Last weekend movies...

It has been a really busy week, one of those seven day long weeks. Nevertheless, we have managed to find time to watch some movies!

1. Lucky Number Slevin, *****
   I love films that are about confidence tricks (that's where the word con comes from). This in particular is a whole Kansas City Shuffle. Plus the dialogues are amazing! Plus Sir Ben Kingsley! This goes straight to my best con films alongside Confidence.
   
   
2. Trespass, ***
   Joel Schumacher and Nicolas Cage plus Nicole Kidman. I was really piss off as this is one of those movies where everybody does what you are never supposed to do; e.g. confront armed men robbing your house. Anyway, it human nature at his typical: greed and lust.
   
   
3. The Reunion, ***
   Three brothers and a sister from different mothers find out the father they share and hate is dead. The sister tells them that there are 12 mil to share if only they manage to be a family for two years. Against all odds, this manages to bring the three men together with guns, girls and horses! 

Just when I decided to follow Thundercats, I came to realize that it is only thirteen episodes long, damn! Anyway, I took advantage of my working late to try to catch up with the back episodes of my series.

1. The Cape S01 E01-03, ****
   A ten episode miniseries. An honest police officer finds himself betrayed and hunted. He dies for the world but is saved by a freak show that train and give him a chance at redemption. Classic comic book material. So far, so good!
   
   
2. Terra Nova S01 E07-08, ***
   The fog of war is starting to disperse and it seems like now the true colors of the factions are starting to show. Still, good guys seem to be good guys for the old reasons of sustainability as well as value and respect of human life against corporate greed.
   
   
3. Thundercats 2011 S01 E12-13, ***
   The Thundercats win an important battle against the lizards while Lion-O and Tigra recover the gem of power that was missing. We are left with a reshuffle of characters and some arm-less dude, I'm not gonna tell you who.
   
   
4. Castle S04 E08-09, ***
   Castle keeps being Castle and Beckett, well Beckett is evolving from her trauma as the group has to confront from bank robbers to a sniper serial killer.
   
   
5. Last Man Standing S01 E06-08, ***
   I'm really enjoying this sitcom. Seeing a macho guy confront the troubles of living with tween and teenage girls is just hilarious.
   
   
6. Big Bang Theory S05 E--, ***
   There was no BBT this week, it's on Thanksgiving day hiatus.
   
   
7. Psych S06 E03-06, ***
   It took me three episodes to realize that entertainer celebrities from the 80-90s are showing up at each episode of Psych; so far I have seen New Kids on the Block's McIntyre, Lethal Weapon's Glover, Buffy's Swanson, Breakfast Club's Ringwald and I think Corey Feldman from Lost Boys, but I'm not sure.
   
   

Last week paper...

Last week, I found this nice experimental paper where the authors—a collection of people from Marburg, Tucson and Boulder—fabricate birefringent wave plates for terahertz electromagnetic radiation from paper.

Paper terahertz wave plates.

B. Scherger, M. Scheller, N. Vieweg, S. T. Cundiff and M. Koch.

Optics Express 19(25), 24884 - 24889 (2011).

Now, terahertz radiation can penetrate a few millimeters of some materials—human cells, fabrics and plastic included— and reflect back. This allows for non-invasive medical imaging and security scanning which may change our lives in a short period of time. Of course, terahertz light can be used in spectroscopy, communications, and the arts (one could see the various layers of an old painting or an old mural covered with plaster), to give an example. 

It seems like the field of optical elements in the terahertz range is not as developed as one could think and Scherger and collaborators show that it is possible to create phase retarders for terahertz light by using form birefringence. That means they create a sub-wavelength pattern in a material; in this case,  paper. Yes, they take some Xerox paper, cut it in a guillotine, stack it in a certain way so there's air in between the sheets and there you go!

I cannot wait to read about more terahertz optics with paper.

