Uncategorized

A Four Dimensional Cube of Yogurt

/ bucklipe / Leave a comment

    There is a process of taking a dairy product that is liquid and turn it into a semi-solid, good for you food. The process is simple, take selected bacteria add them to dairy and warm gently. After a bacterial party has happened you get yogurt.  However there are variables that are at play in this dance. Types of bacteria, ratios of them to each other, temperature, prebiotics, probiotics, ph, additions and the synergies between them.

   This is where the visual of he cube comes in. Imagine a grid of cubes 10 by ten. there is a hundred on the first layer. Now stack ten layers on top of the first one, now you have a thousand. If we use the cubes as markers to track changes I think we could get a visual representation of the working of the process. to use the cube we need a mapping of the cube.

   A method of addressing the map coordinates would go like this; the cube on the lowest layer, all the way back and on the left would be 1, 1, 1 or 1.1.1. Where the first digit would be the level, the second would be the column and the last would be the altitude. The next one forward would be 1.1.2. The top level, all the way forward and all the way up would be 10.10.10. In each of these individual cubes measurements would be entered. The entry would be entered into the formula and would tint the cube following the formula’s instructions.

   Looking at the cube would illustrate the process and predict possible variable’s influences. I want to take measurements to use as inputs. I illustrated a 10x10x10 cube but it might only need to be a quarter of the size.

Movie Sword Fights

/ bucklipe / Leave a comment

    The good guy and the bad guy square off on a wide factory floor. They are in front of large opaque windows lit from outside. Swords are drawn and the fight begins, the bad guy fueled by his rage swings and is blocked easily since he had telegraphed his intent. The good guy stepped back giving the bad guy the the idea that he was about to strike a mortal blow. The music swelled with ominous influence as the good guy stepped back again. The bad guy’s sword is broken by a defensive upstrike of the good guy and the music swells with heroic inspiration as the bad guy is backing up defensively. The scene is being lit more brightly to show the good is winning and evil is losing; NOT! lighting was uniform and monochrome. Face palm and sigh! The fight choreography was spot on without too much of, “The blade has to be here since the blow is going to come…”

We have seen variations of this many times. As I watched this present day sword fight I was hoping that the lighting, movement across the screen and the music would coordinate to orchestrate and define the fight giving us hints as to the future path the fight would take. To be able to know who is who on the screen without dialog and how the fight is going is key. But no. The only discernable illustration of the fight was the music. The two fighters swapped sides seemingly at random, no lighting changes of intensity or color, no particular position on the stage for either side winning or losing.

It was an epic sized stage and expertly backlit but I was let down by the lack of coordination between the screen elements to support the fight. There are excellent fights out there. An easy one is in Battleship, where “BWAHHHH” loudly announces the bad guys. The give and take of the battles are obvious and well supported by the various elements of sight and sound of the movie. There are many examples of good and bad fight staging. What are your film fight elements that make a cinematic fight better? What has disappointed you about some fights? For me, a person to person fight lasting more than three minutes or a small fighter knocking a large fighter across a room don’t make it. Three minutes of all out effort and oxygen depletion happens and physics matter, inertia matters, bone strength matters. How about you?

To be sure, an artistic vision is an artistic vision and I may have been incapable of catching the director’s intent. I have been known to be dense at times… Ask my wife.

When I’m in the theater I try to stay in the experience of the movie and just accept the story as is. I want to “grok” the ebb and flow of the story without any judgment. I’d like to say how successful I am at suspending judgment, I’d like to say it but I’d be lying.

  

Many scenes are emotionally set up by previous events. If I am distracted by the ballistic arc of a person not being right after being kicked in the chest I could totally miss a clue. Not to mention the aorta being ripped loose from the heart if someone was kicked this way. As best I can I stay in the moment as presented by the director and actors. After all who am I to want to change the “BWAAAAHH” or the smile of the Mona Lisa?

“Interesting” messages…

/ bucklipe / Leave a comment

I cranked up a WordPress site to give me a blog to use. I have yet to start my writing schedule so I haven’t as yet written anything.
I did however get a note from WordPress that my password had been changed. An interesting bit of information since I had not as yet accessed the site a second time, much less changed my password.
My presumption is that passwords are required to be changed by WordPress on some schedule and if you don’t change it yourself, they will change it for you.
Well, OK then…

Hello world! Challenges are good, meeting them is better…

/ bucklipe / 3 Comments

I had a recent adventure trying to find the meeting of the Brandon Christian Writers.
I knew the church where it was being held, but didn’t have a good bead on where they met within the church buildings.  In the parking lot there were two ladies walking purposefully toward one of the buildings on campus, so I asked them if they knew where the BCW was meeting tonight?  They did not, but invited me to accompany them to their meeting room where a church member would be present.  Walking into the room, I smiled and asked if anyone might know where the BCW would be tonight?  Indeed the church member knew the location and described how to get there.  As I was leaving the room I overheard a couple of attendees say, “I thought he was a bit too happy to be coming to the Grief Share group…”