Natalie Portman: Menace 2 society or How to chat up Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman ruined one of my photos today.

A spot of rain decided to grace sunny old London today, so Shannon and I decided to visit the British Museum. The collection is quite impressive, as it should be for a large museum, but the highlight has to be the new addition by Norman Foster. Anyway, after wandering through the Egyptian collection for hours, I spotted a great potential photo. There was some fantastic light streaming through a window and spot lighting a huge Egyptian statue. There was a lot of people in the hall, and every one of 'em seemed intent on being in my photo. The crow cleared and I was about to take the picture when Shannon grabs my shoulder:

"She's here! The Portman!" She was really excited, her eyes were sticking out.

"Who? What?" I could not believe I had lost the shot, so I was not really paying attention for a few seconds.

"Natalie Portman is in the museum!" Shannon dragged me round the comer and sure enough, Natalie Portman is standing next to an exhibit case with a tall guy about the same age as her.

"Are you going to take a picture?" Shannon asked, practically squeaking with excitement. I thought about it for a second. A picture like that would have earned me the kind of money I really need right now, but for some reason I suddenly had an attack of the conscience. "No, she's just trying to have a nice normal Saturday, just like us. I'd rather just go and talk to her, but even then, what would I say?" I guess that was why really. I mean Natalie Portman must have so many people say the same thing to her every time they meet her. Nothing original came to mind, and I didn't want to just say something stupid like: "I Loved you in Star wars!" or something creepy like "Your head was really bald in V for Vendetta."

I was so vexed by the "Ultimate Question" (What does one say to Natalie Portman?) that I decided to do a little online sleuthing to see if I could find any really unique facts about La Portman. Like millions of people before me, I checked out her IMDB profile first, but nothing jumped out at me. From there it was your basic Google search, but that just throws up a bunch of scary cult-like worship sites. So I turned to good old Wikipedia, and I of course struck pay dirt. Not only did I find the most unique fact about Ms. Natalie so far, I found the coolest personal achievement metric ever: It turns out that Natalie Portman is one of the few people in the world to have a finite Erdős-Bacon number.

What is an Erdős-Bacon number you ask? Well the second part helps to explain the first part. The Bacon in Erdős-Bacon stands for Kevin Bacon, the Hollywood star who's career famously inspired the game "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon". The Erdős is for Paul Erdős, a Hungarian mathematician who is sort of the academic worlds answer to Mr. Bacon. Much like ones bacon number is calculated by figuring out how many actors it takes to link any other given actor to bacon through there involvement in films, Erdős numbers are derived from linking academics to Erdős via published scientific papers.

In order to qualify for an Erdős-Bacon number you must first have a Bacon number and an Erdős number, meaning you have both appeared in a film (giving you a Bacon number) and co-authored at least one academic paper (giving you an Erdős number). Natalie's Bacon number is 2 as both her and Kevin Bacon have worked with Matt Dillon. Portmans's Erdős number, a 7, is due to the fact that she co-authored two published research papers (under her real name, Natalie Hershlag) while she was a University student. Once you combine these numbers, you get a finite Erdős-Bacon number of 9.

Of course, what this all boils down to is that I now know what to say the next time I run in to Natalie Portman: "Ms. Hershlag, I loved your paper on Frontal lobe activation during object permanence."

The hunt continues

Well the Job hunt is still on as the management at the Teck are idiots. I aced my training shift, turned up a few hours later and they accused me of being a half hour late! I believed them at first until I checked my phone and realized they were lying through there teeth.

It matters not however as I have two high-end job interviews lined up, plus a couple of other pub tests.

I spent some time shooting a few of the really modern London Underground stations on the Jubilee line extension. I posted some on my Flickr page already as I spent all my spare time today re-organizing my photos.

Live from the Apple Store, London

I'm standing in the middle of Apple's brand new retail space on regent St. I'm nearly broke, so I'm using one of the demo MacBooks to check my e-mail.

I had a test shift at a bar in Earls Court called the Prince of Tek. It sounds futuristic, but I think the name means something in old English. The shift must have gone well, as I'm working on probation for the rest of the week there. Sweet, I kind of have a job.

Shannon has picked up a temporary gig working as a psycho guniapig, I'm not kidding. At the least this will prevent my over draft from kicking in too soon.

This store is so full, people are watching me as I type this.

Exusted..is that even spelled right?

I am too tired to really write anything as I have just:

- Updated my links

- Uploaded a ton of photos to my new favorite site: flickr

- Created Shannon a mini-site from scratch: Shan's


Shan's site is to help with the job hunt, while the flickr thing resulted from a online chat, and wow, it is powerfull now. Coupled with Google's picaso, the power is now mine for uploading photos!

