Just everything seems to move so slowly now. I used to stay up in the wee hours because that was when things happened, and the day was boring and for grownups to do daytime things in. Now I don’t know the time, and it doesn’t seem to matter, and we’re not so young anymore.

I guess spending the day sick in bed thinking about you and you and you was a bad idea.

Spoilers ahead. SPOILERS!

Okay so I just watched Wanted with Russ and we couldn’t get over how you curve a bullet. This is like if David Beckham and the Shoot ‘Em Up guy had a baby. Together. With Peter Bloody Parker. I mean seriously. He just swings a pistol and bam! Of course Angelina Jolie wasn’t going to die in the oh-shit-I-did-it!-I-discover-I-have-badass-powers-AGAIN scene.

Now I love physics but hated it in secondary school (it was basically elementary math, but instead of “how many dollars does Tom have” you have “how fast is this generic object moving”) but I do know that forces are linear and you can reduce forces acting on an object to a single net force (right?) so without a constant force acting perpendicular / from whichever side of the bullet it will only travel straight in the direction that it was going when it left the barrel. Of course being excessively rationalistic I must assume that the mass of the bullet is perfectly evenly distributed, the surface is perfectly uniform, zero wind, negligible distance for the bullet to travel for gravity to matter when hitting a relatively large target, et cetera, et cetera. And then what? All I could come up with is let’s say there’s no gravity or wind resistance or whatever, and you fire a perfect bullet, it goes in a straight line. With gravity constantly acting on the bullet, it curves down. If a bullet was curving and somehow you turn gravity off (oh how I hate Counter-Strike) it would go in a straight line in whichever direction it was going at the moment you flipped the switch — there’s no such thing as a curved force. So the bullet will just travel in whatever direction it left the barrel at, if you were to swing a pistol while firing. The self-proclaimed experts who troll the Mythbusters forums seem to agree (edit: all 15098252 of the “zomg lol can a bullet curve like in this awesome movie i just saw” threads are slowly disappearing, and the Google cache of this particular one is missing the post I’m quoting below, but whatever. You can find more examples.), but they are still complete assholes. For example:

“Varus, I assume you got your wide knowledge of bullet behavior from cartoons and video games. I was only in police and security work for over 25 years, was on my department’s pistol team, am certified as a Range Master, Safety Officer and Basic Marksmanship Instructor, and am an amateur gunsmith. I tell you that it is physically impossible to curve a bullet as shown in that ridiculous movie”

This incredibly intelligent post is courtesy of lordfrogenhall, “Senior Member” of the Discovery.com forums with 11,659 posts over approximately 524 days (slightly less than 1.5 years) — that’s 22.25 posts per day, or somewhat less than once an hour. SO YOU ARE GOOD WITH GUNS. PRO TIP: DROP THE “only” IN THE SECOND SENTENCE. AND THEN STOP HANGING OUT ON THE FORUMS SO MUCH.

For serious, not everyone gets to study science to a high level even if they loved it to bits. If someone would pay me to crunch numbers and write some papers and theorise and analyse and computationalisationalise and be a total nerd? YES PLZ.

I was colour-correcting some old photos and got carried away… so I guess I figured how to produce pseudo-lomographic pictures with a lot of time and effort instead of buying a cheap plastic camera. Before and after:

Beat Merchants, early last year

My 20th

Australia, 2004

Funny how introducing a little imperfection makes things so much more visually interesting.

Knights of Cydonia is a pretty ridiculous piece of music. Today I finally sat down and listened to the various verses, so here are the chords for future reference:

Em     G      C      G
B      C      E♭     G
Cm     G      A♭     E♭
Gm     A♭     E♭     G
Cm    

Cm     E♭     A♭     E♭
G      A♭     B      E♭
A♭m    E♭     E      B
E♭m    E      B      E♭
A♭m    

G♯m    B      E      B
D♯     E      G      B
Em     B      C      G
Bm     C      G      B
Em    

You may find it convenient to think about the middle verse in terms of sharps instead of flats.

Twenty-one of us, the current youth worship team and all our apprentices, spent a long weekend in church, a sort of culmination of the past months of teaching and learning and joy and frustration. Up till Saturday I had serious doubts about our ability to put a new team together. At half past midnight on Sunday we pretty much had three bands jamming the heck out of My Redeemer Lives and Touching Heaven, Changing Earth. It’s like they all suddenly decided they weren’t beginners anymore and were going to Just Play The Song Already. Bloody amazing kids and it makes me proud and excited and tired and old all at the same time.

As has become the norm with such occasions I’ll be asked several times why I walk around barefooted and I’ll say why not? If I could I’d walk everywhere barefooted. You haven’t walked if you haven’t felt earth and grass and marble and wood and gravel and concrete under your feet. Sand gets kinda icky though. And carpet — carpet always feels vaguely welcoming at first but then you realise how thoroughly dead and boring it is.

So I’m really tired from knocking on doors offering to clean the one-room apartments of these elderly folk and getting turned down or ignored or there isn’t even anyone there more so than from any actual cleaning. It’s eye-opening though, as such efforts tend to be, and I wish I could do this more often but hey I’m just pretty damned comfortable over here thank you very much.

It’s also surprising how two-faced we are and I’m sorry mate.

In other news it is good to know who your friends are

Mom finds it necessary every time there is a Problem to remind me just how hard my dad works in spite of his back problems like he’s some fucking hero. Like he’s a fucking hero for being fucking stupid and putting work over family and health. Fucking hardworking dipshit. I’d rather live on less than see the fucker die young but no he’s fucking Superman and he’s putting work over family for the good of his family am I right. What the fuck

IN OTHER WHAT THE FUCK NEWS WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THESE LATE-TWENTIES SELF-PROCLAIMED INTERNET WISE MEN WITH CHEESY PORTRAIT PICTURES AND TONS OF FACEBOOK FRIENDS AND TWITTER FOLLOWS (FOLLOWEES?) DISHING OUT LIFE AND BUSINESS ADVICE. DID I SAY ADVICE I MEAN SPAM. FUCK OFF

It is a bloody sauna over here. I think I am going to go eat some ice.

It’s Tuesday evening again, and millions worldwide are at a loss while magicks are performed on the very fabric of the World.

Today didn’t go very well — I woke early, got out of bed late, raced to school, and only discovered there wasn’t class because QL mentioned she’d heard about it. I also stuck my face in the conty window, hello Lamont, and then wanted to make more prints but the thought of negotiating with Uncle J for the darkroom keys wasn’t particularly exciting.

Yesterday, though, was fun, other than having to get up before 6. We stayed a bit after class and developed and developed. I am still lacking a scanner, negative or otherwise, but behold:

I decided to keep that last test strip on a whim and it would make a great bookmark if the edges weren’t all ragged. I am so cutting proper bookmark sized strips and selling these, okay?

The photos for/of the guys back in April didn’t turn out so well, and I’m only left with a shot of The E at the rounders game. The earlier half of the roll is all fogged up though, and said shot is in the earlier half, so we’ll see how it goes.

I caught Control Sunday afternoon with and thanks to Mak, and it was good — black and white film, dingy theatre, one-third the leg space of economy class, and the prerequisite good looking art school types in attendance. Also some fine acting, of course, and Sam Riley does a decent crazy Curtis dance.

You know what’s one thing I really hate? People pressing elevator/pedestrian crossing/whatever buttons repeatedly, loudly, as if it makes the damn thing move/change faster, as if it makes a difference, and the scary thing is I reckon some of them believe it.

West Grand are having a badge design competition and this is my 3-minute effort (just add water):