beyond the break

Hacking at TechStars

2012-01-25T00:11:00.002-05:00

I recently changed jobs and I joined the TechStars incubator program in Boston as one of the "HackStars". This is all the result of a long story which started last year when I joined up with William Ho and created Stix in May 2010. And since then my life has drastically changed. We found out we got into TechStars right before New Years, after they decided that our company would not be a TechStars company, but they still wanted us as individual hackers but also as a company. So we get to work on HackStars half time and try to build our company, along with the help of all the same mentors and entrepreneurs the other TechStars companies have.

So here we are; today was the first day of TechStars. Some of us had been there for a few days or weeks already. And the rest of us were there since yesterday when we had our official HackStars orientation which wasn't really anything interesting. But today for all the companies, we got to hear Katie, Reed, and Aaron talk about their backgrounds, then all the companies got up and gave their elevator pitch.

Everyone is a genius. Especially Reed.

Well, more that the whole place has such a techie atmosphere that it practically makes you exude creativity. Just hearing about everyone's technology and knowing that they'd all been working on this to such an extent was a spur. but not everyone's elevator pitches were super fine tuned...i seriously think that our practice in bars and parties with Stix has made us more aware of what kind of content is good for capturing a random stranger's attention in 30 seconds, and we could really see what worked and what didn't in the other companies' pitches.

However, one thing Katie said during the session really resonated with me, and I could feel my understanding of the business increase, and I could feel myself learning entrepreneurship. That's the one moment when I suddenly felt like I was back in school again; like when I joined MIT and realized it was a way better place to be than Harvard, Princeton, or even my high school; when I joined taekwondo and realized that each practice was contributing something to my knowledge and physical ability; it was (almost) like joining Hogwarts where I'd actually willingly go to each lecture, because literally they were teaching us MAGIC.

Basically, Katie said that it was vitally important for everybody to give feedback. Initially I wanted to just listen to other people give feedback because it seemed they all knew what it was like to be in the startup business and what kind of feedback was good and useful to the guy giving the pitch. But then Katie got mad at us and said that it was vitally important for everyone to learn how to give feedback. And that it was important for a founder to know how to listen, because most people will just try to respond and give more info to an already overloaded audience. And finally, we must understand that when we give feedback we think we are right, but often we will be wrong. And that a founder must realize that of 6 pieces of advice, only two will be right and good for his company. And he has to be able to listen and process that feedback. For some reason this all resonated with me, with the history of trying to work with Stix feedback and beta users, and with our own limited experiences as founders.

Next, Reed gave a talk about precision question answering. It is exactly how it sounds. But when Reed gave an example of precision answering it sounded so much better. Some of the founders will constantly have trouble bringing their explanations into a form that everyone can understand; they have trouble stopping their explanation when it makes sense, without using buzzwords. Reed turned one description of a company into a simple yet captivating catchphrase that even the founders themselves ended up adopting it. And it really made me realize how much experience helps you simplify things...almost in the exact same way that the best poomsae actually makes a form look more simple, not more complex.

And finally tonight we had a mentor dinner, which was basically meet the mentors and eat leftover chinese food and drink beer and wine. It's great that the TechStars office is about 3 blocks from my house because we were there until 10:30 and basically it felt like I could stay as late as I wanted at a local party, and just walk home and crash whenever I needed. But also we met a few random mentors, grizzled veterans of business and entrepreneurship, and a few got quite a good laugh and reaction out of Stix. Hopefully we will be able to sell our product as much as any other TechStars company, and get some incredible feedback from them as well.

Finally, a few faux pas came out of my mouth that night, like saying that our audience is geared toward a younger female demographic in this way: "We need more 12 year old girls." And in comparing our app to instagram, something to the point of "Instagram makes your photos artsy. We make your photos fartsy." That's the new slogan of Stix.

60 fps and the curse of adobe

2011-12-08T02:56:00.004-05:00

This post is somewhat of a reference for myself, in case i forget how to do it in the future.

I have been making a film/music video, and in it I needed someone to film stuff for me remotely, ie I wouldn't be able to film them with my Nikon D90, so they'd send me this footage. The possibility of slightly different formats didn't seem so daunting at first. But when I received the footage, it became a matter of how to get Adobe Premiere and After Effects to give me the right footage from these two formats. It was a pain to figure out the order to work the footage.

First, I wanted to convert my friend's footage to nice black/white. She filmed it with a flip, which was 1280x720 at 60 fps. My D90 films at 1280 by 720 at 24 fps. (apparently the slower 24 fps is more suitable for classic film.) My Adobe premiere settings were all set for the D90 imported video, and obviously if i imported the raw flip footage it would be choppy and have lots of dropped frames.

So far, I've only figured out how to convert frame rate. I created a new Premiere project which was a 60 fps, 1280x720 format. I encoded it to raw (not H.264) video at 24 fps. This was color footage that would load into the project where the other D90 videos were being edited.

Adobe Premiere: Project for import
Sequence Settings - Preset saved as "60fps to 24fps conversion import"
New Sequence->General
Editing mode: Desktop
Timebase: 60.00 frames/sec
Video: 1280 horizontal 720 vertical
Pixel aspect: 16:9
Display format: 60 fps
Audio: 32000 Hz
Preview file format: Microsoft AVI
Codec: DV 24p advanced

For export:
File->Export->Media
Format: Uncompressed Microsoft AVI
Preset: Custom
Video codec: V210
Quality: 100
Width: 1280
Height: 720
Framerate: 24
Field: Progressive
Aspect: D1/DV NTSC 16:9

After the 60 fps media has been converted to 24fps progressive, import the new video into the project of Adobe premiere where it will be used in editing. This time, link it with aftereffects by selecting Replace Footage with After Effects Composition. It will open a new after effects project in which you can add an effect, such as grayscale. To render in Premiere, firstyou can play the video back and forth slowly, basically to let it all render into ram. This I mean using the mouse and adding the clip onto a sequence timeline, then playing that chunk of the sequence back and forth until no more skipped frames appear. My guess is either this is generating a preview that is smooth, or it is rendering each frame for the 24fps needed for output.

Tomorrow I will attempt to edit all the frames.

Things a man should learn

2011-11-29T00:04:00.004-05:00

More and more I've come to understand what it is to be a man. Well, not really in the sense of a movie star super hero should be able to all these things, but i think there are a few things that i've personally really wanted to do, and realize that not many people in the modern world can do it. so maybe we look back on our forefathers and say that's how real men lived.

So the things I have learned or am attempting to learn to do:

1. Ride a motorcycle
2. Shoot a gun
3. Shave with a straight razor
4. Drink whiskey
5. ?
6. Become clint eastwood
7. Profit!

***

Surprisingly relevant: from reddit

Travels, done

2011-11-29T00:01:00.003-05:00

I totally didn't post about each place I travelled to. But a brief summary is this:

San Francisco - Sept 3
North Carolina
Bermuda - Cancelled! Due to passport expiration
Davis
DC (for work)
North Carolina - 11 pm Monday night to 5 AM tuesday night - got a haircut
Chicago
San Diego - November 19

the new science and math

2011-10-05T15:35:00.003-04:00

more and more i'm beginning to think that being a nerd in high school is not enough. being good at science and math is no longer the ticket into a good college and future. parents, sending your kid to science summer camp? making them do research projects? making them practice math competitions? not enough. the new math and science whiz is entrepreneurship.

NFTE launch teaches kids to bring products to market in 4 days

Used to be we'd look up to the kids with high SAT scores. (In my geeky world, that is.) and those who were good at "extracurriculars" would get into the ivys. But that might not even matter anymore if your kid really knows how to think, and make their ideas real. instead of just memorizing the right answers, they create the right answers out of nothing.

and that's why my poor children are going to have to bear piano lessons, tennis lessons, math and science competitions, as well as learn business savvy.

San Francisco

2011-10-05T10:56:00.007-04:00

Flew in on JetBlue on Friday, and Christine and I spent the night at Conor's house, which has an awesome floor to ceiling bay window view from the 27th floor. His pull out couch/bed was surprisingly comfortable, and might even convince me to actually buy a pull out sofa for my basement instead of using a futon.

We went to Off the Grid for dessert after some sushi in the city. I have a ton of pictures but they are all on my iPhone app which saves photos but doesn't make them available to your normal phone, so i'll just have to describe them: creme brulees, banana fritters, spicy mini tacos, a local IPA. And apparently this happens EVERY WEEK.

We had breakfast at Tartine, which was crowded as usual, but Conor took us to a nice picnic spot on the Missions commons somewhere, and we sat on his very useful waterproof picnic blanket. He has a knack for picking out places with views and nice grassy areas. The night before, we drove straight to the Twin Peaks where there was an amazing panoramic view of the city, from the waterfront to the mountains. It was dark though so I didn't get any pictures. And it was a warm SF night, so we only left shivering a little bit when the fog rolled in.

On Sunday, Christine and I went spontaneous house hunting when we saw a sign for some availability near the pier. We looked at two units, each priced about $650k which was surprisingly cheap for an area like that. The first one was amazing and had a private roofdeck, and basically screamed bachelor pad and private entertainment. We were able to take some photos from the second one because the realtor, understanding that we weren't really able to buy his houses, was happy to let us just wander and look at the unit ourselves.

Later, we went to the area around Fisherman's Wharf, and then to Ghiradelli Square, because I was insistent on revisiting my favorite spots from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. We had bread bowl soup at Boudin, then delicious mocha from Ghiradelli. The best thing of all was finding parking right at the entrance of the square at the base of the hill, with 1 hour still left on it. That's usually what makes my day at any given touristy spot, in addition to the rest of the attractions.

JetBlue all you can fly pass

2011-09-19T14:38:00.002-04:00

I purchased the JetBlue Boston Blue Pass in August. Basically, it gives me a free pass to fly through any of JetBlue's Boston based routes through November 22, as long as there's a flight available. This is actually an amazing deal, and I've already begun to take advantage of it.

On Sept 3, I traveled back from Sacramento, CA where I attended my cousin's wedding and also visited Christine. (We had already booked a flight there so that leg didn't save me any money).

On Sept 17, I took a day trip to Raleigh, NC to visit my parents and visit Nathan and Erica. Day trips to NC are ok because it's only a 2 hour flight. It could literally like I go home for dinner then come back the next morning.

So from now on there's going to be a bit of vacationing, for a few weekends at least until I get tired. I'll try to keep a photo log here, and when my iphone app is developed I'll try to add tags of all the locations as well.

Up next: San Francisco, the Caribbean, and Las Vegas.

tech hipsters

2011-06-22T12:38:00.004-04:00

i got the overwhelming sense this morning that there's a gradient of how hip you are in tech. in hindsight that's almost the meaning of tech, because being recent on technology basically defines you as a hipster. but even within that community there's the hipsters who are first adopters, and there are the slower tech giants, and the all encompassing tech consuming masses that follow trends.

if you look historically at how the internet generation came to be, you'd see that there has always been a trend of cutting edge technology being slowly adopted, then suddenly becoming mainstream, then become obsolete and lagging. Apple and Microsoft were hipsters in their time especially compared to established behemoths like IBM. Google was and still is the hotshot, but their hipster rep is going quickly as they become the new evil empire Microsoft became after Windows XP. The iPhone was a sign that you were a hipster both in tech and music, and for the longest time I resisted it. But i'm a late adopter. Nowadays droid is the new thing, and even that is becoming mainstream too quickly for owners to really be early adopters.

We move on to the world of social networking. Facebook and Twitter, with their lack of business models but meteoric rise in popularity, have matured to become platforms for other businesses that are based purely on facebook and twitter apps. Foursquare, which resides solely on the formerly hipster crowd of smartphone users, is now a platform upon which more forward thinking developers build their newest apps. And everyone is trying to push into the crowded apps startup world, so that there are even apps that characterize you and build a social network based on which apps you possess. In other words, whether you're an apps hipster and at the front line, or whether you're downloading and running something because your grandfather told you that all of his friends at the retirement center use on their iphones.

