Pensive
09-22-2009, 04:57 PM
Happy Birthday, Mr. Mathematicious! :D
Here is a cake and a tiny present for you:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/21st_Birthday_cake.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ovJS1Em-6dg/RtF-J9gIu-I/AAAAAAAANQM/QVgA8iEs-Oo/s400/geekClock.jpg
Scheherazade
09-22-2009, 06:49 PM
A very happy 21st birthday, Tal!
I think you are now old enough to handle one of these:
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/5006/broom.jpg (http://img6.imageshack.us/i/broom.jpg/)
Virgil
09-22-2009, 07:34 PM
Tal's birthday!! Happy birthday buddy. :bday_2::bday_2: Whatever happened to that alter ego? ;)
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3376/3456029082_62fbb0148c.jpg
http://hugsnkisses.typepad.com/.a/6a00e5538b8229883301156f3647df970c-pi
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/214/513441663_f859ff4891.jpg
Happy birthday, Taliesin, old friend. I hope you have a fantastic birthday, and do not forget to drop by from time to time! :D
Janine
09-23-2009, 02:30 PM
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TALIESIN!
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p70/sealace/BirthdayCakes/CakeRedCandles.jpg
Forgive me, I know that's a few more candles than 21; but it was such a fun looking cake. Have a great celebration.
Maryd.
09-23-2009, 06:27 PM
Have a great 21st birthday, Tal. (21 - Ah, memories)
Taliesin
09-30-2009, 12:23 PM
Thank you, everybody. I really post so rarely here but it is nice too see that there are people still left who remember the existence of me and my birthday.
Thanks a lot, folks.
Scheherazade
09-30-2009, 06:57 PM
An interview with Taliesin:
Why are we doing this interview thing?
Not sure, really. Probably because, although I have got nothing new to say (see the interview of the previous year (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=627146&postcount=17) for the following information) I need to feel special and that I have done some personal progress within the year.
Rather silly, I`d say.
Are you sure you want to do this?
No. But Scher sort of insisted.
Are you male or female?
This shall remain a secret for you forever, unless you somehow manage to discover that I am male. How you should do it, I don't know.
What is your name (if you don't mind sharing it with us)?
There are some who call me... Toomas
Got milk?
Some, in my refrigerator, but it is some kind of Western Europe milk so I can`t really call it milk. Milk-like product might be more accurate.
Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
If you had a personal theme song what would it be?
Oh, this is too hard. It all depends on the moment and suchlike. Last year I took "Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine".
It still fits, but at the moment, I'd take Trio Sonata for Organ in E Minor BWV528 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpFzx8NdyIo)by Johann Sebastian Bach. Just for the sake of not repeating myself.
What makes you keep coming back to the Forum?
It used to be the internet, but recently I haven't got very much of it, really and that's the reason for my absence.
Besides the internet it used to be my short attention span and tendency to be distracted by the Internet.
It has been a year since the last interview. What have been the high and low points?
I'm not very sure about he high points - I think that the happy times are not high points as such, but a general high flow without any very specific events.
As for the low points, well, recently it hasn't been too great, really. I have failed at making a big social circle in France. (due to my lack of spoken French) And yesterday I heard that a former classmate has gone missing. I really can't think of any very credible scenarios where an alive 21-old young man with a mobile phone would go missing for five days on his way home in the middle of the night so that no-one knows nothing about him in a town like Tartu.
It is quite scary actually. I was not his friend or anything, but it is very unsettling.
The best and worst books you have read during last year?
Shame to say, but I have started reading less the last year. Perhaps it is a passing disease. I don't remember very well when I read some book so I don't know if it's the last year, before that or after. And I like to re-read a lot, so not many new books.
I discovered Irving last year, though. "Grendel" is a fascinating book.
Murakami's great. Chekhovs short stories. Wilde's plays. "Ubik". "Raadio" by Emil Tode.
As for the worst, as I told you, I didn't read much new this year and I have a bad memory, so I guess I forgot about the dull ones.
The biggest surprises of the past year (both pleasant and unpleasant)?
Well, the fact that I managed to pick up my courage and go to a foreign country as an exchange student is pretty surprising for me, really, since I am usually a person of a cowardly disposition. Might be a mistake, though. On the other hand, not going would probably also count as a mistake.
As for unpleasant, cue to the missing person few answers up.
What has been the the biggest change in your life since your last birthday?
Well, at the moment I am an Erasmus exchange student in Grenoble, France. Living by my own is rather big, as is living apart from my friends, family and regular Internet access.
Do you feel comfortable in your walk with God/atheism?
I don't understand the question, but yes.
Given the option, what animal would you choose t
o be?
Well, I am a terribly comfortable and lazy person who is quite fond of regular meals and other pleasures of the human civilization, so I'd say human. I'd also note my intellectual vanity - i.e I like to have one - and it still seems that humans possess the highest analytical capabilites of all animals.
Given a little more playground though, assuming a world where at-least-as-high-as-humans-intellect slightly magical crows both exist and co-exist peacefully with humans, enjoying a number of the privileges of humans while cultivating a vastly different soicety, well...
How did you meet your significant other?
Do I look like a psychic to you?
What is the one thing you must do before you die?
Live. It is rather the one thing one has to do, by definition, before dieing.
Oh, you mean me?
You ask these questions as if I was a wise and insightful person who knew anything about his life.
Do you believe in ghosts?
I am usually a sceptical person, however I have a good friend and a MoralCompassTM who has experienced some rather strange things, so rather yes than no, although ghosts isn't perhaps the right word. Hmmmh. Let's make it don't believe in ghosts although don't consider them impossible, but there are maybe some other similar things.
That doesn't open the gate to all kinds of paranormal stuff, palm reading, astrology, homeopathy etc, though.
