Friday, August 25, 2006
Brush of Air
Haha. Been working on Yamato. This is how it looks like while drying after a new coat of red was painted and finished on its hull.
But what's mOre special is the thing that did that =)
Check out my airbrush - a very common, very dependable 2 year old Badger 155 Anthem. This model's pretty new. Airbrushes here in Singapore cost a bomb (shipping ma) - but they last for practically decades if will taken care of.
Airbrushes are used extensively in art, especially those realistically shaded drawings or 'flame' artworks so often seen on motorbikes and cars. An airbrush can easily provide stunning gradients and colours when handled by the right hands. Even the cosmetics industry uses them for nail painting and spraying of their 'special chemicals' onto the skin during beauty treatments. BuT, its used in scale modelling to well.. paint the model! It can handle many stages, from priming to painting to weathering to finishing. But of course everyone has their own methods. Sometimes its easier and less messy to paint from a spray can than an airbrush.
Why? Cos an airbrush requires a huge amount of maintenance. The hole at its tip is less than 1mm wide, through which a needle regulates the flow of sprayed paint. Once paint dries here, the whole brush gets clogged, and this could be disastrous. Hence, every painting session must be followed by careful cleaning.
This a pic of the airbrush disassembled..
And a pic (out of focus. sian..) of the delicate nozzle. That grid is a 1cm sq grid.
And here I am holding it. LOL.
Hmm. I have a hobby dominated by bored middle-aged-married men. AHHHAhahahaha.
I'm mad.
jOhn thought at 11:22 PM
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Every little boy's dream.
After about 6 months of cold storage, my models have finally been broken out.
Spent today finishing a tiny model plane that was given to me as a gift. Here are some pictures =)
Yes, yes, I know what u're thinking. Don't that plane seem to be suspended in midair like magic? Well, it is =). The model is the French jet Rafale from german model company Revell. Its secret is 3 strings (seen in 3rd picture), an inbuilt magnet and a huge repelling magnet in its base =) This was given to me as a gift.
Incidentally, this is also only the second plane I've built seriously, with paint and all. I've made many more when I was younger, but all were paint-less and dull. With this, I experimented with a few new modelling techniques and processes.. esp with simulating weathering and mastering the many tiny decals. The plane's only 9cm long! and all those colourful words n symbols are individual decals that had to be applied!
Aand I made a huge mistake on this one. But of course, every mistake is a lesson learnt. As you can see, the cockpit canopy is painted white. Its supposed to be transparent, but i ruined it after trying to clean off paint with a thinner-like chemical. It ended up dissolving the plastic and clouding the whole cockpit a sickly white. So I had to add paint on to attempt to save the situation.
But the experience gained here prepares me for greater things: I have three other unbuilt planes at home... One of which is under construction... the Sukhoi S-37 Berkut.
And here is the unpainted plastic body compared with a 20cm ruler.
My 2nd other plane is of roughly the same size, the SV-51R from the Macross Zero anime series.. BUT
My ultimate plane is this!:
This huge F-16's (the same 20cm ruler is shown) from Tamiya, is the wet dream of many plane modellers, and cost me a huge bomb. So I'm not gonna touch it until I know what im doing. Don't want it to look like a friggin mangled mess of grey plastic.
But oTher than planes, I have another behemoth lying mothballed in a box, that same plastic ruler beside it!!:
Yes, a 1/350 Yamato from Tamiya.. Been under construction since I was sec 4 (2004), and also cost me a bomb. My second serious battleship (I made 2 ships before.. including Tirpitz and Scharnhorst.. both dull, messy and unpainted.. still have em =)) to be made, other than a cheapo, averagely-painted 1/350 Missouri thats now gathering dust on my shelf.. I have another 1/400 scale model not made, and its called the Titanic =)
BUT OTHER than ships and planes, I still have these models: Nissan 350Z Xanavi Nismo, M110 artillery gun, german Tiger and King Tigers, M26 recovery vehicle from Tamiya, JGDSF all-terrain car from Tamiya, a Kiowa helicopter, and a small Jap WWII seaplane.
Too much plastic, too little time -_-
jOhn thought at 12:46 PM
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Co-Laterality.
Yo.
LOL.
Im bored.
Holidays are coming.
Ahhahah.
Im having ice cream.
Vanilla, Chocolate, Tiramisu, Rum & Raisin, all courtesy of Haagen Dazs.
Pleasure costs $24, sugar diabetes comes free =)
Reminds me of a time in Austria back in sec school years where we were all served an awful-tasting bowl of salad and I saved the day (erm... right.) by recommending we all pour sugar on it and eat it - masks the extreme bitterness. It worked wonderfully.
AnYwAy.
Just watched Collateral on DVD. Wonderfully artful show about an average LA cabbie who is forced to drive a hired hitman to 5 locations to kill 5 people, all in one night. Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx sure have awesome chemistry.
But the movie also has some interesting themes. Spoilers ahead. Also, if you're bored by long texts and don't feel like generating the mental capacities to digest what's below, then shoo.
But then again. Yooooouu knooow yooouuu wannnaaa. =)
Foxx plays a cabbie with big dreams and no action - he's been bumbling around in his cab for 12 years, and he intends to someday own a limousine company. He's got the plan all hammered out, except he has never acted on it. What's significant is this is how most people are these days - lives flash by, those youthful dreams that provided strength and motivation sidelined to the most unvisited depths of one's mind. People would rather stay within the comfort zone of routine, why take that risk? Let life go by, work like rats and don't aspire to be too much. Zuo ren yao shui bian yi dian.
Cruise is a cold, calculating hitman with the personal motto of 'adapt and improvise'. Unlike Foxx's character, he lives life on the edge, keeping on his toes. Like all stereotypical bad guys, Cruise had a broken family and is a man who totally believes in his personal ideals, which in turn drives his complete disregard for the human lives he takes. To him, the world is full of robots living life in perpetual trance, and he is the one guy who stands out, kind of like the world revolving around him.
Questions of morality and ethics swirl around one's mind when watching this movie... what justifies Cruise's character when he goes around knocking people off like soulless animals? The layman would say things like 'think of that guy's family' or 'he was such a nice person, what a pity' or 'he could have achieved so much'.
And then you start self-examining. Here I am everyday, forcing myself out of bed at 6 when everything else in my body tells me not to, taking the same train everyday with thousands of people I don't recognise, going through the motions at school. Oh, what would be of me, if not for these academic goals controlling my life?
In a final gun showdown in a train, Foxx's character shot Cruise, and when Cruise realised it, he just calmly gathered himself and sat himself down on a seat.
He repeats his first complaint to Foxx about LA: "I read about this guy who gets on the train here, and dies. Six hours he's riding the subway before anybody notices his corpse doing laps around L.A., people on and off sitting next to him. Nobody notices."
And then he dies as the train pulls away, his corpse looking like any other sleeping train commuter.
Where'd he go when he died? Is there a place for people who do things that everyone else considers wrong, but they themselves consider right? Can a universally harmonious society ever accommodate 'misfits' like these? Our modern morals are the result of centuries of religion, tradition, and technological evolution. What is considered socially acceptable changes with time. Technology accelerates this change. The world would not be globalised if not for metal ships, nuclear weapons, satellites, etc.
40 years ago, an Asian girl who regularly goes clubbing is trash, barely better than a prostitute. Now its perfectly okay and normal, even expected! It's called "Having a life." Heard about it?
50 years ago in the States, it was almost impossible for a black man to hold a high office, or even share a bus seat with a white man. Now a black woman is the Secretary of State.
70 years ago here, it was normal to get married at 13. Now, most wait till 'after studies'. Late 20's.
500 years ago in Europe, you could get humiliated and chained up in public for being lazy. Now, slacking is almost a national youth pastime.
Not long before that era, literature was completely contained within the walls of the church, and people's religious lives were dictated by the parish. Back then, if the king converted to a new religion, the whole population was expected to follow or be executed.
Soon, the printing press expedited the dissemination of ideals and opinions. People started gaining knowledge. With knowledge comes responsibility, like a *certain superhero's uncle* said. Nowadays, we have a choice of how to pursue our own religion, and we seem perfectly comfortable in that, in our separate versions of morality.
'Havoc' girl shares the same church pew with someone who conducts herself in the most moral way possible, and they both get along happily, both nonchalantly proclaiming their love for the same God, both singing the same worship lyrics, going through the same motions. When the pastor preaches against 'immorality' and 'sin', does that 'havoc' girl feel condemned? Does she have her own moral principles to immediately cancel out the indirect condemnations of the pastor on her behaviour, and assure herself that what she's doing is acceptable, or forgivable, hence justified?
Such morals may go like these:
-Having sex is a basic human function, therefore, I should follow my basic instincts and sleep with whichever guy I fancy (courtesy of Izzy).
-All my friends spend their nights out at the clubs, so I should go to. Who are my parents to stop me? My life and body are mine to lead, and I shall do with them as I please.
-I wanna 'live life to the rawksome maximum', 'get out and shake my booty', 'hang loose in da club', 'get grindin on a saturday night', 'show off my hot bod while it still oozes sex and conducts lust in others'.
Now, a (stereotypical) atheist with such friends would probably not bat an eyelid. After all, the side effect of a first-world society is that its youth are comfortable, hence disillusioned-ly stupid, deluded by a love of absolute, anarchic freedom to do as they please. Go ahead, It's Your Life (Bon Jovi?) after all. Do as you please, you're gonna shoulder the consequences anyway. Drink? It's your liver yea. Smoke? It's your lungs anyway. Cheat on a partner? Hey, it's cool. Just don't get found out.
But what if such an amorous lifestyle affects you? What if you love that person and want to marry him/her? Are you still willing to shut one eye to practices which you know are wrong, but am already too late to correct, all because you were selfishly, foolishly apathetic in your youth? What if such actions affect you, your health, your money, your family? Only then would you take action?
A person under the moral umbrella of religion is a different story. He or she would probably have to keep 'immoral' practices under wraps, or at least shared amongst a close circle of friends that share the same principles and most likely, age, too. Why? Simply because many religions, stemming from centuries-old tradition and a long- standing set of behavioural rules, frown on the same set of morals that secular society and popular culture have embraced. Religion provides a psychologically (yes - it's psychological for most people - except for some. go figure.) comforting, universal shield against all evil, but it also gags and severely restricts its followers. Freedom-loving rebels, youth especially, despise this, and that's why many backslide, or else maintain a disgruntled commitment to religion, all because religion must be passed down from generation to generation.
The modern world coos delightfully at multi-dimensional characters. No longer is the ideal, faultless, one-dimensional Superman universally admired by young girls. Instead, they prefer men with a dark side, or a dark history, 'ordinary men who were forced to grapple with being a superhero'. Such characters, like Batman and Spiderman, now capture the hearts and mind of audiences. Apparently such people are 'strong' and 'sexy'.
Likewise, a handsome 'bad boy' with parallel religious commitments would probably be a very desirable one-off date (yes - a one-off date), and it would be 'cool' to know such people. (like, say, a teenage dude who clubs and gets drunk, and dresses in metal studs and black leather, but still attends church every Sunday with his clueless family) What. Is he the epitome of fun and family combined together? What's wrong with dressing in black leather and metal studs, right? It's just clothing. Yes. To them, 'getting with the hip crowd' or 'chilling at a club', all while holding a good job, are perfectly justified. The 2 phrases would probably be widely used in advertisements by clubs, but sound staid and as awkward as Lee Kuan Yew singing a punk rock song when used here in an argumentative against them, don't they?
So, what is the solution to the ideal, happy life? Well, I can safely say I know the answer, the solution. However, the answer is an absolute, total sum. How one arrives at that sum, depends on the lifestyle choices that one makes.
The answer's Balance. Balance in Life, Balance in Everything. Simple? Capisce? How you interpret and implement that is completely your choice.
Aforementioned forced conversions are also why we have many religions which don't belong to the locality. What's Islam doing in Asia, for example? (this is a random example - I'm trying to be unbiased here.) Malays weren't Muslim all throughout history. They were converted from Hinduism, Buddhism and Animism (lesser known: mostly referring to the belief that everything on Earth has a soul and spirit) in the early 15th century, influenced by Arab, Chinese and Indian Muslim seafarers during the Islamic Golden Age. And even now, leaving Islam is still extremely condemnable. You lose your name and your friends, and would most probably be threatened to be disowned. In 50 years, would that still hold?
Are you sure that the gaining of knowledge is always positive and desirable? Is it better to have knowledge and be a burdened and tinted soul along with it, or have blissful ignorance and live in pure personal utopia, much like the scenarios of the Matrix movies?
"The richest places are not the cities, Hollywood, or the oil fields of the Middle East. The wealthiest places on Earth are its graveyards! Buried under them are thousands of great dreams. The fastest car, the cure to cancer, the best cuisines, the rockets to outer space, all lie trapped below 6 feet of earth"
- Paraphrased from Rev. Kong Hee
jOhn thought at 3:47 PM
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
A Warning Not Heeded.
I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.
-the Biggest Boss Himself, on the nation of Israel.
