I just found this pink frame hiding under a pile of stuff in my studio, and thought this print of Nidhi’s illustration might work in there–and it does. Love it. Too bad I will now leave for London and not see it for three months. But still!
To the left is a vintage-style baseball, sitting in a wooden hand, with a tiny hat on it. Kudos to Gabe for hat placement.
Paintings are ruined. People behave selfishly. Luggage is lost.
These are the times when it’s most valuable to get the kind of message I got yesterday. I’m heading to London for 3 months (in a week!) and intend to do a lot of side trips while I’m there. My coworker wrote:
If anyone can find themselves on a midnight train in Morocco speeding toward an obscure music festival in the desert, it’d be you. If anyone could find themselves dipping toes in the Black Sea from a fisherman’s boat, it’d be you. If ANYONE could find themselves in the capital of a country in the middle of a velvet revolution, it’d be you. Go forth and ADVENTURE!
Thanks, Whitney, for the reminder. I’m putting those three things on my list for the coming months!
AND, just now, as I was about to post this, my phone rang–the airline found my luggage. 
My buddies over at Monsters are Not Myths are continuing their fine tradition of calling your Mom on Mother’s Day to sing her a custom song, for free. All you have to do is sign up!
I arrived in Hawaii just in time for the tsunami that’s supposed to hit in about 5 hours. We just heard the warning sirens and it’s pretty much the only thing on the news, but my brother’s place (where I’m staying) is on high ground so we’re safe. This does rearrange the priorities for the weekend…
My trip to Tibet last year was the inaugural year of the “Dream of the Turquoise Bee” Tibet trips led by Dianne Aigaki–incredible artist, world traveler, and more than anything else just one of my favorite people on the planet. You couldn’t do better than this for an authentic trip to a part of Tibet that few westerners ever get to see.
Following is the announcement that Dianne sent out. If you’re interested, check out the itinerary or Dianne’s blog, which has fantastic stories about getting ready for last year’s adventure. Enjoy!
An unparalleled experience for botanical illustrators, photographers, landscape painters, botanists, ethnobotanists, outdoor enthusiasts and those whose life dream has always been to travel to Tibet.
Big day for me. Earlier today some shots of me went up on iStockPhoto, and now some videos I did are live. I’ve been on the other side of the camera for plenty of these types of videos–or rather, in the producer’s chair–but this is my first on-camera-talent gig. The websites really are cool, too.
For Schwab MoneyWise:
For Safeway Foodflex:
Tomorrow I’ll be at Fort Mason in San Francisco with my Tibetan teacher for the Bay Area Friends of Tibet’s 24th Tibet Day. My teacher, Lobsang Tsering, has a non-profit called Tibetan Living Communities that is dedicated to the improvement of education and medical care for Tibetan refugees throughout India. We’ll be talking to people and, I think, writing people’s names in Tibetan script. Come on by if you’re in the area!
That’s right: they’re up and ready to go at http://angelajhill.zenfolio.com/. If you have any questions or challenges ordering, please don’t hesitate to contact me at angela.hill.photography@gmail.com.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to the super-talented Nidhi who did this illustration of me as a math detective. I LOVE it! She also did a smaller icon-style one that will be showing up here in the near future…but I love this just as it is. So awesome!
Hello out there, baseball fans. This Saturday (October 17, 2009), at the San Jose Giants Stadium, there’s an awesome baseball event going on. If you know me, you’ve probably heard me talk about the men’s vintage baseball team (rules and equipment from 1886!) that I do photography for. They’re the Stogies of the California Vintage Base Ball League. They’re putting on a game against some former major leaguers including Gaylord Perry, Vida Blue, Reggie Sanders, Mike McCormick, Kevin Maas, Brady Anderson, Mike Remlinger, Darrell Evans, Bobby Grich and Rollie Fingers. There’s also a Junior Giants clinic in the morning.