Where do we go from here? What's the newest level of hipsterness, that will be built on the networks of apps that run on facebook that run through google's servers that run on a windows or mac OS that run on a PC or Apple machine?

speaking of hipsters

har har

gadgets galore

2011-04-25T23:39:00.002-04:00

today, april 25th, is the day where i catch up on technology.

first, christine bought me a casio fh100 slowmotion capable camera. it records 640x480 at 120fps, which is definitely enough to capture sports and make those sweet slow motion videos for highlights videos. it is relatively hi-def at that speed as well. for higher definition video it does take 30fps at 720p which is way more than my last documentary, so it's going to be an upgrade for my videography in many ways. i spent a little bit of time recording my cat chasing a laser pointer: Bella.

next, I bought an iphone and finally upgraded my service, so now i am part of the "smart phone crowd" despite being ok with not having internet and gps on my phone for years. but it's for a iphone app project i am working on and my itouch didn't have a camera, so why not. time to join the modern crowd.

and i am doing all of this development on a mac mini loaned to me by my colleague on the project. i have so many new toys to play with.

bike repair with craigslist

2011-03-29T20:39:00.003-04:00

i just bought a bike frame on craigslist, from a guy who's becoming my buddy because i've purchased parts from him in the past so this time we recognized each other in the first email exchange.

this time i got a frame and while i was there, we decided to basically put it together more or less. and i learned a bunch of things. this post is kind of a note for myself for reference.

frame size: 49 cm (about 19") is measured from the top of the seat post to the top of the bottom bracket.

seat post - 26.6 diameter (the old 26.7 was too tight)

rear wheel has a single speed gear with spacers on it. it was the kind that looks like this: and spacers are needed to adjust the position of the gear so that the chain is straight.

crank tool: ccp-2 needed to pull out cranks. spin the nut as low as possible, insert into the threads by the crank, and spin the tool so that the nub at the end pushes into the bike, so the tool basically pulls the bike out.

inserting cranks: just use a socket wrench to tighten the nuts as tightly as possible.

chainring: single speed, just a single metal disc that has 5 openings for chainring bolts. bolts onto 5 pronged crank

basically he put these things loosely together for me so i have a good idea how to install the cranks and gears in a bike. i still have to find a headset and handlebars, and the seatpost.

and a coincidence - i've been reading up on iphone programming and before leaving had opened the addison wesley iphone programming - the big nerd ranch guide on my computer. and just now i close it but notice that the picture is of an open bottom bracket in the bike, similar to the ones i was looking at today on craigslist.

spring

2011-03-27T18:49:00.003-04:00

it's not quite the right temperature yet but today was like a spring sunday. this was on the schedule:

house renovation (demolition to access ceiling joists)
photography (organize photo365 and other photos)
bike repair (degrease and clean axle, reinstall bearings)
motorcycle (took it out of storage and rode down memorial drive)
beer brewing (boil hops and prepare wheat ale)

the temperature was like 40 degrees F but the ride was actually pretty nice. crisp, not chilly, and full of sun.

soundtracks

2011-02-09T23:57:00.003-05:00

for my own reference, but i can see a new taekwondo video in the near future if these inspire me enough.

i'm looking for a song not necessarily for a dramatic fight scene, chase, or action montage, but where there's some sort of emotional growth or outburst, or when someone makes a speech that causes someone else to realize something. imagine a zoom into someone's face or eyes as someone else is talking in the background.

i'm probably also going to need a high speed (for slomo) camera.

movie nights

2011-02-09T11:07:00.007-05:00

after playing the mustache game a few times and reintroducing foot fist way and black dynamite to the club, i've decided that it's high time we get back to the classics. some of which i haven't seen in a long time, or ever. we really need to watch cult classics and 80's movies, some of which are really bad, some of which are really good.

off the top of my head, i want to have a movie night for:

teenage mutant ninja turtles
princess bride
bill and ted's excellent adventure
back to the future
goonies
space balls
ghost busters
airplane!
monty python series
big trouble in little china
mad max
gremlins
the dark crystal

ah, to go back to the days when i was 8 and watching saturday afternoon movies! and when most of my friends were like 2 or 3...

snow

2011-02-03T00:44:00.002-05:00

it is groundhog's day, and we have had our fourth (?) snowstorm of the winter. the first one was christmas, and i got back to NC in time to miss it. then there was another day when lincoln labs closed. then recently when lincoln closed early, and today when lincoln closed completely. except today, there was mostly rain, which made the streets slushy, the snow piles dense, and everything miserable, in general.

driving a stick shift in boston during a snow emergency is very stress inducing. mainly it's because people are all driving slowly and i have to really test my understanding of a clutch and first gear. but there were a few instances of trying to drive uphill from standstill, or trying to reverse into a parking spot half covered in snow, or driving through a huge puddle while going decently fast. i've decided that although manuals are fun, eventually i want a fully automatic electric/hybrid, and i want to move out of boston.

but, that being said, it's amazing to see piles of snow higher than the cars parked next to them, higher than the people walking behind them on the sidewalk. and if it weren't so grimy and cold, i'd be out there because there must be some great photos to be taken of boston winter storm of 2011.

demo video

2011-02-02T22:12:00.001-05:00

just a link to my demo video:

text twist

2011-01-25T13:35:00.002-05:00

i've been playing alot of text twist online and it just occurred to me that ideas are kind of like those elusive 5 letter words in the game. sometimes you just have no idea what the answer is. but with a scramble and a different alignment of the elements (letters, technologies, whatever) that you already have, sometimes a completely new idea or application will just leap out at you. and it's so crystal clear that it's hard to see how you simply could not piece it together before. i find myself needing a scramble so often because i'll always hear about some new invention or web technology and be like "damn it's so obvious, why couldnt i have thought of it before and made a fortune on it?"

reno

2011-01-15T03:31:00.003-05:00

i'm in reno, in a room of my own in a 2 bed suite (christine's with her parents in the other room) and scrolling around on tv - i havent watched food network, south park, or spike tv in a long time, but i hit up some music channels instead:

starting the year

2011-01-03T10:08:00.002-05:00

today i go back to work and i'm looking for signs that the year will be awesome or shit. well, it's hard to say because it's been such a mix. my milk spilled completely from its container despite precautions to keep it upright, and i spent about 15 minutes in the bathroom washing my workout clothes and underwear in the sink while other guys peed in the urinals behind me. and as i reached down to sqeeze out the water the sink soap dispenser spooged on my sleeve three times. but, some nice guy brought a bunch of donuts and left them sitting around for people in the atrium, and dan brought in cookies. so breakfast was not lost. i forgot my password (really??) and got locked out of my login, but as a result i was able to implement a newer and cooler password. we'll keep count for the rest of the day.

thoughts

2010-12-22T01:55:00.003-05:00

two pieces of hilarity, and one story to completely sober you up.

the last two or three nights have been great. i think i like the holidays most because the people who are in boston are forced to create their own sense of family and togetherness. for most of us, home is somewhere else, and sometimes going home for the holidays is like leaving our real home. similarly, when others leave to go home, we're left here in boston to find someone to be family. and to get mightily drunk with.

Monday

yesterday i met up with one of my best friends from high school, george. we had grown apart a bit in college after going to different schools. and although he did come and attend MIT (a goal for both of us as innocent high schoolers) we never did get to hang out much, and despite several high school friends now living in the boston area, i had lost touch with that aspect of my life. but we did finally get together (although under worse circumstances) and it was still great.

i joined george and his wife and coworkers for their 9th day of the 12 drinking days of christmas. we went to the highly pretentious liberty hotel, where the restaurant "clink" failed to serve us satisfactory food but didnt seem to mind charging for it. so when we left we headed straight to the closest, divyest bar on charles st, and with no one else inside but us we proceeded to order the cheapest beers and play all their arcade games. and that's when we started having fun. i spent about $2.50 for a pint and about $5 on games each round. there was a boxing strength game, and after a few sincere punches we all started trying to figure out how it worked - whether it was an accelerometer in the base, or a force sensor in the bag itself, and we spent a dollar just testing different ways to move the bag and seeing if it registered. we got 5 out of 1000 for each of those tests.

then we played a basketball shooting game, and after going head to head for about a minute we realized that one side gets 80 seconds and the other side gets 40 seconds, yet megan (George's wife) still got 45 points in those 40 seconds to mark's 48 points in 80 seconds. he was excited that he beat her before he realized that she had half the time. at some point we wanted to power cycle the machines to see if we could reset the timers. but the most money of the night was dropped on Terminator Salvation - we had a great system of switching off when one person died, and a drinking game based on killing streaks. at the end of the night as the bar started to fill up, we had gotten enough of the cheap miller high life and gotten our fill of bar video entertainment.

Tuesday

tonight, after CW practice, we all went out to middle east to have a drink/food with mike bartending. the crowd was jay, his dad, fredson, amy, dan, ana, cwilli and me. as we're sitting there eating hummus some very very drunk, skinny white guy stumbles and crashes into our table. so we're like hey are you ok? he starts muttering something about islam and was being a bit belligerent, so we told him "have a good night" ie leave now. as he's walking toward the door, he turns back, puts his hands down on the table and leans over me and cwilli, and starts muttering "have a good night? have a cheap night!" of course it makes no sense what he was saying but he kept looking back and forth at us, and i really expected him to start swinging. but i have to say at this moment i was the least scared i have every been in my life, even compared to a situation where nothing threatening is happening. because at the table there were probably about 50 total black belt degrees, and about a thousand pounds of muscle, and this guy is trying to start a fight totally drunk off his ass.

but basically the guy gets thrown out, and keeps trying to get back in the bar, but was barred from reentry by various people. i really wish he had a sober friend who would tell him in the morning, "look, you really picked the wrong people to start a fight." and it was a bit of excitement but i realize that our community is full of very dependable people.

final thoughts

so i guess the sobering thing is that this holiday season i met up with george because one of our friends from high school just had a terrible stroke and ended up in the hospital. we visited him but basically he was no longer going to live without life support. today i found out that he had passed. it's a terrible thing to happen, especially with the holidays. and it's cliche to say it but these things happen so quickly and without warning that it is making me appreciate every kick, every drink, every conversation with people in my life now. and maybe i'm even beginning to reconnect with my own past, which kind of disappeared when i moved away from nc, but now to find out that not only george and chris were in boston, but many others from my high school class are now in boston. maybe i should make more of an effort to see them, to get to know them, not as the high school stereotypes we all were but as real people now. because i've come to appreciate the real people in the world.

goodbye chris miller, we'll all keep living for you

music

2010-12-06T14:12:00.004-05:00

started listening to a tight jazz playlist on youtube and it's slowly morphing...here's some cool stuff

from the jazzanova mix

bike mania

2010-12-06T11:37:00.004-05:00

edit: yea...posted at work so i'll have to take pics when i get home

i did a bit more work on my huff puff bike this weekend, as christine puts it (my motorcycle is my vroom vroom bike). i took out my old schwinn roadbike, which is old, scratched up, the seat post is permanently rusted inside the frame, the pedals and gears are a but unsmooth and will probably break sometime in the future. but recently i cut the handlebars into bullhorns (see tutorial here) and suddenly the bike is highly awesome. i'm not sure what the exact appeal of bullhorns and single speed bikes are, but they're popular in urban areas like cambridge/boston, and i've long jumped on the bandwagon.

this week i finally got in touch with a few fellow bikers on craigslist and met up with a guy who sold me another set of drop handlebars and a set of road tires. i love meeting people and talking about bikes with them. this guy rode up on his track bike which was clean and basically simple to the point of being almost only a frame. he carried the tires, tubes, and apparently enough parts to almost make a complete bike, on his back, because he had gone around selling parts on craigslist all weekend. we chatted about track wheels vs traditional road wheels and how to use wd-40 to clean handle bar tape gunk.