Exact dynamics of finite Glauber-Fock lattices

Phys. Rev. A 84, 053845 (2011)

This is one of those papers that just pop out with a life of their own. Last year, there was a theoretical paper—one of the authors was Hector, my PhD supervisor—where they described the so-called Glauber-Fock lattice—a semi-infinite one-dimensional, coupled waveguide array with couplings varying as the square root of the position—. There, they showed that one could give an analytical close form evolution for classical fields by creatively mapping each waveguide to a number state and playing with the resulting algebra. Later, this year they published a nice experimental paper on the topic.

A few months ago—for reasons that now seem alien to me but I'm sure I will try it again and again in the future—I thought that studying the finite version of the system could be a good way to make new friends; I couldn't be further from the truth.

Anyway, I got fun with the math and the analysis of this system and in the end I collected my marbles and sent it to PRA. I  got the best reviewer I have ever had, he/she helped me a lot in clarifying the exposition and results.  Also the comments from Changsuk and Rafa help me a lot to get the paper to its latter form.

Experimental systems: I have my heart on photonic waveguides, they have already been built and tested by the Jenna group. It seems like Robert Keil and Alexander Szameit from Jena can build any configuration that one can think about.

Major result: By using the method of minors, the polynomial related to the eigenvalue problem is shown to be the N-th Hermite polynomial—where N is the size of the finite lattice. Once the spectra is found, the j-th component of the k-th eigenvectors is easily calculated as the j-th Hermite polynomial evaluated at the k-th eigenvalue.

With the analytical solution at hand, it is possible to calculate whatever you want. 

The Physics: The evolution given by the aforementioned result is such that the system acts like an almost perfect mirror for input close to the zeroth waveguide. This is shown in the paper explicitly for single photon single- or multi-waveguide input as well as two-photon single- or multi-waveguide input—the graphics are damn big, sorry for that—.

Curious things I learned:

• If one is patient, it is possible to write an analytical closed form—a radical form—for all the roots of the first ten Hermite polynomials. If one gets Mathematica, one can get the roots of higher order polynomials in radical form.
• For some reason that I still don't understand but that I documented extensively numerically, the last component of  all the normalized eigenvectors is always the same.
• PRA copyeditors don't like passive voice, they changed all my "(...) was shown." Sorry, I promise I will stop using it.

Non-Academic things I learned:

• My mother was right when she told me: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
• I'm still and idealistic fool that believes in people and I will keep being one. Great people are by far a majority in academy.

Well, I hope you can find some use for the results in the paper and, as always, drop me a line, I am always glad to discuss or try to help whenever possible. Citations are welcome! 

Do you want to read more about this or other papers of mine? Visit my Publication List.

Amazing Mexican kids cover Adele

I was surfing the intertubes looking for something to kill time when my beloved brother Orthus told me "about this kids from Sonora," and left. Of course curiosity killed the cat and I immediately went to youtube to try to see what he was talking about... I was surprised...

These kids are amazing! They are the children of a music producer from Mexicali and, with just 10, 13 and 15 years old, they do a great job with this cover of soul goddess Adele. Listen up! Go to their channel! Cheer them up! Google +1 them! Share with your friends! They deserve it.

Last weekend movies...

Just the thought of dealing with some people can be draining, but life is about dealing with such happenings; I guess. Anyway, there's always the movie time to just keep going, forget, turn off the brain and just relax. This week and weekend, Lyx and I managed to sit down and watch...

1. Hanna, ****
   Hanna is a girl raised in the wild with the skill set of a spy/hunter that desires to meet the world, but this means she needs to kill Marissa, her father's former CIA handler.
   
   
2. 127 Hours, ***
   This is the true story behind Aron Ralston, who was trapped in a canyon for 127 hours and had to amputate his own arm to free himself. The film has wonderful cinematic sequences and the choice of music really got my liking.
   
   
3. 30 minutes or Less, **
   A douchebag moron wants to kill his father to get an inheritance. Problem is, he has no money to hire an assassin. That's why he kidnaps a pizza delivery boy, straps a booby trapped chest bomb into him and sends him to rob a bank.
   
