Hans Rosling on Insights into poverty -TED talk

Hans Rosling has got to be one of the best professorial lecturers in the world. I've now listened to two of his TED talks and I found them both to be insightful and massively inspiring. I love that he is not stopped by people who cannot see the possible.

TED featured storytellers.

Wade Davis is an anthropologist and talks on belief and ritual. Its a great lecture but Davis speaks way to fast trying to tell too many stories. Each culture he discusses is worth at least an hour-long documentary in its own right. I will have to listen to this a few times to actually hear everything he says.




Amy Tan also gave a great talk on insights into creativity.




Jill Bolte Taylor talks about her stroke. She tells what she experienced while her brain was having a stroke in the left hemisphere. Wow.

David Bolinsky-High-drama animation of cellular motors

David Bolinsky shows the animation of cellular life, made by his company XVIVO, which he presented at a TED conference in 2007. The video, showed at the end of his talk, is fantastic! I went to XVIVO to find more vids. There are quite a few, one of which was on HIV, which seemed to have the soundtrack from world of warcraft.

Paul Stamets: Fungi can save the world-TED

The power of life!

Benjamin Zander: How to appreciate classical music- TED

Today is a TED catch-up day.

This presentation by Benjamin Zander is just amazing. He is a great teacher, leader, presenter and is dedicated to spreading an appreciation of classical music, as well as life. If I ever get a chance, I would love to see him in person.

My turtle tat is no longer lonely! Hope Patty approves.

Day after the line art went in. It's a bit red and hot right now, but I'm sure it will calm down with some more care... and in plenty of time for the color to go in--appt in a month. See previous post for a few pictures of the process.

Adding to my lonely turtle

Lone Turtle from 1994 by Patty Kelley Avalon Tattoo in San Diego. Sorry the picture is a bit fuzzy, it has been surprisingly hard for me to get a picture of my own leg!.

I had been wanting to get a kelp forest on my leg for a long, long time. I finally made the appointment a month ago (at Shogun Tattoo, with Charles Belnavis, see earlier post). June 20 was the day! Of course I walked the 2+miles to get there in 100°F heat, and arrived with swollen ankles/feet and dripping with sweat streaming with Pasadena road dust (gross!) sorry Charles.

Phase 1: Drawing out the kelp. This part took less than 10 minutes.

Phase 2: Inking in the line art. In this case, Charles was just outlining the whole thing, aside from adding little 'serrations' to leaves, he pretty much left things blank. This part went pretty fast too, about 15-20 minutes.

FINISHED (for now). Yep, walked home like this, with the saran wrap and all.

Dinner at Sushi Roku

Awesome inflorescence!

Tat talk

Alphatude, a deviant artist and fellow plurker, kindly shared this tattoo art site with me when the topic of tattoos came up (nice picture of his own on his site). By the way: awesome pieces Alphatude!

Manu tattoo (Wellington, NZ) looks awesome. Too bad it's so far away. Love the cherry tree on the Asian tat page. The background fogged out branches are a nuance I've never seen in tat art (I have limited experience though). It's really impressive.

hmm. Perhaps what I'm really after might be some shadowing of my body parts, maybe something to add definition to my arms and legs to make me appear slimmed and toned? I wonder how fast they would throw me out if I went in and asked for something "Slimming".

I've been wanting to fill in the huge amount of white space on me for a long time now. I finally found the gumption to kick it off --and more importantly I found a place to do it. Although, I was originally going to go for the place around the corner from me (Incognito), but instead happened along Shogun Tattoo Art when wandering home (see earlier blog).

I managed to make an appointment with Charles Belnavis. I love the seascapes he does. I was incredibly impressed with the octopi and kelp forests. I've signed up to get some kelp for my turtle. I've been collecting images for other tats too, both for my own seascape and for the other leg, which I'm thinking to dedicate to pretty flowers.

Send me images if you have them. Right now, I'm looking for cool salt water creatures, schooling fish and cephalopods. Found some great nudibranch images posted by National Geographic, but not quite sure how they would come out in artist renderings...

Car Share! Robin Chase of ZipCar

I am a hug fan of ZipCar, a car share company that allowed you to rent car by the hour to take care of those little errands around town--without having to deal with car maintenance and long term parking. They also had a great (!) choice of cars. I was a true convert to car share until they pulled out of Pasadena (boo!).

In the video below Robin Chase, brains behind ZipCar also talks about MESH networks, it sounds great! If we can't get it into every car, at the very least, it should be in all public transport systems. It would be awesome to go to to a bus stop to find out in real time where exactly the next bus is and when it will be there.

Yves Behar

I love Yves Behar! Years and years of "Don't touch if it isn't broken!" I think, has made people blindly propagate things that are crowded with useless features (his example- the "num lock" key on a key board). It's so refreshing to see someone apply design at the foundation of the object, rather than accommodating what is already there. Behar also applies his design to social interactions. It is so awesome to believe that we can start questioning behavioral and cultural dos and don'ts and design a world that actually accommodates human biology and behavior rather than suppressing it.

Rokia Traore

Rokia Traore's music is delicious and actually prompted me to start posting the Last.FM radio station to my blog. Again, found her on TED.

Music catch up

Just started going through the TED talks. Right now, I'm trying to expand my music experience, so I'm going to use TED as a launching point for finding artists that I might like. Coupling it to Last.FM seems like a good idea for now.

First artist Evelyn Glennie. An amazing percussionist.

Home sick today

Woke with a sore throat and cough this morning. Decided to save the co-workers some grumpiness and cough spray.
Things to do on my sick day (in no particular order):
·blog
·figure out how to implement the tagline generator for whole research papers
·figure out how to remote post to my mac.com blog...for free
·finish drafting paragraph for phenote funding support (yes, work)

Miles from India

Finally made it to the opening concert of the free concert series in LA put on by Grand Performances at California Plaza. We arrived a bit late, but in time to help fill in some seats left vacant by the big donors. The music was a fusion of Indian and Jazz, in case the title didn't give it away. I really liked the second half of the concert, the trumpet player and female Indian vocalist seem to have given the concert a different flavor, although it could have been more that the music was a bit more familiar in the second half. Regardless, it was an awesome venue and it was fantastic to finally do something in downtown LA.

Sculpture in plaza of MOCA

Museum of Contemporary Arts, downtown LA. On the way to the free
concert summer series.

Fountain works in WDCH plaza

Caught some fountain works in the plaza outside of the
Walt Disney Concert Hall. It looks like an awesome
place to hang out before a concert.

LA's Walt Disney Concert Hall

In LA tonight with my friend Margot for a free concert put on by Grand Performances. Walked by the Walt Disney Concert Hall, one of Margot's favorite buildings. It is pretty spectacular from the outside. Of course, I do love Frank Gehry's buildings! Scroll down to see more angles of the building.