Rose Gardens and Space Telescopes

I am a very happy lady tonight, because I have finished my exams! I think my weeks of non-stop studying really paid off as well, which makes finishing them all the sweeter. Nonetheless, I am going to be doing some mad blogging for the next week or so before I head off overseas, so if you visit here daily you'll almost certainly see something new each time ;) Isn't this dress Sheinside sent me gorgeous? It just makes me want to have a picnic in a rose garden. Unfortunately I couldn't find any roses to take photos among - it being the middle of winter in Sydney and all. This pretty park did a good job serving as the backdrop, though. I was so happy with the shoes that Yeswalker sent me as part of a sponsored post a few months ago (these ones) that I went and bought a couple of pairs with my own money, these red ones included. They're soooo cute and comfortable, and were also sent with free postage. I got two pairs for $15 each which is seriously good. These are going to be my Italy-trip walking-shoes! (I will never ever wear practical walking shoes, not even for travelling. Sorry, feet, but runners are just too ugly.) dress - c/o Sheinside cardigan - Thrifted tights - c/o OASAP necklace - c/o Merrin & Gussy hat - c/o Wholesale shoes - Yeswalker You guys. This is the power of crowd-funding. 12,000 people (at the time I write this) have pledged money to a kickstarter project to fund an educational Space Telescope called ARKYD. There's 10 days left if you want to get yourself a "space selfie" (in fact, I think that's probably half the reason why the project has done so well. I am considering getting a space selfie of my favourite outfit just so I can put it on the blog in a science segment. If enough of you tell me that I should...). Right now though, I'm completely exhausted (and vaguely aware that I might be writing nonsense) so I will leave it at that. Good night from Sydney, and I hope you're all having/have had a super good day! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Thrifted Outift & Hybrids

This is a super comfortable outfit, which I have been wearing various iterations of (minus the wig) for basically the entire past week. I am so excited to finally be finished with exams in 4 days now, and getting back into some blogging! I really, really dislike exam time (who would like exams though, right?) because it involves a whole lot of not sleeping and stress-eating, and of course, not having any time to blog! sweater - Thrifted dress -Thrifted belt - Thrifted hat - c/o Wholesale Necklace - Claire's (Japan)   Here's another cool thing from my exam-cramming (and more proof that studying science can be really interesting, whining about exams aside). Zebroids are the types of animals you get when a horse breeds with a zebra (yep, that can happen!) However, because of what is known as "epigenetics", depending on if the mum or the dad was the horse or the zebra, the resulting offspring can vary greatly. (image source) I've talked about hybrid animals before (here), but never understood why the resulting offspring was different, depending on who the parent was. For example, a cross between a female lion and a male tiger results in a tigon. But a cross between a male lion and a female tiger results in a liger. Tigons and ligers, although both having one tiger parent and one lion parent, vary greatly in their characteristics. Ligers are really really big, whereas tigons are just the same size as their parents. Below is a baby liger. Let me emphasise that. A baby liger. (image source) Why does which one was the mother, and which one was the father, cause such massive differences in the offspring? Epigenetic imprinting is the cause of this. Certain genes can be switched on or off by a process called "methylation". Maternal (mum) genes and paternal (dad) genes are methylated in different places from each other. So you get one set of genes from your mother, and one from your father. When they combine, there is almost like a competition for whose genes will be silenced, and whose genes will be expressed. Because of imprinting, depending on who the parent is, the genes that are ultimately expressed vary - leading to both ligers and tigons - even though the DNA sequence does not change (ligers and tigons are extremely genetically related, even though they look very different from one another). Now I've got to get back to studying ;) You may not hear from me for a few days - I've got an exam tomorrow worth a ridiculous 75% of the course, and then another on Thursday! Anyway, wish me luck! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

