renaissance poisson

( have a survey thingie )
via hobbitbabe.

comment on this post and say HEY, DO ME BABY or something like that. i will choose five interests from your profile and you can then explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. if you want, post a similar invitation along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

la_penguinita picked:

industrial archaeology

is the systematic investigation of structures and artefacts as a means of enlarging one's understanding of the industrial past. it's kinda presumptuous for me to have that as an interest because i am completely not systematic, and i don't even study it. i just have a thing for industrial ruins and how things work, and when i come across something that looks cool and "weird" i try to find out what it was used for, and how people did things. my first interest is usually visual, such as seeing a structure and taking a picture of it, like the morden colliery tipple. but sometimes i come at it from trying to figure out how to do something myself with modest means and simple tools, and that usually leads me to how people did it some centuries ago.

collecting other people's hobbies

*heh*. i stole the expression from firecat and i think we're still the only two people on LJ who have it as an interest. if you have a hobby and you talk about it enthusiastically to me, i will be infected by your enthusiasm, and i will want to talk with you knowledgeably about the hobby, and i'll therefore pick it up and learn about it. i'll probably never get very far into it, but i will learn enough so i can ask good questions and wonder about interesting aspects of it. this is part why i am a jack of all trades and a master of none, but i actually like this aspect of myself because my knowledge base is very broad, and it allows for a lot of lateral thinking.

handspinning

first there was making my own clothes. for which one can use knitting and crochet. for which one needs yarn. once i had yarn, i wanted to not only create my own colours (-> dyeing -> growing plants for natural dyes), but i also wanted to learn to construct my own because then i can control the material and the texture. and the cheapest way to make your own yarn is spinning with a handspindle (you can make one from a dowel and a toy wheel or a CD). i sometimes joke that keeping and breeding sheep or alpacas is next (and i am only half-joking).

nina paley

a talented cartoonist, illustrator, and animator whom i knew when i lived in champaign-urbana. she got me into comics because she drew the funniest things with some bite, while i had previously only been exposed to superhero comics (which bored me stiff). i still have a lot of her early work (waves to zemblan), and i've loosely followed her career since then. oh, i see she has a wikipedia entry now. here's her personal site. she puts the fun into dysfunctional. :)

ukiyoe

浮世絵, "pictures of the floating world", is the main genre of japanese woodblock printing from the 17th to 20th centuries. the "floating world" was the world of pleasure-seeking culture of the urban centres -- teahouses, kabuki theatre, brothels, more broadly, the world of common people. i am less interested in the depiction of geisha, sumo wrestlers, and actors as more into what ukiyoe broadened out into in the 18th century -- depictions of landscapes, daily life, and motifs from nature. the process of creating a woodblock print is fascinating, and it's easy to see why it became so popular -- it allowed for "mass production" of famous sights before photography, even non-wealthy people could afford the equivalent of postcards from far-away places. you have probably seen some ukiyoe; they became quite famous in the west during the impressionist era and beyond, they influenced van gogh, manet, degas, toulouse-lautrec and others. i think everyone has seen at least hokusai's great wave off kanagawa. wikipedia has an article with links to sites that go into much more detail.

i am feeling meh, so i'll indulge.

( cut so you don't have to )

this link of the turning dancer seems to be making its way around my flist.

the link gives no information about WHY they're associating the turn direction with right or left brain dominance, and i've been too lazy to dig up something on it myself.

look at it first before reading the rest of this post, since i might be spoiling your own investigative games otherwise. :)

when i first looked at it (i was distracted at the time and not really looking in a concentrated manner) it flipped on its own several times before settling on clockwise; i don't know what it started out as. nellorat got it to switch by thinking of very left-brainy things. i don't have to think about anything at all, i can make it switch on demand by looking sideways so it travels into my peripheral vision, and defocussing and quickly focussing again. bingo, switched directions. i think i could probably practice so i could switch it instantly without looking away. this leads me to believe it has much more to do with the visual cortex than anything requiring thought.

in tests i usually come out right/left brain roughly equal. like this one here, which actually comes in a little higher on the right brain than is usual for me.

Your Brain Usage Profile:
Auditory : 28% -- Visual : 71% -- Left : 41% -- Right : 58%

and hey, i came across more tests this week which i thought were fun to do:
test of visual recognition memory.

i got 100% correct on the first two testlets, and 83% on the last. i could have gotten 100% on that too if i had actually paid 100% attention, but bacchus was doing something obnoxious at the time. the names are oh so very british and rather easy for me to remember. i bet if they were japanese i wouldn't do as well, and korean? forget it.

those results make me happy right now because i generally feel so much less capable than i once was. but at least i can still recognize faces, eyeglasses, and british names!

the directions say to not look at any answers before giving your own. via juliansinger.

What color is fear?
What sound does affection make?
What texture does Autumn have?
What shape does a conversation make?
What fabric is a kitten made of?
What noise is made by curiosity?
What is the smell of knowledge?
How do you punctuate life?
What does death taste like?

my answers are in first comment.

and i took the test because i knew i could beat their scores, especially in the "awkward" category.





ETA: i forgot to say that this test is stupid and annoying, and that i am not encouraging others to do it.

i checked out TrustFlow II for LiveJournal. it measures which people not on my flist are "close" by virtue on being on the lists of my friends and so on down the line. ( long list below the cut... )

interesting algorithm; it seems to privilege small networks over large ones, but looks in general like i would expect (people whom i actually know but have purposely not flisted are good test cases, as are people whom i know but whose LJ's i don't read because they don't post :). there are very few names i don't recognize at all; i'll check them out when i run into one of those periods where i actually have more energy to read LJ. and hey, a couple of secondary journals i didn't know about.

via machineplay.

i forgot to bookmark the link where i liked the wording best, so i'm gonna write my own. naturally i can't keep myself from faffing around [1] with the concept either, so here goes:

if you'd like to get a piece of "art" from me, comment on this post. i can't promise you quality -- that's why the quotes; i have a hard time calling my stuff artistic. but i'll try to make it something good; not a first experiment :). if i can i'll individualize it, but i might not know you well enough to do that sufficiently. it'll be a unique piece in any case. it might be a collage, or a photograph; it might be made from polymer clay, or wire (maybe with beads or rocks), or fabric; it might be knit, crocheted, sewn, woven, knotted. if it's for personal adornment, i'll consult you about colour and possible allergies.

there is no hitch. i won't demand that you perpetuate the meme because i don't see why only artsy people themselves should get art -- but it'd be really cool if you did decide to participate yourself.

i won't limit it to the first 5 people who comment either -- i'll toss all your names into a hat and pick a number yet to be determined, depending on my energy. [2]

[1] -- thanks go to rysmiel for that great term :)

[2] -- now my secret fear is that nobody will want anything because all my stuff SUCKS.

( cut so ghod will not kill a kitten )
there was one question i liked (addendum -- i liked it because it got me to thinking in contorted ways, while none of the other questions were any fun at all):

determine the missing number: "car, glove, clock, sock," "4, 5, 12, ? "

epi_lj ranted about this lj-meme, and i took it just for amusement value, being as i don't consider myself to be an organized person.

At a minimum, you should know exactly where to find these possessions (assuming, of course, you own them—and you should): (a little patronizing and prescriptive here, aren't we?)
( hidden away to not burn the eyes of anti-lj-meme peoples )

i find things easily not because every thing has its place (hahahahaha) but because i have an interesting visual/kinesthetic memory. i am better at finding stuff, even stuff other people mislaid (if i watched them use it last, or if i have a good sense of their organizational methods), than most people i know.