Tickets are $20 - $30; the game starts at 3:00 but there are festivities beforehand. I can’t think of a more all-American way to spend a day. For the ballplayers out there, it’s pretty fascinating to see the differences in the rules and equipment (I would NEVER catch in a league like this…), the sportsmanship is outstanding, and seeing these old ballplayers playing together now is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
if you’re in the area, please pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested. Buy tickets and get more information at http://www.cvbbf.com. Hope to see you there–I’ll be the one on the field with the camera…
I had my first Tibetan lesson on Friday. I’m very excited about learning this language. I speak a tad of Spanish and French and seem to inexplicably understand some German, but I don’t *really* speak anything other than English. Theoretically, Tibetan is kind of ridiculous to learn…possibly even less useful than Finnish. But since I’m hoping to do lots more Tibet-related stuff, I think it will be very useful. The hardest part is learning a new alphabet that corresponds to sounds we don’t have in English. But, I’m using my synesthesia to my advantage; I realized that I can associate the sounds with colors and then work to color-code the symbols in my mind. It’s still hard, but it will be well worth it when I can speak Tibetan!
My teacher recommended these pages for assistance learning, and since I had such a hard time knowing which Tibetan language resources were most useful/usable before I started lessons, I’m including them here:
For learning how to write Tibetan script: http://chris.fynn.googlepages.com/howtowritethetibetanscript
For learning how to say the syllables: http://www.tibetanlibrary.org/library/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=93&Itemid=137&lang=en
As a classically trained pianist, this is my worst nightmare. As a catcher, it’s a rite of passage. This is probably why you don’t see a lot of people doing both.
Our championship game was yesterday–sadly we lost, but the next best thing to playing & winning is playing & losing, as they say. I’m sad to see baseball season come to an end…but it would have been hiatus time for me anyway with this finger. Going for a play at the plate in the 4th inning, I got a ball directly to my right middle finger. Had to take a minute to tape it up and shake it off, but I still caught the rest of the game. This morning my inner pianist got the best of me and I decided to make sure it didn’t need any serious attention. A couple of hours later, I have x-rays of my hand and the assurance that the break will heal up nicely on its own (it’s just the tip, so all of the knuckles, etc. are ok). Most of all I get to feel really, really tough.
Depending on how you look at it, things are A-OK. Also, a big shout-out to Gabe for taking photos at the game.
Unnecssarily Epic kicks off with one design: “live curiously”. After my trip to Tibet, I decided to call this year (hopefully the first of many) “the year of living curiously”. It means that I’m elevating curiosity as a driving force in my life; that I’m going to follow my curiosity wherever it takes me, on a much bigger scale than I have in the past. Frankly, curiosity has never steered me wrong. So I’m taking it as a guiding principle.
I have:
…so, I’ve decided to see if I can learn the first 1,000 primes by printing them out and keeping them on my dresser for awhile. I want to see how well I can do at this without actually studying. I don’t intend to memorize them in a “recite the first 1,000 primes” kind of way–I would rather be able to answer “is this number prime?” up to 7,919 (the 1,000th prime). Well really, I should be able to answer it up to 7,918, since even numbers can’t be prime.
Speaking of which, the first way to narrow down the answer to that question is by looking at the last digit of the number. All even numbers are divisible by 2 and therefore not prime. All numbers ending in 5 (or 0) are divisible by 5 and therefore not prime. So all prime numbers (higher than 5) must end in 1, 3, 7, or 9. It’s also fairly easy to decide if a number is divisible by 3, narrowing it down further. I’m interested in looking at digit frequency in primes using different base systems, just because I’m curious.
I’m interested in combining my background in interior design with my current interest in photography. So I’ve been reviewing books and magazines to figure out some of the elements of good interior photography. Here’s a list of tips I’ve come up with. There are plenty of tips on lighting interiors out there, so I skipped that and looked at composition and viewpoint. Some of these may be obvious to experienced photographers, but as I’m not one, they’re all news to me…
My big disappointment here is that I didn’t realize these things years ago. Here are some photos of my apartments over the years…which look like snapshots, because they are. Never again!
