Blender is an open source 3D package, very powerful for its price (free). The Blender Project premiered recently their 4th “open” movie (free source footage, project files etc), titled “Tears of Steel”. The Blender community has been very positive about it after seeing Blender’s abilities on a real movie, rather than in pure animation. The shot tracking is very good (an Achilles’ heel previously for Blender), but I personally did not like the quality of the VFX or the animation (let alone the acting/script/direction, but these are beside the point here).

The CGI still looks like VFX animation and not realistic. It looks fake. Camera tracking is good, modelling seems ok, but lighting and animation aren’t. There are no shadows to talk about, everything it’s too HDR-ish. If that’s what Blender can do in 2012, then color me unimpressed. That’s no Hollywood-worthy CGI. And let’s not forget that this movie was produced by the Blender guys themselves, with hand-picked Blender artists.

Unfortunately, that quality is not even good enough for TV anymore. Sure, there have been worse VFX on TV than what Blender can do, for example the re-imagined version of “V”, but thing is, there have been better ones too. Back in 2010, Stargate:Universe had some amazing VFX in some episodes, more realistic than anything I’ve seen on TV, before or after. An even more important point for TV is the time it takes to do things with the app (since their deadlines are extremely strict). Blender is not that easy to use, Maya can do better in almost half the time.

That doesn’t mean that Blender is useless. It’s not. You can’t beat its price and features in the advertising sector (which doesn’t require extreme realism, it mostly needs some animation tricks), schools (for obvious reasons), or as a hobbyist artist. Blender can also prove to be a life-saver for indie filmmakers who primarily have the time to deal with Blender (rather than the money to buy other packages). So it’s got its uses in the world.

It’s just that I don’t see it being able to compete for Hollywood movies and serious TV shows. It kind of echoes The Gimp, actually. Good-enough to doodle around, good-enough to do something worthwhile if you have the extra time, but if you’re really serious, you better get Photoshop.

I’m proud of this collage. Higher res at FlickR, print at Society6.

Here is some philosophical quantum physics for you: Fate and its possibilities through a variety of setups.

For some illogical (?) reason I believe that certain things are supposed to happen in life, one way or another. But the setup and the machinations that lead to them are not written down. Fate is nothing but a rough sketch. The details are filled up by the players. Us.

For example, if a woman is supposed to get married at a certain age (in order to open a new chapter in her life), she would get married, but there might be 2 or 3 or 4 men who would be competing for the position *without* any of the parties knowing about it. Each one would just live their lives, but depending on their choices, they would be the ones meeting up with the woman (and eventually marrying her) while the others wouldn’t. The others would remain completely unaware of the woman forever, even if fate had offered them a close chance with her.

The problem arises when someone actually becomes aware of the situation. When someone truly feels inside his head that if he makes certain changes in his life, things will change in a radical way (further than the direction he makes changes to). And the things become even more complicated when he “feels” that there’s indeed such competition, and sees and recognizes the said competition, but it’s so far away from the strings he controls, that he can’t do anything to stop these threads of possibilities.

This my friends would be mental torture. To know that you tried your best, but still end up as the loser, just because someone else was able to get a small step ahead of you.

I always try to make people around me see the big picture, but that type of big picture, no one should ever have to know. IF any of that quantum physics crap is real, we are better off living in total unawareness.

Unofficial music video for John Maus’ track “Lost” from his album “A Collection of Rarities and Previously Unreleased Material”.

Original video footage by Rowan Lee Hartsuiker. Footage is used with permission, and was re-cut to the beat of “Lost”. Rowan shot this on a Canon HV30.

JJ Abrams is at it again, this time at NBC. His new show, “Revolution”, is set to premiere at Sept 17th, but it’s already available online for free viewing — if you live in the US.

The premise of the show is rather simple: all the world’s sources of power have gone dark, and after 15 years of living… in organic farms, local militias have risen.

The show feels like LOST having sex with FlashForward. Everyone’s actually kinda lost, there’s a plane, a text-mode computer, some mystery, and a universal blackout. There are a lot of scientific inaccuracies, while everyone’s hair and clothes are still banging after all this time.

