Earth Colours

After browsing through blogs maintained by friends who take their blogging seriously, I thought I'd give mine a makeover. The header picture is something I clicked while hiking with colleagues at St. Cergue in the Jura mountains in Swtizerland. Remember the movie Jurassic Park? The "Jurassic" in "Jurassic Park" is the name of the period between 200 million years ago to 145 million years ago (at this point an idiot once asked me, "Is that BC, or just from today?"). The dinosaurs in the movie are from this era. And the name "Jurassic" comes from "Jura", which are the fold mountains that go through France and Switzerland, north of the alps. A lot of the limestone rock in the Jura mountains was formed during this period. Having digressed enough, here are some links to pictures from the Jura.

Hiking in the Jura - St. Cergue

These are fantastic hiking areas, especially in the summer. And from the bright blues and greens in these pictures comes my new colour scheme for this blog. Of course, I have to work with several limitations, such as a slight prejudice towards dull monochromatic schemes and a mild colour-blindness that the CERN medical service discovered in my first week here. Anyway, if you're a male, there's a 17% chance that you have some problem with colour identification. So when you get angry, do you see red? Or do you see a different shade of yellow?

Songs from the 90s

I've been without TV since 2000 now. I have had a television set at home for about 2 years now, but I've never had cable. Basically, I don't believe in directionless viewing (or more likely, I don't want another bill that I can procrastinate over). There was a period when I did watch a decent amount of TV, between 1994, when we got cable at home, and 2000, when I left home. This is when I got my first taste of MTV. Of course, back then they really used to play music, instead of showing idiots doing idiotic things to other idiots (RE: Jackass).

So I tried to recollect what I remembered from back then, and tried to find good videos on YouTube to refresh my memory. Of course, this is a colossal waste of time, but hopefully it'll put me to sleep tonight.

1. There was this video I remember very vividly. A tall, dark lady walking and dancing in front of a white background. Very graceful movements and inspirational lyrics. A few searches later, I found "You Gotta Be" by Des'ree. This is a real mood-lifter.

2. Then there was another one I remember. Psychedelic, but there were these close-up shots of a woman with really lovely eyes, and "Crazy Cool" being repeated over and over and over. This was easy to find. The former LA Lakers' cheerleader, Paula Abdul. And I was right about her eyes. Check out the video, and you'll see what I mean.

3. A great Whitney Houston song with a nice tempo. It's the OST from "The Preacher's Wife", which isn't much of a movie, but this is one hell of a song. Wikipedia: This is a cover of an Annie Lennox song, and she has also sung background vocals to this song.

MTV was frowned upon as being a "western influence" back then. But there's no denying that they had great music. Today the music is mostly gone but if you see some of the movies that MTV produces today (Jackass is again a case in point - YES it is also a movie), and the shows that they do, I feel sorry for the poor brain dead idiots who actually enjoy this trash. Well, here's wishing them good luck (gratuitously assuming they can read).

(Wow, I'm ageing faster than I thought.)