so then i went home and put together the wheels for my old scwhinn revival. i used to have a set of thicker (>23 mm) wheels whose bearings were also worn and i had removed them to try to clean...but now i have a set of thinner wheels i had bought, a set of tires i just bought, and when i put them together they were a nice, sleek setup. so i had the bullhorns on the frame already, i put the two wheels on, and installed an old noseless bike saddle that i had spray painted because it was shockingly pink before. i had one bike chain left, and it happened to be a single speed which fit pretty well - i had to take off 6 links for it to fit on the largest gear in front and the 2nd smallest on the rear wheel.

i took the bike for a spin despite not having brakes. it starts a bit slow but it seems to have a good top speed because of the gear ratio - my other single speed has a bit too low of a gear ratio so i have to pedal a bit too fast. and thus my old heavy schwinn is on its way to becoming a cool cambridge city bike with bullhorn handles, a noseless saddle, and sleek wheels. can't wait to ride this one around.

new office

2010-11-29T11:58:00.004-05:00

We just moved to a new office this week, and we got all kinds of fancy new modular furniture. so one of the things that is possible with this stuff is that the desks can be raised and i can set myself up with a standing height keyboard and monitor. apparently that's alot healthier for you than sitting at a desk 8 hours a day. Although most of these studies seem a bit exaggerated. however, why not give it a try? it might keep me from falling asleep sometime. next step: treadmill desk.

black friday my ass

2010-11-26T08:52:00.002-05:00

i've decided that black friday is a complete waste of time.

yesterday i was quite insomniac in the evening, despite a large and pretty heavy thanksgiving dinner. i played dragon age late into the night and soon i decided it might be worthwhile to stay up to see what black friday deals are available, even though i had sworn i wouldn't do any of this stupid consumerist nonsense this year.

i remembered the one thing i did kind of want - a dremel set - and home depot would be a good place to go because i needed to return some other stuff and buy more plastic wrap for the windows. so i looked it up, there seemed to be a deal, and off i set toward home depot.

but first i wanted to check on microcenter - they have some sort of deal for a GPS system, who doesnt? but compared to amazon, this garmin nuvi seemed to be a pretty good deal in store. so i drive there first, which is the complete opposite direction of home depot.

there is a line of people waiting outside, and in my mind i think maybe microcenter opens at 8 (it's only 7) and i laugh at the fools standing outside in the rain waiting for the doorbuster. then i drive to home depot, get a nice dremel for $20 less than its usual price, and start heading back. it's now 7:45 as i pull into microcenter. the line's a bit longer but not appreciably. and i get tired. so i decide to take a nap until 8:05, just to let everyone bust in the door, do their thing, and if there's still a nuvi left i'd take it.

at 8:05 there's still a line that's not moving. i take another 10 minute nap. by this time i am dreaming of all sorts of weird things in my car. when i wake up, i notice the same people in line, but one or two people are exiting the store. what, they let you in one by one to buy what you want, then force everyone else to wait outside, prioritized by who is the most greedy and willing to get up at ungodly hours to buy temporary happiness in the form of portable electronics? yes.

some part of me, whether it's pride, laziness, or sleep deprivation, forbade me to enter that charade. i was already ashamed of having come to microcenter twice after declaring to everyone at thanksgiving dinner that i would not be up at 5 to shop. i drove home, happy to be free of this consumer culture that plagues america. i went home happily with a dremel set.

of course, now that i'm on the computer i went back onto amazon...they have an online black friday special as well...so i got a different gps system for a bit less, and it's probably the same anyways. so yes, i did succumb to the greed of america. but i did it in a modern way.

motorcycle tales 2

2010-11-26T08:45:00.004-05:00

recently i was able to finish my motorcycle light installation. this is kind of how it went.

after taking out the old lights, reusing the wires that connected to the motorcycle by twisting the wires together with the new light fixtures, and using a 1003 bulb instead of a 1073 bulb, it was time to make things permanent. i bought a soldering iron but it didnt have a stand (i later saw the actual stand) so i used what i could - an empty wine bottle makes a the perfect classy soldering iron stand.

after soldering, the lights were in their fixtures and ready to be inserted. I used a dremel that the bus driver from work loaned me. dremels are useful tools. i was able to cut a small hole in the fairing of the motorcycle where the old lights attached, without doing too much damage. and finally, the lights just slid right in, the base plate fit well, and the wires clipped right into the old attachments inside the bike.

my stomach as a child

2010-11-18T12:37:00.002-05:00

i was browsing reddit today and randomly came across a post reminding us how this got us all free pizzas as a child:

it randomly brought up a memory of when i was in elementary school. there was a program (school district sponsored?) where if you get a good report card, straight A's or gold stars or whatever they give you in elementary school, you could take the report card to redeem a personal size pizza.

we did it once. we took the report card to the local Kmart. and turns out you get the pizza from the layaway department, the place in the way back of the store where returns are processed. i wonder why they have pizzas there too. but i got my personal pizza, it was a small, circular cheese pizza, cut into four slices. i guess i was expecting one of the gooey cheese and pepperoni pizzas you see in ninja turtles. but oh well, it was free food, and we were a chinese immigrant family.

but maybe it was my lactose intolerance, but i ate a quarter of that pizza on the way back, and immediately felt sick, and threw up all the pizza in the car. i never finished the rest of the pizza, and never got straight A's again. well, not as far as Kmart could tell.

corner office conversations

2010-11-17T15:15:00.003-05:00

I have my office on kind of a corner in the hallway - where it starts to change direction. for some reason, that makes snippets of conversation much easier to hear. as people come around the corner, their conversation instantly becomes audible, then almost instantly goes out of range, giving me a short window to listen in at the most strange moments.

overheard today:

A: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
B: well, i guess so...
A: i mean, it's all a concept.
B: well is it new bacon, or is it "been in your mouth" bacon?
A: oh, of course it's new bacon!
B: ok then of course that makes sense.

woot!

2010-11-04T19:17:00.003-04:00

last week, i officially successfully got my first bag of crap on woot.com. w00t! after a week of waiting, and receiving a ton of other things (a monopod from woot, motorcycle pants, a package of amazon food, and a soldering iron, see previous post) i finally got the bag of crap today.

and it came in a huge box that weighed 4.1 lbs so from the start i knew it wasn't a big screen tv or an xbox 360. but all i wanted was for there to be NO screaming woot monkey. those things suck ass.

and the official stash is:

3 garden sprinkler stakes (looked like sais to me)
3 hdmi cable bending connectors
1 pga golf hat
1 pga bookbag
1 carabiner camera - pink with flowers
1 citronella mosquito repellant lamp

kinda cool - no real bags of crap.

motorcycle tales

2010-11-04T19:02:00.007-04:00

i received a package recently that was sent from thailand with very unreadable markings on it. i was scared for a second then i realized i had purchased some flush mount turn signals from a company called asiancycle.com, and it turns out they are located in thailand and ship direct. so here's the blog story documenting my first attempt at modding my bike with aftermarket products.

near the end of summer (september) i was riding down broadway and had a small accident. it was basically caused by the lack of paving on prospect which was a huge mess at that time, a little girl on a tricycle crossing the road, and a left turn. i remember thinking this is a typical accident situation, when my eyes met hers, then her dad's eyes, and i knew i had to stop and risk the skid. my back wheel slid out and i remember looking sideways at the road and my bike handle bars, and thinking SHIT my light broke off.

after the father helped me pick up my bike i rode off again after taking some pictures...but those are pretty useless so i never did anything with them. my knee kind of hurt and had a small scrape through the jeans, but my shoulder and arm were perfectly fine. i didn't even notice that the armored jacket had gotten scratched up until later...thank goodness for shoulder pads.

so i took the opportunity to replace my turn signals with flush mounts, which i feel might look better, and definitely won't snap off next time i take a fall. they came a few weeks after i ordered them, with everything except instructions.

then i had to search around to figure out how to install them. fortunately, keithinasia is a very popular seller and provider of kawasaki ninja 250 lights, and there are many forums where people have complete instructions on how to install his flush mounts. so the only thing i could do was go in, and try to pull out the lights.

the light fixture itself was attached by a few screws which came out easily. the wiring kind of plugged into another pair of wires that were inside the motorcycle frame and harder to get to, but they were pretty easy to pop out of the connector. however, i found out that the original bulb does not fit inside the flush mount enclosure - it was a 1073 bulb, and i had to go to advance autoparts to buy a similar but smaller bulb (1003). however, later i plugged it in and it works just as well, and is bright enough.

i would use the old fixture's wire connectors by cutting them off and soldering it to the wires on the flush mount fixture. i plugged everything in and hooked it back into the motorcycle and the turn signals seem to work fine. the next step would be to actually cut the fairing on the motorcycle so the back of the flush mount fits...because if the front is flush, all the crap sticks out the back. that's to come later.

food cravings

2010-10-29T11:14:00.001-04:00

i want ramen (the college kind, with spam and an egg...thanks to silly facebook posts).
i want wonton soup.

on motorcycles and other mounts

2010-10-25T10:21:00.002-04:00

today i realized why some motorcycles are cool to ride. one thing that makes a sport bike cool is the way the tail rises up, and the back wheel is almost not connected to the rest of the body. you look at this bike and you think wow it's like riding on something that's flying in the air.

then i realized maybe a part of me has always wanted to be in those cartoons/fairytales where you can ride a flying insect.

maybe i should call my motorcycle dragonfly from now on.

fall sunday night

2010-10-03T23:27:00.002-04:00

it's chilly again. mainly it's the feeling that the weather is changing again and another year is truly passing. somehow this year i feel it sharper than before - it's like i could pinpoint the moment my windows started being chilly instead of breezy. this past week it started getting cold in the mornings and today was the first of many where it is harder to get out of bed than usual because it's so cold outside of my blankets. i ride around and there's a shuffle of leaves and crunching acorns under my wheels, and my hands become ice cold from not wearing gloves while biking. maybe the fickle boston weather will bring us some heat again. but it's the first real taste of the crisp air all day long, and the first real need of my peacoat and beanie. it is definitely fall.

this kid can play

2010-09-29T14:08:00.002-04:00

i want to enjoy something as much as he does. i get the same look of pleasure on my face as he does when i surf a good wave...that's about the only time i can think of that.

dansons sous la plue

2010-09-17T11:37:00.000-04:00

edit: it was removed from youtube but another version (official?) now exists.

rollercoaster

2010-09-14T09:49:00.004-04:00

i have a fear of roller coasters. and i will never go on one. i can simply experience it from the poor schmucks who get tricked into them for the first time by their so called friends. for example, this guy.

this is exactly what i would be like but worse, i'd be freaking the shit out and tearing out my hair in the first 5 seconds of the clip. "are we done? are we done?" apparently that was a gameshow. a cruel, cruel gameshow.

getting ready for work

2010-09-12T15:38:00.001-04:00

from a friend on facebook:

this is just for my reference, so i can get up in the mornings and be super efficient.

herding cats at ikea

2010-09-10T12:50:00.001-04:00

i love ikea. i like cats.

my very first ikea hack

2010-09-09T18:57:00.004-04:00

I bought a Lilliberg 3 seater sofa frame by itself because it was on sale. I had an old metal futon that was falling apart so I used the hinges on the futon to turn the Lilliberg sofa into a Lilliberg futon.

First I shortened the legs by a few inches because I like lower furniture but also the futon hinges would add a few inches to the height of the sofa.

The futon back and bottom needed a wooden frame to be attached to the hinges. I cut four pieces of 2x3 and attached them to the hinge using various L brackets I had laying around. Then, with the frame extended, I drilled holes to attach the hinges to the futon frame so that the 2x3 supports would lie flat on the lengthwise beams.

I also added 1x3s lengthwise to support the middle of the futon. These were attached with small brackets to the 2x3 supports. The Lilliberg back and bottom come attached with several small metal hinges so I removed those so that each piece was independent and could be screwed to the wooden frame of 2x3 and 1x3s.

