BMW Advert - Seeing Music in colour

If you haven't seen it I just thought I'd share this advert with you courtesy of YouTube. It's basically just an advert showing off BMW's cars and how great they think they are, but the add really appeals to me in an artistic sense. First of all I love the piece of music (can anyone fill me in on it's name - Dan I'm looking in your direction) but i also love the colours and textures that go with it. I think that is how music should be, full of colour and life.

Media player visualisations go some of the way towards creating this effect, I remember once spending about an hour with friends when we projected visualisations onto the ceiling and lay on the floor listening to music and watching the ceiling being filled with colour and patterns, when we finally got up it took quite a while to adjust back to normal light!! But even these don't quite cut it as they follow a preset pattern and the colours are just random - this advert goes further, giving bursts of colour when the sound explodes and weaving patterns in the buildups.

Since I have a condition called Synaesthesia, which links various sensory areas of the brain, I do, to a very small degree, experience music in colour. There are some people with the condition that would probably see a piece of music in this fashion every time, it depends on which areas of the brain are affected. I see colours for different pitches, and that's only occasionally, and textures for sounds but I can definitely see a logic to having individual patterns and colours for pieces of music.

Anyway that's enough from me - basically I really like this piece!! I might blog about synaesthesia when I'm less busy.

If you're viewing this on facebook, you'll have to go to my actual blog to see the Youtube content

The Grind

Hello folk(s)

Since I'm done with lectures I am now in a strange place that I enter every term where I'm not in university, but instead am stuck at home ceaselessly working away at assignments etc. I think I've blogged about this previously so I won't go into it now, plus I do have work to do!! Anyway this will either mean that there won't be any communication from me as I beaver away or there'll be daily blogging as I seek to divert my mind from the crushing despair of deadlines and pressure!

So, see you soon...maybe!

I'd like to say a few more words

OK, I'm in a world of busyness at the moment (note the alternate spelling conveying a state of being busy rather than working for a corporation) so I won't have much to blog about. All I've got on at the moment is coursweork, trying to find work for next year and i'm gradually managing to improve my squash and table tennis skills - I'm now quite fluent at doing "proper serves" amongst other things.

Right apparently the power needs to be turned off so I'll finish this later

Bye

OK, after two power failures I'm back - here's a few more words, to keep things short I'll include only one definition and link to dicitonary.com for the rest if you desire to look at them

Concordance - noun

an alphabetical index of the principal words of a book, as of the Bible, with a reference to the passage in which each occurs.

Parenthesis - either or both of a pair of signs ( ) used in writing to mark off an interjected explanatory or qualifying remark, to indicate separate groupings of symbols in mathematics and symbolic logic, etc.

Peculiar - 5.belonging exclusively to some person, group, or thing: the peculiar properties of a drug.

Noun - noun

1.

any member of a class of words that are formally distinguished in many languages, as in English, typically by the plural and possessive endings and that can function as the main or only elements of subjects or objects, as cat, belief, writing, Ohio, darkness. Nouns are often thought of as referring to persons, places, things, states, or qualities.

Endlessness - adjective

1.	having or seeming to have no end, limit, or conclusion; boundless; infinite; interminable; incessant: an endless series of complaints; Time is endless.

That'll probably be enough for your meagre minds for now - more to come and possibly a bit of actual news ya never know

Last Day/ Trains again!!!

This week has been the most productive week I've had so far this term - which is pretty good considering it's my last week of University!!! In terms of decent advice and feedback this has been the only real "good week" I've had all term, which in terms of organisation has been quite dissapointing. However I've managed to get on ok with my work etc. so it can't be all bad, so here I am now,with a few weeks to scrabble over coursework and then I'm done, which is a scary thought indeed. What's kinda odd is that it doesn't feel like the last day, we finished the lecture and all walked out as if it was just another day, i wasn't too bothered at the time (I was hungry) but looking backit seems a bit weird that I can end three years of my life with "see ya"

Anyway - time for a good moan!! The trains this week were a double whammy of dissapointment - I had two horrendously complicated journeys home, though both of which managed to sort themselves out alright in the end.

First of all I get to Bidston (seriously the middle of nowhere) and get told that there's no train coming and I have to get a bus. After cautiously waiting, whilst keeping an eye on the train lines (I've learnt not to trust anything I hear on the train journey) the bus arrived a little after 10 minutes wait. This is good, it normally takes about an hour!!! The bus took us home, but I realised it was skipping stops so I had to get of at Shotton and get a lift from there.

The next day I arrive at Liverpool Central station to the sounds of alarms going off and shutters closing. The entrance to the platforms was completely sealed off and everyone was standing around wondering what had happened, except for one woman who was informing someone on the phone that the station had been bombed. With this as my only souce of information I decided to ask the only official presence nearby - two police community support officers who seemed a bit too nonchalant for a terrorist situation. As it happened it was a fire alarm that had been triggered that was causing the ruckuss so I managed to peg it up to Lime Street and catch the next train and get home ok, the only difference being that we didn't stop at Central.

So there we are, and end of an era and my first real experience of post 911 culture I s'pose.

I won't do any more word of the posts till I've compiled my old ones

Ciao

Word(s) of the Post

Hello Alan and the odd other person

I've decide to collect all my Word of the Post's into one post for you to review and well...mostly it's for me so I can remember which words I've already used. I like doing this word of the post thing as I love playing around with words, part of why I want to be a writer I guess. I've always loved words and sounds, even as a small child (according to my parents) are there are some words I just love. What I use the word of the post thing for is when I use a word in conversation or a piece of writing and think back and say "wow! that's a great word!!" then i want to record that word and show my enthusiasm for it. What I also like to do is to break words down into their components (I'm not clever enough to do latin roots or any of that lot, but I like to take apart the different sounds and see where words are derived from etc.) I have a fascination with particular types of words too - words that just sound impressive, words that sound like they should mean something else, long words with short meanings, words that have a much easier way of being said, words with unusual structures etc.

