Spiral illusion
The below image has an optical illusion. Can you spot it?
Believe it or not - and I didn't - the blue and the green are the same colour. I had to zoom in in Photoshop to prove it to myself. There's a close-up here.
Looking again at the full-size image, I can just pick up a green tinge at the edge of the upper-left blue, but that's all. Impressive. I'd be interested to see a writeup of it at Illusion Sciences. Via Richard Wiseman.
Christmas card feedback
I just received the uni feedback for my secular Christmas cards. My favourite part is where I'm penalised for a lack of visual coherence: if you look at the images, you'll see one has a white background, while the others are darker. Fair enough - if those are the requirements of the course, sure. But the second year of university has done a stunning job of crushing any interest I ever had in art photography.
Die Hard 4
The depiction of computers in movies seems to irritate a lot of people. I've never understood why. Yes, computers don't have fancy graphics, large-text access denied messages, mouse-less operation, and you can't magically hack into anything at will - especially with a gun to your head and, um, other distractions - but it's not real. It's a film. Using a computer is not inherently dramatic - filmmakers have to do something.
That said, I was smiling throughout Die Hard 4: it was clearly written sans geek. My favourite part was "he could download the entire financial data of the US onto a portable hard drive", when the average portable hard drive would barely hold my photo collection. Incidentally, said financial data could then be taken anywhere and used to move money in an untraceable manner...somehow...
Of course, Die Hard made up for it when Bruce Willis jumped onto an airborne F35. Give and take. And it's not as bad as the CIA using Norton Antivirus in The Bourne ThirdOne. That was offensive.
Surplus of A
Dating site mysinglefriend.com has more Andrews than any other male name. Why is this? The obvious explanation is that potential romantic partners are too intimidated by our awesomeitudemacity to ask us out. It's a curse1.
Alternatively, there might just be a lot of Andrews, although this seems unlikely.
Anyway, you too can help reduce the Andrew deficit with the "Random Andrew Generator", which links single women directly to the Andrew of their dreams. A fully-functional example of this can be found here.
*pops head above parapet* *waves*
Hello! I am still alive. Apologies for pulling a vanishing act - I think that's one of the longest periods I've gone without blogging since I started. You noticed, right?
I've been in London since last we spoke, sorting out family stuff. It's been a curious couple of weeks, as - I feel bad saying this - independent of home stuff I've actually been having a great time. I photographed the big BHA Darwin / Humanism / Science day, as well as a memorial celebratory service, a book launch, and the International Humanist & Ethical Union international conference. I was also in the audience for the Radio 4 News Quiz, as well as upcoming BBC3 sitcom We Are Klang. Someone flirted with me in a coffee shop. I failed to understand bus routes a lot. And this morning I nearly got splatted.
So a strange mix of highs and lows, but starting to calm down now. I'll head home - officially the most charming town in the world (they clearly haven't met the swans) - soonish.
Bumpy few days
A couple of days ago an uncle of mine died unexpectedly, and I headed down to London to be with family. I'm ok personally - I hadn't seen him in ten years - but things are generally a little sad. I might be a touch slow at responding for a little while - sorry about that.
I'm in town for a fair bit, as starting tomorrow I'm photographing the European Humanist Federation's general assembly, which should be fun. Lots of events centered around the big Darwin, Humanism and Science conference on Saturday. I'll be wandering around in the background, trying not to drop anything during the talks.
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often meander around humanism and photography, but they're flighty and you can't trust them, so anything is possible.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
Recent Comments
- vicky: going up this weekend having done all the welsh peaks except 4 snowdon, cant wait
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: what, how can u live in the 21 c and say that, probably a sexist thing
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: da iawn laura, cant believe what im hearing, all this fuss, anyway love the site, and i agree, normal people who swear and curse clomb mountains cos we live in the...
on Climbing Snowdon. - Andrew: Did a few quick test shots to check the light levels, then balanced the camera on the arm of a bench, set it for a 20s exposure and hoped for the best
on ISS. - lynsey: Wow, how did you take that photograph?
on ISS.