The futon folds up very easily and is nice and solid because of the additional wooden frame. Lowering the Lilliberg by cutting off a few inches made the sofa the right size because I added extra padding. I topped it with two regular futon mattresses which were a bit longer than the Lilliberg but I could get it in there by scrunching the mattress.

Submitted to Ikeahacker.blogspot.com too!

MIT Sport TKD: the docudrama

2010-08-31T01:29:00.002-04:00

allright. i am tasked to produced the dvd for the 10th year MIT Sport TKD Anniversary/alumni reunion. Which is great because it will finally force me to make the documentary that i've wanted to make for years. since 2003. and 2004. and then 2005 when we officially became a dynasty (three years of the cup). then in 2006 i got old and bored and tired so it started to drift and I realized that I would never make this documentary, about how we started up and became amazing and had so many achievements.

and now the script is done.

as far as my filmmaker's resume goes - i actually have quite the list of imbd accomplishments - "I Am Bobby Director", not imdb.com. my first genius works came as a high school junior or senior in ap environmental science class and english class. we made some film about culling the deer population but made it ironic in that the deer were culling the human population. i also made a political ad for simon in lord of the flies, in which special camera effects involved stop and go recording, a paper dove hanging on a string, and flour thrown to imitate smoke from an explosion. that was what jump started my film career.

my masterpiece came in senior year with the mystery "duck and run" whose theme song was the same title by three doors down. in it i realized that music made everything better, and script writing and camera special effects always happens best initially so FILM THE MOST IMPORTANT SCENES FIRST. otherwise you lose patience and the ending is just a hack. we actually had a premier for the movie - at my friend's house, with me wearing a black shirt and black tie and being as hollywood as i could possibly be while being from north carolina.

and since then, as a has been, i've found myself exploring more creative media - music videos. and recently i've looked back on some of the work and there have been some really good highlights work...and some very repetitive work. you can tell that the first one in the year is great, then i learn to follow the formula so closely that later tournaments are not served justice. but there are several good ones that i am very proud of. i think those were made just so my 80 gb harddrive could be freed up for more footage.

oh yes, i forgot about the martial arts movie we made in the MAC courts. conor, erica, i've forgotten completely about that and will not mention it again.

so now with a million small projects still on my mind (WUTC video, poomse video), i have given myself to the task of this documentary. because honestly if I finish it, I can die a happy man. and i think that i'd be able to do anything else i want afterwards.

so look forward to a great two part film about MIT Sport Taekwondo. as seen from bobby's eyes, but you'd never really know that.

motorcycle

2010-08-27T18:39:00.002-04:00

paint master

2010-08-24T08:36:00.002-04:00

last night i pulled off a feat worthy of being featured on a TLC or HGTV house flipping show. actually more like some cooking show where they give you a bunch of random ingredients and say GO! and you have 2 hours to accomplish something.

here's the back story: I bought a nice light white paint/primer for my renovated room. except i calculated the square footage wrong (and the first layer has to be thick) so I ran out of paint. Later i brought the can back to the store to buy a second can...but somehow the color they gave me was completely off. some poor sap out there is going to have a nice white ceiling for his nice reddish grey den. but since i had someone moving in, i had to paint the ceiling. it was at least a coat of primer.

i had to redo some of the seams in the living room because of unrelated taping issues (well, related in that i'm a n00b at renovations) so i needed wall paint as well as ceiling paint to cover up the corners. fortunately the previous owner of the house had done some work as well, and had about 10 half used cans of paint left in the basement. three of those were decent, light colored white paints, so i decided what the heck, i can get two full cans of a soft white from these three cans of bluish white and very white, and greyish red. (some of the paint had rust flakes in them too.) and after an iterative mixing procedure done very precariously over the tarp in the room, i did have two full cans of a color that almost came out like the existing wall color. in the right lighting (atmospheric mood lighting) of the room you can't tell.

but the important thing is that i have more than enough paint to finish the wall and ceiling, and maybe even repaint my hallway. and i got rid of some old paint. THAT should go on ikeahacker.

extended education

2010-08-21T22:59:00.002-04:00

I attended one day of motorcycle school today. I went to bed at 1 and got up at 6, with several intermittent (3:30, 4, 4:15AM) waking and checking my clock moments. I didn't want to miss another learning opportunity in my life. More than that, I didn't want to forfeit the $275 I choked up for yet another hobby that I hope I will have time for.

That's when I realized that here was another one of my recent stints sitting in classrooms listening to some craftsman, artisan, or professional who has gotten so good at his trade that he can get paid teaching it to others. But I love to take classes to learn the proper way to do things - it's like a woman collecting shoes that she never ends up wearing. And it's just another hobby that will eventually get hung into my closet, after I shell out a few more hundred bucks for accessories to go with it. Will I ever use these adult education seminars? Do we get the choice to take more classes because finally, as an adult, we can take classes for skills we enjoy rather than skills needed to get a job?

The most recent one before this streetwise motorcycle school was a home brewery class. Fortunately that one came from a groupon so for $35 (?) I got a full kit and a beer brewing lesson that comes summarized in a handbook. And the brewery kit paid off once, failed horribly once, and is now sitting in my cabinets. At least I can always tell my friends I'm a brewmaster, and in case I lived somewhere where a constant beer supply helped run a household, I would be proud to uncork my 5 gallon bucket again.

Before that, there was bartending school. Which, of course, really taught me the right way to do things whether at an actual event or just with some friends. And I still do it, just on my own, with far fewer standards, and with no possibility of screwing up or making money. It's just that now I meet people who are more successful than I am at getting bartending jobs, but at least we can all chat and say wasn't bartending school fun? And when I see someone else try to mix a drink I am filled with contempt at their ignorance, and sadness that my bartending snobbery brings me no extra joy. College kids can do fine with college bartending skills. It's like I got a PhD and now work at a McDonalds.

And another thing before that in which I spent weekend days listening - sailing. I took the sailing class - books all morning, sailing all afternoon, and with that they sent us out on the water with the sail in full motion. I made it back that time - the next time I didn't, and haven't sailed since.

So hopefully this time the motorcycle lessons will pay off. Because once I drop another $2k on a bike, $1k on gear, and decide I'm brave enough to go onto the road and eventually commute to work...this class will have paid off. Because I will be much better at not dying while riding my bike than if I had "learned it from Uncle Joe" as our instructor said.

So...maybe it'll actually be better if this habit gets hung into some cabinet as well.

lightning storm

2010-07-20T11:22:00.002-04:00

yesterday a fantastic lightning storm rolled in as we were having practice on the turf. it was near the end of practice so we were doing pushups and crunches and stretches, and you could see the dark clouds sliding in over the field. between every five counts for pushups or squats, there would be a sharp spike of light spreading over our heads like a coral skeleton in the sky. that would have been the perfect time to capture some imagery but I didn't have my camera and we were still in practice, so after everything finished i ran home and grabbed my camera and tripod and went first to the mass ave bridge, then up to the top of the west garage. it was empty up there, just me and the sky, and i'd continuously take 2 second exposure photos hoping to catch the lightning in the middle of my frame. it was like a game. every time i pressed the button just at the right time (1/2 second before a thread of lightning spread across the sky) i would get chills down my spine at the awesomeness of it all. it was probably a funny sight, me in my workout clothes holding a huge pink victoria's secret umbrella, under a while street lamp on top of an empty garage, pointing a camera at nothing and intensely taking photos. but i caught some of the lightning.

i will post a few later.

espaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnaaaa!!!

2010-07-04T22:51:00.004-04:00

its been about 10 days since i've left boston and arrived at spain. and i can clearly say that if i had the opportunity i would leave the united states in a heartbeat and move to spain. or almost any country in europe. but i love the lifestyle. perhaps it is that i love the memories i obtained during a few days of sports games that i attended. but in truth my whole experience here in spain has been amazing and i would come to another seminar/open/training here in a heartbeat.

tomorrow i leave for the USA again. it mis an afternoon flight but we're leaving in the morning so it will be early. pictures tomorrow.

sports in 2010

2010-06-24T11:56:00.003-04:00

it's a great time to be a sports fan. and i'm not talking about your typical american sports fan with the superbowl sunday bbq. it's about all kinds of different sports where people are giving it their all and really doing some ridiculous things.

last week we were all glued to the TV for the celtics-lakers NBA finals. lakers took it in 7 in a rough final game and the tension was incredibly thick in every living room and bar in boston. somewhere, fans have to cry, it just happened to be in the beantown this year. i didn't really follow the celtics that much but now i will be watching rondo play next year.

then the world cup starts in south africa. it plays in the morning so we couldnt really watch as a group but the buzz is everywhere, and not just from vuvuzelas. when the US tied england 1-1 there was a shitstorm on reddit about getting England back for BP (which is ridiculous). then the US lost a point to tie 2-2 instead of win, and US fans were suddenly in uproars about bad reffing. but then we had a victorious overtime score by landon donovan (another person i didn't really follow until now) and it is all good for the US fans. furthermore, France has some serious *drama* and is out of the first round, and italy, last year's world cup winners, just lost and did not qualify for the 16. in fact they lost to south africa, who did not qualify but left the world cup with a sweet victory. and north korea scored 1 point against brazil for which kim jong-il must be rewarding his player, but they lost 7-0 against portugal.

then we've had the longest match in wimbledon history, john isner vs isner mahut, 5 sets over 3 days, with the final set ending at 70-68. they played for 10 hours yesterday until they couldnt see because the sun had gone down, and this morning resumed at 56-56. it was good that someone didn't just screw up and the game ended 58-56. but hopefully isner doesn't just lose in the next round in 3 sets or something pitiful, because he's going to be feeling this game for a while.

tomorrow morning we leave for Spain, for the World Universiade Taekwondo Championships! there will be a lot more sporting craziness, alot of travel and sightseeing after the competition, and a lot of europe to experience.

i have so many kiwis. so so many kiwis. i am eating them 2 a day and i could easily do 4. i am happy.

2010-06-17T14:57:00.003-04:00

final room

2010-06-11T19:24:00.004-04:00

before anyone moves in:

looking for a place to rent starting aug 14? lemme know!

workweek day 6

2010-06-11T10:18:00.021-04:00

thursday. today we pounded out the work and changed a construction site to a bedroom. just don't look up at the ceiling because i ran out of paint.

the electricians came in the morning and put in bulbs and outlets, so there's actually electricity in the room. no more need for that long extension cord! of course there's still an issue with the dimmer switch actually connected to the rest of the outlets. that's not good because then your computer could be hooked up to an outlet that can be dimmed down to 1% of actual power. the shopvac sounds pathetic when it's "dimmed".

iliya and i figured out how to level the floor. we took all of chsueh's broken boards and cut them to fit in the groove where the wall used to be. they matched up with the height of the lower half of the room perfectly. so then we had a long thin layer of the old paneling covering the crack, then we fully covered that half of the room with another layer of the old paneling. and with that slight step change in height you can't feel anything under the laminate.

laying down hardwood floor is alot harder than internet sites say but alot easier than you'd think. the hard part is dealing with small regions like the closet. because the walls aren't quite perpendicular (my fault?) the floors are slightly angled all the way through. but once we got out of the closet area and started laying en masse, it went much faster.

the first laminate plank, lined up with the outside of the closet

cwilli being a slave driver

anye and mengfei measuring end pieces

construction cat

the painting went on at the same time as the flooring, basically, because we had two groups and one could paint while the other cut and installed flooring. i had to run to home depot because i didn't have primer for the paint left over from the previous owner, so i sucked it up and bought a gallon of paint+primer. turns out 1 gallon doesn't cover the whole room, and when the guy said that it would be enough for a 200 sqft room he meant 200 sqft of surface, not floor space. so i'm leaving the ceiling artistically bare, for now.

