When a dying star collapses yet retains its HUGE mass its destructive force is so great that it's escape velocity (that is, the velocity needed to shoot something outside an atmosphere) becomes greater than the speed of light. Because light can't escape we can never see what is going on inside the atmosphere of the black hole, but only its halo around the outside (known as the event-horizon). Once you cross over the event-horizon then that's it, you're gone.

This is important to remember because

I've crossed over the event-horizon



of the soul.

Yesterday I decided to make the trip to Dendy cinemas in Portside, since it's the only place screening "Ponyo" in its original Japanese language (with subtitles). I am of the opinion, although it still lies at the heart of the fundamentals of animation, that the voices must be recorded BEFORE the animation and not after. The animators must make a performance based on the voice work! If you add voices after an established performance you are going to ruin it!!!!! The last (and only) Ghibli film I heard in English dub was "Spirited Away" which tore at my heart like a rain of knives. It's worse than listening to a ballad by Britney Spears! _{(I was going to say "shards of glass scraping across a blackboard" but I concluded that that might sound pretty cool)}

So anyway, the movie, in its original Japanese...it's beyond words. It's what animation should be, and so much more, to the point of being excessive (which is a good thing). But what should animation be? Let me explain. Animation is about giving life to the drawings on your piece of paper. Animation should make you put aside your disbelief of what's real and what's not real - without you even realising it! This involves more than just illustration principles, there is also heavy reliance on sound-design, and also good story-telling. In this sense an animator is more like a wizard, a grand conjurer, a mage who defies the laws of energy-conservation and creates something from nothing. Hayao Miyazaki has shown with "Ponyo" that he is the grandest, most majestic magician alive. From the opening sequence of sea-life, watching hundreds of jellyfish moving across the screen all individually, and all of it drawn by hand!! It is absolutely captivating from start to finish. When Ponyo is running across the water, chasing the car, I was truly overwhelmed.

I love how Studio Ghibli is one of the last few Japanese studios to practice FULL animation. It doesn't associate itself with any of the other traditions and clichés that have befallen the rest of the market, which in turn has alienated the dedicated fans of the 80's and 90's pre-"Love Hina" anime who found something decent to escape into, but now is tainted with a system of executives and market-research to find out what "sells". Studio Ghibli still concerns itself with good, unconventional story-telling. The mood of Ponyo is like a rollercoaster that doesn't stop. All the characters are lovable, even Ponyo's father (who plays a bit of a villain, but not in a generic "evil" way). This is important, it makes me want to keep watching, knowing I'm in safe hands without awkward uncomfortable moments like heart-break and betrayal, the kind of Disney/Don Bluth stuff that rapes you and tries to hug you afterwards. Some people might crave that kind of stuff but I've been through it too many times, I'd rather a true sense of purity like a Miyazaki film, and then his own sentimentalities that come out (i.e. caring for the elderly and pollution in nature) have much more effect.

In summary, "Ponyo" was amazing. If you had any decent sense you would make it your NUMBER ONE priority to watch this film (providing it is in its original Japanese).


In other news I bought a scanner recently and I intend to use it.

So I'm reading "The Mind Of God" by Paul Davies. You can find it in just about any bookstore (except christian ones) for about $10 among all those "Penguin Books" titles. If you come across it DO NOT BUY IT AND THEN READ IT!!! You will have mind-meltdowns and your imagination will run wild within itself out of control!!!


I've just finished reading the part about how mathematics is full of unsolveable problems, mainly in an area of proving something as "true" or "false". For example, consider the statements:

SOCRATES: "What Plato is about to say is false."
PLATO: "Socrates only speaks truly."

Then you have a contradiction in statements that both can neither be true or false. Things like this are usually called 'self-referencing'.

Then the following pages starts enthusiastically talking about this old computer game from the 90's or something (the book was published in 1992) called "Conway's Game of Life" where you create little pixels on a screen and they start reacting based on where the pixels are placed and where pixels are not placed, say if an empty space is surrounded by 3 neighbouring pixels, then that empty space will be occupied by a pixel in the next frame being refreshed, but any other circumstance leaves the pixel empty. In this game the pixels take a 'life' of their own and there are some shapes that self-reproduce themselves, but in contrived circumstances. It's all too complicated to explain briefly here but there's probably information about it on Wikipedia somewhere. It's basically an example of how living organisms reproduce themselves.

Davies mentions in a single sentence and does not elaborate at all (as far as I've read) how self-referencing and self-reproducing could be related.

I was thinking the exact same thing! Maybe our physical reality handles these self-referencing mathematical paradoxes by creating what we call "life" and by living we are designed to paradox ourselves by creating children, who are in essence the self-referencing of two contradicting people - the man and the woman! Maybe having children is reality's way of solving the uncomputable!!

This discovery could lead us closer to see what it would look like when robots have sex.

Today at Roma st. Station I passed a crowd of what looked to be Kingdom Hearts cosplayers (maybe it was Org Infinity?) and I kind of wished I could be in that crowd, not caring about the ridicule I might receive. There's a part of me that craves solitude but the paradox of my personality is that I also crave to be a part of a crowd of Kingdom Hearts appreciators.

go to the search page [link] and type in anything you want to, and see what people around the world are saying about it right now. It's pretty interesting, really.

I only just discovered (thanks to twitter) that Sony just announced YESTERDAY that they are releasing the PS3 Slim in September for THREE HUNDRED CLAMS.

I'm talking about dollars here keep your mind out of the gutter.

I got my PS3 on a discount. It works lovely but I solely bought it for games that are still in development (FFXIII and new Project Ico game) and I barely use my PS3 right now because I don't have these games yet. If I knew the PS3 Slim would be coming so soon I wouldn't have spent so much clam-chowder on this thing. I should probably play Disgaea 3 more, but in my heart I just know that I'll never catch that dragon.


Anyway, I might go make some tweets. My Twitter is here--> [link]