Category Archives: personal

Tales from the Industry XXXVI – 3D at the Fun Fair

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Thursday’s shooting day was tiring, but fun overall. It started in the (highly unusual) June rain that we had in the first area we shot in – Griffith Park. We were at those famous (man made) caves that you may well have seen in one or other movie Western, or TV series like the classic old Batman show, where they played the role of the batcave. Don’t ask me why we were there. I think it was just a nice backdrop for the physics I was talking about to camera, between rain showers and screaming bouts from some, er, Angry Birds*. Crows, I think they were. It was cold, and I was a bit low-spirited and off my game as a result. I did not even remember to take a picture for you…

Then we headed South -and warmer- to Knott’s Berry Farm. Now, I’d vaguely heard of such a place, but I will admit that I had no idea that it was so close to Los Angeles. We were there to shoot lots of moving, interacting bodies, as a series of analogies for some other physics issues…and this is the perfect place for that, with all the various fun rides there are within easy reach. It was fun to enter the park through the service entrance, and then emerge through a secret door in the middle of the special universe they’ve created for the customers! We wandered off to find the various things we […] Click to continue reading this post →

Little Green Courgette

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(I think that perhaps Prince ought to write a song with this as the title. Hmmm…)

So to accompany the other types of squash that have begun to appear (see previous post), I’ve some courgettes (or zucchini) coming along nicely. It seems I have two plants of these this year (with a bit of leaf mould infection that I ought to see to), and so in the next few weeks I should have some nice additions to various meals…

Still to be unveiled are some Mystery Squash plants that I put into the soil a bit late. I grew them from some seeds that […] Click to continue reading this post →

Gourdy Goodness

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Ok… So that was a bit unexpected. I was not expecting these when I planted them. Crookneck Summer squash.

I’ve got several of them coming along in three clusters… They look very much like tough, inedible gourds, and I imagine that they can be like that if picked at the wrong time. So I’ve picked a few small ones and the bigger one in the second photograph (below) and will see how they deal with being tossed into a stir-fry.

* * *

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Sew What

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This morning, before starting what turned out to be a long day of work, I did some sewing. I realized the day before last that the umbrella that protects me from the sun’s rays a lot of the time was filthy with dust and mildew. Realizing that this was connected to it never having been washed in its seven or so years in my possession, I set about removing it from the frame (a task that involved 16 screws, interestingly) and popped it into the washing machine. It emerged with a lot of the mildew greenery still attached and so I soaked it for a while in diluted bleach* and then rewashed… It emerged rather splendidly clean, but then I noticed that all those years in the sun and other elements had rather taken a toll on a lot of the stitching in various places (perhaps the vigourous cleaning contributed a bit too?), and so before putting […] Click to continue reading this post →

Best Ice-Cream Van Ever!

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Monday, Memorial Day, found me at the MOCA Geffen Center downtown, where there’s a huge retrospective of graffiti and related forms of street art, including marvellous works like this – elaborately decorated cars. Wouldn’t you just love to get an ice-cream from this van? The artist is called Mister Cartoon. I am sorry to say that the shot I took of a small child looking at it in awe was too blurry (I was in such haste to get the shot before he walked away). The exhibition is quite splendid, with a huge variety of pieces, including some that were created specifically for the exhibit, said to be the largest ever retrospective of its kind in the USA.

One such site-specific piece was “Wish You Were Here”, by an artist called Mode 2, […] Click to continue reading this post →

Another Purple Indicator…

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… of Summertime fun*!

Yes, I went with some friends to see His Purpleness last night, at the Forum. Remarkably fun show, with tons of great music. He played and played and played, including some long James Brown style jams where he channeled much of the master’s moves and stylings, and – yes! – brought on Maceo Parker as a guest for a lot of the evening’s proceedings. (Who is Maceo Parker, you ask?! The familiar also saxophone soloist on a lot of the famous James Brown hits…) He did so many of his songs, including some of the great hits known to all, and some of the songs that he’s written that have been made famous by others, such as “Nothing Compares 2 U”**.

…And he kept coming back for more… leaving the stage entirely, with people setting off to leave, and then returning for another long jam. He did this three times into the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Movie Notes

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Going to the movies this weekend? Lots of interesting choices, but perhaps you especially want to see some portrayals of people in academic careers by some of the hot young phenoms. Well, here are two you might not have considered, both films released May 6th.

1. Observe Nathalie Portman as an astrophysicist in Thor. I don’t find this to be too much of a stretch since the actress always seemed to me to radiate an intensity and intelligence that would help make such a role believable, even in films where everything else is rather a disaster as far as believability is concerned. (cough, cough, Star Wars prequels, cough, cough) Well, it turns out that Thor is not the disaster I thought it would be and is rather well put together, all things considered (this is one of several Marvel characters that I was underwhelmed by in the old days). So go for Portman, stay for the hammer, lightning bolts, and other stuff. Turns out the physicist aspect of her performance was not as well studied as her ballet in that other film, but oh well. It was not like it was the central issue of the film. But enjoy all the Einstein-Rosen bridge mentions!

