★ posted on 31 Mar 2008 at 11:08 am under Life in General ★
Was at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) on 79th St.
I arrived via subway at aroun 12pm. For those visiting, it’s good to have a watch. My ever reliable handphone that I use for telling the time was left at home as I haven’t charged it in a while and the battery was flat. The watch is required to tell time so you can arrive at the certain shows they have throughout the day. I just used the inbuilt clock of my camera. Heh.
You get to see things from the giant heavenly masses of stars and planets, to the tiny micro organisms and everything in between. I heard that the Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC are much more massive and at 5 floors, there’s plenty to see at this museum right here.
Like the zoo, I walked until my feet were sore. There is a vast collection of items at the AMNH, and it has a long history dating back more than a hundred years. Heh, it’s probably a different atmosphere from the zoo, and while it’s quite impressive seeing stuffed life size animals on displays, it’s just not as great as seeing a real, life animal.
Saw so many things, but the highlights included a space show where the projection was on a large dome. The last time I recalled seeing something like that was when I went to Singapore when I was 12 and visited the planeterium there (if memory serves me correctly). The short fim was narrated by Robert Redford, and it was about cosmic collisions. Then there’s the IMAX Dinosaurs Alive! show. The screen was massive, but didn’t capture the IMAX experience. Heh, it’s interesting that even in the early 1930s, people were already pioneering the trail to the Ghobi desert in Mongolia to look for dinosaur fossils.
Just wandered around and you could see dinosaur bones. I still recall the first time I saw them as a kid in Malaysia, as the bones were touring the country then. They are massive, these dinosaurs, and I wonder how much they consumed before this to reach these sizes. Earth must have been more tropical back then, with more oxygen/carbon dioxide, for things to grow to such immense sizes.
Heh, after wandering around more, there was a special exhibit for butterflies. These were real butterflies, not the kind tacked onto a board and encased behind glass. Yes, the room was warmed up and humidified just to keep the butterflies, and they were fluttering all over the place. One even landed on my cap (apparently) as the other museum patrons told me. It’s quite amazing, these tiny creatures, they just look so dazzling in their various colours.
Wandered around a little more and after 4 hours at the museum, I was just glossing over things. The dinosaur displays are all on the top floor, and you can recognise their distinct shapes like the T-Rex, Brontosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus etc. Heh, as a kid I was a big fan of dinosaurs and I could name you the various types way back then, and even the three periods and their durations (Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous eras, all under the Mesozoic era).
You can also see the various tools, clothing of the different peoples from around the world from different time periods. There are also land animals, sea animals, plants etc. The wealth of information is just astounding. The last exhibit I went to see before leaving was the minerals section. All your precious stones and jewels and minerals were all gleaming in the dark, and you have no idea how many types of minerals there are on the planet.
Will just leave you with some pictures from the trip.
*roar*
the butterflies were so desensitised to humans they just posed for me.
this was one massive tree, and it grew around 550AD before being chopped down in 1891.
doesn’t this remind you of Kryptonite? heh.
yes, plenty of 300 odd carot jewels on display here.
★ posted on 29 Mar 2008 at 10:59 am under Life in General ★
No dinner pictures tonight.
For lunch my colleague and I went to Johnny Rockets for a fastfood lunch. The irony is that the menus come with the number of calories on the side of each order. I got myself a double pattie burger, an oreo shake and fries, which totals up to around 3,000 calories.
I’m still contented and not terribly hungry at the moment.
* * *
So here I am typing away at my Eee PC again. When not programming at work, I’ll be doing trying different things at home. Messed around with the Microsoft Windows shell and substituted Explorer with the Black Box implementation taken from Linux. Just an alternative design method, but I’m a keyboard person, relying heavily on memorised shortcuts to get things done. The Xandros operating system on the Eee hides things away yet if you know where to dig, you can find a lot of useful information and programs to get your things done.
Managed to get Sopcast installed on this thing, and now I can stream live English Premier League matches on the go, as long as I have a connection to the Internet. Heh, it’s not the usual .exe file where you double click it and the program just install itself for you. I’ve been spending a lot more time with the command prompt and although I know what the commands are instructing, I can’t quite think up those lines on my own (sort of like me knowing how to read a Chinese essay but not quite being able to write one. Heh, not anymore anyway).
Then there’s the tiny footprint in resource usage. This thing is very efficient, and even with multiple windows of applications open, it is not thirsty for memory and remains snappy. The processor can’t handle high definition video files, but even any processor older than 2 years would struggle with it.
* * *
I’m just rediscovering my fascination with tech stuff. I used to mess up my computers very often not too long ago. Heh, now I have the luxury of redundancy as I have too many PCs lying around. There is only one of me and I can only be using one item at a time, and the different machines have different purposes.
Just good to be reminded of one’s youth every now and then. It gives you perspective on how life is and you remember the good things you used to look forward to. Heh
★ posted on 25 Mar 2008 at 11:08 am under Life in General ★
As promised, a picture of spring in the making. I’m starting to notice some shoots on some trees, and it’s a wonder at times, as you just notice the temperatures change and one day you look out your window and realise the bald tree from winter is suddenly covered with green.
* * *
Feeling a little smarter today, as I sort of managed to solve some problems at work and am getting more familiar with Python (a programming language). Heh, I’m not the terribly bright kind of person, but given enough prodding at a question or problem, I will be able to figure it out sooner or later.
Was spending the evening doing a site design from scratch. Heh, into this whole programming buzz now, so if I can’t reflect my non existent art skills, I could try my illusory programming skills as well. Managed to come up with a more conventional design, something with bold lines and photographs instead of pretty girls. It’s a work in progress, and I will just rotate between that and my programming.
It’s just a way of keeping everything interesting at the moment. I’d like to explore my photography a little more at the moment, but something more along the lines of a studio setup with controlled lighting. Since I can’t really practise that at the moment as I have no people to use as models and I’m not really keen to do street photography at the moment, it will just have to wait until I’m back in Melbourne.
* * *
Plenty of other ideas going through my mind. I’m trying to figure the best way to organise all this information. At the moment, it’s easiest to keep these ideas that come to my mind on an online website. I use Todoist, and so if any fancy ideas pop up at work, it goes straight there. My only lament is that when the Internet dies (which is often where I am as I can’t access it occasionally), the usefulness of it being on the web goes down quickly. There isn’t really an all in one convenient solution yet. There are ideas to put things onto a USB stick, or have your info on a phone. Heh, when you have weblinks and all that, the phone doesn’t quite work either. All this connectivity available yet they can’t quite talk to each other properly as yet. Heh, if there was free wi-fi at work, I’d lug my Eee PC everywhere just to jot notes on ideas. Heh, wonder if that will work when I am back in Melbourne. Not sure if they have wifi in the office.
Just going through the days one by one now.
makumaro.net is the rented space of HC Mak, built on 
