Out of the Carbonite!!!

After a somewhat slow period as far as my personal projects go, everything seems to be popping!!

The good news!

• There's only one more commission that JJ is working on before he gets to all of my stuff - Ranger sword, Faramir sword, Spartan armor and shields.

• Russ completed the Spartan "Mede-killer" pendant which I now have in my hands - it's definitely unsettling, to say the least. Just something a bloodthirsty Greek warrior would wear!

• David finished remaking the Spartan falcata scabbard. Instead of the cheap, Chinese leather (that probably had excessive lead in it too!) I have a beautiful antiqued brown leather covering for the close-combat weapon! Also, he put on a nicely primitive bronze clutch buckle instead of the stainless steel buckle with varnish that came with the original scabbard.

• I received the Spartan spear from Strongblade - very nice! Well put together, well balanced and frighteningly authentic at over 7 feet long. The spear is composed of two halves that screw together - a steel/iron leaf-shaped main blade and a sharp bronze butt spike:
  

So Why CARBONITE?

You may be wondering about the title of the post - I promised Andrea that I would take pictures of the entire Han Solo outfit once I got all the pieces together. And I have been jokingly referred to as the "Headless Horseman of the blogosphere" in some quarters - mainly because pictures of myself stop at the neck. I'm finally showing a bit more of myself and above the neck, too!

Just recently (and by multiple people, yet!), I've been told that I'm a very handsome, extremely sexy-looking man and that I have beautiful azure eyes - "just like the waters off the Cote D'Azur." Damn ... flattery will get you everywhere ... I guess my Cappie powers are on the rise again - I'm getting more copper-red strands in my hair (versus white or grey) and in the right light, my eyes do appear to have a blue-purple hue instead of the normal deep blue-green ...

Seriously, though -- I'm just very picky about displaying my likeness online in these days of Facebook and MySpace abuse by employers. So, after setting up the tripod and camera today, here's a sample of the photo session. Everything felt GREAT! Andrea performs her magic again!

Bollywood Redux !

I've got to hand it to Rakesh Roshan - these movies keep getting better and better. As I mentioned before, Krrish (the follow up to Koi Mil Gaya) is a big-budget action adventure romance. This mega-production has pieces from:

• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• House of Flying Daggers
• Tomorrow Never Dies
• The Forbin Project
• Dr. No
• Batman
• Superman 3
• On The Town
• The Devil's Advocate
• Titan AE
  

What we have here is a superb mix of James Bond, Batman, and Superman with (of course) a love story and a really evil, evil villain. The best thing about these movies is that they accomplish holding the audience's attention without having to resort to blood, gore, sex scenes or full-frontal (or full-backal) nudity - you actually enjoy the movie for itself. Okay, sometimes the musical production numbers can get a little overdone, but they produce the same feeling of awe and amazement as the old 1930's extravaganzas with the rotating stages, lighted stairs and hundreds of dancers hoofing away to a Big Band beat. It's just fun!

Do yourself a favor - watch the two of these over a long weekend - you won't be disappointed!

Hurray for Bollywood!

I've always enjoyed watching foreign films and reading subtitles has never been a hassle for me (although I really prefer the yellow ones to the white). I've seen French, German, Danish, Japanese, Spanish (a lot of Almodovar) and Portuguese. Never Hindi. Until this weekend.

I had read on a couple of boards how great Rakesh Roshan was as a director, so I took out two of his movies - Koi Mil Gaya and Krrish - both starring his son Hrithik Roshan.

These movies put to shame the most lavish Hollywood movies of the Golden Age - these are spectaculars in the true sense of the word. We have action, adventure, drama, romance, danger, singing, dancing and whatnot which - like the Energizer Bunny - keeps going and going and going. The only gripe I have is I believe that the female singing is dubbed - every Bollywood actress cannot sound like Yma Sumac and have that screechy, unearthly, near-ultrasonic voice that can puncture eardrums and cause horses to shift uneasily in their stalls.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then these Roshan epics are indeed a homage to no less than 11 (count'em - 11!) Hollywood movies. Not to give the plot away, but in Koi Mil Gaya, you can easily identify pieces from:

• Charly
• Forrest Gump
  
• Singin' in the Rain
• Saturday Night Fever
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• House of Flying Daggers
• Flubber
• Top Gun
• E.T.
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• The Sound of Music

The surprising thing is - it's amazingly enjoyable! And there is definitely no dearth of extremely handsome actors and glamorous actresses in these movies. What's also endearing is the fact that all of them are distinctive in their own right - again, far more reminiscent of the "stars" of Hollywood's Golden Age in their heyday (just think James Mason, Barbara Stanwyk, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Richard Widmark, Dana Andrews and William Holden) than the the current spate of bleached, botoxed and homogenous actors/actresses we have today. Below are pictures of the two stars of Koi Mil Gaya - Hrithik Roshan and Preity Zinta:


The next movie to watch is Krrish - another Roshan/Roshan production. This is supposedly the Hindi equivalent of Batman/Superman/James Bond combined. I can't wait!!!

