Practicing Gallifreyan

I've been practicing my Gallifreyan. It's quite fun. But there are some aspects of the not-quite language - it's really more of a code - that make it difficult. For example, a lot of the "rules" are purely aesthetic. How the dots look on the letters, or how long the lines are, can vary depending on mood or your particular style of drawing. It might, however, allow for the Time Lord version of "handwriting" I guess. I also find that the hard part of making sentences (and paragraphs, etc.) is the spacing of the letters. Some groups of words just seem naturally suited to each other. Others are less so. One strategy I've been using is to make the words separately to get an idea of what they look like. Then (because the size of the words can change to make them fit together) I will sketch the rough shapes out to try to get them all to work together.

I also attempted to cut out the shapes, but since you can't really change their shape or slightly move the letters around to make them fit together, it wasn't very helpful.

I have also tried using the computer (PowerPoint, if you must know, as my Photoshop skills are nil) to make the shapes. They are much cleaner, but lack the rough, artistic look of the hand-drawn characters. This one says "Gary." I hope :)

So here are my first to basic attempts at writing full sentences in Gallifreyan. This says "Give me liberty or give me death" (more or less).

And this one says "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first, invent the universe." Also more or less.

I highly recommend learning it. The alphabet/code is an easy learn and there are lots of resources online (http://timeturners.wikidot.com/circular-gallifreyan). And it looks cool. At very least, all you Whovians should figure out how to write your name!

31 Days of Planets: Songs

Day 30

Who wouldn't like a musical post? There are lots of songs about planets, space, and exploring the great unknown. Let's start with a general look at the universe as a whole:

Now look at our solar system. I recommend imagining this as a metal song - it's much better. In fact, I think they should redo it as such, because in reality it's pretty boring: 

This is one of my personal favourites. I mean, who doesn't love Phineas and Ferb?

I would be remiss if I didn't include a little bit of Carl Sagan: 

And maybe a song about the future. The lyrics to this song go something like "where was I when the rockets came to life, and carried you way through the alligator sky?" And I would like to know - where exactly are they going?

In conclusion, play all the songs at once!!! And just see the magic that happens.

A SPACE EXPLOSION!!! (a supernova)

Picture from NASA.

Imagining the Universe with Kitty Litter

If you imagine the universe, instead of as what exists beyond the the thin layer of elements that separate us from everything, but as an endless expanse of darkness with droplets of stars floating in determined circles around massive all-consuming, all-absorbing black holes, you'll discover that this is impossible. No matter how hard I know that the universe is thirteen billion years old, that stars are so massive it could take 1100 years to fly around one (a big one) in a jet plane, that millions and billions of these objects inhabit the rest of the dark, vast expanse of everything--in my head the looming rent bill still seems bigger.

When I see this picture-- 

--the biggest thing I can imagine is a dust storm blowing over cities and farms and continents. But this picture represents the birthing process of stars: the Orion Nebula having babies as big as or bigger than our sun, far bigger than our Earth, and incomprehensibly larger than me.

I'm a girl. Sometimes I feel fat. Well. Here's the thing:

Watch this. 

I'm not fat.

I like to imagine the universe. I spend hours and days and months and eventually years trying to picture it, to capture it with words or pictures or simply with thought, but I never will. I also don't care. Despite the immense impossibility of ever understanding the whole thing, it still fills me with wonder (which is a great feeling), reminds me that there's so much more to find and see than the little things that sit in front of me everyday, and it makes even the most mundane seem valuable.

Our magnificent universe, working and working without ever stopping, building and destroying, thinking and innovating; our magnificent universe, functioning in perfect rhythm, ignoring tiny little me who so admires its beauty and grace but still creating the perfect conditions for my existence; our magnificent universe filled with massive stars and planets, made of every element imaginable, filled with black holes and galaxies, life and death and existence, is swirling around itself, dying and breathing and living, and I am lucky enough to be allowed to change the kitty litter.




For more cool things about the size of the universe, check this!

Buckets Hold More Than Water

Carl Sagan, one of the most brilliant men of the 20th Century, described Earth like this: 


"Our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos, of which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky." 

If the Earth is a mote of dust, what am I?

Easy: I'm just me. 

Here is my list of things I want to do before I die, in no particular order:

Publish/finish my novels.

Go hang gliding.

Touch dry ice.

Introduce my cat, Goblin to my big brother and sister-in-law's cat, Chloe.

Fly on the Virgin Galactic (anybody want to give me $200,000?)

Write about flying on the Virgin Galactic.

Have Elton John sing "Rocketman" to me.

Go to Alaska and meet a bear.

Be a Verizon Cell Phone Tower Fix-it Man.

Take a cosmology class.

Meet Terry Pratchett.

Learn how to drive a tractor trailer and/or a backhoe.

Hug my mom. Pull my dad's beard.

Buy a nice writing desk and put it in a room with a window and a rug and a book case.

Watch my little brother play a show on drums.

See the aurora borealis, possibly while I'm in Alaska.

Any more suggestions?