Lunch Time in Colour
Finished the inks and threw some (digital) paints over the lunch group. I think it’s time to move on to another part of The Project. I’ve spent far too long fiddling with the light in this.
From Instagram
From Instagram
Author Archives: Clifford
Goodbye, Nelson Mandela
Rest in peace… but let your legacy and the lessons of your actions and words forever stay alive and working in our societies worldwide.
New Tool
Actually, this new tool is pretty old school, and I love it! There are times when I want to have a change of venue while doing rather detailed work for The Project… perhaps go sit in a cafe for a change, instead of at the drawing desk. But when not at the drawing desk, I could not use the lovely large illuminated magnifying glass […] Click to continue reading this post
Fail Lab Episode 12 – Finale
….In which Crystal and many of the crew chill out on the sofa after a long hard season of shows and express some of their gut feelings about the whole business. Well done on an excellent series of shows, Crystal, Patrick, James, and all the other behind the scenes people! (Warning: – This episode may not be for the squeamish!)
Embed below:
[…] Click to continue reading this post
Dining
Well, since yesterday was all about eating here in the USA (Thanksgiving, in case you missed that), I thought I’d share a partially inked panel from The Project, of a meal in progress. I got a bit of quiet time to work on it this evening, while listening to Jimi Hendrix and then Freddie Hubbard. They helped a lot. It is at times like this I wonder what insanity has come over me […] Click to continue reading this post
Fail Lab Episode 11 – Failure
This episode of Fail Lab gets down to the bone of the matter: Failure. The whole point of this excellently conceived series was to look at the fail videos all over the web (as everyone does) and instead of just laughing at the people in them (as most people do), take a different path and try to see the positive in the failure. Sometimes with humour, and/or with tongue in cheek, but with an eye on looking at things a bit differently. Now this special episode turns and looks the issue directly in the eye. I have the honor of being a co-presenter of this one again, again with the excellent Crystal Dilworth, and this time we break the pattern and have yet a third person as a co-presenter – Adam Steltzner from JPL, the chief engineer of the landing stage of the Mars Curiosity mission, you might recall. Crystal and Adam are on the left. (You might also recall that we teamed up for an event earlier this year at the Natural History Museum…)
Together, we talk in the episode about the whole idea of failure, making mistakes, and of course, experimentation. We highlight how it underpins all innovation, scientific, technological, artistic… all corners of human […] Click to continue reading this post
Film Tips…
Over on the USC Science Film Competition blog, I give some tips to the 35 (or so) teams registered for the competition. I hope they really pay attention… This could be a great year for the competition if they stay the course…
Automatic Beans
So here’s a nifty thing. The beans on the left are a sort of speckled butter bean (or lime bean, if you prefer) that are pretty automatic. Each year, since I first planted them long ago, I get a lot of new bean plants appearing in the patch that the last ones grew in. Basically, the beans tend to [stay on] be left on the vine until they dry and then they pop open and replant themselves, ultimately, since I never find all of the ones that fall on to the ground. This is great, since it means that I never have to actually plant the things again… they just show up and start spreading. I need only put some stakes and climbing frames out, and each year they will just cover it with vines and new beans. This year I discovered another automatic feature. […] Click to continue reading this post
Hands On
Did you hear about the “takeover” of Seventeen Magazine’s Manicure Mondays? Hearing about it really made my morning*. I read about it in Slate. Go and look at some of the photos on twitter (you don’t need an account to do so) – It is a great variety of images showing hands (male and female) doing things, including scientific activities from field work to lab work. A rather excellent enhancement of the intended scope of just having nail-art.
Jason Bittel, who wrote the Slate piece, says at one point: […] Click to continue reading this post
Fail Lab Episode 10 – Disaster!
Fail Lab Episode 10 is available on Discovery’s Test Tube Channel, or on YouTube. It focuses on responses to dangerous situations. Crystal Dilworth and Heather Watts do a great presenting job once again, and as a bonus, the brain-dog makes an appearance this time!
Embed below: […] Click to continue reading this post
Back to Bilbo, Again
I’m preparing some notes for my graduate Electromagnetism class, and I’ve finally arrived at the section on Special Relativity. We will end up discovering the fully covariant formalism of the equations of electromagnetism in a few lectures, and a number of mysterious things we’ve seen over the course of the semester will be more natural in this setting, showing how marvellously Maxwell’s equations from the 19th Century, unifying Electricity and Magnetism, actually herald (actually should out loudly for!) Einstein’s 20th Century physics – Special Relativity.
But first I must review Special Relativity, going back to the basic thought experiments I like to talk about that lead you to discover it. Traditionally this means lots of scenarios involving flashes of light, and long extended objects being boosted at speed in various directions and so forth… All very fun.
Well, over the years I’ve changed the characters in the scenarios a couple of times, and now I’ve firmly (as of 2012) left Harry, his broom, Hermione, and […] Click to continue reading this post
Date Tastiness
Time for a quick visit to the kitchen. I woke up one Sunday morning with the urge to make a cake. I’d thought about a simple sponge cake for some reason in the days leading up to it, and that must have planted the seed. I was busy and so did not immediately jump into it. But I woke up the Sunday in the mood. (I think it was last Sunday.) So I looked at what I had lying around and remembered that I had some old dates that were needing a purpose. They’d dried out a bit and so were not so great for eating directly, but certainly had a use in cooking. A short time later I had a date and walnut coffee cake sitting on the counter waiting to be eaten.
It was all gone within a short time, and so this morning I thought I’d make some more. The pictures you see are some of the steps.
It is pretty simple, being a fairly basic (baking soda risen) batter. The key novelty is to put together a cup of dates and a cup of walnuts, all chopped, […] Click to continue reading this post
Fail Lab Episode 9 – Aggression
Fail Lab Episode Nine, all about Aggression, is now online. See earlier posts (listed below) for thoughts about this excellent series on Discovery’s Test Tube.
(By the way, (spoiler alert) in the video they analyze this week, that looks like a bit like a Wing Chun move (and stance) to me… albeit a tad sloppy. And I note that it was used to end the aggression. A win for positive use of martial arts!)
Embed below:
Why Do I Study Physics?
I was sent* this delightful short film recently. It is by Shixie (Xiangjun Shi) done as a graduation project at Rhode Island School of Design. It seems that it won prizes – quite understandably! – at a number of short film festivals, including one about science communication (which reminds me of the one I run). The film is entitled “Why Do I Study Physics?” and it is a lovely piece of writing and hand drawn simple animation that’s very […] Click to continue reading this post
Consulting for a Cat…
Ever wonder what it is like to science consult for the entertainment industry? Read on. You may recall me mentioning in passing that I had an interesting time a while back on a sofa being interviewed by a cat, an owl, and a robot. Possibly you missed that remark, or tried to forget it!!! Well, the interview is now online, and you can enjoy it at your convenience. Embed below. The entirely spontaneous piece ended up being a humorous conversation that closely resembles a lot of serious conversations I’ve had with people trying to creatively mix science and a dramatic story (and in some depressing cases, documentary…) I try to help where I can, if I get the call in time! (Actually, to be fair, sometimes even the most bizarre creative free flow can end up being useful!)
The show is called Love Me Cat, and was created by Eric Kaplan, who does the voice of the cat, in collaboration with My Damn Channel. You’ll certainly know Eric’s work from things like Futurama and Big Bang Theory, for starters. I had a lot of fun on the show, and it was great to meet Eric, and all the
[…] Click to continue reading this post