Geek Break III - Wonders of the Electronic Age

Okay, it's summer, my Spartiate and LOTR items are being worked on and it's a slow news month.

I saw a guy wearing this on a t-shirt as I was walking through Penn Station today:

There's no place
like
127.0.0.1

Get it?

Geek Break II - Music of the Spheres

Ahh ... summer reading ... something easy on the eyes at the beach ... For me, it's Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos.

Hey, some people consider Jackie Collins light reading!!

I read (actually re-read) the two books and something was annoying me about some of the concepts. Greene uses characters in his books like George, Gracie, etc. to make a point and to inject some humor into the narrative. I decided to send the author an email:

Dear Dr. Greene:

I read your book, The Elegant Universe, and I enjoyed it very much. However, there was one gravity item that you had covered in string theory which has been on my mind and has been like an itch you cannot reach.

I am writing to you in the hopes that you can satisfy my curiosity. I'd like to illustrate with an analogy:

George, in addition to being a well-seasoned space traveler, also has perfect pitch and superlative hearing. His hobby while not jetting about the cosmos is to listen to and identify every powered garden tool by its sound. By looking at schematics and specifics about the engine, he claims he can identify any make and model lawnmower by sound alone.

Milton, his best friend, scoffs at George's boasts."Okay smarty, I'll bet you a steak dinner that you can't pick out lawnmowers!" George, seeing an easy way to a fine meal, agrees. He asks George for the schematics and engine diagrams of the equipment in question.

Milton (who happens to be the groundskeeper at the local football stadium) brings George to the playing field and blindfolds him. He motions to one of his assistants to start one of the machines and motions him to move it past George.

"That's a Briggs and Stratton Model X15", George declares. Milton is dumbstruck. George correctly identified the lawnmower. "Want to try again?" George taunts.

Milton agrees.

Milton motions to another one of his assistants who starts another machine and runs it past our star traveler.

"Hmmm. That's a Lawnboy Model AR3," is George's smug reply. Again, Milton is incredulous. How is he doing this? "I can just taste that steak now", George says. Milton is turning red as a beet. "One more time, okay?" he asks.

"Okay." Says George.

Milton now motions for both of his assistants to run the mowers past George.

"Milton, are you trying to trick me?", George laughs. "You just ran the X15 and the AR3 by me again and you added a Honda Weed-Whacker Model 33 to the mix."

"Aha!" says Milton. "You owe me dinner! Take off your blindfold!"

Now it is George's turn to be surprised. With both lawnmowers turned on, the harmonics sound just like the Honda. "Boy, do I have egg on my face. I never thought of that!"

Sorry to be a bit long-winded, but can you see where I'm coming from?

While string theory defines the specific vibrational pattern of gravity, we don't appear to find or feel gravity except in the presence of mass vibratory patterns. Could gravity's specific vibrational pattern be the result of interference or harmonics amongst the matter-based vibrations? Could gravity be an embedded quality of the universe, rather than a property unto itself?

If we use the lawnmower example again, the effects of gravity (or the sound of the weed-whacker) would be smaller (quieter) over long distances since the harmonics themselves interact less forcefully.

My issue is that strings not only vibrate, but in order to recognize the vibration is occurring (and to observe the specific properties that that vibration produces), they must affect their surroundings - namely the 11-dimensional space in which they are embedded. The vibration could have components in the lower 4-dimensional space, the higher 7-dimensional space, or some combination of both. Mass vibrations could produce a harmonic in the upper dimensional space which manifests itself as gravity in the lower dimensional space.

The gravitational feeling experienced during acceleration, then, could also be explained by the matter vibrational pattern being distorted and perhaps this "doppler howl" produces a similar harmonic. The same way that 2+2 and 3+1 yield identical results, so too could gravity and acceleration be explained by different harmonic interactions that yield a similar "tone".

Are there any Calabi-Yau shapes which explain the physical properties of the universe but only define the gravity vibrational pattern in the upper 7 dimensions?

Thank you for reading this, and I hope to hear from you soon.

What I'm finding absolutely hilarious at this point is that here I am, Ithilien Ranger, Gondorian Prince, descendant of Numenorean Sea-Kings, sword and bow wielder, discussing trans-dimensional geometry with a theoretical physicist ...