What I'm listening to

Lately, I've been listening to The Nightmare Before Christmas sountrack; Danny Elfman is a genius! "What's This?" is below for your listening pleasure. I love how you can hear a piece by Danny Elfman and know it's his, but you can ID which movie it's from. He's able to maintain a very particular style and sound yet have enough distinctiveness in each song or movie soundtrack to distinguish between them. That's skillful. Plus, he seems like a nice guy. A friend of my sent him a picture to autograph in high school and he did and mailed it back to her.

It's coffee time!

It's coffee time, it's coffee time, won't you drink this coffee of mine???? Sung as a dirge or a peppy morning wake-up song, it captures my mood right now...COFFEE!!! We went to the grocery store last night (finally) and bought a whole bunch of crap. YAY! Some of which is coffee. Ever since our honeymoon in NYC, I've been an avid coffee drinker, so for slightly over 2 years now. And with my being in grad school, it is a morning must. Please enjoy this picture of coffee. There's something off about the picture, let me know if you find it , hah ahah ahha {evil laugh}.

Once you've found it, it's there for life. This is an example of one-shot learning. Nathan found it super fast, like 3 times faster than me.

And now for something a little lighter

Why is the Adelson's checkerboard illusion (shown above) an illusion? Nothing looks weird about this image. Right? For instance, checker A is a darker checker and B is a light checker. View the same image below, but now with a homogeneous patch of grey overlaying the checkers. A and B are in fact identical in luminance, but our perception of them is quite different from their physical reality. This is an illusion of lightness constancy.

I'm teaching (as a GSI) a course in Perception this semester with Steve Palmer, and I taught Sensation & Perception last fall with my advisor, Bill Prinzmetal. One of the most striking things I've learned from doing this is just how many illusions there are, and not just visual (if I can figure it out, I'll post some auditory illusions I have). The more I learn about how the body is formed at the cellular level and how the body functions both biologically and perceptually, the more I am amazed by how amazing humans are (and other animals). Yes, there are a slew of illusions that humans are prey to, but we also have overwhelmingly accurate perceptions most of the time. There are so many areas and ways that our system/body could breakdown, and it does don't get me wrong, but it also doesn't a lot. I don't know, I don't really have a point except that evolution has done a pretty good job.


(images acquired from this MIT website)

Presidential debate is back on!

McCain had bitched out over tonight's debate, but he must have gotten enough slack about it, because he's back in. Nathan and I are going over to my advisor's house tonight to watch the Presidential Debate. I am so sick of America and our politics! But I'm hoping that tonight can help rebound Obama's campaign to it's previous high. If McCain gets elected, I may just move out of the country...after I finish my PhD, of course.

You've probably already heard

John McCain recently skipped out at the last minute from his appearance on David Letterman. And Letterman was pissed. Supposedly, McCain was halting his campaign because of the country's financial crisis. What, he's never heard of multi-tasking? So, what, if he's elected and there's another "crisis" he'll just drop everything, like healthcare reform, education issues, etc to handle the crisis??? Come on! If you haven't seen Letterman's rant, I've added it below. It's a little over 9 minutes, if you don't want to watch the full clip, skip to the 6 minute mark. It's certainly worth a view.



It took me a long time to track down the clip of McCain on Couric (fishy), but here it is. The portion with McCain ends at about the 2 minute mark.
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Update:
This video clip is no longer available, and I can't find it on the web again. Fishier and fishier. But here's a picture of McCain on Couric's show, post make-up application.


Let's hope this nonsense hurts their campaign. Save us, Barack!!!

Remember Mr Wizard?

I am not, nor have I ever been, a morning person, but when I was a kid I used to wake up early (like 6am early) just to watch this show. One of the things I remember learning about is the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound. In fact, this show is probably the reason for my interest in science. The awesome Don Herbert (Mr Wizard) began teaching science to America via his television program in 1951, and he was still at it nearly 4 decades later when I discovered it on Nickelodeon. He passed away just last year, just before his 90th birthday.