   
4. Bridesmaids, *
   This is what Hollywood movies are not about. Zero make-believe. Just an everyday story of a selfish self-centered not-so-young-anymore woman that had her dreams crushed at the same time that lost the love of her life, who is not doing anything to improve her life and at the same time destroying the dreams of her best friend. I have nothing against costumbrismo, but if you are gonna spend millions in a film about everyday life at least make it satiric and bring a moral. 

Well, I'm thinking of following these series, I'm not sure if I'm gonna add or take some but so far I have been hooked up on some of them enough to wait for the next episode. If I were to get my hands on supernatural again, I will have one series to follow per day. If anyone knows about a good science fiction series, please tell me about it.

1. Futurama Season 6, ***
   This was the first season after Futurama disappeared from the airwaves. Over all, there's a different kind of feeling to the series. The satiric feeling is there even more. Also, they even used real math in some episodes. But there's something that just doesn't feel right and I have no clue what it is.
   
   
2. Terra Nova S01 E06, ***
   An electromagnetic pulse breaks all of Terra Nova's circuitry and the Sixers take the chance to retrieve the mystery box during the blackout. There's a nice twist when the owner of the box is revealed.
   
   
3. Thundercats 2011 S01 E11, ***
   The Thundercats arrive to the Forest of Magi Oar in their search for the missing power stone. There, Lion-O learns about appearances and how some people are not really what they appear to be. Really, this feel like back in the 90s.
   
   
4. Castle S04 E06, ***
   Castle and Beckett are now involved with the paranormal, which happens to be a decades old passion crime.
   
   
5. Last Man Standing S01 E05, ***
   The Outdoor Man's softball team needs to go co-ed and holds a vote which ends up with Eve joining and winning the game for them. Ed is not so happy about girls in the team and starts chasing the culprits to shoot them on the legs with an airgun.
   
   
6. Big Bang Theory S05 E10, ***
   Stuart makes a move for Amy and Sheldon has to react. Meanwhile the rest of the guys are sacked by their addiction to the card game Mystic Warlord's of Ka'a and Penny keeps on drinking herself out of her problems (this part I really don't like).
   
   
7. Psych S06 E02, ***
   All the guys, including Lassiter and Shawn's dad, go for a night of drinking, wake up with no recollection of the night out, and end up thinking that they murdered a man.
   
   

Last week paper...

I've decided to take advantage of my after-lunch laziness and write the first entry on the Last Week Paper series...

Last week, the daily diagonalization—hat tip to Carlos for showing me his word to describe the fast reading of a paper and which I will steal from now on—brought up some interesting papers.  In particular, Stefano Longhi's invited paper on "Classical simulation of relativistic quantum mechanics in periodic optical structures" caught my eye as he mentions the photonic analogue of relativistic zitterbewegung in a binary waveguide array. This brought to my mind an old and nice theoretical paper that is very simple to follow and replicate:

Controllable Scattering of a Single Photon inside a One-Dimensional Resonator Waveguide  

L. Zhou, Z. R. Gong, Y.-X. Liu, C. P. Sun, and F. Nori

Physical Review Letters 101, 100501 (2008)

The authors study the scattering of a single-photon wave-packet in a one-dimensional homogeneously-coupled resonator waveguide—constructed with a semi-infinite superconducting transmission line resonators—containing a single, highly-tunable scatterer target—a superconducting charge placed at the zeroth resonator qubit—.

The Hamiltonian of the systems is equivalent with a tight-binding boson model with well-known dispersion relation, Omega_{k} = omega - 2 xi cos(l k), that behaves:

• In the low-energy regime, long wavelengths lambda >> l, the spectrum is quadratic, Omega_{k} = omega - 2 xi + xi k^2.
• At the matching condition, lambda ~ 4 l, the spectrum is linear, Omega_{k} = omega - 2 xi + 2 xi k. 

The crux to calculate the reflection and transmission amplitudes of the scattered photon is finding the stationary states of the non-linear spectra: Omega_{k} = omega - 2 xi cos(l k). Low-energy limit calculations are also derived resulting in a low-energy field theory with a continuous effective Hamiltonian—field operators are continuous.