The Illusion of Reality

So I'm blogging again so soon... but I swear I'm not procrastinating on studying (maybe!)  Even though I've been non-stop studying the last few days, do you think I'd just wear comfortable clothes? Nah. This is about as "comfy" as I'll get, haha. I actually spent the morning in my pyjamas, but it's also nice to get dressed up for no reason - I feel like it helps me maintain my sanity! Which, at exam time, is always a good thing. pants - c/o Sheinside sweater - Thrifted necklace - Claire's (Japan) beanie - stolen from boyfriend Here's more stuff that I'm trying to cram for my exams! But it's super interesting, don't worry ;) So much of what we think are solid "facts" about the world we live in are entirely made up by our brains. I didn't realise this until this year, but there is nothing inherently "blue" about an electromagnetic wavelength of 450nm, or inherently "red" about a wavelength of 750nm - yet when these wavelengths of light hit our eyes, we experience blue and red colours. Here's some amazing facts about colour vision and your brain (read these two posts about colour perception if you don't know much about it!) Your brain keeps colours constant. A purple wig keeps on looking purple with different kinds of light shining on it (i.e. when you move from inside to outside). Outside light is really blue, but inside light is really yellow - yet the purple wig keeps looking basically the same colour the whole time - even though the actual light being reflected to your eye from the wig has changed vastly in wavelength. And it's all got to do with context - you use the colour of other things in your world to determine what the colour of things should be. This is called colour constancy. Don't believe me? Both of this girl's eyes are the exact same shade of grey. Still don't believe me? This is what happens if you remove everything from the image except for the eyes. (image from here) There are also impossible colours that could never be perceived (though you can try here by crossing your eyes). This includes "bluish yellow" and "greenish red". You can't create them (I'm talking about mixing light here, not paints) - whenever you mix these opponent colours you just get grey. Apparently, you could never perceive these mixes of light. What's different about these colours that makes them different from mixing yellow and green, for instance? Again, this isn't anything unique about the physics of light - these colours are only "impossible" because your brain says so! One more: after images (ignore the seedy music on the video, it's actually really cool.) Your brain makes up colours that don't even exist, just because it was tired of the ones it was looking at. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Little Red Riding Hood in her Stripey Dress

I am still loving this cape I made the other day. If I get the time after my exams before I head off overseas, I will try and make a tutorial for it! Yep, that's something I have totally forgotten to mention - I'm travelling to Italy for a month in my uni break! I am probably the luckiest lady in the world, getting to travel overseas twice in one year. I am going to Italy because Luciano (who is Italian - could you have guessed from his name?) is going with his family, to meet with their 80+ relatives for the first time ever... and they are taking me along with them! dress - c/o Cichic (and similar) cape - DIY tights - c/o OASAP necklace - c/o Merrin & Gussy I am currently into day 3 of the hardcore-studying-regime that I've implemented on myself, so that I will (hopefully) do well in my uni exams next week! So this video (via ASAPscience) seemed quite apt - the Science of Procrastination. And in case you guys were wondering, this blogging that I'm doing now isn't my procrastination - it's my reward. I've been studying for 3 hours straight and doing a little bit of dopamine-releasing blogging is the reward for me finally wrapping my head around eukaryotic transcription regulation (woo hoo!) Hope you're all having a more interesting day than me, Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Lady Vintage & Astrogardens

This dress has made me want to take up being a vintage lady full-time. Although the skirt takes up an entire seat on the bus, I love wearing petticoats and swishy vintage-style dresses probably more than any other style of clothing. Plus, basically everyone I interact with compliments me on this dress, which is never a bad thing. Also, these shoes. They weren't even thrifted. They were free. As in... I found them on the side of the road during our "council collection", where people recycle things they don't want anymore. Now I know some people who would be ashamed by that, but I think that is a ridiculous attitude to have - I just gave them a quick clean, and now I have a brand new pair of (free) shoes, side-of-the-road and everything! dress - Lady V London petticoat - Ebay cardigan - Thrifted necklace - Claire's shoes - Thrifted (in a way) hat - c/o Wholesale socks - c/o OASAP I found a pretty cool Kickstarter project the other day. What with much talk lately about sending humans to live on Mars (through the Mars One project and organisations like NASA), there has been more investigation into practical aspects of living on Mars - like gardening. Sending a bunch of dehydrated food over to Mars would be expensive and impractical (and unhealthy), so if people ever want to live on Mars, then they will be need to be able to make their own food. Making a garden bed using Mars soil, with Mars temperatures, wind and gravity, would be a little difficult, however - so this is where the Astrogarden comes in. The project is primarily an education and communication project right now, aiming to give information to kids and the public about what would be required to sustain people on Mars. However, it's also an ongoing research project. Check it out on Kickstarter here. I hope that you're all having a gorgeous day so far! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Lilac Stripes and Recording Your Dreams

Would it ruin these last few posts if I told you the main reason I took the photos all knees-up is because I fell down some stairs, hurt my ankle, and couldn't wear anything but giant comfy socks? Haha. Just *imagine* that I'm wearing some super cool lace-up creepers here, not fluffy pink bed socks.  I'm particularly in love with anything zebra-like lately, so these shorts from Sheinside are a welcome new addition to my wardrobe. They look great paired with a cropped shirt or cropped sweater of any kind. I can't wait to wear them together with some highly impractical shoes ;) blouse - c/o Romwe shorts - c/o Sheinside tights - c/o OASAP Enjoy this amazing video from ASAP science! Even though I'd already been introduced to most of the concepts in it, it still blew my mind! I hope you're all very very well! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr