Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Like Nietzsche Said

There are times when I am a lot more expressive than I am now. Not always, but there sure are times. Today is not one of those times - obviously. However, I did want to share a bit of my state of mind all the same. I decided to do so, by quoting one of Nietzsche's best known lines.

"That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger."

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Photoshopping is awesome

Look what I made:



Ain't it awesome? Don't mind what it now says, just take a look at the changes from the original. (Which I do suppose you know, if not, and you're above the age of let's say fifteen, shame on you!)

I sure had a blast making this thing. Sure, I didn't change all that much, but it was just a lot of fun to work on it in Photoshop. I mean, before today I had pretty bad memories about using Photoshop, but these days are over now.

For me, photoshoping used to a frustrating search for ways to do what I wanted to do. I used to know what I wanted to do (say create a border of a few pixels along the curves of a letter), but I didn't know how to do so in Photoshop.

Now, however, I know the basic tools so well, that I can get along with the program. On top of that I understand the power of both the program's selection system and the use of layers. Really, I understand the two so well enough now, that I can actually use them to my advantage instead of them just being in the way of what I am trying to do. Lastly, I also have a lot of background information on computer terms and the names of many transformations, which means that when I am looking for a way to turn a border yellow without decreasing the number of shades involved, I do have an idea where to look. Sure, I'll still often be trying a dozen or so things before I end up with something I actually like, but that doesn't matter. Not once did I just not know what to do, I just wasn't done exhausting the available options.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Battlestar Actors on Other Shows

While I took a bit of a hiatus from writing here, I watched Battlestar Gallactica. And man, is that a series. Truly, it's brilliant. Great writing and great acting, they take a lot of risks and manage to pull each and every one of them off favorably. I am getting sidetracked, though. I will write about how awesome this series is and how you should watch it some other time.

Now though, I want to focus on a story that played the past week for me. It all started when I saw my first episode of Hawaii Five Oh. Or rather, a tiny bit of it, it was just on as I was in the kitchen, and I actually was just about to leave. In the very first scene in which she appeared, I recognized Sharon from Battlestar! At first she was in the background and I wasn't sure about it, but it soon turned out that it was indeed her and that she actually played a main character of the series.

Zap forward to tonight. This time I watched my first ever episode of Law & Order UK. It's an interesting series, but that's not really what this is about. They have Lee Adama!

I think it's really interesting how being on this show means so much for your career. I mean, both shows were started recently and are quite big. And two Battlestar Gallactica actors actually got major parts in them, very possibly because of their achievements on Battlestar. If anything, I really say it says something about the (acting) quality on Battlestar. (Go watch it!)


PS. For this show I tried to translate a word that just doesn't translate very well. I didn't know this, so I typed a sentence in google translate to see what English phrase it would use (I ended up just rewriting it, but just have a look at this):



Now, the important part is in Dutch, but it's translating to English, so you can see what it is about. Now take a look at that suggestion. It is suggesting I change "zij" into "hij". Or in English, it's suggesting that I change "she" into "he"...
What's up with that Google? Some problems with emancipation?

Thursday, February 3, 2011

The Problem of Time Travel

Well, I have't been posted in a while - a bit over a month, as I didn't post anything this year and it's Februari already - but here's something I wrote a while back.

Say you travel to the past. You blend into the crowd and you do whatever you were traveling through time for. However, someone turns his head to look at you. For some reason you get stuck in this guy's mind. Perhaps he sensed that something was wrong about you being then and there. However, he carries on with his life normally.
Later the same day, the guy is doing something boring and his mind wanders back to the moment the two of you met. Nothing too interesting, one would say. However, had he not been thinking of you, he would have been flirting with the beautiful woman from the company they were doing this project with: his future wife. Now, they don't marry six years later, they don't get a son together and now their son's son doesn't get to be the first girlfriend of another girl. Because of this girl's experience with relationships is entirely different, she breaks up with her boyfriend after three months instead of getting him a son. And she just so happened to be the mother of a major player in the third world war in the future you are from. Now this war plays out quite differently and the whole world has changed.

You did nothing, yet you changed the entire world.

Perhaps, you make sure you don't get noticed by anyone. Perhaps, you even avoid any and all contact with humans. Perhaps you are just a bit more lucky and only change less influential things. But still, you will have made a change by just being there. And as it happens, the chance that that change disappears is minute. It if doesn't disappear, it will propagate. Given enough time, nothing will be the same.