Thursday, July 28, 2005
OrigamiBlog!
I made this at the Origami festival a couple weeks ago. It's a pretty neet little gewgaw, especially because it rotates!
The guy that was there teaching this said, however, that if you do the same thing with double the original folds, you end up with a square-shaped deal, as opposed to the triangular-shaped thing above. Yeah, it's a ring, but it's a *triangular* ring. You'll see.
So one week, while I was particularly uninterested in paying attention to my class, I started folding the 2x version. He recommended using larger paper. I just did smaller folds, because I don't have any larger origami paper. I even documented the process so you can see *just how crazy* you have to be to take up origami as a hobby.
Step one: Fold paper into 16 different lines
Step two: Good, now fold it the other way 16 times
Step 3: Whew, hard work. Now fold all the diagonals, both ways!
Step D: Man, my eyes! Okay, now loop the thing up and make this:
Step X: What? Good! Now repeat that over and over...
...down the whole line...
Step &: Whew, magnificent!
Okay, good! Now repeat that whole thing three more times and join them.
Yeah, I said crazy, didn't I?
Anyway, I managed to finish it off and get everything connected. The connecting was, as it usually is with modular origami, the hardest part, but I like modular origami since there aren't that many folds...okay, there are a *lot* of folds, but they don't all build on each other. The second fold on the first fold, the third on the second, the fourth on the third, so that the *microscopic* error you made at the beginning becomes a *heinous gash* at the end. It's not easy, but it's a fun way to show off to friends and family.
-N
I made this at the Origami festival a couple weeks ago. It's a pretty neet little gewgaw, especially because it rotates!
The guy that was there teaching this said, however, that if you do the same thing with double the original folds, you end up with a square-shaped deal, as opposed to the triangular-shaped thing above. Yeah, it's a ring, but it's a *triangular* ring. You'll see.
So one week, while I was particularly uninterested in paying attention to my class, I started folding the 2x version. He recommended using larger paper. I just did smaller folds, because I don't have any larger origami paper. I even documented the process so you can see *just how crazy* you have to be to take up origami as a hobby.
Step one: Fold paper into 16 different lines
Step two: Good, now fold it the other way 16 times
Step 3: Whew, hard work. Now fold all the diagonals, both ways!
Step D: Man, my eyes! Okay, now loop the thing up and make this:
Step X: What? Good! Now repeat that over and over...
...down the whole line...
Step &: Whew, magnificent!
Okay, good! Now repeat that whole thing three more times and join them.
Yeah, I said crazy, didn't I?
Anyway, I managed to finish it off and get everything connected. The connecting was, as it usually is with modular origami, the hardest part, but I like modular origami since there aren't that many folds...okay, there are a *lot* of folds, but they don't all build on each other. The second fold on the first fold, the third on the second, the fourth on the third, so that the *microscopic* error you made at the beginning becomes a *heinous gash* at the end. It's not easy, but it's a fun way to show off to friends and family.
-N
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
From the top…
Last week was fairly normal. It looked for a while like I might be going out to Florida for work, (for secret work that I can’t talk about, so don’t bother asking :) but it was ultimately decided against. I’m missing a clearance that would instantly transform me from ‘not useful’ to ‘useful’, so I wouldn’t have really been much help, as it turns out. Ultimately, I think it’s probably not that bad a thing. Mostly it would have been work that I really couldn’t help out with, and Florida in the summer is pretty daggurn hot. And muggy. And hurricane-y, if you’re unlucky.
I went and saw a co-worker performing on the drums with his ‘band’. It was fun stuff, good music, and an all-right time. Met various co-workers, too.
Then, for the rest of the weekend, I did nothing. Well, I played some video games, which are always good fun, and ‘watched’ my class. The teacher made the mistake of saying that the material from last week and this upcoming week would not be covered on the midterm. So already my interest was at an all-time low. Then he went about explaining D/A and A/D conversions of images, which is absolutely DSP 101 kinda stuff. I don’t think I paid attention to a single word of it. Especially when he started explaining the Nyquist sampling rate. People, I get it. We have to sample at at least two times the highest frequency of the signal if we want to be able to regenerate the data from its signals. Fine. Good. We’re done. I don’t need to have this explained to me every single time I take a class that has anything to do with a digital signal. Well, regardless, I didn’t pay attention. It was dumb.
Oh, and speaking of video games, I’m never, ever, ever voting for Hillary Clinton for anything, ever again. Take-two, a video game publisher, is getting slammed up and down the news for allowing code to slip into their game which includes an over-18 mini-game in an over-17-packaged game. Despite the fact that the actual game doesn’t allow you to access the material, and you actually have to go out to the internet, download the patch, install it yourself, and then you finally can stumble, eventually, upon this badly-rendered little game. Senators, spearheaded by Hillary Clinton, have been ranting and raving all over the news about how this is so bad and so awful and have even gone so far as to insinuate that Take-two was actually intentionally putting in this unused code to be sneaky and evil and undermine the moral fabric of our young, innocent, little children.
