Cloud Atlas - We are All Connected (The Book and The Movie)

At the start of this year I've been searching for a new book to read, as reading has been one of my favorite ways to spend my "me" time. I had to look up some book reviews for it though because I'm looking for something new, something to take my imagination for a spin. Just like in movies, I easily lose interest when the plot or the theme gets predictable. Or maybe it's just that I want my hard-earned money to buy something that can really teach me something new.

And Cloud Atlas gave me more than I asked for. It's not just a novel, it's six (6) different stories spanning six (6) different eras. The characters are linked together by a single birthmark shaped like a comet, and a universal rule that knows no space and time.

Favorite book of 2013 :)

It was a helluvanexperience. Personally, I found it breathtaking and exhausting at the same time. Each character lived in a different era, therefore for each "chapter", one had to be accustomed to the setting, the characters, the culture, and most especially the prose. The vocabulary of the 1800's are of course, different from the 1970's, and from 2013, and Mitchell invented his own slang for the future. Mitchell, takes a delicious spin at every turn and I loved it.

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Trying to be Cool - Phoenix feat. R.Kelly.

I'm simply amazed. R.Kelly with PHOENIX.
I've been playing Phoenix's album Bankrupt over and over again for the past days just to get a better "feel" of it. Two tracks have already been released, "Entertainment", and "Trying to be Cool". But I like the latter better. I stumbled upon this version at Soundcloud (one of the best ways to flirt with your music, I say). And it's just way too cool!

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Science via Art, and Vice Versa

Our professor invited Joey Tanedo from the College of Fine Arts to talk about the upcoming video presentation of our review paper. I thought we'll just deal with the technicalities of video making like the framing, the camera works, the gestures and the like. But what we talked about was something deeper. It was the marriage of Art and Science.

I first heard about this while reading Steve Job's biography (I blogged about it here). The reason why Apple remains to be the icon that it is, is because they were able to merge technological genius with a fine taste for art. You can see it in the way they planned their operating system, from the all the nitty gritty connections, to the design of their phones - everything is well thought of.

Now if they CAN do it, why can't we?

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Remote Online Journal Access for UP Students >> Thumbs up :)

I went to the College of Engineering Library of UP Diliman today to do research for the 70 journals/ references that we need to read for our thesis. I try to say "70" as casually as I possibly can because seriously, this has been driving me nuts for two weeks now. WHEW. There's three days from the deadline and I am only halfway through the required number so help me Lord.

I've been on Kiji-mode (killjoy) for a week now, I try my best to minimize working overtime and I keep my eyes glued to journals as much as I can. I could go on and on with my rants but the bottomline is being a working student is definitely, definitely not easy. No matter how cool it sounds. BUT daunting tasks like these are worth it when you are interested with your topic. :) And I could use a little more discipline here.

BUT what I'd like to blog about is that I was pleasantly surprised today upon learning that:

1) It's now easier to access academic journals online because the university has their own subscription to online journals, allowing students to download the needed literature for their study, and

2) We can even access them from home! Nice! I think this has been on for a couple of years already, sayang I learned about it only now. I used to think that all academic journals can only be accessed via the University wifi.

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