The show was interesting, but it was super-flawed. Not in terms of the overall idea, but in terms of execution. It has the exact same problems as FlashForward had: poor execution. The plot showed us a small version of that world, it was not grand and emerging to the viewer. The stakes were not big. Except the main mystery (why did the lights went out), there’s nothing else to keep the show together.

The biggest problem for me was the cutting of the show. Either this show needed a different editor, or an additional 5-6 minutes, or a two-hour pilot instead of an one hour. Everything just felt rushed, Jon Favreau could only do so much with directing.

The only thing that worked in this show was the fight scene. Personally, I give the show no more than one full season to live. Just like with every other network show, it just can’t bloom the same way cable shows can. Not enough time in 43 minutes to tell a proper story, and not with the FCC checking every word and scene.

It’s been a year exactly. 3rd of September 2011 was when I found back my health, after 10 years of hell and seclusion. The Paleo diet saved my life. I have already written the good things I got from the Paleo diet, first at 6 weeks on the diet, then at 4 months. Here are the remaining problems/fixes a year on:

* Sleep apnea: GONE.
* Asthma: It was coming and going for a few months, now it’s completely GONE.
* IBS-D: It’s very rare to have an incident of IBS-D now, it only happens if I consume over 200gr net carbs for a number of days in a row.
* Period pain: Comes and goes, but I have found that I have an “atypical” fibroid, and a polyp (both existed pre-Paleo apparently). I will have surgery for those soon, and then my period pain should just go away for good.
* Alopecia: More hair, although not way too much. Definitely an improvement over a few months ago.
* High blood pressure: I got this in August because of a medicine I was given for my fibroid (that’s being here pre-paleo). When the medicine went away from my system, so did my high blood pressure. I’m not worried about this.
* Weight loss: In one year I lost 25 lbs. I still have another 30 lbs to lose, but I’m one of these people that their thyroid freaks out if they go too low carb (ketogenic), and sends them to hibernation (excess rT3). 95% of the people won’t have this problem though, I’m a bit of a special case on this (I guess my lineage is Neanderthalian…).
* Fatty liver/high triglycerides (they go together): Still there, because weight loss doesn’t happen to me as easily as for most other people (although I didn’t try to lose weight very hard, I was eating normally). I’m thinking of going raw vegan for most of the day, and Paleo in the evenings to combat this. It’s possible that genetically I have the double e4/e4 APoE gene, which means that I can’t digest/use fats properly. The problem in this case is that half of the researchers about this say “eat more fat”, and the other half say “stop eating fats”. Go figure. Update: I got tested, I’m APoE 3/3, so all is ok in that front.
* B12 deficiency: due to a bad gut all these years I can’t absorb it (I found out about this deficiency in May). It’s gone with supplementation now, and my gut heals over time anyway. Soon I won’t be needing supplementation.

Everything else is peachy. 🙂

This was my snack today at tea time: cod liver from Norway (unfortunately, canned). This was the very first time I had this, so I expected a very fishy taste. But thankfully, its taste is very mild, it resembles duck foie gras! I ate it as-is, but I watched a recipe about it over at Martha Stewart’s website (by an Icelandic chef), and the consensus is that it tastes like “lite” foie gras. A lot of D3 and vitamin A in it too, one of these superfoods that people never eat. Even better when fermented. Considering that this is much healthier than non-wild, forced-fed ducks and that it costs about 30x cheaper than true foie gras, I think it’s a great choice.

So I was reading a bit of philosophy recently (a bit of Alain Badiou and Sartre). Since I’m not a native English speaker it was hard to read, but I think I pulled through for most of it. Regardless, the “language” and altered definitions these modern philosophers use is unnecessarily complex in my opinion. It’s like linguistic masturbation, showing off to other philosophers who would read their books.

And then it occurred to me.

See, I’m Greek. I’m used to the idea of Socrates walking down to the Athenian Agora and starting talking to strangers. Presenting them with questions, with riddles, with thoughts they never thought possible. Diogenes was always my favorite philosopher because he was a no-shit guy. He had some ideas, and he lived by them, and showed others how to live a good life too.

