Live traffic feed courtesy of feedjit

I just noticed that I've been pinged by a few people from around the world. I'm sure they ended up on my blog by accident, or were maybe searching for The Beatles and got my youtube post, but it's still exciting. A few in France, India, elsewhere in America, someone in Hungary have popped over. I know this thanks to feedjit, which tracks traffic. While I feel that's a little creepy, like I'm spying or something, it's still really cool to get to see when people stop by. Keep it up people, you're making my day (or night).

Hooray, Earth.

I'm working, I really am

Honestly, I'm writing these essays. But I'm referencing the lecture slides to do so, and because this a course on perception, I came across a visually interesting picture:

I've forgotten the proposed explanation for why we see illusory motion in this image, but I know it has something to do with the contrast. If you're interested in visual illusion, visit Michael Bach's website. By the way, this is just an image, it is NOT moving...that's the illusion.

I've made a huge mistake

In the words of Gob Bluth, "I've made a huge mistake." This whole blogging nonsense is too fun for someone whose nose is generally stuck in a book or a research article. Must. Stop. Posting. No, shush.

I'm going to get back to writing bullshit essays for the class I'm teaching now. The undergrads have a test coming up on the 1st, and I'm supposed to hold review with them on Thursday. Therefore, I need to do everything that they're supposed to do before that time. It's not like I haven't gotten anything done today, it's just a lot less than I could/should have. Bagh! Hmm, that makes me want to watch The Fellowship of the Ring... Maybe I can write these essays and watch the movie at the same time... In the words of Cat Stevens "Why not?"

Harold and Maude

I watched Harold and Maude this week, and I love this movie soooo much. It might just be my favorite movie. There are so many great things about the movie that it's hard to even start talking about it so I'm not. Instead, I will express my love of this movie visually.



And for your listening enjoyment...

I'm all about the technology, baby!

I've just joined Facebook. Hooray, me!

This aggression will not stand

This is ridiculous. I've got "pandas" in my description and haven't yet put a picture up?!?! Ahhhh, that's better.

The votes are in

Is blogging addictive?
Votes for "Yes" = 1 million gazillion
Votes for "No" = 0

Let's hope I can get my brain on more important stuff for longer than 30 minutes at a time (~ average time between posts). O Mighty Blog Gods, please lessen the shiny and new aspects of blogging and redirect my attention elsewhere!!!

Explanation of blog name

Here, There and Everywhere by The Beatles is Nathan's and my song. This was the song we danced to at our wedding. When we first started dating, we bonded over The Beatles. Nathan's a really good guitar player and singer, and he would play me Beatles songs, which was very romantic. And I would sit there and listen to him and imagine spending the next 50 years listening to him play music.

This is us in the AZ airport about to get on the plane to NYC for our honeymoon (8/6/06)

Pic of my honey

Nathan was disappointed by the picture of him I chose to put on here, because you can't see his face very well. So here's another one. You can only see half of his face, but I like this picture. This is from a short vacation to San Diego in March 2007.

What I'm reading

I thought it might be nice to keep track of things I'm reading. I'm compulsive about a lot of things, one of which is archiving my life for fear of forgetting. This fear was recently reinforced by the crash of my computer's hard drive. Thankfully, I had backed up a few days earlier. Unfortunately, I'd mistaken the structure of my data, and while I thought I'd backed up everything, I'd in fact not included photos from the last 2 months and various other things. Also, my mac's hard drive was partitioned into a smaller windows hard drive, and I lost everything on my windows side. Nathan and I went out the next day and bought two external hard drives, and I've now cloned my hard drive. Let's hope that keeps my fear/stress demons at bay.

But the point of this post is books:

Palmer, S.E.(1999), Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology, MIT Press. I'm reading this book because I'm teaching with Steve Palmer this semester. In order to get my tuition and fees paid for by the school, Berkeley requires that a graduate student either be hired as a GSI (graduate student instructor) or GSR (graduate student research). If you or your advisor has funding, then GSR is the way to go. Unfortunately, my advisor, Bill Prinzmetal, and I are severly lacking in monetary bulk as of late. Therefore, I've been teaching as a GSI for the past 2, and now 3, semesters. Anyway, it's a pretty good book. Steve is a world famous vision researcher, so it's really an honor to get to teach with him and whatnot. But it's also a pain in the ass to be a GSI and take classes of your own and try to run research and try to keep your RA busy with research and try to make time with your husband and try to not have a panic attack. But, that's a day in the life of a graduate student.

