EsePrimo's weblog

5:00 PM. "We have left only a red convertible and a grey SUV. Because of the Indianapolis GP this weekend, the rest of vehicles have been either rented or reserved… So, which one do you prefer?"—said the employee at the AVIS branch. Finally, Viduido decided to get the SUV, since unfortunately, this particular convertible doesn't have enough room in the trunk for the huge amount of baggage they are taking back to Spain.

The best way to learn a language starts inevitably by grasping and getting as acquainted as possible with the basic grammar rules. Once the basic constructions are fluidly handled, one must acquire a large vocabulary. After this, it only remains to get more and more exposed to even more complex examples; until reading any text or writing any document presents no secrets.

Listening comprehension and Speech should be worked in parallel to the previous plan, and one ought to pay attention not only to a restricted accent, but to show some interest for different speech patterns belonging to different countries and social levels. In English, for instance, one needs to acknowledge the serious and sober British accents, the laid-back and relaxed American modes, or the coarse Australian ways; not to forget hybrid patterns offered in old UK colonies like India. Although it seems practically impossible to tackle such a demanding work, it pays off. Among the obvious benefits, I like to list the better access to information gathered from readings, song's lyrics or movies from very different cultures.

An excellent exercise in this sense, that covers the third step above, is to get exposed to the thoughts of personalities from everywhere: politicians, actors and actresses, sportsmen and women, etc.

In order to exemplify this point, I have been collecting some quotes from Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband. Enjoy his diplomacy and "savoir faire":

I'm sure you've seen more than once those games in which someone presents cites of a book or a movie, and you have to find out their titles. The game introduced here is similar, but with a twist that makes it, if not harder, at least more involved.
( Click here to enter the game )
As always, you know the drill: I am after the procedure and search patterns, rather than the solutions themselves.

One of my lifetime's dreams: to explore the Paleontology section of the Smithsonian's National museum of Natural History. I believe that right now each and every one of you that were completely nuts about dinosaurs when you were younger—and even now, for a few of you—know what I am talking about. Once there, I couldn't but marvel at the sizes of those huge animals, in particular that enormous sea animal I forgot to record its name, and the subject of the somewhat blurry picture under the cut below. So, there is today's question:

( This is a fossil of what? )

( alarmist e-mail )

From three different pictures, playing accordingly with layers and masks, I obtained this somewhat harsh illustration. The obvious turn back to black and white was forced to even further communicate the idea of dryness, ausence of comfort, uneasiness that the word crowded inspires in me.

I'm not too happy with the overall illustration, but it makes an excellent point, since it communicates too well the feeling behind this week's suggestion. Please, feel free to comment on my technique, choice of topic, or whatever pops into mind.

It looks like everybody cool is doing the transparent background thing with their Powerbooks and/or iBooks. There is a whole Flickr tab devoted to them, so I didn't want to be less…

There are only two actors; all scenes are in the same house—or rather mansion I should say. And still, this lack of cast (lack as in quantity, not quality) and variety of location is good enough to carry a superb story. Quite intelligent: if you are into dialog-driven plots, mystery/detective stories, games of wit and theater… then this is your kind of movie.

Care to guess its name?

Are you able to isolate a point of discussion? :)

I don't usually make movie reviews—one should let pros take care of that. And until tonight, I would never even think about playing the critic rôle for a movie I haven't even finished watching… I guess there is a first time for everything:

This movie was filmed in 1999, directed by Takashi Miike (well-known for the explicit and taboo representations of violence and sex in most of his movies). The story starts with a Nanni Moretti flavor: as in "La Seconda Volta" (The Second Time), the script points to a romance between two completely strangers, but at some point the plot takes a radical turn. In Moretti's we discover that the interest of the professor on the girl with the red coat is not love-based, but due to the fact that he recognized her as one of the terrorists that tried to take his life several years before.

In Miike's "Audition"… well, the businessman has good intentions, but the lady is a mess; mysterious, evasive, and the best part of her personality: she's all about infringing pain. Believe me, the director doesn't want you to miss a single bit of the action, and a few minutes of this sweet girl working on the guy were more than enough for me (yes, I couldn't finish watching it).

Damn you Silke!