To me, that’s the real worth of a philosopher. A philosopher for me is not different than what one would consider a “holy man” who talks to, and freely advises strangers in the streets or other settings. But in this case, instead of spreading religion, he spreads knowledge, opens minds, and instigates progress. He’s the Initiator.

Instead, what we have today is these academic types who speak a language that no one understands. The public doesn’t understand them, plain and simple. This is a crime in my opinion. It’s a major disservice to 2700 years of philosophy. So what kind of philosophy is this today? Only for those who pay to learn about it in these private colleges of ours? It’s like their language is so complex on purpose. When was the last time that Badiou hosted a FREE summer camp for example? He’s a communist after all, but I’ve never heard of him do anything for the “community”.

And let me go a step further. When was the last time that a philosopher walked down the mall, sat down with a sign saying that he’s available for any type of conversation, and awaited people to come to him? I’ve never seen any philosopher doing this neither I heard of anyone doing this, and yet this is the DEFAULT behavior I’d expect from a philosopher. A philosopher doesn’t have to become a missionary man or join a humanitarian cause in order to do “good”. Or write books that are more difficult to decipher than Chinese knots. The philosopher can do good by changing his society directly around him by opening their minds. When this happens, the “good” will automatically propagate like wildfire.

I would honestly sit down with such a person to discuss stuff, from ethics to art, to whatever. And in fact, I’ve done something similar once. In 2000, when I was still living in the UK, there was a (Catholic, I believe) monk in the High Street of Guildford (the town I was living at the time). He was sitting in the middle of the closed-down and busy-by-shoppers street, having a second chair next to him, with a sign saying that he’s available to talk. The time was 4 PM, it was almost night (November) and he was ready to pack and leave. I sat down with him and we talked. He did indeed help me (loneliness was my problem at the time), even if I wasn’t particular religious. He was a really smart guy! At the end, I asked him how many others sat with him that day. His reply: “you were the only one”.

Update: Translated to Greek.

A lot of people today still claim that the Mediterranean diet (especially the Cretan one) is the best diet in the world, but the truth is that it “was”, not “is”. Things changed in the last 30-40 years in these countries, and now the people living there are full of disease, as everyone else in all of the Western countries are. Having originated in rural Greece, this is my opinion why this diet worked well, until about the 1970s:

1. Geography
This is really the biggest point. This is a climate that it has harsh-enough winters and hot summers, surrounded by sea. All the fish, fruits, vegetables and meat one could think of can survive there. It is the best place to live in the world, food resources-wise. Too much of everything will kill you (even water), so Mediterranean people just ate seasonal things, a little bit of everything.

2. Spelt, not wheat
Cretans traditionally used spelt and farro/emmer (types of ancient wheat with low amount of gluten), not the Frankenstein selected wheat that’s available today. Additionally, very few of their dishes/foods used it. They would also not eat cereals (mainland Greece used a type of lacto-fermented porridge-like wheat cereal called “trahanas”). Gluten was not as omnipresent as it’s today for Cretans.

Today’s problem with gluten is two fold: first, we eat a sort of wheat super-gluten, bio-engineered & non-digestible. Secondly, it’s mostly a matter of reaching a certain threshold during our lifetime (different for each person), at which point our immune system can’t deal with it anymore (had too much of it). Cretans were never reaching such thresholds by using [fermented] spelt at low quantities. Rice/corn was not regular there either, while they always ate our potatoes skinless (skin is where potatoes store their toxins).

3. No sugar
Cretans would eat a lot of vegetables (a lot of them wild) and have fruits and honey as desserts. They would also use honey as a sweetener for some dishes. Both fruits and honey are mono-saccharides, which are the only sugars easily digestible by healthy humans. Poly-saccharides that don’t get digested end up in the gut, where they become food for the microbes that live there, over-populating them. The key to human health is the balance of the gut micro-biota.

4. Plenty of Omega-3
Lots of fish/shellfish and non-vegetable oils (they’d slowly cook with pure olive oil) means one thing: a better balance of omega-3 to omega-6. Possibly as close to 1:2, while most Western people today have a ratio of 1:25, literally killing them slowly.