Huettel, S.A., Song, A.W., McCarthy, G. (2004). Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Sinauer. This book is for a class I'm taking on fMRI from Mark D'Esposito. I learned how to run EEG over the summer, but the future of cognitive psychology involves neuroscience, so I'm bolstering my neuroscience chops by taking this class. Plus, it's a requirement if at some point I want to use one of Mark's scanners for a project. It's a good class, but jam packed with knowledge which is covered at a lightning pace (how I long for a medium pace). So I'm hoping reading the book at my own speed will complement my weekly mental barage of info.

Luck, S.J. (2005). An Introduction to the Event-Related Potential Technique, MIT Press. I'd intended to read this book over the summer while I was learning EEG. I started out strong, but didn't get anywhere near the finish. So, I'm trying to plug on through.

"The Red Wyvern" by Katharine Kerr. This I'm reading entirely for enjoyment. Usually, I'll get through a couple pages a day when waiting for the bus or a class to start. It's part of a cheesy (but delicious) fantasy series that I've read a couple of times in the past, complete with magic, elves, dragons, and geeks (when you count the readers). I'm hoping the author finishes the series soon, because it's already something like 11 books. When I finish this, I think I'm going to re-read Harry Potter again. I re-read of the Ender's Game books over the summer, which are also great, more sci-fi than fantasy.

Bugs, what are they good for?

Nathan and I started composting about 6 months ago. We like to pitch in (no pun intended), though we'd probably be shunned by the community if we didn't. That's just one of many "great" things about Berkeley. A result of this composting is bugs. This is partially our fault, we didn't take the compost out for like 2 weeks. But now there are little gross flying bugs all over the apartment. This means I'm on a rampage. I'll lie in wait in the kitchen, armed with Raid, and when one of my foes lands, I pounce... and always feel bad after they die. I don't particularly dislike bugs, except when they're in my home, and then it's war. Berkeley has a lot of bugs too. There are spider webs on practically every car and bush outside, and plenty of spiders inside too. And I'm not just talking about daddy long legs. I'm talking about black-bodied, have-some-substance-to-them, look-like-they-could-kill-you-in-your-sleep spiders. And ants... oh ants, the bane of my existence. I find ants in random places throughout the apartment throughout the year. Ugh! There's no winning, but I shall continue the fight!

If you haven't discovered Netflix, you should

I love Netflix! It's pretty much my favorite stress reliever. This venerable slot used to be occupied by books (merely gazing adoringly at them or reading them), but when you're a graduate student working on a PhD, more reading is pretty much the last thing you want to do to relax. Netflix occupies two relaxation niches I didn't even know I had: 1.) It allows me to watch TV shows I've either missed because I don't have cable or because I have a life, and 2.) Access to guilty pleasure movies, like My Stepmother's an Alien and Crocodile Dundee (I and II, thank you very much). Nathan used to think I was crazy for watching so-called-mindless movies, but now that he's in a Masters program, he understands the alure. Anything that keeps you sane.

Is blogging addictive?

We'll see. But here I am adding more already. It's cheap and easy, why not?

I'm sitting here watching "Friends" and wasting time on the internet when I should be reading my fMRI book for class. Boo! Wasting time is fun, in part because of the nervous "I shouldn't be doing this" feeling, and of course in part because wasting time is fun.

Nathan was very concerned that I add a link to his blog from mine. So if you want an insight into the workings of his crayzee mind, click on Booktapes to the right. By the way, here's Nathan.

My first post (boring, but appropriate)

It seems like everyone is blogging these days. I've avoided it for as long as possible, partially because I hate doing something that everyone else is doing, and partially because I think the word "blogging" is stupid. But I've decided... screw that; I want to talk about random things I like too. I want to post pictures I like, or songs, videos, basically whatever. Soooo, I'll start with a photo of my beautiful kitty boys, Fred and George (their names should make sense to you when you see their pic).