2. Observe Jessica Alba as a mathematics teacher who loves numbers in An Invisible Sign. Now, er, this for me was casting that did not bode well, but to be fair,[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Happy Mother’s Day!

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It is Mother’s Day over in the USA today, and although my mum and sister (both mums) are over in the UK where they have Mother’s Day a bit earlier (no, not hours earlier, weeks earlier) I still try to remember to make and send them cards to arrive in time for the USA one. For the card I made for my mum this year I used these spectacular roses I spotted on campus (during the recent festival) in the garden next to the USC Alumni house (it used to be the original USC building some 131 years ago):

Stunning, aren’t they?

I wish all Mothers, far and near, Happy Mother’s Day!

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Festival Activities, 1

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Well, it was wonderful yesterday. Maybe my best time at the festival over the several years I’ve been going, possibly because I visited more of the ticketed panels, mixing those in with the wandering outdoors looking at the stalls and stages. Might do some more today…

In the meantime, here’s my favourite picture from yesterday. I like it for several reasons, not the least because it symbolizes a major aspect of the whole thing that I consider important – family and the joy of reading – but, well, have a look and see what you can see… (click for a larger view).

festival_of_books_2011_cvj

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Festive Weekend!

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It has been another rather busy week this week (including a marathon seven-hour video interview!) and so posting was a bit light. I apologize for this, including for not getting to blogging about an event (or cluster of events) that I’ve been gleefully waiting for since the news broke last Fall that (as I’d mentioned back then) the LA Times Festival of Books is now being hosted by USC. This is something I fantasized about many years ago, in fact – I simply think it is a better fit for the city of Los Angeles for many reasons.

Anyway, the first festival of the new era is tomorrow and Sunday, with a wonderful program that can be looked at on the LA Times website. It will continue to be the largest literary festival in the USA (and perhaps beyond?), and it is hoped that it will get even larger… Next year, we’ll have the new branch of the subway system running, giving three stops at the campus (hurrah!), but in the meantime there’s a dedicated shuttle bus connecting USC to Union Station downtown and the Convention Center (not to mention all the many regular public transport links), and so you don’t have to bring your car to the area to deal with parking issues.

As you know from my blogging about all this in previous years (see list of links at the end), in a sense the whole thing kicks off the Friday night before (tonight!) with the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Maneuvers in the Dark

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fay_wolf_hotel_cafe_14_4_2011_smallBefore getting up in the wee hours to prepare to jump onto a plane on Friday morning, I was out seeing some live music at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. I find that I need to go and get some of that from time to time, and the Hotel Cafe is a favourite of mine for that…

I had my notebook and a nice vantage point for grabbing a quick sketch or two of people at the piano. It was a nice challenge to do a couple of fast sketches – in almost darkness – to see if my hand and eyes were still “in”.

As usual (I’ve discussed this earlier here) my goal on fast sketches is not photo-realism (!) but a […] Click to continue reading this post →

Lounging

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20110416-220116.jpgI’m lounging around. In Cincinnatti Ohio. Why? Well, it has been a long day, and I’m tired. I spent the whole day yesterday traveling to get here, changing planed in Chicago, eventually getting to my hotel at 10:00 pm, having arisen at 6:00am. I spent the flying time thinking about physics and writing the talk I was invited to give here as part of the regional SPOCK meeting at the University of Cincinnatti. The letters stand for something, but I can’t recall what it is right now. It does not mean, as the title might suggest, that several emotionally-challenged and otherwise tv-cliche-handicapped individuals were meeting to discuss arcane matters in a room somewhere. It was a meeting of several people from the region’s string theory community to discuss…. Ok, ok, Ok…stop giggling!

I got up at 7:00am -really 4:00am my time- transferred all my pages of notes to the iPad, and got ready, leaving to do the short (I assumed) walk to the physics department in the wind and rain. I enjoyed that bit… I had however mis-estimated how long it would take me to get to the Physics department building, largely due to […] Click to continue reading this post →

Missing Sidney

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sidney_harman_1Yesterday I received an email that quite caught me off guard. It was from the USC President Max Nikias to all faculty and staff informing us that Sidney Harman had died. Perhaps oddly, my first thought was that I must have misread it, that perhaps Max was referring to someone else and I’d mis-wired the pathways in my brain to as to who it really was, or something… since Sidney surely was going to live forever, right? Or at least until 150 or so… He died at 92, and I was actually writing a post about the time I spent with him a while back brainstorming some ideas, on the delight of spending a little time with him and his wife Jane Harman, and his infectious wit and humour.

sidney_harman_2The post was about the outcome of the brainstorming, the new Academy for Polymathic Study here at USC. I gave a talk there a short while ago and was impressed with how it is coming along. My thought was that the spirit of Sidney, the driving force behind it, is there for sure, and I was looking forward to seeing him again so that I could tell him that, thank him, and congratulate him.

Missed my chance. He’s gone off to see to other matters, I expect.

Have a look at the memorial piece by Jonathan Alter about Sidney.

Here’s a video introducing the Academy, which includes Sidney taking part in explaining what it’s about (I borrowed the stills above from it): […] Click to continue reading this post →