Genesis 12:2-3
Even if you don't believe it, I'll bet you are more than a little spooked =)
jOhn thought at 11:54 PM
Monday, August 07, 2006
Do I have the right to complain?
This is terrible.
During the last submission I swore to kill anyone who teases me about the slack-ness of poly.
And it still holds.
Every night, we work and work, as long as there is electricity, night and day do not exist.
Our teachers say, if we even have time to sleep, we are not working hard enough.
They recommended, we work 36 hours a day, 10 days a week.
And what if we are tired? Well, sleep for two minutes, said a lecturer.
You can see the shock in their faces when you tell them that you actually had time to play a computer game.
We archi students do everything.
Model on 3D software like Industrial Design.
Churn out Photoshop posters like Graphic Art.
Draft on software like engineers, and duh, architects.
Study history like them history students.
Write thousands of words of theory and arguments, as if taking General Paper.
Forced to present our project, filmed with a videocam, like Mass Comm.
Calculate dimensions and stress point, drainage, platform levels, sewer discharge, like civil engineers.
Experiment with materials, get acquainted with how to put them materials together, whats can and cant work, whats strong and weak, as if we were scientists.
Observe how people live, and how society works, and prove it in our designs, like a sociologist.
And many more.
SP's archi peeps are being treated as university students.
Is that a good thing?
Surely it would contribute towards the poly's good image.
University archi students are famed for not needing significant sleep whatsoever, camping over in school with pillows and mattresses, sluggin through the night with their computers.
My teachers experienced that, except back then computers weren't used for drafting.
Are they trying to subject us to such abuse too?
The only pride we have is when the NUS students came over and marvelled at our work, saying we learnt more things in 3 years of study then they did.
And for that we may get some temporary respect, to be comparable to university students.
Every few months someone drops out of the course.
Recently one girl fainted before a presentation, fell down a flight of stairs and had to be sent to hospital.
She has since withdrawn, too.
Is that normal? Fair to her? To come here for more than a year, waste her life away doing something she totally cannot manage, but still courageously hanging on to that glimmer of hope, only to have her body sound the final alarm before she succumbs to this course's annals of rejects?
What has 1.5 years in SP taught me?
Well, for one, it nurtured my interest in architecture, something I am thankful for.
But it really tested me. Tested us all.
It forced me to get acquainted with my body's physical limits. When to sleep, how long can you stare at a computer screen without going blind and having digital images imprinted on your eyeballs everywhere you look, how much clicking can you do before your fingers rot. And whether you can still walk in a straight line after not sleeping for a week.
Of course, there's always a God to help me through, eh?
But so many, many others complain about breakdown and not being able to make it.
They started school with the aim of being the best architect in the world.
Now they are happy with passing.
Before submission day, people cry, people hallucinate, everyone has black bags below their tired eyes. In trains, they fall asleep on stranger's shoulders, they get moody and irritable.
Why, because some did not sleep for up to three days straight.
There's work to be done, and only 24 hours a day to do it.
It takes a toll on our bodies, definitely.
Perhaps we'd all die young, because of this torture.
Reminds me about US Navy SEAL training, where more than 3/4 of applicants drop out due to sheer stress.
This is exactly the same.
This course is designed to weed out the best of the best. The others just fade away into obscurity.
The ones with the top grades are those who lack social life whatsoever, recluses who don't have no social skills. Heh. I'd try not to be like that. No false hopes though.
I don't lie when I say that this course really grabs mortals by the neck and forces them to become deities.
My own hat off to any graduate of SP Archi.
Is this how they want students to be?
Some kind of school this is.
But of course, courageous little me is hanging on, showing everyone that I can make the cut, doing what I can to also pull up anyone who falls.
Because it's a war, folks.
A war without much reward at the end. Like Vietnam.
Just like those troops, we're gonna wheel each other's wheelchair into the airport arrival hall, grateful to be home. Except there won't be any large crowds with CONGRATULATIONS HERO banners. Just like the troops who got spat upon at the airports by the war-hating public, who returned to to care and love of their family, and nothing more.
But we're all fighting, aren't we not?
We're all victors, we. Every submission is a ridiculously difficult test, and we're given chopsticks for weapons. Yet we still somehow find that strength to pull through.
Oh, just you wait, you smart asses at the top.
Until one day someone dies from excessive stress directly linked to SP's Archi course.
And the parents sue the school for a few million dollars.
Then the war is won, would it?
Whatever.
And don't you dare complain about the A levels. I'd swing a reinforced concrete pillar at you.