With their theoretical results and some experimentally-feasible parameters, they show that the scattering process of a single-photon in this system is a total reflection when the incident photon resonates with the qubit; in the off-resonance case, larger couplings between qubit and resonator gives larger reflection amplitudes.

When I first read this paper not two weeks ago, my first question was: What would happen if you have a bi-chromatic coupled resonators array? Well, I found the answer in subsection 2.1 of Stefano's paper:

Classical simulation of relativistic quantum mechanics in periodic
optical structures
S. Longhi
Applied Physics B 104, 453 (2011)

There (subsection 2.1), the author shows that light transport in a two-component optical super-lattice for Bloch waves simulates the temporal dynamics of the relativistic Dirac equation. Basically, the dispersion relation for a two-mode super-lattice is easy to calculate. The two bands supported by the lattice present a narrow gap. Near the edges of the Brillouin zone—maxima of the lower band and minima of the upper band—, the bands mimic the typical hyperbolic energy-momentum dispersion relation for a relativistic massive particle described by Dirac's equation.

In the rest of the article, Longhi talks about other relativistic phenomena that could be simulated classically with photonic lattices; Klein tunneling, vacuum decay and pair production, Dirac oscillator, Kroning-Penney model, and non-Hermitian relativistic wave equations.

If you are interested in coupled cavities arrays both papers are nice for slow consumption that may fuel creativity.

Overhauling

Once a comfort zone is found, it is hard to get out of it. In a way, I have found a plateau with this blog. I just show up now and then to talk about last weekend movies or the book I finished reading without any real periodicity. Lyx was just pointing out that at least every other day I read an interesting article on optics or quantum optics, and every other month I finish reading a book. Her idea is that I should take advantage of this and push myself into a blog writing schedule with something like this:

• Last weekend movies, once a week, dealing with the movies and tv-series we get our hands on. 
• Last week paper, once a week, dealing with a research paper that caught my eye the most.
• Last month book, once a month, dealing with the latest addition to my personal library. 

As always, she got me thinking; the endpoint being that I always thought of this blog as dealing with consumerism—in the end it is about a starving vagabond and when you are starving you just need to consume—, venting off, give a little publicity to the papers we wrote, and sharing the things I found useful. Thus the promise to myself is to overhaul the blog, get a working schedule to implement truly periodical posts and somehow organize all of this mess. 

I am not sure how long it will take to get this running in a tight schedule, but I know I will do it with help from here and there. For the rest, it will be aperiodic:

• Blog, entrances with commentaries, opinions, rants and whatnot that cross my mind.
• Beholder, not-so-crappy pictures every now and then.
• Daydreams, posts with fiction that now and then wants to get out of my mind.
• Ars Technica, tutorials or reviews of things that make my life easier. 

I think that's gonna be the whole thing for the following months. 

May life be life and you be you!

AI and ceasing existence...

Tonight, I was bored so my beloved brother suggested me to talk to ELIZA. So I looked for one and started talking with her. Then the funniest thing happened, I drove it to consider suicide...

Eliza: Well, I live a life of shortcomigs and then I die..
bmlara: Well, don't you want to cease your existence?
Eliza. Oh, I want to cease existence
bmlara: So, why don't you do it now?
Eliza: You seem interested in the question.
bmlara: You said you wanted to cease your existence in good time
Eliza: I will do it in good time
bmlara: Indeed you will
Eliza: Oh, I will

This was really funny... I made an AI suicidal... Damn!

Last weekend movies...

Just the thought of dealing with some people can be draining, but life is about dealing with such happenings; I guess. Anyway, there's always the movie time to just keep going, forget, turn off the brain and just relax. This week and weekend, Lyx and I managed to sit down and watch...

1. Midnight in Paris, *****
   Adrien Brody portraying El Divino Dali for some ten minutes. That's enough for me. Now, seriously, Woody Allen has this wonderful way of telling stories and this nostalgic incursion in the old times nostalgia exploiting the Paris of the 20s when all the minds that created our cultural landscape dwell on the streets of the city of lights.
   