Then:


And now (roughly):

Pictures of my kitty boys

I've just uploaded a bunch of pics of my beautiful kitty boys to my facebook page. My mom should get facebook so she can view our pics (it's free and easy mom, I could walk you through it). Here's a taste of what you'll find.

Fred's inFredigating how to be especially cute with his bell-bell in the air.

Crescent-moon kitty stretch George.

Speedy recovery

My mom just had surgery on her elbow today, and she came through alright. Here's wishing her a speedy recovery.

This is from my birthday last year. My goofball mother brought a "Happy Birthday" banner to hang, but you'll notice it doesn't say happy birthday...goofball.

A Clockwork Orange

This is one of the better adapted movies I've ever seen. I enjoyed the book and enjoyed the movie, a rather rare combination. Kubrick and Malcolm McDowell made a brilliant combination of precise creepy. The lyrical quality of the Burgess' fictional slang help sell the slang and the setting of the story. Unfortunately, it's not one that I can watch over and over, it's too dark for that.

A bit of the old ultra violence, now available in slow motion. Bad droogs!

This is pretty much what it's like to be a participant in one of my experiments, except without getting to watch the cool video clips.

An eye-conic picture, if you will. Moloko anyone? Cheers!

Timing is everything

When we were in AZ over the summer, our friend Richard introduced us to an internet phenomenon. A youtube video of a song called "What what (in the butt)" by Samwell. I will not post the video here, as I hope to never hear the song again and therefore someday not have it stuck in my head. One of the highly memorable lines from this fine music video is "I won't bite...not that hard."

Ok, now that you have that information, I can tell the story.

After Nathan missed his shuttle today (see post below), he decided to stick around campus with me while I finished up (I needed to attend a practice conference talk for a fellow graduate student). After the talk, one of the girls from the lab had to leave, but she came back when she realized she'd forgotten her keys somewhere. Rather than coming all the way back in the room, she just tentatively poked her head in the door. My advisor then said, "We won't bite" at which point I turned to Nathan and said "Not that hard." A more perfect set up could not be asked for.


The moral of this story: Always keep Nathan around so he can laugh at your jokes.

Coincidence?

A funny thing happened today. Nathan missed his shuttle to school and so missed his class. That's not so interesting, he just left the apartment a bit too late and the shuttle departed a bit too early. What is interesting, is that a couple of hours later (6:15, just before he would have been leaving class), we got a call from his school. Apparently there was some "police emergency" happening on campus very near to where he would have been in class, and everyone was advised to stay locked in their classrooms. We weren't told what the "emergency" was, but we got another call at 8:30 telling people it was now safe to leave campus. Whatever it was, I'm glad Nathan missed his shuttle and wasn't at school today. I'm also glad that Mills College has a functioning emergency contact plan in place for their students to warn them when things like this are happening. Berkeley just started a notification system like this over the summer, but thankfully I've never gotten a call.

This is the view of campus from the steps of Mills Hall (Nathan's building).

Kitty dinner time!

My boys are not stupid when it comes to putting food in their bellies. They get fed breakfast every morning and kitty dinner at night, and they know what time of day it is and when to start begging. Kitty dinner time is 9pm (residual from when Nathan and I used to work at the Tempe Public Library, which closed at 9 and we'd feed the boys right when we got home), but the boys start their impatient cat chirps at 8:50. Every night. They've got some good internal kitty clocks. They also know when to beg in the morning. This is a little more sophisticated, because if they piss me off by waking me up, they know their breakfast will be delayed. So to avoid Mallison (the name given to my furious counterpart), they keep their begging in check until the alarm clock goes off. Smart little fluff balls, if you ask me. George is much more vocal about food time than his brother, so it's always a joy when little Fred squeezes out a mooching meow. Awwww...cute cute cute.


