Looks Cool: Paris Portrait Shoot and Make-Over Give-Away

Wouldn't it be wonderful to win this?

Once in grammar school my best friend entered a mail-in contest. I walked her to the mail box so she could drop in her entry and shared my doubts she would win. Well she went and did win - something awesome like a year's worth of free shoes. She bought shoes for her whole family and even sent them to her family in the Philippines. Ever since then, I enter contests, even if I know deep down I probably won't win.

Paris Portrait Shoot and Make-Over Give-Away

Catch Up Post

 

Hi Guys – Just wanted to post a catch-up post….

 

We definitely had some fun with the snow, and were able to get out there and make a snow man with Matt before it started to really melt. The first picture really got me going, cause he looks so big! Time is going by so fast!

 

Meanwhile, Ger and I also got to sneak away to Vegas for a couple days. It was such a blast! We stayed at the Aria hotel – they were all set to celebrate the Year of the Snake as you can see from the lobby photo below. The Aria is pretty new and was a great place to stay, and we had so much fun walking the strip. In addition to all the sites, I was completely bowled over to run across an Oldenburg sculpture right next to the hotel! This is actually probably the third time I’ve run across an installation of this particular sculpture and it was like seeing an old friend.

You can see from the last photo, which was a view from some of the rooms at the Cosmopolitan where some of the conference participants stayed. Our view was very nice too, but this one at night was particularly fun- you can see the Bellagio fountains. It’s time’s like this that I wish I had remembered my other camera (these are all iPhone pictures). Some highlights of eating was tapas at Julian Serrano and our dinner at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant. I was surprised to learn that the lights of the real Eiffel Tower were dimmed the day that the Vegas Eiffel Tower was lit; I thought that was very sweet and just makes me want to visit Paris all the more!

 

 

 

Especially since I just finished reading Jennifer L. Scott’s “Lessons from Madame Chic – 20 Stylish Secrets I learned while living in Paris”. The latest American attempt to deconstruct the French myth is by far the best. For light reading, it was fun and entertaining and a good reminder of common sense advice. The author is very observant and points out things like the modern American suburban house plan of an open main floor basically means the kitchen is never closed, so you eat all the time. This I thought was a very clever observation. I enjoyed the book so much I started following her blog, which is chock full of good advice and tidbits.

I also finished Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Margaret Atwood brings us another creepy, weird and wonderful dystopian tale – the first in a trilogy. Atwood takes us through a fictional end of the world scenario, which while probably not very plausible still had a heavy cautionary tale. The Handmaid’s Tale is still Atwood’s best work, I think, but I was moved by the story even though it was a very heavy handed lesson she is trying to push to her readers.

Finally I also finished Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This was a beautifully written book, and I am so sorry I am not a movie producer or I would fight to buy the rights to this. It follows characters living in current day south east Nigeria through the 60’s – during the attempt to form a new country – Biafra. The resulting suffering from the war and blockades is what spurred the formation of Doctors Without Borders. This book however, follows mostly African middle class characters through the war. There are good reads and there is literature and this one is literature. It was definitely a bit heavy at times (anything less would have been trite considering the subject matter) but I loved it and was glad I read it.

I still plan on doing some book reviews from time to time, especially with the non-fiction as it helps me digest and remember the main points, but I am so behind I just wanted to jot down some thoughts on those books before too much more time passed….

I’m going to end with some kitchen going-ons. I had so many pictures I’ll spare you. SO I have just two updates. Apparently, my muffin tin does not make the cut. I tend to use things till they die, but I was given a new one and told to relegate the old one to back-up status. I bake a lot, as you know but I never thought about pan maintenance. To say goodbye to my old muffin pan I baked a goodbye batch of orange cranberry muffins, which were the muffins that originally got me really baking. It was a pretty sentimental moment. New pan, you have some pretty big shoes to fill!

 

 

Also, as you know Matt can be a super picky eater. In all the cookies I made last year he never showed any interest in eating any of it, despite helping me mix and measure ingredients even – until just recently. Imagine my surprise when he crawled into my lap and took a cookie and starting eating it! It was all I could do to look nonchalant while he ate. Ger of course could not hide his excitement, as this means a lot more cookies in our household from now on!

 

Book Review

Book Review: The Cambridge Quintet by John L Casti

There have been some exciting books published recently in the field that could be known as artificial intelligence. The field and what they've tried to accomplish is a moving target, and with some of the recent advances and publications I've decided to check back in. What started out as a question for computer science has been passed mostly to neuroscience, and is more of an interdisciplinary research area along with physics and robotics, as well as others. In preparation for a little reading tour this year of this fascinating subject, I picked up again “The Cambridge Quintet” by John L. Casti.

Sometimes, the best place to start is at the beginning.

The premise of the book is a dinner party that never actually happened, but you wish did and that you were invited. The setting is post-world war II England, and people are just beginning to understand what computers are and are capable of doing, having been instrumental in code breaking during the war.  Alan Turing has just floated the idea that a computer can be built to mimic a human mind- a fantastic notion. The author ­C.P. S­now hosts a dinner party to thump this idea. He invites a cadre of leading linguistic and scientific experts and philosophers to debate Turing's idea. The author sets his real life characters (the dinner participants are all real people from various disciplines in the early 20^th century) into this fictional setting and lets them have at it. The description of the food (each chapter is a course) is an added bonus.