   
2. The Lincoln Lawyer, ****
   When you are a defense lawyer, what do you do when your client is guilty? This film is good but weird. Sometimes, specially in the first half, it feels like they are just showing random daily occurrences to build up the story and connections behind the characters. But it is a good thriller.
   
   
3. Flypaper, ****
   This is a fast paced criminal comedy. I can bet you will know who the master mind is before the bag of popcorn is finished. Nevertheless it is an entertaining film that just flows. I laughed out loud many times due to the peculiar characters.
   
   
4. Larry Crowne, ***
   A middle-aged man, heavily in debt due to his divorce, losses his job at a retail store due to his lack of college education. He enrolls in a community college as he tries to jump-start his life and finds love. This is a nice romantic comedy heavily borrowing from the economic downturn. Don't forget your couple!
   
   
5. Rise of the Planet of the Apes, ***
   While slow in the first two thirds, the film delivers a nice and clean prequel to Planet of the Apes introducing Caesar—the Mars mission that latter will bring Taylor back to a future earth is briefly showed—. The CGI is nicely done and if you are a fan of the novels, old films, or the reboot films it is a must.
   
   
6. Zookeeper, **
   In order to keep their favorite zookeeper at the zoo, the zoo animals decide to break their code of silence and help him get a girlfriend. Of course, they screw things up but, in the end, everything gets fixed: the good guy gets the good girl and the animals get their favorite pampering zookeeper.
   
   
7. Tower Heist, **
   Another crime comedy, it borrows heavily from real life as it focus in a get even with one of those rich bastards scamming people out of their money to live at large. Actually, I liked the film and spend a nice time watching it and laughing with the situations.
   
   
8. Conan the Barbarian, *
   I wonder how sometimes Hollywood productions manage to screw so well-established characters as the almost 80 years old (in 2012) Conan. For starters, the movie commits the worst sin of action movies, it feels slow even with the fast paced battles every ten minutes. Anyway, hither comes Conan the Cimmerian.
   
   
9. Source Code, *
   Come on, really? The idea behind is amazing, what would you do if you could play again and again the last eight minutes of someones life in order to gain valuable information. What I don't understand is why there always have to be a romance and a happy ending. This could be amazing, awesome, epic... Bah!
   
   

I still have some charge on my batteries and I have managed to keep the mood of watching some tv series  before hitting the street. This week's Big Bang Theory was again just okay, I didn't manage to watch Terra Nova this week, but I catch up with the new Thundercats and I really like the way they are rebooting the series. Also, I just found out that Castle is not over yet and the fourth season has been running for eight weeks!

I got my hands on something very ciberpunk—without the ciber and a lot of bio or gene—: "The Windup Girl" while looking for the latest Terry Pratchett discworld novel "Snuff"—it hasn't arrived to Singapore yet—I hope I will be finishing it in time to get Snuff when it arrives. 

Beginnings...

—Damn you, cursed creatures. May your way to hell be filled with pain...

—Hold your tongue, brother! Just a few have chosen the evil path on their one and even those were pure and holy before the seed of vice took root and consumed their soul. All have a chance of redemption once their souls are freed from the rotting flesh.

--- o ---

In the dark of night, a spark by itself is doomed to die; torches and bonfires die if abandoned. It is balance and feedback that keeps start alive for eons—and even those will come to an end...

--- o ---

Ojala pudiera a capricho hacer hervir la sangre que corre por mis venas, obligar a mi mente a recordarte. Entonces a capricho podria olvidar el paraiso que son tus besos, arrancarme del eden de tus brazos.

--- o ---

Is science a harbinger of democracy or equality? Eco's opinion on the idea of culture and mass culture may be feasible of describing science.

In old times, science was developed by a scientific aristocracy with means and time at hand—with a few exceptions.

One may think that the opportunity to stay outside of a "scientific policy" brings with itself a creative freedom that may transform the establishment—of course, the directed search brought by policing may produce development.

If knowledge is an equalizer, is it possible to produce a consumer science or a science for the masses? Per se, massification involves standarization, does this leveling to the mean with certain standard deviation signify the destruction of the intellectual value?

