The final frontier

There is something about watching videos that remind me of how small our planet is, and how impossibly small of a space we occupy in the universe, and how incredibly little we know about either planet or universe, that gives me that tingly feeling inside.

This week, I got tingly while watching The Known Universe by the American Museum of Natural History (via Gee Len on Facebook, who shared "This Link Leads You To The Entire Known Universe")

And that made me think of one of my favourite TED talks ever, wherein the delightfully cute Brian Cox talked about the CERN supercollider (before it was completed last year). The part I love is towards the end, from 10:50 to 14:35, in which he recites what he calls "a wonderful narrative --- almost a creation story, if you'd like --- about the universe, from modern science over the last few decades".

Mmmmm ... tingly.

When I was a kid, my first adult-like ambition was to be a teacher --- pretty much par for the course for any wee urbanite who's packed off to school where teachers wield all the classroom power --- but after that what I really wanted to be was an astronomer (which I've briefly mentioned before). Not doing well in physics, or really, in any science subject in school put paid to that vague dream, but I still get a kick out of reading or seeing astronomy-related stuff (the ones I can understand, anyway). The best non-visual link I've found recently is this lesson plan for "The Earth as a peppercorn" (via Slate's "Learning To Love the Moon"), which uses a "thousand-yard model" to help people understand the relative sizes of the planets and the distances between them.

In a nutshell: even if the Earth is represented by the size of a peppercorn, while the sun by a ball 8 inches wide, even then the distance between Pluto and the sun is, well, pretty damn far. Go read and imagine it for yourself.



Okay, so now we know it's called an iPad

Why you shouldn't let the cat too near the keyboard

(Image above of my old iBook used here for nostalgic reasons. Someday not too far in the future, I don't think we'll be wrangling with keyboards like this anymore.)

Now that it's been more than 24 hours since the announcement of the iPad and everyone's had a chance to freak out about all the functionalities it doesn't have and how it's not going to be the tablet-killer everyone thought it was going to be, let us remember a few things:
Me, I just wish they'd called it the iSlate instead because I'm old school that way --- I think the word "slate" has more resonance. "Slate" also makes me think of all the fun doodling goodness (literally or metaphorically) you could have with it, whereas "pad", once you get over the jokes about feminine hygiene products, merely conjures images of lined notepaper (perhaps even in that sickly yellow hue of legal pads) just waiting to be filled with, ugh, work.

Edited to add (10:48 am): Oops, except that I forgot about the HP Slate --- which I suppose tells you something about how much mind share it holds with me.

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Milton Glaser and more

Opening night





I paid how much for SMSes?

My latest mobile phone bill informs me that I sent 907 local SMSes in the last billing cycle. That works out to about 30 messages a day, which is not inconceivable considering that sometimes one message may spill over into several 160-character SMSes.

Nonetheless, 907 is a lot considering that I averaged 500-600 SMSes a month last year. Plus it added about $20 to my monthly bill ($0.05 per SMS, which is also a lot considering that the cost of zipping all that data around is negligible with all the paid-up mobile phone infrastructure in place).

Hmmm ... more WhatsApp, less SMSing.



It would seem we are still talking about this


If you missed them:









In which I put blogging-by-iPhone to the test

I'm sitting at my laptop at home, so I thought this'd be a good time to test if I have BlogPress Lite set up right. It's a free app, but obliges Blogger users to have Picasa activated as well (even if, like me, you have no intention of ever using Picasa).

Edited to add (5:51 pm): Hey look, it works --- except that I had to manually add labels (or "lables", as it's misspelled in the app) to this post because BlogPress Lite imported only the five labels I'd used most recently.



Solo efforts

It's not every evening that you walk into a friend's birthday party, only to be greeted by a look of dismay from the birthday girl. "I brought you wine!" I said cheerily, waving the bottle of Shiraz.

"Yu-Mei Balasingamchow," she intoned in her distinctive singsong way, albeit with a tinge of disapproval, "you were supposed to be here earlier."

"Yah, sorry, I had dinner with some friends and ---"

"No, you were supposed to be here earlier." She gave me a look. It turned out there had been a Very Nice Man at the party whom she'd been hoping to introduce to me, but he'd booked it for another party before I got there.

Nonetheless, she proceeded to tell me several significant details about him, which now makes me wonder if I'll be able to keep a straight face if he and I ever get round to meeting (nothing wrong with him, just my friend's enthusiastic description).

Unrelated to this, a couple of months ago someone asked me what type of guys I like. In response my mind went completely blank. One doesn't simply walk around with a list in our heads, do we?



Hiding from the heat

Tea for two


Tomorrow I'm staying in.



New year, new work









Hello 2010

I meant to write something suitably offbeat for New Year's Eve, but I hadn't finished it by the time I had to go out to my aunt's last night and now that draft blog post just reads wrong.


I still don't know what to call this decade, now that we're done with the Noughties/Naughties/nowhere-in-hell-are-they-the-Ohs. Is the new decade the Teens? The Twenty-'Teens? The Two-O-one-ies as Shan has suggested on Facebook? Someone think of something catchy, fast.

(Speaking of catchy phrases, I like "The Catchphrase of the Decade". A lot.)