What is your role in an emergency situation: the 911 dialer, the person who runs to
the scene to help, the video recorder, or the person too overcome by shock to do anything?
The person who thinks that he should help but stays passive since there are much more capable people around and he would only be bothering them.
What song is in your head at the moment?
Dog Police (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0359hSerDeE)
Which book are you reading at the moment?
"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, translates into French
The last book you finished reading?
Ooh, haven't actually had the time to finish anything for a while since all the books I can get my hands on here are in French and it's tiring to read in French.
Oh, I remember. "Raadio" by Emil Tode. I remember once meeting a person I know at the street and he told me how he had bounced into Emil Tode and wanted to ask him why he had done this to him, destroying everything and so on.(although he looked as if he hadn't slept that night and was operating on coffee, so it was maybe a slight hyperbole) Then I didn't quite understand why, since I had only read one book by him, the most famous one, "Border State", and it wasn't so life-destroying, but now I think I understand. "Raadio" is rather a cruel book, on quite a number of levels.
Might be a gay thing, though.
What are you wearing at the moment?
Black t-shirt, underwear, grey socks that actually match, dark jeans, skin.
Favorite TV shows?
The Big Bang Theory (the nerd in me can't resist it), Hikaru No Go (I have re-taken up go recently and am fascinated by the game. Truly, you have three simple rules and a game of a much higher complexity level than chess. And, IMO, more aesthetic) and also
Take my love,
take my land
take me where I cannot stand
I don't care if I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me.
Take me out
to the black
tell them I aint coming back
Burn the lands and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from me
There's no place I can't be
since I found Serenity
You can't take the sky from me
But goddamn, don't take Firefly.
Why did they cancel it?
Which LitNet members would you like to meet in person if you could?
See the list of the previous year. Plus a few others, maybe.
Favorite post on the Forum?
Well, as I told last year, I still would have to answer by this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI):
Favorite thread?
ditto (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI)
Last food did you have?
French fries, since I can get to the Internet only through a hamburger restaurant.
Last words you said out loud?
Merci
Last person you hugged/kissed?
Liisa, who was visiting me from Estonia.
What question would you like to ask yourself?
Oh, you're a clever one. You know, they asked the same thing from Einstein, and it was really clever then, since you got Einsteins brain power and to consider the best question. The only fault in your plan is that I am maybe not so smart and probably not as benevolent as Einstein.
What should you be doing at the moment instead of answering these questions?
Doing a big bunch of algebra homework, considering the the intersection of all the maximal ideals from left of a ring.
Last dream you remember having?
From this night I only remember some fragments, so, the last dream I can remember more completely would be this:
I was a 250-old count (probably Comte Saint-Germain?). I was captured by someone and sent to the past so that I would kill a certain queen. At the party where I was supposed to kill the queen I met a nice lady who had a similar plan, I talked to her and her maid. I actually remembered that in my youth I had tried to kill the queen but someone else was captured for it. Well, after talking to the lady, I saw the queen, and started walking towards her, but then I was betrayed by that lady and was captured, hence making it all logical.
Who is your best friend and how long you have known them?
I guess that there are two - one is an utterly charismatic, mildly shizotypal young man a few years my junior and another an art student with an excellent sense of humour. She is two years older than I am, I think. We are all role-players and met about five or six years ago through a fantasy forum for youth. The forums dead now, which is a pity.
If you had to lose one of your senses, which would you choose and why?
Pain seems like a really tempting offer, since it is technically a sense, but that would probably be very dangerous.
So, out of the senses I wouldn't want to give away seeing, hearing, smelling, taste or touch. Sense of cold maybe?
Wait, actually losing sight might be a possibility, since there are audiobooks and stuff, plus, vision takes away huge parts of your brain. So if I could rewire my brain to use that part which is reserved for vision for other possibilities, then yes, why not?
Are you mostly happy with life or are you still in pursuit?
Pursuit.
How often do you tell lies?
I am not good at lying so I almost never do it, although there are some exeptions, of course.
Right now, for example. This sentence is false.
What gives your life meaning?
Question not answerable in words.
What type of Faerie would you like to be and why?
The homosexual type, I am tempted to say.
Ignoring the opportunity for a crude double entendre, though, some kind of more trickstery, but still generally benevolent type of creature would be interesting. A puca perhaps?
If you were a colour, what colour would you be and why?
Let's say #228B22
What makes you laugh?
Not accurately answerable by words.
What was the happiest period of your life and why?
I like to think that the happiest period of my life is yet to come.
If you could be a disney character who or what would you be and why?
Disney has characters?
I'm so sorry, but I don't remember them.
Do those animated smilies ever get tired? Think of them day after day, dancing or crashing computers or laughing or crying till the end of time...
I don't know, I'd have to look at the code of the smilie to see if there is a tiredness function or field somewhere in there, although I suspect no, since it would be impractical.
It might be, though that the smily is eating up some kind of resources of the computer, and hence, if that resource is finished up, it can't function any more. Although that's more like death, tiredness is like some kind of feedback system to notify the system for the lack of something, like rest.
It is rather interesting though- suppose we made a near-human level AI. Would it need sleep? What function does sleep and dreaming carry?
One thing you would like to do before your next birthday?
I know that this is really sappy and how a certain unnamed person will call me a very sappy person for giving such sappy answers, but I think I'd like to meet my significant other.
One final word of wisdom for LitNet users?
This joke is on you. Yes, you. Personally on you.
What would you like to ask to the person to be interviewed after you?
Well, at the moment, defining rad(A) to be the intersection of the maximal left ideals of the ring A, and knowing that rad(A) has the structure of a ring, how would you prove that rad(A/(rad A))=0?
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