The Life & Times of Hilzery.
After finishing school for dental assisting in Kitchener I decided on a drastic (and rather spontaneous) career change & bunkered down in the media arts sector of life! So far it's been a fantastic journey & I can't wait for what's to come!
ANYWAY, I'll be using this blog to primarily post up my photos, comics, projects, all that jazz.
*! If I snapped your photo at a bar, club, event, it is here! Just scroll away and find it!!!*
*This will be updated/more info will be put up soon. Thx for your patients*
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<3 Why I’m wearing purple & think you should too <3
“Hi,
So, by the time you see this note I’ll hopefully be dead. All I wanna say is it’s not your fault. Tell jackie, bryan, sonja, gen and shar, colton, kai, and tony & jess, I say bye. Mrs. Grundy- tell her thanks for everything shes done to help. Tell Brook to keep fighting for LGBTQ respect in the catholic school board. Tell Chantel exactly this- Iron Man, I wasn’t in diapers but it’s over now. I love you and stay strong…I’ll be watching & if you don’t I’ll haunt you ass!! /_\ Fisty man.Mom, you were great. You tried hard to accept me but you can’t and this wasn’t because of you, it’s a lot of different things.
I’m going to go now mom, I love you. Stay strong cause Teddy needs you, he’s your baby now so take care of him. I love you so much and I’m sorry you could no longer love me because of who I am. I don’t need you anymore so your burden is gone.
I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done.
-Hilary.”
It’s been almost 5 years since I wrote that note. I recently found it along with my hospital band when I was rummaging through my box of personal stuff & I still can’t read it without crying; even as I typed it out my hands were shaking.It’s hard to imagine that once upon a time I was sitting in my counsellors office telling her I knew I wouldn’t live to see my 17th birthday if this is how my life was going to continue. Because of one little sentence my whole life was turned upside down. I was no longer welcome in my home, no longer a daughter to my mother. I was an abomination in the eyes of my all loving Lord who I had spent my whole life dedicated to and being so involved with the church. I was alone in the world and couldn’t even believe in myself. My mother no longer loved me or acknowledged me as her daughter, I was no one and worthless, I had nothing, how could I believe?
When I was put in the youth psych ward I was cut off from all outside contact an my mother had control over my visitors because I was only 16. I saw no one. She was my only visitor and came to see me daily; the person I needed to be away from the most was able to taunt me and I couldn’t escape. When I got out of the hospital on a day pass I ODed again and landed myself back in the tiny 1 hallway ward with 10 rooms, 1 solitary confinement room, a common room, and a nurses office, with no escape. I was put on medication that made me gain 85 pounds in 5 months. I was now a disgusting abomination and could no longer look at myself in the mirror; I took a potato peeler to each one of my stretch marks. To punish myself while in the hospital I would take the staples from the magazines we had in the common room and dig them into my arm, I took the springs from the clicky pens and straightened them out pushing them under my finger nails because they were too weak to use to cut, I ordered extra salt packets with my meal so when I asked the nurses for ice to squeeze (one coping strategy your told to use) I could put the salt on the ice and burn my palms, inner arms, and inner thighs, and I would hold my hands under the tap with only the hot water on. I lived a hell on earth for years and I know my story compared to many is absolutely nothing but a scratch on the back but to me there was no greater struggle anyone could have been going through. I didn’t have hope and didn’t believe, yet some how I survived; Hope found it’s way to me even when I had none.
Today I wear purple for all those people and friends I’ve met in the hospital, shared my deepest secrets with in that little morning group circle and learned their secrets who didn’t make it and also for those that id make it. I wear purple for those who I didn’t know that have been taken away from our world, for those survivors I’ve never met, and for the anonymous person who struggles and suffers in silence daily.Its taken me almost 5 years to be able to share this tidbit of what I went through with all of you and there’s a lot more that I still can’t share but i write this because I love you, even though I don’t know you, because in some way I understand. To the person struggling, feeling alone, helpless, useless, and worthless; I promise you matter to me, I love you even though I’ve never met you & I believe in your fight even though you don’t believe in yourself, hope will find you. The struggles you are going through and will go through are what will make you a better person & it’s people like you and I who change this world and make it a better place for the future people like us. You are a hero and inspiration to all those that have come before you and will come after you. You are my all my personal hero’s and inspire me!
I promise you it’s worth sticking around because I know one day we will all change the world and we need your help. We all need to stick together; The world needs you even though you don’t think so yet.<3 -
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Smart Petri Dish Images Cells Using a Smartphone Camera and Legos
Despite all the huge advances in medical technology in the past couple centuries, petri dishes, one of the most crucial pieces of equipment, haven’t changed much at all. Now a grad student at Caltech has finally brought these flat-bottomed bowls into the 21st century.
The new device, dubbed ePetri, uses an imaging chip from a mobile phone camera, a smartphone and Lego blocks. The imaging chip acts as the petri dish in the traditional sense, holding the cell culture beneath a sheet of protective plastic. The square chip is placed inside a platform made of Legos, and an Android phone hooks in place on top. The phone’s LED screen is used as a scanning light source, illuminating the image sensor.
Smart Petri Dish A cell culture is placed on the image-sensor chip, while the phone’s LED screen is used as a scanning light source. The device is placed in an incubator with a wire running from the chip to a laptop outside the incubator.
Guoan Zheng/CaltechThe whole thing goes inside an incubator, and a cable connects to a computer outside, which reads the image sensor. This allows researchers to watch cell growth in real time — no extra cell transport, pipetting or external microscopes required. Watch a video below to see how well the system works.
Cell culture involves lots of cell transport, moving from incubators to microscope plates and back again. The process is time-consuming and laborious, so any processes that can automate cell culture would be a welcome advance. It also cuts down on contamination risks, explains Guoan Zheng, an electrical engineering grad student and lead author of the paper describing the ePetri.
The ePetri allows wide-field images of confluent cells, which are cells that grow tightly together. Other Caltech scientists have already put it to the test, according to a news release from the university: Biologist Michael Elowitz used it to observe embryonic stem cells. Stem cells differentiate in different ways, so a biologist looking through a microscope would only be looking at one small group, akin to wearing blinders. But the ePetri let Elowitz study stem cells on the entire device.
“It radically re-conceives the whole idea of what a light microscope is,” he said.
The team believes the ePetri could be used for labs-on-a-chip or other portable diagnostic devices, according to Caltech. Zheng and colleagues are working on a new self-contained version that includes a small incubator, which would be useful for diagnostic tests that would not require sending samples out to a lab.
The ePetri is described in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Colliding Nebulas
Abstract mixed media artwork by Archan Nair.
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Lomography Camera of the Day - Lomography Sprocket Rocket
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Friday photo tip: Stick your face where it doesn’t belong.
How else are you going to get that new angle?
Photo via Levi Maestro
(Source: ephe)
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[Image: From afar looks like an ordinary MTA service announcement, but look closer]
This is a smart poster. Picking up the graphic language of the MTA to draw people’s attention to a completely different message is brilliant design work. Hats off to whomever created these.
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I love this show!!
Perfect show is every perfect thing to ever be perfect.
![banquethall:
[Image: From afar looks like an ordinary MTA service announcement, but look closer]
This is a smart poster. Picking up the graphic language of the MTA to draw people’s attention to a completely different message is brilliant design work. Hats off to whomever created these.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lt14snBfWn1qcvwrgo1_500.jpg)
