Tom was working in Hilo, Hawaii; Danny was working in New York City; Duncan was visiting family in Cornwall, England; Charles was working in Shanghai, China.
This awesome chance alignment happens only once every million billion juptas.

http://picasaweb.google.com/t.rice90/MayFavorites

This selection isn’t as experimental or exciting as my first batch, mostly because I had less time to take lots of pictures and had less of a photo stock to draw from — ah, so it goes.

For now my photography hobby, at least inasmuch as high-quality cameras is concerned, is taking a break for a while. I might play around with some panoramas, though. It’s definitely pretty here.

For the time being, I think I’ll pour my creative energies into music instead of photography – this will be the topic of a soon-to-come blog post!

11 Everybody

She’s performing an arrangement of Ingrid Michaelson’s “Everybody” with her school’s jazz choir.

So: I intend to make several posts in the next few days, as it looks like I’ll have lots of free time. Apologies to the month of May: it’s not your fault you got no Blandfill posts.

A tiny little snippet: I am in the tropical and rainy town of Hilo, Hawaii. Today is King Kamehameha day: a celebration of the unification of the Hawaiian islands, a day off of work for state employees including those of the University of Hawaii, and a chance for childhood Tom to chuckle at an obscure anime reference. I like it here, even when I don’t have much to do on account of being transportation-less. Life is lived more slowly, I keep my windows wide open 24/7, there are real people. There’s an elegant simplicity to things, despite the fact that this community doesn’t have all that much money (in comparison to developed tourist centers on the other islands). Most of all, I like how this place is the polar opposite of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Dear readers: unless I am whisked away on some sort of adventure in the near future, I shall make more posts soon. Until then, listen to some Dio.

I find myself at a unique point in my life. I’m overwhelmed with things I’m expected to do, and even when I throw my best effort into the fight it seems like I’ll inevitably fail at something. I feel somewhat uncertain about how things are going to go.

Can I do it? Can I find within myself the discipline I need to face the coming onslaught?

The pressure, even when I handle it gracefully and without stressing myself out, has the terrifying effect of separating me from my soul — as if in a magnetic field, experiencing strong Zeeman splitting — and if this continues for much longer I fear I’ll have lost a part of myself. On the other hand, maybe this separation process is good for me; maybe I’m becoming organized, gaining the ability to transform myself at my own will into a homework-crunching robot, thereby becoming more time-efficient and freeing up hours to devote to more introspective, exploratory things.

The fear, of course, is that once I’ve gotten used to locking myself into robot-mode I’ll be unable to snap back out of it. I value my expressive side so much that I’d give up the chance at a more productive, successful future if that was the price for retaining it — in short, I will not sell my soul to further my career. My passions run deep but they are founded firmly in my thoughts and beliefs and ideas about what it means to be human, to exist as we do in the Universe, to have such a short amount of time to experience all of life. I don’t like the idea of numbing my emotions just to make myself a better worker.

This is a naive view to hold, I realize. “Tom, think about it for a moment – if you stay the same undisciplined procrastinator you’ll never grow as a person and you won’t be able to pull yourself together confidently enough to achieve your dreams.” And I agree with this sentiment. I don’t want to stay lazy and disorganized.

But artistic vision and creativity are born from an innate frustration with status quo and a deep, personal desire to make things different. The process of disciplining oneself necessarily kills off a big part of spontaneous fidgeting that could act as creative seed for unconventional ideas. It’s somewhat ludicrous for someone like me, a student of science who’s never created art nor is on track to do so, to declare to the world: “I will never cease to be expressive!” — what could possibly be the point? If my goal was to make a big impact on the world by having the best, most original artistic vision, I’m pretty fucking far behind in that race; any art I am ever to create (in any sense: writing, music, drawing, whatever) will be invariably dwarfed by those among my peers who have actually devoted their lives to what they make or do. So — why do I persist with this seemingly futile endeavor? Why, when I’ve already established the detrimental effects this wandering exploration might have on my career, don’t I give up?

It’s because the way I see the world is fundamentally shaped by whether I make an effort to have a creative mind — to be conscious of details for their own sake and for the way they interact and make things interesting. I like this creative process. I like learning about all the different things I encounter and trying to understand how the world works, and I also like trying to recombine ideas and objects and observations in new and interesting ways. And when in life I find myself in crappy situations, it’s incredibly satisfying (if not remedial – though it’s far from a panacea) to be able to channel raw emotions into some kind of medium.

These are ideas that I never really had until this past year. I cannot really describe where the transformation came from (or whether it was in fact a transformation — maybe I’m just getting better at capturing ideas that I had held in some vague form), but I think it’s tied to all the new things I’m experiencing. Seeing more of the world, getting into new and unusual social situations, reading about new ideas, taking on different responsibilities — in more ways than one, I’m learning, and I’d like to believe that I’m expanding my mind as well. I guess I’ve picked the right time in my life to do so.

Getting back to my original question: Can I find the discipline within myself to achieve my goals? Only time will tell. But one thing has begun to interest me; perhaps in spite of my waffling, rambling thoughts on being disciplined versus creative, I’ve started to notice that simply by bringing these ideas out into the open I can clear my mind, figure out what I want to do, and then do it. I’m still not perfect, and will never be, but I’m curious to see how far this cycle will go.

Hello, dear readers!

My dear friend Will has loaned me a camera! He did this because I expressed an interest in taking up photography as a more serious hobby. I’ve been thinking for a while about getting a nice camera – I think that it’s pretty neat to be able to capture the, uh, beauty of the world around us and show it to other people. It’s really great that Will is letting me try this out with his camera (THANK YOU WILL!) so I can decide whether it’s worth an investment. So far: I’ve had lots of fun taking pictures and think I’d like to continue! And this summer would be a really, really good time for me to have a good camera, so I hope I can learn quick.

My favorite pictures from the past weekish I’ve uploaded to Picasa here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/t.rice90

This whole photography endeavour is kind of exciting, and I’m really new to it. Actually, I have a lot of questions about the whole thing – about what it means to be a photographer and how to improve what I’ve got so far.

So I’ll ask them here:

• How do you make sure you get consistently non-blurry pictures? By this I mean it’s really annoying when I keep getting images like http://imgur.com/z7ZOf.jpg when I wanted images like http://imgur.com/GoZKl.jpg
• Are there good tricks to get good color and lighting balance? It seems to me like I should avoid flash whenever possible and so this might combine with the above problem in dark settings. Do people usually manually adjust shutter speeds and aperture sizes and stuff? Is it easy to make a washed-out or too-dark image look great using basic photoshop/gimp editing?
• How does a good photographer figure out where to position things in the frame of the shot so they look cool? I’ve heard about a “rule of thirds” where it’s supposedly better-looking to put your subject in the top/bottom/left/right third of the shot (basically, not the middle), but I’m curious as to other ideas.
• How can I best make use of different depth-of-focus effects (I mean, that thing that happens when stuff at different distances are focused or not focused – just like in the two pics of Danny and Duncan at the top of this post)? This is probably my favorite part of using a real camera and I’d like to do it a lot. I’ve noticed it usually only happens when I’m particularly close to what I’m taking a picture of – can I improve on this or would I need a special lens to make this happen for further away subjects?

And some bigger questions:

• How do I organize all the zillions of photos I take? Specifically,
• How do I choose which ones to keep, and which ones to share?
• Where do I host them? (I’ve chosen Picasa for now…)
• Is it polite or expected (or maybe just nice) to send people pictures that you took of them?

I’m curious about these things. (: I’ll be thinking of my own solutions but am also soliciting advice.

As a special treat to you readers who made it this far down, I’ll throw in some other pictures that I liked but didn’t include in the picasa album.

Twilight over Boston from atop the Science Center

Venus, shining bright above the horizon. (click to zoom)

Another of my infamous reflection shots

To close this off, I’ll throw in some neat astrophotography shots I took (astrophotography is probably an entire blog post topic in its own right!):

I took these at STAHR’s telescope (Michael-Loomis observatory) and hope to do more neat stuff like it in the future.

That’s about all I have to say! Thanks for reading, dear readers, and please comment whenever you feel the whim.

Epilogue:
Holy crap a lot of stuff (besides photography) has been going on in my life lately. I failed to make a post after my awesome spring break trip which I suppose I owe you all. Also, there was a kendo tournament last weekend – which was an awesome experience on many levels, even (or especially!) for a beginner like me. What else happened…. ah, too much to count. (Uh, made a last.fm account: http://www.last.fm/user/Comrade420). I’ll do my best to report this all. Mostly I’m grateful at life right now. (It’s definitely got bitter parts but I keep my head up high.)

But then I was like

So, Tom, what the heck are you talking about?

I’ve more or less alluded to this in previous blog posts (such as, in chronological order, pursuit, advance, funny, ‘trospection) but college has really helped me confront myself and my beliefs and such – not so much politically or religiously, but personally and emotionally. Living at home with my family was a sort of painful box for me; not because of anyone in particular’s fault, but because of my overall situation; and though I numbed to the pain and managed to “be good at stuff” to whatever extent university admissions folks think is important, it’s only since I’ve come here, living without my family, with my roommates, in a new community, that I’ve been able at all to address bigger questions.

I’ve been thinking about ways I’d like to change myself, become better, perform self-improvement — whatever the hell you feel like calling it — and the following “pieces of thought” (they happen to be cartoons) struck a chord in my mind.

I'd never carefully read the words in this comic until recently -- the bottom panels are pretty distracting.

The words sounded pretty but I never really believed I could apply them to myself.

And, with more levity! (and less seriousness)

This one's cute.

By now you can tell I'm a silly xkcd nerd.

That was a pretty intense xkcd interlude (thanks Randall!)

By now, dear reader, I’m sure you’re dying to know what I think, not what Mr. Munroe thinks, so here I go. This is hard to really describe in words, but here are my goals, as best as I can describe them:

To be honest, diligent; to accept defeat and take risks. To be proactive, and to explore. To open up and be free.

To take control of my life, in the face of pressures. To have the discipline and maturity to act when needed; to bring my actions in line with my heart.

To understand myself and the circumstances which have shaped me, my beliefs and opinions, my habits, my fears. To reflect and self-analyze so that I can overcome the ways I subconsciously and intentionally limit myself, and so I can discover what I really find worthwhile.

Heh, that almost sounds like a prayer. It’s what I want, though. As abstract as it all sounds, I think I might be making a bit of progress — but I’m struggling still. I think I’ve taken the first steps this school year: I joined the Kendo club (which is perhaps as much about self-development as it is a competitive sport), and the astronomy club (which, as I’ve noted before, is a pretty swell way to stare at the Universe while simultaneously introspecting in the peaceful, dark silence of stargazing). I took spontaneous leadership of a silly physics-related event and ran for office in physics club. Further, though, I’ve been getting more serious about my studies and about my learning process in general, doing my best to dig for true understanding rather than cheap grades. (I’m still struggling very much here — physics problem sets have been taxing my sleep at a very very high rate Thursday nights and I haven’t quite figured out yet how to effectively redistribute the load throughout my week; also, I’ve noticed that sleep deprivation makes me hate myself.) I’ve reached out a bit socially and made a few new friends (and, er, eroded my inhibitions somewhat when it comes to girls — ? This is an in-progress thing I suppose). A few small things here and there that I would never have been able to follow through on before. I’ve gained a bit of insight into what I might like to do for the rest of my life — and started to think very hard about all the things I’d like to do in the meantime. I’m starting to believe that the kind of career I end up with is far less important than the kind of person I turn out to be. (And yet I wonder whether maybe it’s only because I likely have almost certain “success” in my future that I can say something so naive.) These are all grand ideas, and I am a small person. Yet, I figure: I am young enough to still have time left to both think hard about this stuff and follow through on my conclusions; and I am finally old enough (?) to have the maturity and experience required to start work on these questions.

So! Anyways! This has been a long post, my dear friend, and I hope it wasn’t too tedious for you. My overall message, I suppose, is that the reason I don’t have specific goals is, mostly, because I don’t yet know what I want to achieve. But I know that whatever I encounter in my life, I’d like to have this new spirit to be part of me. Thank you for reading, and may you have a pleasant day. (:

Epilogue:

Some notes about myself today. I did a CS pset! It involved mad recursion, higher-order functions, and symbolic differentiation (I never thought I would program stuff like that!). Also, Charles and Duncan and I worked out. Tomorrow I’ll do some physics and maybe practice my saxophone. Hey, dear readers, quick note: We at the Blandfill really love you, and we love you even more when you leave comments! So please leave comments on our blog whenever you have a thought.

Final note: I listened to this song a bunch of times today and it is pretty swell!

http://xkcd.com/696/

Edit: Well, this is a silly post. I’m gonna test out some TeX.

I’ve been playing Diablo 2! I finally beat Duriel. I’m a necromancer and I summon skeletons. That game is hard and sometimes repetitive so I’m gonna lay off for a while.

There was a robotics kickoff! I didn’t sleep last night! Instead I played Diablo 2 with Nico. Nico has returned to school, to the best of my knowledge. So, today I am pulling an all-day-er. I made up this term; it describes when you have been up all night for some reason and, if you were a rational person, you’d go to sleep as soon as you were done with whatever was keeping you up all night. But I decided I want to stay up so that my sleep clock (totes not a biology person, someone explain why it exists) isn’t all screwed up, and I’m trying to make it all the way to normal-people’s-bedtime so I can be set all right and stuff. It’s about 9:20 PM as I’m writing this sentence so I think I’ve been mostly successful! Also hugely sleep deprived, which is why this post is a collection of words that lack logic or intelligence behind them.

Adrian sent this out over that one email list: http://www.dontevenreply.com/
I countered with http://www.asofterworld.com/oqarchive.php and http://www.27bslash6.com/

Here’s a silly video to break up the pace:

I have been playing the xkcd game for like two whole hours without ending. (The xkcd game is something we made up, I think, where you click “random” until you get a repeated comic.) Usually it doesn’t take more than 20 minutes, but I’ve been going really slow and leisurely, analyzing the details of each drawing, trying to make sure I don’t miss any of the jokes. (Like backslash escape sequences, for example — something I wouldn’t catch in a handcuffs reference even if I was vaguely familiar with the idea when comic 234 came out). I think my patience to do it so slowly is very related to my sleep-dep-ness; reading xkcd endlessly is trance-like.

I am reasonably sure that I haven’t been just forgetting which ones I’ve seen since I began playing, since my browser cache would load previously seen images instantly but all the comics I come across load noticeably slower than instantly.

I imagine this blog post is pretty boring. I’m streaming all over my consciousness right now.

This comic is funny.

To come, two posts (which I might combine into one) on less playful topics: A) New year’s resolution (1240×1480? ^_^), B) What happens to me when I am at home.