painting the closet

we had enough paint for the walls but not the ceiling

at the end of the night, the room looks like it's almost, ALMOST habitable! i just have to install the closet shelving and put the trims in. one day.

renovation expenses

2010-06-10T10:40:00.004-04:00

and just before i forget i'm going to list down what i think this place has cost:

electrical $700
flooring $300
closet $100 shelving, $20 wood
paint and spackle - $40
sheetrock - $100
beer and pizza - $50

workweek day 5

2010-06-10T10:20:00.005-04:00

wednesday, june 9. a crazy day in terms of scheduling. i went to the home depot straight after work and stayed for about an hour and half, making two trips through the checkout for two different projects. i've never purchased flooring so the whole section was a mystery to me. i finally found the cheaper but pretty laminate (estate cherry, 99c/sqft) and it cost me $200 for the ~170 sqft room. I'll have extras for the downstairs.

then i went back to look at closets and just became engulfed in the selection of their closet shelving system. not to get into details but it is much much better than the old ghetto wood plank and metal hooks in the original closet.

wednesday evening is usually busy for other reasons - UIU homework (a midterm today) and poomse practice. so i went home, worked on the midterm for half an hour, ran to the gym to practice poomse with rdc and sauza, came back for another half hour still in my dobok to finish the 2nd part of the midterm, picked up cwilli and xuan and put them to work sanding and dusting while i finished the rest of the midterm.

so we did more cleaning. it seems that the dust never really goes away because it gets dispersed into the air each time you clean. and this time we removed the sublayer from the carpet, which was full of dust, and finished all the sanding. in the end, we had a system of sweeping the dust into the cracks under the walls, vacuuming it up from there, then wiping down the walls with a dry sponge. and voila the room was clean.

we moved the paneling that was used to cover the hardwood half of the room down to the garden in order to try out the laminate. the color i bought matches pretty well, but it turns out that with underlayment and laminate down on the old carpet half, there's about 1/2 inch of height difference. even if i had bought the right high to low t-moulding, i think having a 1/2 inch ledge in the middle of your bedroom is not very convenient. so it looks like i'm going to have to lay down laminate over the original hardwood. at least it'll match completely. and if we use the paneling over the hardwood, it actually brings the height up exactly, so that there is no need for connective moulding.

cwilli and xuan stayed until 2, and by then we were making scary faces in the worklight.

proof that i am actually involved in this project:

tomorrow is a finishing day. the hardwood will go down, the paint will go up, and the lights are already being installed by the electricians.

workweek day 4

2010-06-09T16:39:00.005-04:00

tuesday. we put in the final layer of spackle in. one thing i realized is that i shouldn't have used corner tape for all the seams. mesh tape would have been fine and easier to smooth over, but i was thinking that since corner tape is flat it makes a smooth surface. it does, except the edges pop up when the spackle is dry. i'm too pressed for time to change it now but i'm afraid that after painting, it'll just be a permanent mistake that can't be covered up.

other than that, we were able to clean up the whole room more or less, and get rid of a lot of the dust. we took up the boards protecting the floor to reveal the original hardwood. i'm not sure if this hardwood is good or not, so i might just be putting in laminate over the whole thing. this is providing i can even the floor between two levels or figure out how to make a nice transition.

tasks to do:

build inside of closet
fill in gap in floor where old wall was
put down laminate
install electrical components (thurs morning)
paint
trim (?)
assemble furniture

the small details I have to look into today:
measure for trim
measure for laminate
buy closet materials
buy paint or use existing paint
clean

workweek day 3

2010-06-08T01:37:00.004-04:00

i am so tired and covered in spackle dust. this dust is almost as bad as plaster dust. but it's gotten all over me in a sheet of white powder. fortunately this time i invested in decent masks and goggles and i am not coughing up a lung.

today was basically 4-5 hours of sanding and respackling. i haven't even put up the 2nd layer of spackle yet. i think at this rate i'm going to just stop with the 2nd layer (and spackle so well that no sanding is needed!) because I really need to jump to painting and flooring.

no interesting pictures because everything looks the same. there were a few large mosquitos flittering around because the window was open, though.

workweek day 2

2010-06-07T13:56:00.009-04:00

sunday, june 6 - most of the work right now is spackling. then sanding. then screwing in more screws. those were definitely done out of order but with multiple people, whatever task is available is done whenever someone is not busy. primarily anye is helping, but cwilli and rene came by in the afternoon and helped with taping and spackling. we had a system where cwilli would slab on huge amounts of spackle, and i would come by with the corner tool and just make one swipe and the whole thing would pretty much form into a square edge. here's the picture of the horrific gaps in one corner. some require a lot of spackle, plus paper tape to cover the gaps so we don't empty a gallon of the mix into the wall cracks.

one thing i've never done is install corner beads. so we did that and it was a learning experience. the closet was a great experimental wall so basically we slathered a lot of spackle onto the corners, pushed the corner bead onto it and nailed small nails to hold it in place, then spackled some more.

before and after:

i also finished the chimney. because i need a contractor to come and look at the water damage i'm leaving the wall semi unclosed, with plywood covering it instead of drywall. it looks kind of funny but it's the room's avant garde art display.

and finally at the end of the weekend:

nature you scary

2010-06-06T16:05:00.002-04:00

i was witness to an amazing phenomenon of nature.

i was walking to dupont, and while passing the saferide turnaround, i saw a sheet of water descend in a cascade in front of me, coming like a wall toward me. it was like when the wet leaves of a tree get shaken up and a bunch of drops fall down at the same time while the rest of the day is clear. well that wasn't tree water but the rain that suddenly went from zero to downpour. in the 1.5 seconds it took to reach me i audibly said "oh shit" and threw on my hood (my china rain jacket is SO money) and hugged my d90 into my chest, and the torrent hit my head at the same time i heard screams from nearby Mass ave where unprepared pedestrians were now instantly soaked.

another guy passed me as he nonchalantly opened his umbrella. we both said at the same time, "that was awesome."

workweek day 1

2010-06-05T13:46:00.004-04:00

Saturday, June 5 - in one week the new tenant moves in, so this is almost the equivalent of my freshman workweek when I spent a week renovating. part of me welcomes the excitement of finishing a project at breakneck speed with a deadline looming. i welcome the tiredness and dirtiness. the only thing that bothers me is that we always used to cut corners as deadlines comes closer, and i can feel that as time runs down i might find ways to make things work easily again.

i went to the beach and on the way was a lowes, so it was a good time to buy some spackle and start the drywall finishing process. the walls are almost all up, though there are always small pieces, like inside the closet and the rest of the chimney that i always forget still needs patching.

the other thing that takes forever is actually screwing in the drywall. when you put each piece up, you put in like 6 screws to keep it in place and move on to the next portion. later when all the pieces are up you realize you have about 200 screws to put in and you've forgotten where the studs are. furthermore, for the connecting walls that are double paned, we use the long 3" screws, which get harder and harder to drill into the studs so i first drill a lead hole. switching between the drill bit and screw bit is a pain.

here's the glory of the back wall, complete with all its panes. i started spackling a little because i just couldn't wait. the bottom layer has the seams in the gap between two studs, so hopefully no one will lean on it. the top layer has two pieces (because i was running out of drywall so i had to use the piece on the right) sharing a stud, so the screws are really close to the edge of both the drywall and the stud. sketchy operation all around, but it'll be ok once it's all covered and out of sight.

also notice the gap in the ceiling and the bottom layer. those are all small gaps compared to other corners. so spackling comes next, and we have a ton of mesh and paper tape to cover up those holes and hide my mistakes.

at the end of day, here are the photos so you get an idea of the before and after. here is the back wall again, with most of the gaps filled. it makes a world of difference.

and at the end of the day a lot of gaps and nails have been spackled, and the room is beginning to look like it has real walls.

finishing ceiling and drywalling

2010-06-02T13:37:00.005-04:00

drywalling is almost done. here is a view of the back wall, with the double layer of drywall (for fireproofing and sound insulation) almost complete. figuring out the right dimensions so that the drywall is supported by studs is somewhat hard.

ceilings are hard. especially when the beams are not actually perpendicular to each other, when there are light cans in the middle of beams, and when you havent quite finished putting in the closet frame. but the plus side is that me, cwilli, and iliya all got some extra points for my Kicked into Shape program for holding up heavy, heavy drywall. my shoulder and neck muscles hurt. here's the last major piece of the ceiling. with the insulation sticking out below the studs, you had to push the drywall up flush against the stud or the screw will just spin in place.

pane after pane we've moved the drywall up the stairs from the back yard into the living room, measured them, put them into place, found that they didn't fit and then filed away corners until they fit. there are some large gaps left, but hopefully that will all be covered up by trim. i have a lot of faith in trim.

cutting holes for the lighting is one of the most annoying things to do, because you measure from the wall into somewhere 28" from this wall and 32" from that wall, not even really knowing whether the drywall fits into the place you're measuring from. but because the trim for the lights isn't that big, any error either results in a large gap or the need to saw off tiny slices until the fixture peeks through the hole.

house renovation - interior work

2010-05-25T14:33:00.007-04:00

I've been putting in more time because in June my friend is supposed to move in for a few weeks. I promised him a summer sublet. So I better have one with walls ready.

After the electricians came and finally upgraded the wiring in the room (ie make it not likely to explode into flames at any second) my task was to insulate. I bought R13 insulation, which is the thickest you can do with 2x3 studs, and took a few days to cover the exterior wall. Since I took down the ceiling and there are only studs spanning the ceiling, which is shared between all the houses on the row, it would be necessary to insulate the top part of my room as well.

Here are pictures of the room after complete gutting and cleaning. It looks quite spacious. This was progress as of May 4.

The cleaned up room with old electric wiring still hanging down.

The studs left across the ceilings after everything - slathes, plaster, junk, was removed.

Entryway to the room. Chimney has some water damage.

This past weekend, Alicia, Christine, Jose, and CWilli have come over to help me out with some of the work. Together we put up a lot of drywall, and designed and built the closet partition. The hardest part of drywalling is cutting everything to fit correctly when the house is crooked and not exact. Also, after a few hours of drywalling, we went a little crazy and stopped functioning and measuring correctly.

Insulated ceiling and recessed light fixture. It's a pain to cut drywall to fit the fixture but will look really good.

Jose measuring dimensions for drywall. He doesn't really need the ladder to reach the top.

Alicia measuring and cutting drywall. Her specialty was the measurement, at least until we became too tired.

Building a closet partition is pretty simple. I just decided to take the whole space where the old room extended into an irregular shape, tear out the old tiny closet, and wall it off to make a huge walk in closet. There was a lot of tearing down - removing posts, walls, flooring, shelves, but once it was done, and there was just open plywood floor and walls, the job seemed much easier. Basically, we build a frame for the whole wall, then an interior frame for the door, and make sure that there are studs holding up the door. Luckily it fits into the space.

Christine and CWilli installing drywall in the closet ceiling.

Christine, with a closeup of the hole cut for the closet light.

The closet partition in place, with doors unattached.

As of may 24, I have almost the whole place drywalled (with the exception of the ceiling). Apparently I will need two layers of drywall on either side of the house to provide fire proofing protection as well as sound insulation. Which is good because we patched the sides alot. For the future, it is best to fit as large of a piece of drywall as possible. This could mean not actually using the whole 4x8 piece, because the remaining piece, less than 8' long, could be left with no stud at one end. There are a lot of other problems that will have to be fixed cosmetically.

microoptimizing my driving

2010-05-21T11:13:00.003-04:00

in the big picture, cambridge is something like 4 miles wide from end to end so there's no need to optimize driving distance at all. but a few routes have bothered me because i drive them several times a week, and because of the nonperpendicular streets there's always a feeling that i'm driving farther from my destination than an alternate route would be.

so i looked up two driving directions from my house: to Home Depot, and to CW Taekwondo. In both cases I always feel like there's a more direct road somewhere that I don't know about. Sure, driving on the major roads might be slightly faster or hit fewer red lights, but just out of curiosity, i had to see if i was actually driving farther away by going down third.

first, to CW taekwondo from my house. There's a street called Binney St which is kind of unavoidable because you always hit it coming toward MIT, and there is a median so you can't turn left coming either direction earlier if you wanted to. fortunately it looks like 3rd street actually curves toward MIT and CW, and going up broadway will actually take you farther from Central. Google maps does magic. The total mileage to CW: 1.7 miles. It's the same route I always use.