So here are a few of my faves and ones i came up with by looking around my room or flicking through the dictionary when i couldn't think of anything at the end of a blog post!! Definitions are courtesy of dictionary.com

Ambivalent – noun

1.	uncertainty or fluctuation, esp. when caused by inability to make a choice or by a simultaneous desire to say or do two opposite or conflicting things.

2.	Psychology. the coexistence within an individual of positive and negative feelings toward the same person, object, or action, simultaneously drawing him or her in opposite directions.

Prective - has no meaning, but should have one - sounds great don't it?!!!

Ruddy - adjective

.

of or having a fresh, healthy red color: a ruddy complexion.

2.	red or reddish.

3.	British Slang. damned: a ruddy fool.

–adverb

4.	British Slang. damned: He'd ruddy well better be there.

Favourite -

adjective
1.	appealing to the general public; "a favorite tourist attraction" [syn: favorite]
2.	preferred above all others and treated with partiality; "the favored child" [syn: favored]
noun
1.	a competitor thought likely to win [syn: front-runner]
2.	a special loved one [syn: darling]
3.	something regarded with special favor or liking; "that book is one of my favorites"

Evidentialism - Evidentialism is a theory of justification according to which whether a belief is justified depends solely on what a person's evidence is. Technically, though belief is typically the primary object of concern, evidentialism can be applied to doxastic attitudes generally. Formulating evidentialism in terms of the doxastic attitude of belief its most-defended form comes from Conee and Feldman: Belief B toward proposition p is epistemically justified for S at t if and only if B fits the evidence S has at t.

Recapitulate -verb (used with object)

1.	to review by a brief summary, as at the end of a speech or discussion; summarize.

2.	Biology. (of an organism) to repeat (ancestral evolutionary stages) in its development.

3.	Music. to restate (the exposition) in a sonata-form movement.

–verb (used without object)

4.	to sum up statements or matters.

Axiom –noun

1.	a self-evident truth that requires no proof.

2.	a universally accepted principle or rule.

3.	Logic, Mathematics. a proposition that is assumed without proof for the sake of studying the consequences that follow from it.

Epistemology –noun a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.

Precocious –adjective

1.	unusually advanced or mature in development, esp. mental development: a precocious child.

2.	prematurely developed, as the mind, faculties, etc.

3.	of or pertaining to premature development.

4.	Botany. a. flowering, fruiting, or ripening early, as plants or fruit. b. bearing blossoms before leaves, as plants. c. appearing before leaves, as flowers.

Deluxe –adjective

1.	of special elegance, sumptuousness, or fineness; high or highest in quality, luxury, etc.: a deluxe hotel; a deluxe edition of Shakespeare bound in leather.

–adverb

2.	in a luxurious or sumptuous manner: We always travel deluxe.

Well this has already gone on much longer than I thought so this will have to go on over a few weeks I'd imagine. For now I'll leave you with a word I was horrified to find I'd left out as it's pretty much my all time favourite word.

Generic – adjective

1.	of, applicable to, or referring to all the members of a genus, class, group, or kind; general.

2.	of, pertaining to, or noting a genus, esp. in biology.

3.	(of a word) applicable or referring to both men and women: a generic pronoun.

4.	not protected by trademark registration: “Cola” and “shuttle” are generic terms.

–noun

5.	a generic term.

6.	any product, as a type of food, drug, or cosmetic commonly marketed under a brand name, that is sold in a package without a brand.

7.	a wine made from two or more varieties of grapes, with no one grape constituting more than half the product (distinguished from varietal).

21 innit!

Hello you

Ahh yes, it had to happen sometime, and now it has come. I, my friends have reached that permanant age. From now one, whenever you ask me my age I shall snigger and say (for the moment truthfully) "I'm 21".

So let's get the cliches out of the way - no, I don't feel older, more responsible or particularly compelled to enter the dodgy London nightclubs my age permits me to. Yes, looking back I have had a good life with few regrets and all the rest of it and i probably wouldn't change anything. an finally yes, I do still plan on acting like a child for many years to come!!

The festivities were threepart, firstly the youth group which I'm gradually becoming a leader of held an end of term/birthday celebration with games, pizza and an awesome toffe fudge cake. We had a great time, though most of it was spend trying to hook up a PS2 to a digital projector!

Saturday was an indulgance in nerdiness as we went to a Star Wars weekend at a science museum near Liverpool. I briefly met the guy who played Darth Vader, as well as Boba Fett and the legend that is Warwick Davis (star of Willow and numerous other films and also played an Ewok in Episode 6) there was a previously unseen "behind the scenes" documentary/spoof as well as props from the set and loads of guys in costume. I also met Karen Traviss and got her to sign her latest book and chated to her about her work and the Legacy of the Force series as a whole. Then we got back just in time to catch the new Doctor Who series!!

Sunday was a day with the family as cousins from far and wide came over for the afternoon which we enjoyed, chatting away and eating a buffet that included the most delicious cake that I have ever eaten - it was at least 50% icing!!!

So yeah, I'm a grownup - sort of and I had a good birthday, catch ya later sista!

Word - ambivalent