Alan Turing is known as the father of artificial intelligence and is most popularly known for his idea of a Turning test, which is what the dinner guests thump. The idea behind a turning test is roughly as follows: that if you were conversing with someone or something behind a wall, and the answers to the questions could convince you that the other person was a live, sentient human but it was really a computer program, then you could claim that the machine was a working replica of a human mind.

This claim of course, sets off a plethora of debate of what it means to be human, have language, have emotions, etc. etc. which was all fascinating and a good refresher for the start of my reading tour. It’s a great introduction to this field, and Casti does a good job of having his dinner guests debate their view points. Casti is well enough versed with everyone’s arguments to come up with some novel conversation points. He has Turing concede that if ESP was invented, that his test would be invalid. I hadn’t heard of that before, and it was both novel and made me laugh.

At the time, the idea of a machine passing the Turing’s test was tantalizing and so investment into the field was made, of which we reap the benefit today (not least of which I can bore you with my blog and book reviews). Massive leaps in computing power along with networking have enabled ever complicated and far reaching applications. But as for Turing’s test - well the story here is more complicated.

The one outcome that the dinner guests didn’t count on was this: It doesn’t matter. If you were able to have a computer do polite conversation for 10-15 minutes – so what? You haven’t learned anything about the human mind. You’ve done the equivalent of teaching a horse to count. The things computers are good for – boolean logic tasks like routing traffic or calculating the odds at chess are impressive, but not what makes someone human. To replicate how a human mind works, you have to know how a human mind works. So about 10-15 years ago or so it was like all the computer science artificial intelligence people said collectively, rather roughly, “okay we are going to hold that thought while we go figure out neuroscience and neurobiology.”

So brain research is the #1 area of NIH funding now – not only to answer these questions but also because we don’t have effective treatments for brain diseases – Alzheimer’s being first and foremost on the list.

But there is still other work to be done while the brain research people do their thing. For example, the robotics people have their work cut out for them. Turing had his fictional computer behind a wall, but an important aspect of being human is interacting with the environment. This is a point the philosophers at Casti’s fictional dinner bring up. Replicating the senses and processing them and writing programs to appropriately respond to them are a herculean scientific challenge.

A lot has changed since the end of World War II and with any nascent field there is bound to be a lot of self- questioning, back peddling and good old fashioned angst. Nevertheless the optimism and can-do spirit of those in the field is one of the reasons I’m going to try and check back in this year (though I can’t promise not to get side tracked) – and a spirit Casti captures in his book.

Traveling Style–Vegas Edition

Ger and I just got back from Vegas! As I sort through the photos, I figured I’d get the clothes ones out of the way…

For this trip, I finally got a new carry-on, which was a long over due purchase. Even with the sale, I had coupons (mom you taught me well) and the piece came in at just about 70$.  I have to say, the Tommy Hilfiger Scout luggage was perfect, I had no trouble rolling around with it and it was a true pleasure to travel with. Plus it is not black! It certainly is an upgrade from a back pack for us. The memory of our cruise vacation, where our wheels broke as we were on the god forsaken customs line, so we had to drag our luggage which promptly split, and so we dragged fistfuls of clothes while holding on to Matt, who by then was thoroughly bored of the whole process was fresh in our mind. We have a couple of ideas in mind to upgrade Ger’s piece as well – but he hasn’t decided on a hard back piece yet.  As we were getting off our flight I noticed a nice slice in his carry-on, which is already so beat up it doesn’t stand on its own anymore.

Now, I wanted to show you my outfits, mostly cause things that I note tend to get improved upon, and there’s always room for improvement when it comes to fashion!I did not check anything- everything fit in my one carry-on.

I’m not quite showing you everything I packed (you didn’t really want to see my two swimsuits and undies) but you can see how I would have gotten a couple more outfits out of the combinations below…

 

….On the plane

Quick change into strappy sandals for casino hopping on night arrival. After that I bought a pair of flat shoes- I didn’t realize how much walking we’d be doing!

That little black clutch came in so handy….

Next day touring

It was kind of chilly

Quick lunch.

more running around during the day…

(that last scarf I stole from my mom before I left)

 

Now – I did have one splurge, I tried a new service, Rent the Runway. Apparently, you can rent designer clothes for your event – mostly cocktail dresses, evening wear and accessories.

Your package looks like this when it comes.

 

Now they send you two sizes so you can try on your outfit. I opted to rent a diamond cuff with my dress, but it was so scratchy and weird I ended up just wearing my own bracelet that I packed. If you log into the site, it is the mermaid dress. Here I am below in the size 4, it had a longer hem. Perfect for Vegas!

 

I would definitely rent again, as it was way cheaper than buying and you can take risks like a shimmery dress like this. The only thing is that because I had it delivered to the hotel they charged a handling fee. Next time if I arrange for this service while traveling, I’ll be sure to make sure I understand any package fees on the hotel/ cruise/ etc.

So all in all, after mailing the mermaid dress back, I had enough room in my little scout spinner to pack both my trench coat and Ger’s jacket, a copy of the Eiffel Tower Restaurant Cookbook (more on that later) and this stuffed animal for Matt from the Mandalay Bay Aquarium.

 

My parent's retirement. In the past 18 months...

My dad takes in the Grand Canyon.

My mom has been wanting to go back to Europe, so they traveled some through France. Here she is in Paris.

Mom and Aunt Naomi while touring New England... and the Berkshires

 

My dad at the monument to the Alamo during a trip to Texas

My mom and dad while cruising the Caribbean. Here they are on St. Martin.