I just had a shower in Bath

The title says it all really :)

I'm staying with cousins in Bath at the moment as I left stuff with them before Shannon and I went to Greece and my Mom is here too, as she just returned from a week in Ireland. Tomorrow it's back to London and the Job hunt, and to poor Shannon, who has been abandoned in heart of the former British empire. I think she is stalking employers as I type, so she's prolly as happy as a clam. How happy are clams when they take the London Underground? Happier if they have an Oyster card anyway. An entire post will be written about Oyster card, as it's like crack for geeks like me. For now, I'll just mention that it's a contact-less smart card that stores your tickets on it, but works like those key-less security fobs that some office buildings use. Just waving the card over the yellow pad at the gate lets you through. Some people just leave them in their wallets, bags and pockets, so it's funny to see people waving various random belongings at the gates.

THIS JUST IN: Just this second I got a call back from a recruitment agency, who tried to sell me a training course. Lucky for me I nipped that in the bud, and talked my way on to the recruitment list.


I've also been playing around with the blog settings a bit. I now have a separate, but inter-linked blog for posting my photos to and I'm testing a third one on the beta system that has lots of high tech geeky bells and whistles.

Comments wise, I've turned off comment moderation, as it was preventing peoples comments from showing up instantly. Which brings me to a little request I'd like to make: Please Comment! Even if it's just a quick hello, one or two words ect, I'd still like to here it. I have herd from a few people that they are reading the blog, but I had no idea, as they had never commented before. For ages I only thought the family's of Shannon and I read it, but if the reader ship is more varied, I'd love to know. In return, I promise more photos in the future :) Also, if anyone of you reading this has their own Blog or website, I'd be happy to link to it.

Flat hunting, one of life's few real joys...

Hi,

I saw your ad on the gumtree about the double room for let in Crickelwood. My Girlfriend and I are interested having a look at the
place. We are a Canadian couple looking to set ourselves up in London after having spent six months in Edinburgh, and the room sounds just like what we are looking for.

A bit of background to Shannon and Rory: Shannon has a degree in fine arts, and is looking to put said degree to work in the London area, but is not adverse to falling back on here extensive retail experience in order to fund her search for art-related employment. She also likes dogs and long walks in the park.

I (Rory) have a dual professional background that consists of IT and Photography/Video with a dash of bar tending on the side, all cooked in a white wine sauce. I have lived in London previously for a two year period, and I prefer cats and short walks in to the Surf (when I can find some).

As you may have gathered, we are both in the Job Hunt, so the temporary thing works for us, and once employment becomes more solid, then we might be interested in extending our stay in your wonderful household.

My Mobile number is 07960453459, please feel free to call at anytime.

-Rory

So we have returned to London after a fantastic two weeks in Greece! I'm still sorting through all the photos. We have only been back in London since Tuesday, and yet it's all blended together in my head, so I'm going to revert to the ultimate writers crutch: Point Form.

- We found the worlds best Pita gyros shop ever! It was a family run place, and the I have just been interrupted by a 17 year old who needs help picking up a German girl sitting next to him, we are trying various online translators, to a somewhat humorous but useless effect. whole family runs it at once, mom, dad, the kids, all of 'em. The walls are covered with notes thanking them for the good food. We signed the guestbook.

- I convinced Shannon to let me rent a little 4x4 quad bike for two days. Everyone, and there dog was riding around on scooters and quads, tourists and locals alike. The dogs ride in the foot wells of the scooters, it's pretty neat.

- The quad let us explore the two near by resorts, which are Hersonissos and Mali, not Harakilon as I said before. We also found a fantastic little town called Sisi. It's off the beaten-track, down the road from Malia. Sisi has a little harbor that is quite deep, and is really clear, so the swimming was fantastic.

- We spent took the bus to Agios Nikolaos, a Venetian port town about 45 mins east by bus. It has quite a skyline, as the town faces some desert mountains across a large inlet. The harbour is "bottom-less" as it's so deep that the true depth has never been established.

- Shannon was accosted by a small child at one point, and wowed tourists and locals on at least two occasions with her Karaoke skills.

London wise, we spent the day watching the F1 race at lunch time, then we went to the Camden markets, as Shan had never been before. Just the shear ammount of shoes alone almost blew her mind.

Anyway, I better get back to Hunting for a new life on the Gumtree...

EDIT: Some photos from Greece are Here