George is in the red collar in front, and Fred's sporting the highly fashionable blue in the back.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to my mom! She got stuck with babysitting for my brother tonight, but I believe she enjoyed a free birthday dinner beforehand. She'll shortly be out here in Berkeley to celebrate my birthday.

My present to my mom is this super cute dachshund puppy. Yay, birthdays!

DAMN AT&T!!!!!

I've had internet service with AT&T for less than a month and have had to call them about problems 9 times. What's wrong with this? The most recent problem occurred last night. Nathan and I got home from my eye appointment debacle and tried to check our e-mails to no avail. We called AT&T to find out that they'd canceled our service and even they didn't know why. That's not all, the people who could help us fix this problem weren't available because it was after 5 on a Sunday. So I called back this morning and spent 2 hours on the phone with them (no joke) and the problem still wasn't fixed. Thankfully, my honey took it upon himself to call them back while I was at school and got it all worked about, which took almost another 2 hours. And now that I've got internet access again, I'm spreading the word of their evil works. If you have AT&T service, I would recommend hanging garlic above all your doors and lighting some frankincense for your protection.

Attempt to post video clip

My crazy cat Fred was just being crazy on his kitty tower, but of course stopped when I went to video him. I did, however, catch a bit of the old Fred-George Fred-George, which I'm attempting to post (p.s. there's no sound, there's not a problem with your computer).


My favorite part is when Fred smacks at the toy in rapid succession.

The Princess Bride

I have to retract an earlier statement that Harold and Maude is my favorite movie. I don't know how it's possible, but I was forgetting about The Princess Bride. The Princess Bride has everything, torture, revenge, fighting, giants, true love,Cary Elwes, Christopher Guest, Mandy Patinkin, Andre the Giant, come on! On top of all that, there's a rad 80's score trying to bring techno to medieval romance, and some many memorable phrases that you could quote along with the entire movie (which I always do).

In high school, a couple friends and I actually dubbed over a copy of the movie with our own dialogue. It was really funny, and still an entertaining movie. Excerpt: "I have fish" replaced "As you wish" which spurred many fish-related gift exchanges between the three of us. And, there was the creation of The Cary Elwes Fan Club, complete with membership badges. Yes, I was and will always be a dork.


"Anybody want a peanut?"

Redefining cute

But on the bright side... when we got home, Fred-Fred was super cute and joined his dad in the chair to help him surf the internet (I'm not the only one addicted, Nathan). Thankfully, I captured the moment in pictorial history. No matter what's happened in my day, these kitties can always make me smile. It's no wonder having pets is correlated with longer lifespan.


I can't exclude George. We love them equally.

Is Berkeley actually pure evil?

I have to ask myself this question practically everyday. Today, I ask it because of my alleged insurance. I was trying to buy new frames and lenses after my appointment, when I was told that I don't have insurance. But I do. As a graduate student in the psych dept I get full tuition and fee remission, including full health insurance. But since Berkeley is pure evil, they're claiming I don't have this. This is one of about a dozen problems I've had with them this semester. Last year was fine (they were fresh out of the wooing me to their school phase), but this year I've spent so many hours in various departments across campus, I could cry. First there were issues with my residence, then financial aid, then getting my friggin bus pass, then registering for classes, and now insurance.

Don't let the picturesque campus deceive you. It seems Nathan was correct in suggesting that I should combine "Berkeley" and "complaints" into a single malicious post label.

Hey everybody, come and see how good I look

I had to have my eyes dilated at the eye doctor, so I needed light protection when I left. Hence, this picture. I think I should walk you through it. First, the awesome wrap-around sunglasses are in essence super cool, but the fact that I need to wear them under my regular glasses to keep them on my face...masterful.

Here's an attempt to capture my crazy dilated eye. It's pretty creepy looking actually. Nathan said that when the doctor held my eye open to shine lights in it, it looked like I was dead. I think it looks like my cats when they're about to pounce something.