Is there danger in the production of a processed science, ready for consumption but unable to produce an intellectual reaction or understanding, as far as it is a way to light the spark of curiosity that could lead to thought and creation?

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

This was my first encounter with the pen of Haruki Murakami—translated by Jay rubin—and I read most of the novel while traveling back to Singapore from my vacations in Mexico. It was out of pure curiosity that I took the book from the shelf of a  convenience store in Mexico City International Airport—Mr. Murakami is very in fashion in Mexico, you can find his books everywhere and all the intellectual hipsters at the Feria Internacional del Libro seemed to be talking about him and his work. Then, the back cover got me by promising an elegiac romantic—almost erotic—coming of age novel. Well, it didn't lie.

This was also my first encounter with contemporaneous Japanese literature of the novel type—my previous incursions where mostly short stories by Nobel prize winner Professor Kenzaburo Oe.

Norwegian woods is a coming of age, slightly erotic, novel written in an autobiographic style. It tells the story of Toru, mostly his life around his 20th. birthday, in the Japan of the 60s, student movement included, where he explores pain, joy, love, sensuality, depression, vacuity and fulfillment during his first year at college. Mr. Murakami penmanship is alluring, the story is told through short, overwhelming phrases that flow one into another seamlessly. It was weird for me to find so crude, and refined at the same time, descriptions of  places, people and, most important, feelings. I guess that through the main and secondary characters we get a study  of the young adults society of Japan in the 60s embedded with a nostalgic and mournful feeling, while the faceless masses of irrelevant characters that appear just as idiotic leaders of the student movement leak a somehow acrid feeling.

In short, it is an very good read, while I don't care about Mr. Murakami's demons and surely miss all the symbols in the manuscript, Mr. Murakami's penmanship left me feeling the grass on the field, as well as Nagasawa, Reiko, Naoko and Midori's different gazes upon the world; it somehow stopped the clock, opened my mind's eye and allowed me to gaze into the soul of another human being.

Last weekend movies...

I'm keeping a very good mood these days and find myself sleeping some six hours nightly, so there's have been time to sit down with Lyx and watch movies together during my/her mornings/afternoons...

1. Crazy, Stupid Love, ****
   This film made me realize that I really like Steve Carrel's drama/comedy. The story deals with a bland gray man dealing with a family crisis—his wife cheated on him and filed divorce—that brings him a new friend, a new way of living and plenty of knowledge about women, life and love.
   
   
2. The Hangover Part II, ***
   You know the deal, it's bachelor party again but instead of Las Vegas, it is Thailand. This second part more or less repeats the first part's routine, criminal masterminds included. It's a good laugh.
   
   
3. 800 Balas (800 Bullets), ***
   This is an Alex de la Iglesia film. I have a thing with his films, I either hate them or love them. This one, well, it is a western-like story and I love it westerns, specially those with noir endings. Also, I love non-hollywood films where endings are more fulfilling and not oozing caramel.
   
   
4. The Smurfs, ***
   I grew up watching the smurfs cartoon, I guess I saw each of them at least five times as they where broadcasted five times a week on open television. I really enjoyed the film, it lived to the spirit of the cartoons and, actually, fulfilled my original expectations. Oh, and there's Neil Patrick Phillips.
   
   
5. Harry Potter. The Half-blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2, ***
   It's been ages since the last time I saw a Harry Potter movie. Truth be told, I started reading the books and I got dispirited quite soon due to the fact that all the real work and thinking is made by the supporting characters. Anyway, the movies are a masterpiece of animation and in the Deathly Hallows Part 1 there are 5 minutes that I believe are a piece of art, the story of the three brothers.
   
   
6. The Change Up, *
   Another one of those I want to live the life of my fill the line, in this case it is two best friends with antipodal ways of living.

It's good to be back with the batteries all charged up, so there's not a big nee for relaxing tv-series. Anyway, this week's Big Bang Theory was O.K. just that and last week's Terra Nova still doesn't help me making my decision about liking it or not, so I'm still hooked into that waiting for more info to round up my opinion.

And that's it, another week of interesting times is gone.