Then, since I've been doing a lot of home depot runs, there are two ways that seem kind of roundabout, but one feels shorter so i've been taking it. It's annoying because route 28 and I93 border a big industrial area that you can't drive through so you have to drive all the way around to get to Home Depot. One route went through medford and seems to take a bigger loop, and my route takes an earlier right on Washington. But Google maps is telling me that both ways are exactly 2.5 miles, which is what my odometer told me. But, I did discover a new one that backtracks in the beginning but is only 2.4 miles long, but 1 minute longer to drive.

but like i said, in the big picture though, nothing really changes whether I save that .1 miles or not. it's just an exercise in OCD behavior.

Ian mckellen/fresh prince impression

2010-05-21T10:31:00.000-04:00

like the comments say, it's 100 times more awesome than i even expected!

why do they say such-and-such enjoys a cult following? isnt it the cult following that enjoys such-and-such? or is it a mutual consensual thing

2010-05-17T11:53:00.001-04:00

may gardening

2010-05-13T15:46:00.004-04:00

The best part about owning a house is that I own a back yard. a whole back yard to myself that I can plant whatever I want. And i've planted a ton of stuff. But there's either a kitty or bird that always comes and digs up my pots...so I had to start seeding indoors. which still doesn't work because I think my seed is no longer viable. :( only my gardening seeds, that is.

but anyway I planted a bunch of seeds and began keeping a lot just so I know what and when i've planted things. and they turned out to be really colorful and look cool. who knew that party cups could have a second life after they are discarded in a drunken stupor?

and here is bella hiding in the bushes, and swatting at some flying insect that only she sees.

*update* - I believe the eggplant has sprouted. again, the rosemary and thyme seedlings are unfamiliar to me so I can't tell if they're sprouts or weeds. and the tomatoes are still not emerging, and i'm worried that it'll become too late. last year the cherry tomatoes i threw out into the compost grew like crazy. this year the seeds i coddled and planted caringly refuse to sprout. it's like how kids who play outside in the dirt don't get allergies.

chicken fried

2010-05-10T09:31:00.002-04:00

after 12 years living in north carolina and 10 years living in boston, i've realized that i've become a southern boy.

as the summer comes and things get warmer i am actually longing to visit home. i want to sit on the porch in the heavy heat drinking a cold iced tea. i want to hear the buzz of a lawnmower trimming the vast suburban fields. i want to drive to the local strip mall, visit a family dining establishment that has its own building and parking lot, and eat in a dining room filled with families. i want to drive down my high school's road and visit the bojangles.

i listened to the zac brown band whom i've never heard of before until today and their old time country actually didn't sound repulsive, but made me just want to visit home. so i bought two tickets off of jetBlue's $10 sale - like a commute, only 711 miles - for tuesday night at 11 pm to wednesday morning at 7 am. it'll be a quick and awesome trip home.

done with the destruction

2010-05-07T09:53:00.003-04:00

Back to the posting of progress on my bedroom renovation.

after months of slow demolition i've finally torn down all the plaster and lathes in the room. also, to install lights i had to take down the ceiling too. that was an additional like 3 trips to dump out boxes of plaster. after a while, a hammer becomes part of your hand and removing lathes is done with just a flick of the wrist. and the result: a beautifully bare wood cabin with a skeletal roof. and dust, dust everywhere.

jim the electrician came by and pounded out a morning of work, and installed five recessed lighting fixtures and a new wire from the basement. the cost comes out to about $700 which is pretty good, because the room is going to look nice once those dimmer lights get put to use. cue soft 80's sex music.

the next step is to put up drywall. iliya and i spent about 2 hours moving 25 sheets of drywall to my back yard. after a few sheets your forearms really start to hurt from carrying them. and we nearly lost anye when the stack started to tip over as we were putting tarp around it. that was actually pretty scary, and iliya and i managed to catch the whole pile before it passed the 45 degree mark and stand everything back up. a stack of sheetrock is actually really heavy and scary. i don't look forward to bringing them upstairs.

so now the house is gutted and almost ready to be faced again. hopefully it'll look great soon. i'll be happy when there's not rock dust everywhere.

At work giving a demo to the us sec of homeland security. So many big names. Next up, Obama!

2010-04-15T16:21:00.002-04:00

i realized the satisfaction of a meal depends on having the following factors: rice/carbs, fat, and salt. having 1 of 3 today is leaving me hungry.

2010-04-06T12:21:00.002-04:00

i am procrastinating from going to the gym by doing work.

2010-03-31T12:19:00.000-04:00

faith in our system

2010-03-26T15:57:00.002-04:00

I have had my faith in humanity, our police system, and our postal service restored.

my wallet was returned yesterday. i got it in the mail, with all the cash, receipts and credit cards intact. although moved around. and it was sent, along with the police report i filed with the cambridge police, to my old address at 8th st, which is what is presently on the driver's license. so then, the usps forwarding system sent it to my current address as i requested months ago. that just makes me feel that even in today's convoluted world, things that should work as you expect sometimes do.

joe wong

2010-03-25T10:29:00.004-04:00

fobby chinese people giving a speech at RTCA dinner. funny stuff. i have a new hero and he's NOT william hung.

"life is like peeing into the snow in the winter night..."

collegiates costs

2010-03-24T15:55:00.002-04:00

Yep, we're taking the plunge (again) and doing collegiates.

This is an attempt to keep track of all the costs of becoming a full time student. So far, my costs are:

$50 UIU App fee
$8 MIT Transcript request

To come:

airplane ticket
tournament registration
hotel and local travel
college tuition
worlds (?) costs

doctors

2010-03-23T16:00:00.002-04:00

i got my tetanus vaccine today and my foot checked up. there was some minor scraping from construction work, no big deal, and i was overdue for the shot anyways. but the doctor was really nice and it just occurred to me that doctors are foul weather friends. you only ever see them when your life is in peril. and when you are relatively healthy, even a trip to the doctors to get a regular checkup is a pain and no one ever wants to do it. but that makes us the doctors' fair weather friends. if the doc has a good prognosis or treats you and you become healthy, then they get to see all your appreciation. but if you get bad news, then there is that unavoidable feeling that the doctor is linked to your misfortune. that is why the medical profession is so noble.

you know when you really want something

2010-03-22T09:28:00.002-04:00

and it doesnt happen? you kind of knew it might not but you can't not hope. then the letdown is still bad and all you can do is sigh. like when you're going for a job interview that's out of your league. or a girl that's out of your league. or hoping that you get the mvp award when you're not really the mvp. well that's what happened with me hoping that some nice person picked up my wallet, looked up my info and left me a message at work. and it didn't happen. not a big deal but i am surprisingly let down.

the weekend is

2010-03-22T00:40:00.002-04:00

this weekend was pretty much amazing. and terrible.

on thursday we had a presentation for work, and afterwards the boss suggested that we can take friday off because it went well. so it was great - the beginning of a 3 day weekend was 60+ degrees and sunny. i put in enough work on my garden/cleaning up the patio that it felt like a real spring.

then i go for a run and go to cambridge bicycles first to pick up some spare inner tubes for my bike, since a sunny day means it's a good day to work on handy things outside. and as it goes, my jogging shorts didn't have pockets so i put my wallet in the same jacket pocket as my keys, which promptly dislodged them into the street. when i came bakc to retrace my steps they were nowhere to be found. either someone picked them up and left a nice message in my lincoln email, or it joined all my other shit in the land of lost items. i HATE losing things.

i was in no mood to jog and instead spent the next hour closing my credit cards. but still it was a beautiful day so i put my backup credit cards in a plastic ziploc bag that is still now my wallet.

then we had an amazing barbeque on saturday. my back yard has proven to be a chill enough place for about 8 people to eat burgers and drink beer, and once the leaves come out and there's a bit of shade and fragrant flowers it will be my private getaway. we proceed to drink our way through two real movies and one not real movie, playing a harold and kumar drinking game at the same time as kings. that was quite amazing.

sunday was chilly again. i find myself walking outside in the same pair of shorts and a similar tshirt as saturday but it is noticeably more uncomfortable. to repent for the excess of the previous day i eat only a breakfast and a dinner. hamburger for breakfast, potluck for dinner. also, i redeem myself by going to RDC's killer cardio sunday practice, between lifting weights with alicia for about an hour and then sitting on a stationary bike and chatting with chin for another half hour. not that the bike burned any real calories for me.

finally, i found out that my photography skills aren't that bad after all. i did catch a few lucky shots at the NLDC Potluck Party, which will be posted on my photo site soon. now i just need to figure out how to quickly and accurately adjust focus manually so i wont wait for the damn autofocus. and had i chosen i think i would have picked up on the bachata lesson pretty quickly but i was of course busy with my own art.

it felt like a spring weekend. or even a summer one. but i am still pissed about my wallet.

reggie watts

2010-03-21T09:51:00.000-04:00

this guy's kinda funny. and who couldn't use a fuck shit stack?

LOOSEWORLD x Waverly Films: Reggie Watts in F_CK SH_T STACK from LOOSEWORLD on Vimeo.

coffee is beginning to taste more like tea to me. either i've got a really light brew or my taste buds are mutating.

2010-03-12T15:18:00.001-05:00

music is like salad. it fulfills a certain primal craving but always leaves me wanting more

2010-03-12T10:59:00.001-05:00

dj hero soundtracks don't sound as good unless they're all that you hear. i guess i need stronger bass in my basement, or bigger earphones.

2010-03-12T10:57:00.003-05:00

thoughts

2010-03-12T10:55:00.003-05:00

i've had several interesting thoughts recently. i put them up on my gchat status but they're too ephemeral. they had to do with music, salad, and other basics of life. i might just start posting such quips as titles of empty posts now, to emulate twitter.

high fps video

2010-03-09T11:22:00.003-05:00

gawd i need to do some slow mo video. imagine this but with taekwondo. of course doggies are cuter than people kicking but still.

the speakeasy

2010-03-08T09:36:00.004-05:00

in new york we went to a little bar dan and kathy knew about called the dutch kills. this was one of the coolest bars i've seen. the atmosphere was really interesting, and the decor and theme was pretty much an underground prohibition era bar. the bartender was a bearded, suspender and tie wearing gaius baltar. they would be able to serve you a drink based on preference of alcohol. and they also have hand chipped ice so that highball drinks had a long solid ice rod, and rocks drinks had a large cube. there was sawdust on the ground and an old piano, unfortunately not being played, in the corner.

i've become a little bit obsessed about ice cubes. i think it kind of fits in with my idea of self expression through saturday night parties. an establishment that serves alcohol can also be a place of creativity, and bartending itself is an art form if one chooses to go beyond just serving drinks. i've always understood garnishing but we never talked about ice techniques, and now i'm fascinated.

here's an amazing article about ice sculpting in new york's B flat bar.

capturing the moment

2010-03-08T09:12:00.002-05:00

memory is definitely the best camera, because with a real one it is so hard to capture the moments that matter. the moments where the tension and concentration is finally broken and all emotion is released. i wished that my camera was continuously on like my eyes and ears were, and that i had captured every such moment at west point this weekend.

when aziz beat sean to secure mit's victory against albany, he made it look easy. he came off the ring barely breathing hard. but after bowing out and shaking the coach's hand, he let out a thunderous victory cheer that reflected all the tension. that cheer answered all of our questions, whether he could adjust to wtf style, whether he could help out our men's team as a newbie in the club. my mind's camera will remember that time.