Nick & Nidhi are getting married tomorrow, so today, they had a mehndi–everyone came by and we all got our hands/feet/arms painted in henna. Nidhi’s were the most spectacular, of course. This was my first time with this–so interesting and beautiful, and great company to boot…
This is what the mehndi looks like after it’s just been painted on. After it dries, it’s dabbed with a mix of lemon juice and sugar to bring out the color; later, the henna flakes off, leaving the stain on the skin, which lasts for 2-3 weeks.
I rented a fisheye for the weekend; thinking about taking it to Tibet for some night sky photography (15,000 ft elevation plus no light pollution must be a good combination), which I’ll be trying out this weekend. But so far, after having it for a few hours, here’s a bit of what I’ve come up with. This is FUN!
This is a matter of grave importance. From USA Today:
Anyone who has been to a rural state fair understands the allure of a good butter sculpture. But until now, few people considered the exhibits controversial.
In Iowa, a plan to add Michael Jackson mid-”moonwalk” to the annual butter cow display “has created a lot of, well, ‘churn,’” said state fair director and CEO Gary Slater.
Sculptor Sarah Pratt said she didn’t intend “to honor (Jackson) as a hero” and would also commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission - the original “moonwalk†- with the exhibit.
Pratt, who describes herself as a childhood Jackson fan, said she had planned to sculpt just an astronaut but chose to link the tributes with a play on words after Jackson died suddenly.
Lori Chappell, a fair organizer, said she realized the addition could be controversial but added that the sculpture was meant “to pay tribute to his contribution to music and dance,” not to add to “scrutiny of his life.”
Now, after hundreds of people reacted strongly to the July 1 decision, officials have decided to let the public decide whether the pop star should be featured at the fair, our sister paper The Des Moines Register reports.
To add your voice to the debate, visit the fair website to vote from July 9 to 13.
…now come in gold as well as silver. I heart the stamp. I don’t heart cutting out the card stock and doing the stamping, but I do heart the results. With tonight’s cutting/stamping extravaganza, the card drought has officially ended.
While walking around in Burlingame over the weekend, I stumbled upon a game of “historical baseball”. They play with the rules and equipment of the 1860’s. That means gloves are literally just that…gloves. No fancy mitts. No shin guards. Bats are 40-ounce and higher. And the umpire wears a top hat!
There were even people in the stands in historical attire. I sat down near them, unsure of what I was watching, and said, “Good afternoon. I can’t help but notice that I have hot pink hair, and he (pointing at umpire) is wearing a top hat. Something seems amiss. What’s going on?” That broke the ice and we chatted for some time while I got my camera ready.
Following the game, I became the impromptu team photographer. So much fun! They play again in a couple of weekends and I plan to make it out to catch that.
As of this weekend, and on the spur of the moment (though the “spur” wound up taking about 5 hours…):
Er, a CD I’m on is on eBay. Wooo! It’s the New Jubes and Virtual Orchestra from my second year of college. You too can bid on this musical gem:
Dear Banana Republic Copy Editor,
I think you might want to take another look at this. Honestly. Don’t blame the marketing people, which of course is what you want to do. This means that one MUST IRON the shirts. Your double negative will not be excused when written in a font this large.
Sincerely,
Angela Hill, Math Detective/Copy Editing Police
Emily and I went out and took photos around San Francisco today–I’ll put some of mine up shortly, but in the meantime, here’s one she took of me at the Hyatt downtown. I’m upgrading myself from just “Math Detective” to “International Math Detective”, just because I look cooler here.
Now on my list of coolest scientific/goofy phenomena, THE BLOOP! From this Wikipedia article:
The Bloop is the name given to an ultra-low frequency underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration several times during the summer of 1997. The source of the sound remains unknown.
The sound, traced to somewhere around 50° S 100° W (South American southwest coast), was detected repeatedly by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array, which uses U.S. Navy equipment originally designed to detect Soviet submarines. According to the NOAA description, it “rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km.” According to scientists who have studied the phenomenon it matches the audio profile of a living creature but there is no known animal that could have produced the sound. If it is an animal, it would have to be, reportedly, much larger than even a Blue Whale, the largest known animal on the earth.