One of the exhibits we attended to in DC was about mapping, both paper and pixel, so to speak. It showed how technology has been used to represent not only portions of the Earth, but the sky above, or geographic changes due to natural disasters from the very beginning—well, pretty much from Vespucio's first map of the American Continent to nowadays.

Among the most interesting pieces, there was a collection of both geographical and architectonic curiosities rendered from the information gathered on satellites orbiting the Earth. You can see one example of such images on this post. And that's precisely what this game is about: finding out the location, region/country or name of the construction there.

Oh, yeah, and you know the deal… I am more interested in the procedure to find the solution than the solution itself.

And as part of our visit to the city of Philadelphia, we stopped at some point to admire the Liberty Bell, crack and all. Once there, I got captivated by a very original photography of some 25,000 enlisted military men forming a human Liberty Bell in 1918 at what is now Fort Dix. Unfortunately, I was only able to obtain the thumbnail you can see accompanying these lines. Are you able to obtain another one in larger size and more detail? If so, please indicate in a comment not only the proper URL, linked pic or even image posted, but also how you proceeded to find it.

( Human Liberty Bell )

I am surprised that ant_fugue hasn't beaten me to posting about the excellent holidays we have spent in the East Coast (Baltimore, Philadelphia and DC). She made almost all the planning on her own (lodging, rentals, sightseeing, restaurant areas, museum choices), distributed the very little extra jobs she couldn't finish by herself, and more importantly, showed a great many improvisation skills looking for fun things to do everywhere.
I bet during the following days we'll exchange posts about the places we visited, the people we met, the food we shared, and the wonderful experience we had in general. I'd like to start with what was probably the absolutely best time I had last week: As we were walking down the streets of Philadelphia, we decided to get in the Free Library of the City—ant_fugue and patterner enjoy visiting these kind of places—and once there, we directed our steps into the Department of Rare Books. One of the researchers warned us that we had but fifteen minutes to browse over the books on display, but ant_fugue convinced her of showing us the most precious treasures behind their walls. And so they did; another nice gentleman took us to one of the locked bookshelves, and from it the first item he extracted was a genuine cuneiform tablet in which, according to scholars working on the piece, a matter of goats and sheep was discussed. We even had the chance to handle the clay table with our own hands. Then he proceeded to show us a few pieces of a papyrus with the book of the dead printed on it; a Book of Esther in Hebrew (13th century?); a medieval Book of Hours, beautifully decorated; a page of one of the first Gütemberg Bibles; a thumb Bible… and this one.
Of course, vvgrant took a few pictures of some of the displayed treasures, focusing mainly on those with the most attractive illustrations. Under the cut, a nice example:

As I was trying to phone home, I realized some tourists were petting what it looked like… yes, an albino squirrel! The little fluffy animal was pretty tame, and not only let the small crowd to feed it from their bare hands, but also allowed some nice close up pictures. Now, the question is: can you find out where I took this awesome picture?

There are clues all over both my Spanish blog, and my scrapbook.

This week's topic on IF was derived from the word "bloom". My choice was therefore based upon a floral arrangement from a gift-basket catalog: The original image was treated to spawn a fractal structure, and enhanced by several usual techniques of blurring.
I was tempted to place a shadow on bottom and left margins of the printed area to "push" the main image further. Is that a good idea? What other tricks would you suggest? Please, feel free to add comments. There's so much to learn…

You enjoy flash animations, you like jazz… then, this is your kind of movie: Giant Steps.

Flickr has this new service: its daily zeitgeist, consisting on a small window with an arrangement of up to twelve pictures uploaded recently—and cataloged as public images—by random users. The arrangement of the photographs is not fixed—as in the picture in this post—but it rotates constantly, with funny effects, smart transitions, and of course, sometimes surprising images. As a matter of fact, I don't think it is totally safe for work, since gawd only knows what kind of stuff people will post over there sometimes. For members, there is fortunately this possibility to recode the application so that only pictures from selected users are displayed, or from a chosen selection of tags, etc.

And for what I have just read, the brains behind this fun project are aiming to further increase its properties and functions. Definitely, a tool to have and keep an eye on for upgrades/updates.

We can't install it in our LJs, of course, but if you want a taste of it, check out my other blog (I seem to divert people over there quite often lately, don't I?).