas and my first few are so worn I had to go to my school library last year to tape them. Heh. It's an amazing series, probably my favorite one of manga. The Haru and other person dialog sounds like Shiguire and Haru. Is that right? It's been forever since I've read the series, or watched them, for that matter.

estar: That's awesome. Congrats!

[dorotheia]

Yes, math is useful. At the point I am at now, though, I have little idea of how practical it is. When does all this weird theory and formula come together and get useful? Algebra, I get, but higher maths seem useless until you do weird stuff with it like make fractals and spirals. That's out of this world. But the paths to get there...! I'd have to be crazy.

Oh yes. I sympathize, SilveredBlue. I watched Ouran High School Host Club's first season in two weeks, over spring break, and started on Fruits Basket right after that (how did that happen? I feel like I'm still such a newbie...) My brother was getting real irritated with how often I'd burst out laughing for no explainable reason. "But you have to know the characters!" Let me tell you, that cuts no slack in my house. Luckily the library was not open at the time (for the first time in ten years, for like a month). Otherwise it'd compete with my reading, which I had to ration for once.

[SilveredBlue]

*drools over pics* Those are just gorgeous. I love math/art crossover stuff. If only I had Photoshop, what fun I'd have....=)

You know, I always feel guilty using a smiley face with an equal sign rather than a colon, because it feels like I'm cheating on the four-smiley limit. It's gotten to the point where I am starting to subconsciously limit my smilies on other, limit-less boards. And my spelling and grammar is less sloppy, too. See what YW can do to you?

Now, the reason for my recent silence. *blushes* I'm ashamed to say it was anime overload. I've gotten good at pacing myself, most of the time, but I finally tried Fruits Basket and got addicted, using up all my computer time and some of what SHOULD have been schoolwork and sleeping time watching all 26 episodes in approximately a week. heh heh

Incredibly, the English dub is BETTER than the sub (once you get used to Tohru's voice)- some of the funniest moments are made even funnier by the actor's expressions and pauses. "Haru, cut it out or I will cut. you. off." "Aw, have my words made you angry?" It is hilARious to watch that scene- I can put up a Youtube link if anyone wants- even though it may not seem so on paper-um, screen. The expressions can't even be expressed well- Haru's comma between "words" and "made" gets me every time, but on paper it just looks like bad grammar.

I'm giggling just thinking about it....

[Emi]

Oh my god. So many pages since my last post... I feel extremely terrible that I haven't been on here in like.... months. I'm so sorry.

College is like super crazy, and practically taken over my life. The only thing I've been doing lately when I'm not in class or work (I got a job at the TV studio on campus), is enjoying my time on Facebook/Twitter/Wordpress. But that's rare lately because my roommates and friends like to keep me out of the room.

I recently started a blog on Wordpress http://learnloveyourself.wordpress.com/ If you want to read it you can.

It's also another reason why I'm posting, because I want to start this project.... and it would be amazing if I got some diversity in this, since most of my friends on Facebook are from my college or my hometown. BUT if you guys participate then it will make my day.

Okay now that I got my shameless advertising in...

Change of topic.

I haven't gotten the new Young Wizards book yet, unfortunately. I'm so mad because I have to wait for paperback, and I have to wait for money. College eats up your bank account. Fair warning to all all of you who are going to college, really save up. You might say "yeah, yeah" to your mom or dad telling you that, but it's the truth!

How is everyone? I haven't been on here in ages-

I saw Eric saying something about getting his braces off? THAT'S AWESOME. I remember the day I got mine off. It was the best day ever. Just remember to wear your retainers every night.

Kathy- those pictures are like amazing. I wish I had that skill.

I wish I could remember what other people were talking about... grr my brain is losing cells I can feel it. I feel really old, even though I'm only 18. I joined this group like forever ago.

Sorry for fast paced rambling.

I hope to be on soon.

Emi

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

If you're not as adventurous as Kathy, you can just go with Autostitch and take panoramas like this. :-)

[Kathy Li]

The best place to go for the infinite-spiraling Droste stuff is this group on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/escherdroste/

The basic tool you need is Mathmap. If you use the Gimp (free open source application that kinda subs for Photoshop), it's a plugin for the Gimp. There is an OSX standalone version that doesn't require Gimp (which is what I used).

For panorama stitching and perspective correction, you can use the open source application, Hugin. I use PTMac, but it's now defunct with Snow Leopard, and PTGui has a $100+ license. (sigh).

[illiriam]

I can't stop staring at those awesome pictures.

And if math can do that, math is cool. (I secretly always knew this, but I had a hard time seeing it. This just confirms my theory that math does fun things, as well as big-technical-engineering projects.)

No, but seriously, that is nifty. I have to show my brother now, who is a computer nerd (I say this with love). He has recently gotten into photography (and has been working on a project for about a year now where he takes a picture a day using all the fancy equipment and such and then fixing any issues on his computer) and I think that he would find this as a fun new experiment.

[Kathy Li]

Kathy Li: So basically you're making a 360 degree view flat, using math, right? At least that's what I got out of the conversation.

Partially. Basically, three things are going on.

First, is squishing the sphere to a flat square, then tiling the square (because of the mapping, it tiles seamlessly, if you flip/mirror the squares)



Then, "drostifying" it to do the endless spiral. Here's a simple Droste without all the other weirdness so you can see what's going on:



All the spiraling is what uses the imaginary numbers.

[crazy_bookworm]

Zirsta: I agree about the standard date. It would be so much easier for everyone. I also know about the stereotypes. If Canada lives in igloos, you must too, being from Alaska. *rolls eyes*

96bookworms: Sounds like an awesome set list, even though I only recognize three of the songs but recognize the musicals for the others. The Wiz and Wicked are both in the Wizard of Oz world, right? Your library also sounds supercool.

Kathy Li: So basically you're making a 360 degree view flat, using math, right? At least that's what I got out of the conversation. Don't want to even think about imaginary numbers.

Wolf: I agree. I also learnt a ton of physics ideas from Going Bovine, by the fabulous Libba Bray. I learnt about entropy in my chemistry courses and I'm happy that it sounded familiar. Also, for your boss: tell them upfront and be honest. They usually understand. And tell them as soon as possible. That way they can find someone else to fill your position when fall semester comes.