each time tara walks off of the mat, she has this intense glare and walk like she's about to destroy someone, whether she did well in the previous round or not. i wanted to capture that look because it was intense, yet there's always a sense of serenity. she never walks quickly to the chair or to her water, but she's always at a pace as if she controls not only her match but the rate at which time is ticking and how much time she has left to rest.

there was one match where sophia won with incredible poise as she always does. when she came off the mat everyone ran to hug her and congratulate her. i managed to take a few pictures of people smiling because they were genuinely happy and full of admiration. for this one, even the pictures in my memory are fuzzy, and i wish that i had captured a few real photos. we'll just have to try to remember the good moments and make new ones.

self expression and late night art

2010-03-05T10:56:00.005-05:00

i need an outlet for self expression.

sometimes i find it in physical actions. sometimes i feel that what i do on the mat is a form of expression. all the movement, the exertion, the way you kicked a target, all of that was YOU. i guess that's what they mean by expression of ki. taekwondo, although a combat sport, is a cousin to dance. sparring can be beautiful, and it can be ugly. but in the end, it helps you express your need to accomplish something physical, and your need to take that risk between winning and losing.

sure, there are other conventional forms of expression. photography, for one. i find it less mystical, maybe because i'm just not good at it. i havent come to understand how to express one's soul in a picture, because all i can do is take pictures to reflect what's on the surface. to find a meaningful shot i would have to take pictures of everything, then understand what i have never shot before.

and as for music, i used to do it alot. i played years of classical, but again it was always copying the masters, learning what already existed and playing exactly the style i picked up from the recordings. sure i played poignantly, and my teacher and fellow students' mothers lauded my unique talent for expression. but it wasnt me expressing myself, it was beethoven and chopin being brought back alive, somewhat, in my talented hands. but they were only talented to the end of the page. when the bars stopped i stopped.

only when you excel at something that puts you at the edge, then that's when you're finding your form of expression. otherwise, you're just following the envelope, and you'll always be copying others. but pushing the envelop means you're doing something you can't stop thinking about. when constantly, every day you are thinking about the next time you could do something. and you mold your weekly goals around getting to that point, and you think about how to make that point even better when it happens.

i realized that my newest form of self expression is the saturday night party.

it's something i find myself panicking and stressing over early saturday afternoons. but it's not like a competition between me, martha stewart and paula dean. at 1:35, the vibe of the party determines the success of the artist. soon, when the last saferide is set to come, that's when the my judgment happens. when i'm in the groove, that moment comes and goes without meaning. and throughout the night i would expression myself through the drinks that i make and take, the conversations i stumble through, and the drunken food i consume. and like good art, it must be ephemeral, and be gone in the morning.

winning and losing, a gambler's viewpoint

2010-02-14T08:22:00.003-05:00

quick recap.

i arrived in vegas on feb 8, 2010. i brought with me a carnitas burrito from caliente, and a yokozuna combo and hot hot ca roll from sushi deli. they were delicious even after four+ hours of waiting - in fact, more delicious.

we trained hard for poomse on wednesday despite my calves being super sore from the 1 mile of barefoot running i did at paul's. that was a complete mistake that i knew would happen when i started running but did anyways. my calves hurt until two days after the competition, after intense therapy sessions in the hotel jacuzzi.

excalibur is cheap at $40 per night (per person?), but you basically pay for what you get. i've also decided that the worst part about casinos is that they allow smoking indoors, a fact which was to our advantage as augie, nathan and brett enjoyed stogies tonight on our night out through all the casinos. but i don't think i have a shirt that isn't smoke ridden, and my underwear are slowly becoming immersed in the smell as well. furthermore my socks should just be thrown out after this weekend. the lack of laundry is killing me, and the lingering smoke is killing my throat.

alicia and i placed 6th place in pairs. i placed 5th place in individuals at the prelims, 6th place in the semis, and 7th in the finals. of course, the finals form could have gone much, much better.

from wednesday night to basically tonight, we've had a ton of fun. john wong and rene left yesterday but for a few days we went out and ate alot of good food. we went to mesa grill to meet my name twin bobby flay, and saw Ka that night as well. i'm also slowly overcoming the ingrained guilt associated with drinking while walking along, and drinking while the sun is still out. i think we've almost perfected the cranberry vodka or soco diet in a 20 oz bottle routine, and fatburger has served us twice while very drunk, or wishing to be very drunk.

and tonight, i won about $100 on craps table. i was rolling a hot hot hot field. and the best part is that my friends were in on it at some point or other. brett definitely went from $10 to $200 which is phenomenal, and alicia gained a quick $50 just by being there and putting in her $10. i was the only chump who made $200 off of a full $100, resulting only in a 100% return.

that said, i've realized some things about the world that i have never known before.

taekwondo is a filthy dirty sport. the holding area was like a pigsty. there was spilled water, sweaty equipment, sweaty people, and leftover food everywhere, on and off the mats, and among it the players were just standing or sleeping. when you're facing impending pain and stress i guess none of that other small stuff matters, though.

alcohol has become such a strange currency. bars and clubs are able to charge $10-$12 for each drink, but a casino will easily give you drinks just to keep you at the table. even when you're making money on the table and the casino is losing a bit of money. conversely, a small drink can make a person's day. winning $20 and then getting a free drink (worth about $5 in your mind) can really give you a positive mood, as if the free drink was like extra cash in the pocket.

gambling is addictive. craps is FUN AS CRAP and when you're on a streak you're on a streak. of course, this just means next time i play i'm going to lose all of my winnings from this time, and more. and humans are coded to appreciate loss more than gain, meaning that if i end up completely even, i will still be left with a lingering sadness, because losing the $100 hurt me way more than the happiness gained from earning the $100 in the first place.

so now it's time to sleep. tomorrow we have a few more matches, and hopefully we will come out positive.

end of san diego

2010-02-08T21:16:00.003-05:00

i've left san diego and am now at the excalibur in las vegas. not much has happened yet except i've lost $2 to the slots, so I'll just do a recount of SD.

i've done everything i'd wanted to do at SD. I am highly satisfied.

friday night i just hung out with hyon at the hilton mission bay. it was a really nice hotel and had a nice view of palm trees, and a deck that got a bit chilly. but i didnt get my burrito until the next day, and i was a bit pissed because the fish burrito that we ordered wasn't great.

on saturday, i tried to hit the waves around noon. they were really rough and basically while the current drove me northward the waves beat down on my head. there was one wave which i semi caught for maybe 3 seconds, but the board didnt hold my weight too well and didnt have wax, and my general surfing skills have definitely deteriorated. after four successive monsters that bore down on my head and forced me to abandon the board and dive under the water, i ran out of strength and decided to drift back to shore. i think the day was complicated by the dark clouds that constantly shouted "thunderstorm", and the worry that my car keys, which were all electronic, would be stolen because i had to leave them in my shoes.

after that disappointing session i drove down to sorrento valley to visit the old work place and go to caliente. now, that is a burrito that is as good as i remembered. the last bite i took was greasy and filled with guacamole and fatty carnitas. however, it was raining and the old deck we used to sit under was completely abandoned, so i just ate the food in my car. here is a picture of my burrito and my surfboard. there's always a silver lining even to a bad surf day. i went by moura's surf shop afterwards and it was the same old guy i remember but of course he didnt remember me.

the one thing that goes really quickly is my sense of direction. i could not remember how to get to la jolla shores and i basically followed gilman around until my muscle memory picked up a little bit.

saturday afternoon we went to UCSD to watch them whoop on UCI. a lot of the kids i knew have improved alot - garret and andrew, mainly. after that, we went to noodle house, and jacky basically went crazy. we took soju bomb after soju bomb, and i remember the moment when i knew i would be screwed for the rest of the night. i probably took a look at the soup in front of me, took a bite of food, then took another bomb. and after that there was only brief moments - that last killer soju shot, drunkenly paying $60 for my share of alcohol, falling out of the car on the side of the highway to puke, then being unable to regain my balance. i woke up in paul's room, and panickly wondered where my camera, wallet, and rental car keys were. also, i briefly remembered puking hard into some container and hoping that the container was not paul's bedsheets.

the next day was ok, and we lounged around the house until 2 pm when we went to sushi deli 3. sushi deli is always delicious and wonderful. more to come...

US Open Blog

2010-02-06T12:57:00.002-05:00

This upcoming week a bunch of CW people are going to be vegas for US Open. I left a bit earlier, to go back to my old haunts in SD. I chilled with hyon at his hilton in mission bay last night, and now i'm hanging out at Pauls. I'll be going surfing in a little bit...3-4 ft waves, la jolla shore where my favorite small breaks are. it's overcast and 59, but still nicer than boston.

and i rented a Yaris. :-D i hope it fits my board.

hopefully i'll be able to take some good photos this week, and probably get some video of our competition at US Open. Thus, i'll start keeping a little blog, whenever I can get access to a computer.

more housing work

2010-02-02T19:33:00.007-05:00

it's been a long while and I've found myself doing a bit of work every weekend, thus progress is slow. i've made a trip to home depot to buy 2x6x12 support beams and 4x4s to hold them up, then we opened a hole into the attic and decided that there's absolutely no load on it and it would be a waste of effort and space. so we just cut down the beams for the old wall, and lo and behold no ceiling came tumbling down. back to home depot to return $30 worth of wood.

i had electricians come in and they decided that I need to gut the whole thing so that they can properly rewire up the rooms. it's pretty interesting to tear down every wall, it's like a puzzle of where to put all the trash and how to get it out of the house. by now i've gotten pretty good at tearing out the slathes and taking down the plaster at the same time. we put mail bins underneath to catch all the debris, then throw the slathes into a large pile which is broken down and put into trashbags later. it'll be done eventually.

the current state of the windows. the trim is all down in order to tear down the paneling, and i dont think they can be recovered. also, note my new $39 green ladder :)

the remaining plaster left on the first room. the door was busted on the other side when a 4x4 fell and knocked a big hole in it.

the chimney. notice that some of the brick is crumbling. not sure what to do...i might just drywall it up.

what remains of the ceiling light connectors. this is all gonna go to the dumpster.

craigslist bonanza

2010-01-07T09:32:00.002-05:00

just a little list of what i've been purchasing on cl. it's kind of like a drug to me. when i get bored during the day the most satisfying thing to do is to search on craigslist...for anything basically, but right now i'm looking for all kinds of shit to put in my house. i don't know how i do it, i think i've doubled the amount of furniture and possessions i have. well, at least i dont have to move it any time in the future.

so here's what i've busted my wallet on since i moved in to spring st:

ikea track lights (3 bulbs) - $20
pyramid range hood - $215
ikea wool rug - $40
ikea upright lantern - $20
ikea couch - $200
ikea 6 drawer malm dresser, wide, and stave mirror - $100
ikea stave mirror - $20

looking:
crate & barrel hanging pot rack
west elm coffee table
another couch
another rug

nostalgia for christmas past

2009-12-26T01:46:00.005-05:00

at home we don't do very much for christmas. these days it's all been even less ceremonial. i at least remember as a child that christmas was a big day. the whole holiday season felt like a definite period. now, it's just another few days between going back to work.

the period of christmas and new years were much more enjoyable when i was a child. unlike people who complain of the holiday season being too in your face now, for me i see too little of it. we don't have tv, we don't go out shopping for presents, and i feel like i've barely heard a christmas jingle. sure, i hear jingle bell rock and it still annoys the hell out of me. but it's different. when i was a kid and i first heard jingle bell rock, it became ingrained in my memories as part of growing up and experiencing christmas. much like the following bits of nostalgia, that i have no way to experience anymore except through excerpts of youtube.

a charlie brown christmas.

how the grinch stole christmas

a christmas story

i remember watching this in the middle of the night before christmas while old tnt or usa commercials played in between. or while my mom was cooking a decidedly chinese christmas dinner and my dog athena was sitting there eyeing the scraps. or the next morning when i'd be playing with my new crossfire system or new ninja turtles! (surprisingly that's the only gift i really remember receiving.)