If I still have the strength after losing the very most basic primal need of sleep, that is.
jOhn thought at 1:04 PM
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Command of Language.
Well, how do you judge a person's skill at language? Take English for example.
English arguably has two basic elements, grammar and vocabulary.
A person new to English would write something like this:
"It was a hot day. The sun was out."
Nothing wrong, isn't it? Except it won't get you anywhere in the world of language.
Perfect grammar. That is the first, and most important step.
But perfect grammar's not enough.
Here's Level 2:
"It was a sweltering day, and the afternoon sun shone bright in the sky."
This time, more advanced vocabulary is added into the picture. Now we have a better sentence, which communicates the idea of a 'hot day' much more clearer.
Where does it go from here?
Level 3:
"The day baked under a sweltering sun, radiant with its bright afternoon rays."
Here there is effort to group and combine adjectives and nouns where they are not usually used, but still keeping their usage applicable and accurate. (thats the best way I can explain it)
And this is the highest level, Level 4:
"Noontime baked under sweltering sun at levels near unbearable."
Here, there is a complete elimination of unneccessary words, such as 'a' in 'a sweltering sun'. The structure of the whole sentence is changed, the split created by the comma completely removed. Each word now holds meaning and information that give the sentence its power. For example, instead of saying 'day' and 'afternoon' seperately within the same sentence, a simple 'noontime' is used, and this alone communicates all that is needed to know about the time of day, in order to form a picture in the reader's mind.
Infused within a simple sentence are all the conventions of English, maximum use of simple vocabulary, integration of unusual yet accurate grammar & vocabulary, yet completely broken rules of conventional sentence structure. The author is toying with grammar itself, while still being linguistically accepted. And that is the highest level of evolution the command of a language can reach, and the level at which poets can string words together.
Few authors of entire novels have the experience, time and knowledge to completely rearrange conventional text, and make it even more readable, interesting and polished, even when writing in such altered sentence structures.
Now, a sentence from an actual short story, which has wonderful use of grammar in it:
"Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come."
In this case, a stranger, this guy called Nuttel wants to meet the aunt, who is upstairs and coming down soon, while her sacarstic 15 year old neice is already sitting opposite him.
Wonderful sentence. Here you find a long but satisfying, well-linked and yet contrasting grammar and actions. And what is the only word that can be considered 'chim'? Endeavour. That's all!
A lesser author, a pathetic wannabe with thesaurus in hand, would write something like this in an essay (in this case, of course written by me):
"Beads of pearlescent sweat glistened on his bushy brow as he carefully contemplated words to say. He greatly wanted to duly impress the young adolescent girl before him, yet he did not wish to draw any unpleasant comparisons between her and her aunt, that might result in severe misintepretation and spoil their already awkward relationship."
Rubbish.
Yes, the above sentence can be considered good, concise English, but see, it uses very basic structures, merely using adjectives to mask their rudimentary grammar and achieve required depth of meaning, which any fool can do. I can rewrite it as this:
He sweat as he thought about what to say. He wanted to talk kindly to the young girl in front of him, but was afraid of saying anything that might be hurtful to her or her aunt.
Structure goes something like, Peter felt bored while doing homework. Noun followed by an adjective and a verb.
Second sentence, Peter wanted to play, but he had homework to do.
Simple synthesis and conjunction of conflicting actions.
Nothing special.
Whereas in the original story excerpt, the author has managed to completely rearrange the structure, see:
"Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come."
"Peter wanted to do something that would ease his boredom while not making him feel guilty about not doing his homework."
In a simple sentence with standard vocabulary, the author manages to communicate action, contrast and emotion accurately, rather than what someone with poor command of grammar can do, even at his best efforts.
I see people like that all the time in school, especially in polytechnic, where you have people who think they can speak good English, just because many other persons more adept at Chinese only can manage broken English. They, with all their big mind-boggling dictionary-check-inducing tirade of adjectives, don't know nuts about what it really means to fully command this wonderful language.
Keep this in mind. Outstanding English is not about how chim your words can get, but how much you understand its grammar. A dictionary can be on hand anytime you wish, but knowledge of structure can only be individually developed and honed by practice. Thats what makes it so special.
Note: I do not have any experience in proper linguistic studies, and the above are purely personal observations, communicated with words already familiar to me, that I best felt illustrated my points. They may not be the correct technical terms. They don't try to be. They just have something to say and want to say it.
jOhn thought at 8:45 AM