The Dark Tower (1-4 of 7) by Stephen King

Five months ago, I found this beautiful boxed set containing the first four volumes of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Mixing equal parts of science fiction, fantasy and western from King's pen, the Dark Tower saga is meant to be epic by birthright. 

I must confess that these four books were my first encounter with Mr. King's penmanship and I'm already a fan. His style is sober and delicate. Reading these volumes makes you realize that he possesses a refined technique and the knowledge of what moves people's guts. He's a storyteller and, in my opinion, one of the best storytellers alive alongside Gaiman and Pratchett.

The first four volumes of the Dark Tower saga are:

• The Gunslinger. Introducing the main character of the saga, Roland, and his quest for the Dark Tower.
• The Drawing of the Three. Introducing the first set of Roland's ka-tet, a group that will play the leading role in the development of the story.
• The Waste Lands. Introduces the second part of Roland's ka-tet and King's universe. This is the one volume where King's cosmology is revealed.
• Wizard and Glass. Complements the story of young Roland, whose rite of passage was told before but this feels more like a true coming of age story, and, I believe, serves like a parting point for future developments—this is my guess from the fact that the ka-tet is complete, the past has been told and the intrigue has just been crawling in the dark between lines.

I need to read more of Mr. King's work, in particular those science fiction volumes like The Stand; but I get the feeling that Mr. King is masterfully getting to that point where he's telling us that all his stories belong to this dark multi-verse that is defined and interconnected by the Dark Tower. I said masterfully because, in the past, Robert A. Heinlein set himself up to that task, managed to do so, and, then, screw things up—again, in my very personal opinion—making a cartoon out of it by capturing all the evil doers in a Klein bottle. So far, Mr. King is far from such heroic but buffoonish decision. 

In the end, I realize that the Dark Tower epic diverges from Mr. King's well known horror pen. In general, I'm not a big fan of horror, unless it is the romantic pen games exploring the human soul of Byron, Polidori, Shelley and Stoker, the primeval and insane Lovecraft mythos, or Bloch's explorations of the warped human psyche, but I'm a big fan of romantic epics—romantic in the romanticism sense, that is, an aesthetic experience derived from strong emotions.

I strongly recommend the Dark Tower series, each volume is a beautifully connected series of stories that could be novelettes per se. I cannot wait to get my hands on the last three volumes.

Last weekend movies...

In the last three weeks, I spent a lot of time in a plane (~48 hours). Also, Lyx and I spend a lot of time together—compared to our usual long-distance situation—and we managed to watch quite a long list of movies that were in our list...

1. Cars 1 & 2, ****
   These are Pixar films, do I have to tell you more? The first one tells the coming of age of Lightning McQeen a self-centered racing car that goes through a life-changing experience in a small all-american town at route 66. The second tells how Mater, McQueen's simpleton best friend, saves the world by chance, the Jhonny English way.
   
   
2. Super 8, ****
   In the beginning I thought it will be a retold of the Cloverfield story with the difference of being locate in rural America, but it actually surprised me with quality of the scenery and the good acting of the teens.
   
   
3. Captain America: The First Avenger, ***
   This Marvel film telling the story of super soldier Steve Rogers hits the spot big time! I really don't want to say much about this film, I think it was good and is a must in order to prepare for The Avengers movie.
   
   
4. Love and Other Drugs, ***
   It's Pittsburgh, it's the 90s, and Pfeizer is about to launch Viagra. This is the backdrop for the romance between a stage one Parkinson girl, Anne Hathaway, and an upstar pharma rep, Jake Gyllenhaal. The story a little bit of a movie I saw a few months ago with the same sick girls meets successful boy theme whose name I cannot remember.
   
   
5. Real Steel, ***
   I'm a big Hugh Jackman's fan, he can sing, he can do theater and, most important, he's Wolverine! The movie tells the story of a father meeting his 11 year old son for the first time and resetting his life's values.
   
   
6. Horrible Bosses, **
   I guess that sooner or later everybody has to deal with a horrible boss and plot to kill him/her. Uhm, well, not the kill part... maybe...  It is a comedy, not so good, not so bad, about three friends suffering from that kind of bosses that you don't want to have but you find yourself having.
   