I’m well aware that this will only be funny to family members and close family friends, but it’s such a miscellaneous moment from our little family Christmas trip, and plus Aaron is just so adorable. I think it’s the blinking.
It was a family extravaganza!
Left to right that’s Aaron’s best friend Kyle, Adam (my brother!), Aaron (my brother!), Aaron’s girlfriend Ashley, Adam’s wife Jenna, and me.
It was also apparently very exhausting for Adam. Somehow I really like this photo.
Granted that I’m more of a knitter, but still. Katie was right: this pretty much captures me to a T…
From the French–but as there’s no perfect translation, I’m using it as-is.
Flambeur: a big-shot, a high-roller, a show-off, a risk-taker. I’ll also add, a compulsive-hyphenator.
or 
But don’t limit yourselves. All gifts welcome.
A pinky ring? Are you serious? You’re far too young to stoop to that level.
The iTunes commercial with the Coldplay song
The American Express commercial with Diane von Furstenburg
Every military recruitment video ever made
The Snickers commercial with the guitar that comes out of nowhere
The “I’m not a chicken, you’re a turkey!” anti-drug commercial from my youth
The Boost Mobile commercial with the cool 3D
Miriam Makeba died the way I’d like to think a lot of musicians would choose: while singing one of her greatest hits.
A lot of other people will say a lot more knowledgeable things about her life and accomplishments than I could. But I can say this for sure: she was a master at creating those moments when, as a listener, you sit up, take notice, and realize that somehow, you’ve been connected to something much bigger than yourself. This video from Paul Simon’s Graceland concert is a perfect example.
Endogeny is something that “arises from within”; that is, it’s created or synthesized within an organism or system. Its opposite is Exogeny.
I like it that Wikipedia calls out that in psychology, “an emotion or behaviour is endogenous if it is spontaneously generated from an individual’s internal state.” I’d like to make a list of my endogenous behaviors and emotions.
My brother Adam works at the coolest place EVER: Archinoetics, a company in Hawaii that “focuses on the research and development of human-centered technologies…includ[ing] functional brain imaging systems, human fatigue and performance monitoring devices, intelligent algorithms based on genetic programming and biometric sensors, remote sensing, and neurobiologically inspired computing platforms.” The “functional brain imaging systems” are basically brain-computer interfaces…so you think, and the computer responds.
One of the cooooolest applications of this is the work they’ve done with Hawaii artist Peggy Chun, who developed Lou Gehrig’s disease and is now fully “locked in”. However, R&D from Archinoetics and the University of Virginia’s Dennis Proffitt has developed a system that lets her paint by thinking. The paintings, system, and just the whole concept in general is/are completely fascinating and can be seen here.
They’ve also just launched Project Niu, “…a K-12 science curriculum that provides students and teachers with hands-on, project-based experiences with the technologies used in remotely monitoring the ocean. Through deploying and tracking a high tech “message in a bottle” as it drifts out to sea, students develop an understanding of mankind’s impact on the watershed while forming personal connections to the environment.”
After batting practice this morning, I went for a run in a bit of a downpour, because I was feeling extra-badass. Whenever a run is particularly grueling (and I am not making this up), I imagine that I am in a prison camp with Heinrich Harrer trying to get myself in shape to escape over the mountains of Tibet. I find this extremely motivational. Imaginary Heinrich Harrer is never quite satisfied with my performance but still slightly impressed when I finish.
I’m slightly ashamed of leaving the title of this post “Hello World!” but I sort of like it that way.
So, I, like, started a blog? And now I have a lot of catching up to do so there are going to be quite a few posts in a row? Because there’s a lot to talk about? And hopefully this is going to be kind of fun? But I don’t fundamentally believe that there is an audience of people out there who really want to know what I’m doing every day? But these days you just sort of have to have a blog regardless? So I’m going to sort of be writing to myself and thinking of this as a portfolio? Of my, like, you know, thoughts?
And with that, we’re off to the races!