What I'm listening to

I usually need music on to study, thanks to the shithole that is Berkeley and their crummy old buildings. What this means, is I can hear our upstairs neighbors yawn, giggle when the pee (yeah, it's creepy), stomp around their place, and have yelling fits in the mornings. Therefore, whenever I'm trying to concentrate on studying or sleeping, I generally have to have headphones on. I'm fairly used to it by now and the near-constant headache that accompanies nonstop auditory input. Another consequence of this is I listen to a lot of music. Now, I'm a bit of an obsessive person, shocking I know, and so I'll usually put on one cd and listen to it 5 times through. What I've been listening to lately is:

Works for violin and piano - Paganini
No need to argue - The Cranberries
Amarantine - Enya
The Celts - Enya
Watermark - Enya
Luna's Fancy - Sarah Marie Mullen
Wild Woods - Sarah Marie Mullen
Celtic Spirit - ???
Greatest Hits - Cat Stevens
Let it be...naked - The Beatles

Bellow is "Across the Universe" sung by Fiona Apple. This song is an absolute must for calming one's nerves before a test or any stressful situation. Instructions: 1.) Listen to song, preferably with eyes closed, 2.) Take deep breathes and saturate your brain with highly oxygenated blood, 3.) Repeats steps 1 and 2 as necessary.

An old friend is newly happy

As you know, Nathan and I have rediscovered technology via facebook. And with that, we've rediscovered many friends. One of our really good friends in AZ has had a hard year (I won't go into it), but we've been chatting with him through facebook's IM and can tell that he's taken a turn for the happy. Congrats to him and bonne chance avec la nouvelle fille.

Eye Appointment

My mom will be glad to hear that I'm finally going to get my eyes checked today. I was up at Minor Hall on campus Friday to hear a talk by Miguel Eckstein of UCSB, and Minor also happens to house the university's eye center. Two birds, one stone, you know how this is going to turn out. So I'm going there at 2:30 for a 90-frickin'-minute appointment. I guess it's going to be so long because they're dilating my eyes. It was really funny actually, because the guy who took my appointment was like "now, with your eyes dialated you'll be really sensitive to light" yadda yadda yadda, and I was like, "Yeah, I'm a vision researcher..." (but not like a biatch).

So, I'll be doing that today. Also, my school's insurance has added coverage for frames, so I'll have a free $120 to work with to get frames and lenses. Yay, no spending my own money. I'll miss my old glasses though.
Goodbye, old frames (don't worry, I'm keeping the creepy eyes).

Movies make the world go round

I'm heading off to bed now, finally. I like to watch a movie or tv show to help me relax and fall asleep. Lately, I've been falling asleep to The Simpsons and Starwars: A New Hope. But tonight it's Willy Wonka. Gene Wilder is Awesome (note: that's with a captial A) and the music is great, though I always skip the Cheer Up Charlie song and the song where his grandpa learns to get out of bed.

Another illusion

After I posted the rotating snake illusion, I got a bunch of hits from various people. Coincidence? I think not. To test this, I'm posting another illusion, the Fountain Floor.

This one is courtesy of Akiyoshi Kitaoka.

Not one to be left out

FRED! Can't forget inFredible Fred-head (who, by the way, is sleeping on the top part of the chair behind my head as I type).

The boy can sleep!

George just fanned the flames with his cuteness

Our crazy cats are basically little people to us (substitute children, really). We love them so freakin' much that we could seriously sit and stare at them all day and then talk about how cute they were all night.

Case in point, George just visited me while I was trying to study. What this means is that he walked on top of my textbook and stood there for a while. Then he slowly walk his front paws off, and stood there for a while. At which point I pushed his fluffy behind out of the way. Anyway, it was really cute, and because I'm full-blown addicted to blogging now, I had to post about it. Here's a little George for thought:


What can I say, the boy likes laundry.