while we're at it, here's an old favorite of the eighties.

incidentally, reading rainbow only stopped having new episodes in 2009.

construction work before christmas

2009-12-23T00:50:00.007-05:00

i leave for NC tomorrow (wednesday, dec 23) and before i even pack i've made some last minute construction work. but overall it's been slow progress. i don't really have more than an hour each day at home, and that's usually spent cooking and being lazy. so finally i stripped the wall down to the studs.

they're thick old studs - covered in nails. and i had some trouble with the top and bottom where they extend above the ceiling and below the floorboard. there's still a baseboard that's nailed to every stud and is below the hardwood flooring.

right in the middle of the wall there's a set of daisychained electrical outlets. it's a mess to deal with, because the wiring is old and the outlets are just hanging out in the middle of the studs.

yesterday i went to home depot and got a bunch of supplies like an extension cord and a work lamp, and a multimeter, so i could switch off the power to the upstairs (which also switches off power to half the kitchen and the living room) and finally remove the outlet. after some nervousness and basically prayers in case i get zapped and explode, i finally get the outlets off and cap them, so now they're no longer in the middle of the wall. the live wire is actually quite pretty, with my new green ladder in the background.

jordan came by and looked at the studs, and they seemed to bear a little bit of load (hopefully not a lot of it) so we decided to brace the ceiling before cutting off the rest of the studs, and eventually building a frame into the center of the room. that's as far as i got, and hopefully the house doesn't fall down on me while i'm gone for break.

when i get home, there'll be more construction work, in my dad's attic. it's fun, but i hope i can eventually actually finish a project.

workweek

2009-12-14T23:45:00.007-05:00

I've started to renovate my house. and by renovate i mean tear it down haphazardly and hope that drywall, spackle and paint will be enough to overcome any blunders. Hey, it sounds just like college! I've also set up some music and beer right next to the rooms i'm working on. soon when the paint fumes hit, it'll be so reminiscent of phi sig i'm going to cry.

anyway here are some photos from last week's work. i've since torn down more of the wall but got stuck.

View from the "Office" with panels and drywall on this side completely removed.

The first view of the "Small Bedroom" through the Office.

Studs and Jordan's ladder. It's a sweet ladder.

A view from the Small Bedroom. There is a panel that is stuck behind some window trimming that will have to come down.

moonlight sonata over the alps

2009-12-02T15:30:00.012-05:00

Timelapse movie: The Alps -- part II (night) from Michael Rissi on Vimeo.

memorable quotes

2009-11-24T01:34:00.001-05:00

nathan: they may be bigger, stronger, faster than you, but you can always fight harder than them.

rdc: you may be standing on the shoulder of giants, but you have pretty damn broad shoulders yourself.

iliya: (my last tournament) is like when you're on a vacation, and it's the last sunset of the last evening, and you look at it and remember.

dan: clinch like you're driving a bus. just drive the bus.

happiness in a sandwich

2009-10-29T10:52:00.002-04:00

today i am happy because my lunch is so delicious.

i have my usual sandwich: bread, meat, tomatoes, lettuce. but yesterday i went and got a change up of ingredients. I have a loaf of arnold double fiber whole wheat bread instead of the shaw's wheat bread. i figured that spending $1 more isn't that bad anyways...and most of my bread ends up being thrown out anyways so if i get a more expensive one i might take care of it more. then i got sara lee roast beef lunch meat. i've had enough of the haymarket turkey ham, and the typical packaged deli meat is so bland. then i realized that with roast beef i'd like to top it with a bit of dietz and watson horsedish spread instead of mayo and mustard. it's like both in one nice squeeze bottle, and it adds a tang to the roast beef.

nom nom nom.

and i also bought avocados. one of them was ripe enough that the top popped off, and left a little hole from which to suck the avocado pulp from. it was like drinking an avocado smoothie, directly from the source.

honda's one wheel cycle

2009-10-22T09:26:00.000-04:00

omg this is so cool

simplification

2009-10-21T15:57:00.002-04:00

i've decided to start simplifying things, starting with cooking. i feel like our modern world involves so many conveniences that you stop understanding what doing something yourself is actually like. in other words, there are too many layers between the user and the data. i'd like to get down and process data with my own hands, not with someone else's api.

first to start off, cooking rice. when i first cooked risotto and realized that it's just a certain rice cooked to become mushy, my life was changed. and since moving to rene's house and not having a rice cooker (neither a microwavable or electric one) i wanted to cook rice one day. and i just did it in a pot. ~ 2 cups rice, water over the top, bring to a boil and let simmer until rice is edible. that, kids, is what cooking rice involves. we can easily forget the act of cooking when we start worrying about the whole deal with pressing the button that pops up when the rice is cooked and keeps it warm, adding a specific ratio of water to rice, etc.

recently, i've started making yogurt. there was always something foreign about making yogurt. milk should stay in the fridge - how can you willingly leave milk out, then eat the thickened stuff that forms hours later? but forget about all those yogurt brands in the stores. light yogurt, fruit on the bottom, organic, lactose intolerant, unsweeted. make your own from milk. boil milk, and when it cools a bit, add a spoonful or two of plain yogurt. leave it wrapped up in an old coat overnight. the next morning, you have yogurt. and you know exactly what went into it, and what will eventually go into it (honey, granola, fruit.)

and finally, i write this article as i make a pot of coffee in my 10 cup coffee maker. i make a cup each time, and the pot sputters and steams and eventually i get a small cup of brown liquid as if magic. you put the water into some reservoir in the back of the machine and it magically flows through a pile of coffee held in place by a filter. well after spain, i started to enjoy a smaller frothy espresso, and when i went to the store to look at espresso makers, their simplicity made the whole process of coffee drinking more appealing. there's water that turns into steam. it rises through the coffee and goes into the pot. only one layer simpler than a coffee machine, but you have direct control of the path of the water and the coffee, and somehow it just feels better.

next up, hand grinding whole coffee beans after i roast them on a bonfire made from wood cut from my own saplings.

fall colors

2009-10-11T22:51:00.008-04:00

the leaves are starting to turn and i've taken some photos of the fall's colors. first, here's bella by the window!

a shot of boston from the same building:

and we went apple picking today! here are some of the pics, from my mit gallery:

(rene did this one)

musical friday

2009-10-09T11:50:00.002-04:00

looks like today is a day to post musical clips.

the accordion is now awesome in my mind. lederhosen, i am still conflicted about.

tchaikovsky would be proud. apparently this was originally written for the glass armonica, and that's not just the aussie pronounciation of harmonica.

ok ok here's something not musical. i still want one.

team toulouse, team boston

2009-10-07T14:39:00.001-04:00

alicia found a video of phillipe's school doing a professional demo.

and here is a video of MIT doing a demo in 2006. the video editing makes it more awesome!

food wanderlust

2009-10-06T09:45:00.002-04:00

i made two resolutions in spain. the first is to try to say hi to people as i pass them, or as i meet them. this is something that is done so rarely in boston, as people tend to look downwards or avert their eyes as they pass you. in the navarra gym, as i was changing into my dobok, someone came in and said to me "hola!" and i mumbled hola and averted my eyes. then another came in, probably two complete strangers, said "buenos dias" and shook hands. then they shook hands with me and i felt like an american idiot. since then i've admired the friendliness of the europeans i met, and can only try to bring some of that warmth back from pamplona.

the second resolution is to enjoy my food more. in spain we took two hour meal breaks. this was often because of slow service and the three course meals, but it did help to relax and allow everyone to mingle for awhile. and when there's nothing else pressing that needs to be done (like a pset, project, work, etc.) it's good to just sit back and enjoy the weather and food between sessions of satisfying physical exertion. so despite not having three course meals here, i want to still be able to enjoy my food. and at carlucci, brusela, and the hotel dining, the menu was always a surprise. what are meat icicles? (a stuffed pasta) and ice cram? what about snuff to the oven? though the portions weren't tiny, they were also sufficiently foreign and small to prevent me from eating the way i eat chinese buffet - fast, large amounts, low exploration.

these things made me realize that to me, food on a trip is all that matters. sure, the photography is fun, the people are great, and accomplishing the actual purpose of the trip is important, but my lasting impression of any place i've been to will always be the food. and now i've decided that maybe in life, it's important to live where you want to eat. i have a huge craving for the breakfast sausage and the jamon on the salads we've eaten, and somehow i just dont think buying it at whole foods here will feel the same.

the gift of language

2009-10-03T20:32:00.002-04:00

gabriel (from the french team) apparently is a freelance translator. he's lived in japan, the UK, france, australia, and probably mongolia. we all thought it was really cool. then i realized how awesome knowing more than two languages is. tonight at dinner at carlucci's, we sat around in a circle that consisted of two danes, three french, and two americans. between all of us we spoke danish, chinese, laotian, french and english, and once in a while spoke phrases of spanish to the waiters. and though sometimes there were people who didn't quite understand what the current topic of conversation was, most of the time we'd be talking and laughing about random shit (because I had some wine and brought up very random shit) while alicia translated to the french and i translated her french into english for the danes. it was like the tower of babel, except instead of trying to reach for the sky we had sat down to dinner and accepted our differences in language, and instead explored it. at one time alexandra was writing phrases in danish on a napkin and teaching it to us line by line. we all tried to say the hard vowels with our tongues sticking out and it must have looked pretty ridiculous. but we all stared at the napkin with open eyes completely entranced in trying to pronounce every syllable. europe is pretty amazing. being in a mix of completely different cultures yet the same culture is an awesome time. benjamin (the 16 year old danish competitor) would say, "that's gangsta."

pamplona open photo album

2009-10-03T20:29:00.016-04:00

Some initial pictures from the seminar, tournament day, and the fort walk afterwards, through my pamplona picasa album. I will be posting most of my pictures on the facebook group as well.

beyond the break

Hacking at TechStars

60 fps and the curse of adobe

Things a man should learn

Travels, done

the new science and math

San Francisco

JetBlue all you can fly pass

tech hipsters

gadgets galore

bike repair with craigslist

spring

soundtracks

movie nights

snow

demo video

text twist

reno

starting the year

thoughts

music

bike mania

new office

black friday my ass

motorcycle tales 2

my stomach as a child

corner office conversations

woot!

motorcycle tales

food cravings

on motorcycles and other mounts

fall sunday night

more motorcycle documentaries

this kid can play

dansons sous la plue

rollercoaster

getting ready for work

herding cats at ikea

my very first ikea hack

MIT Sport TKD: the docudrama

motorcycle

paint master

extended education

lightning storm

espaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnaaaa!!!

sports in 2010

i have so many kiwis. so so many kiwis. i am eating them 2 a day and i could easily do 4. i am happy.

final room

workweek day 6

renovation expenses

workweek day 5

workweek day 4

workweek day 3

workweek day 2

nature you scary

workweek day 1

finishing ceiling and drywalling

house renovation - interior work

microoptimizing my driving

Ian mckellen/fresh prince impression

why do they say such-and-such enjoys a cult following? isnt it the cult following that enjoys such-and-such? or is it a mutual consensual thing

may gardening

chicken fried

done with the destruction

At work giving a demo to the us sec of homeland security. So many big names. Next up, Obama!

i realized the satisfaction of a meal depends on having the following factors: rice/carbs, fat, and salt. having 1 of 3 today is leaving me hungry.

i am procrastinating from going to the gym by doing work.

faith in our system

joe wong

collegiates costs

doctors

you know when you really want something

the weekend is

reggie watts

coffee is beginning to taste more like tea to me. either i've got a really light brew or my taste buds are mutating.

music is like salad. it fulfills a certain primal craving but always leaves me wanting more

dj hero soundtracks don't sound as good unless they're all that you hear. i guess i need stronger bass in my basement, or bigger earphones.

thoughts

high fps video

the speakeasy