5. Fermented legumes
As it’s been demonstrated in the lab, most legumes lose their lectins when they’re fermented. Fermentation is key to render a lot of “problematic” food inert. I clearly remember my mom fermenting our beans/lentils overnight (soaking them into water or dairy) before cooking them for a long time the next day. To be fair, not all legumes are created equal. Some are more poisonous than others (especially the colorful ones).

6. Fermented dairy from the right animals
Most dairy consumption in Greece was fermented AND from goats/sheep (not from cows). Goat/sheep’s casein is more compatible with the human digestion than modern cow casein. Greek yogurt has proved its efficacy aiding the fixing of gut problems, but also our cheeses carry a lot of this micro-biota too (not just the well known feta, try mizithra instead). The Greek equivalent of kefir is called xynogalo (although home-made kefir is more potent).

7. Coconut
For the Cretans in particular, coconuts actually grow there. The coconut factor is well known among Paleo dieters.

8. Local Delicacies
Cretans in particular would eat some types of insects, snails, raw artichokes and other types of food that are simply not common in the rest of the Mediterranean cuisine. These have nutrients not found elsewhere (e.g. insects have lots of K2 Mk4). And of course, a lot of wild, bitter greens (which thankfully they’re still common among older people in Greece).

9. Greek Mountain Tea
This is a miracle herbal tea that science only recently has started to unravel. Just read the research! I wish more Paleo people were aware of it, the thing works. Cretans also used dictamnus, a local herbal tea, also known for its health benefits.

10. Less red meat
As much as Paleo people would eat red meat almost daily, I’m actually not a big fan of this idea. I think meat should not be consumed more than 2-3 times a week. More (healthy, wild) fish and shellfish is best instead, and a lot of vegetable dishes are good too (even if you cook them in animal fat and bone broth).

11. Offal and bone broth
What, you thought they would throw that stuff to the dogs?!? They ate it! Delicious eggs from local hens too.

12. Lots of herbs
Herbs are known to help with various health conditions. In the Greek/Cretan cuisine, these are used a lot. These days mostly oregano is used, but in the older days there was a much wider array of herbs used.

13. Sun and exercise
A lot of sun, daily. Up in the mountains with the goats and sheep, or down to the fields. Nobody was a couch potato. And of course, snoozing under trees from 3 to 5 PM, when the heat was at its highest. My goat & sheep herder grandfather at 84 years old now can go up the rocky mountain like it’s leveled asphalt. I lose my breath after 3 minutes trying to catch him.

In other words, Cretans and most Greeks were closer to Paleo than most dietitians today would like you to think. When they push down Paleo and try to tell us that the original Cretan diet was the best, they need to get their facts straight, because the two diets are not as far apart as they would like you to think.

As to why the diet was better in Crete and not in another island (e.g. Sicily, Rhodes, Cyprus etc), I believe it’s because of its relative long distance from the mainland. Small boats could not make it to Crete, only bigger ones could. This relative isolation has made Cretans to keep their original, traditional diet for longer than other islands did. But it’s already gone now. Greece really became “modern” in the last 30-40 years (mostly after its induction to the European Union), so cow dairy became the norm, lots of wheat, cheap vegetable oils, and processed/sugar foods too, while the consumption of traditional fermented foods, offal, bone broth, wild mountain vegetables etc went down.

I haven’t blogged here for a while, I mostly write on Facebook and my TumblR these days.

In the meantime my collages have taken off. I have over 3000 followers at TumblR now, and a lot of my collages are going viral lately. I even had a few sales! This has brought attention to some sites and wrote about my work, or interviewed me. Here’s two of them: 1, 2.

“Normalization“

I’m thinking of putting together an animated short movie using elements from my collages, we will see how this will turn out.

Other than that, I’m getting ready for a surgery (tumor that I had for years, thankfully benign), while right now I have a pinched nerve on my neck and I can’t do all that much. My Paleo diet is out of the window too, downgraded to plain gluten-free. I need to get back on the boat though, because my health can get bad without it. It will be my 1 year anniversary on 3rd of September, the day that I found the solution for my 10 year old health problem.