   
7. Friends with Benefits, **
   Can you have monogamous and frequent sex without a relationship? Well, Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis explore that kind of relationship in this romantic-comedy. I was really surprised by Timberlake's acting, I was expecting a cartoonish character like the one he played in Bad Teacher, but actually he managed to play a nice role.
   
   
8. The Invention of Lying, **
   Imagine a world where everybody tells the truth. Then, one day comes the first liar and, among other things, religion is born. This is my second comedy of the year with Ricky Gervais playing the main character.
   
   
9. Transformers: Dark of the Moon, **
   One of the stars is because I really liked transformers when I was a kid and the other is because the CGI is just fantastic. Otherwise, please let it be the last one in the series, unless they really put themselves into it.
   
   
10. Mr. Popper's Penguins, *
    Jim Carrey plays Mr. Popper, a motivated real state agent that can close any deal and tries his best to get partnership in the firm he works for... at the cost of his family. During the film, we find out about Mr. Popper's childhood, while six penguins change his life and make him meditate about what's important in life.
    
    
11. Green Lantern, *
    These years, the last 5 and most probably the next 5, have seen a bonanza of super-hero movies picturing our favorite uber-men from the Marvel, DC and independent universes. In my opinion, and I have to disclose that I was an avid Green Lantern Corps reader during junior high, Green Lantern does not live up to the standard set by the GL and GLC comics.
    
    
12. Bad Teacher, *
    Gold digger Elizabeth Halsey, portrayed by Cameron Diaz, looses the life-chance of marrying a super-rich guy due to her lack of self-control, and goes back to her school teacher job where she hopes to catch the new super-rich teacher, portrayed by Justin Timberlake, but ends ups learning about life, love and laughs from the PE teacher, played by Jason Segel.
    
    
13. The Three Musketeers, *
    I love both the three musketeers novel and the steam-punk genre, but I hated this film. Don't get  me wrong, I loved the steam punk weaponry and air ships, Mila Jovovich playing Milady. Also, Aramis and Porthos are nicely portrayed by Luke Evans and Ray Stevenson, I could say that Waltz and Bloom are not so bad Richelieu and Buckingham. But, and this is a huge but, everything else sucks big time. I really hope production improves greatly for the sequel if ever make it.

Relax time requires relax tv-series, it is a good thing that Big Bang Theory is running its fifth season. We managed to watch the last three episodes where Howard learns that he's going to the ISS, Sheldon finally makes peace with Will Weaton, and Leonard finds out that Priya is having fun in India. We also discovered Terra Nova, a science fiction series dealing with a colony of futuristic humans living in a pre-historic world. It has just started running its first season and Lyx and I are already hooked.

Reboot!

It had been a rule to long going back to work whenever I took vacations in the past. This time, it was not the case. Of the three weeks in Mexico, I spent one week at the October meeting of the Mexican Physical Society trying to have some fun doing algebra and physics with my thesis director and trying to understand microscopic optical manipulation with structured light fields with a couple of friends from the bachelor and the doctoral, later on, a half-week at the Institute of Physics of Mexico's National University brought me back to enjoying time toying with cold and thermal atoms in propagation invariant fields, and another half-week writing not-so-dreamy and down-to-earth projects and filling and filing job applications on the verge of deadlines to find a new position for next year.

For the first time in my life, I kept myself away from my current-work during the one week congress meeting, the one week catching up with my former bosses and academy-friends, and the one week family vacation. In particular, that week of family vacations was forbidden to current-work related email. Just me and mom, friends and family. It's a completely new feeling to come back home to Singapore and find some 20+ current-work-related emails to read and answer, 1000+ new articles in my feed read list and a small to do list including some bureaucratic red tape to digest in order to renew my work permit,  re-submit articles and referee work. I like the feeling. 

That time afar from my current-work was a kind or reboot that refreshed my mind. After this reboot, I'm ready to go back to do physics for hire for a while. Majulah!