These people are idiots, to a man and woman. For starters, Take-two did not peddle this crap. Unused code gets kept in builds all the time. That’s why they call it unused code. The fact that you actually have to go out and download what amounts to an illegal hack to run this thing should make it obvious that Take-two had no intention of this bloody thing ever getting out. Add to that the fact that the Grand Theft Auto series is the only, and I mean only video game that these senators ever get up in arms about and it should be obvious that these people are grandstanding for the sake of their constituents, trying to appear moral and upright and the like, all the while slowly gutting economic and social reforms and taking money from special interests and having their policies written by lobbyists. Grand Theft Auto is not the most violent video game out there. Not by a long, long, loooong shot. But it’s their talking point. It’s the only video game these idiots know. They hear the phrase ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and they’re just on a roll.
I may not be the most politically polarized man on the planet, but I am very, VERY, pro-video games. And if these twerps are going to try and tread on that, I’m never giving them my vote, or even my consideration. They’ve proven themselves to be fools, enacting laws on a subject they know nothing about. I know video games, and yet they’re the ones telling me how the games should be. Imagine if they’re like this on *every subject they have to vote on*. I suspect they are.
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to investigate Take-two and Rockstar, 355 to 21. Idiot quote of the day: "It appears that the publisher has blatantly circumvented the rules in order to peddle sexually explicit material to our youth." Right. Except that you're completely wrong. See above. Someone tell me how to figure out who those 255 were, because I’m never going to vote for any of them again.
Today was the software center picnic at work. It was good stuff. Lots of food which was delicious, lots of friends to hang out with, and some entertaining games to play. I believe I held the distinction of being the first person out of the entire dodgeball tournament. I am horrible at any sport that involves throwing things. Baseball, basketball, dodgeball, all of that. Really bad.
I also tried a new form of running today, which I have dubbed the ’20 minute run.’ Which is almost a complete misnomer, considering that it actually takes me ~40 minutes to do. The idea was to run in one direction for 20 minutes, then turn around and run back. I ran out of road at about 17 minutes, but it was a good workout nonetheless.
I’ve grown tired of porn. It’s done nothing but mess up my days for far, far too long. I end up staying up too late at night downloading and watching the trash, and I end up not having time to do the things I like to do, want to do, or even sometimes need to do. Well, okay, it’s never been quite ‘need to do’ bad, but definitely ‘want to do.’ So it’s no good, and I’m done with it. Today I deleted all the porn I own off my hard drive (with the exception of stuff I’ve written. :) No more of that, we’ll hope. Not to mention that I freed up crazy-lots of gigs of space off my hard drive.
I tried to do this once before, a while ago, it didn’t really work out. I suspect this won’t be easy to give up, but I also suspect its necessary.
-N
Last week was fairly normal. It looked for a while like I might be going out to Florida for work, (for secret work that I can’t talk about, so don’t bother asking :) but it was ultimately decided against. I’m missing a clearance that would instantly transform me from ‘not useful’ to ‘useful’, so I wouldn’t have really been much help, as it turns out. Ultimately, I think it’s probably not that bad a thing. Mostly it would have been work that I really couldn’t help out with, and Florida in the summer is pretty daggurn hot. And muggy. And hurricane-y, if you’re unlucky.
I went and saw a co-worker performing on the drums with his ‘band’. It was fun stuff, good music, and an all-right time. Met various co-workers, too.
Then, for the rest of the weekend, I did nothing. Well, I played some video games, which are always good fun, and ‘watched’ my class. The teacher made the mistake of saying that the material from last week and this upcoming week would not be covered on the midterm. So already my interest was at an all-time low. Then he went about explaining D/A and A/D conversions of images, which is absolutely DSP 101 kinda stuff. I don’t think I paid attention to a single word of it. Especially when he started explaining the Nyquist sampling rate. People, I get it. We have to sample at at least two times the highest frequency of the signal if we want to be able to regenerate the data from its signals. Fine. Good. We’re done. I don’t need to have this explained to me every single time I take a class that has anything to do with a digital signal. Well, regardless, I didn’t pay attention. It was dumb.
Oh, and speaking of video games, I’m never, ever, ever voting for Hillary Clinton for anything, ever again. Take-two, a video game publisher, is getting slammed up and down the news for allowing code to slip into their game which includes an over-18 mini-game in an over-17-packaged game. Despite the fact that the actual game doesn’t allow you to access the material, and you actually have to go out to the internet, download the patch, install it yourself, and then you finally can stumble, eventually, upon this badly-rendered little game. Senators, spearheaded by Hillary Clinton, have been ranting and raving all over the news about how this is so bad and so awful and have even gone so far as to insinuate that Take-two was actually intentionally putting in this unused code to be sneaky and evil and undermine the moral fabric of our young, innocent, little children.
These people are idiots, to a man and woman. For starters, Take-two did not peddle this crap. Unused code gets kept in builds all the time. That’s why they call it unused code. The fact that you actually have to go out and download what amounts to an illegal hack to run this thing should make it obvious that Take-two had no intention of this bloody thing ever getting out. Add to that the fact that the Grand Theft Auto series is the only, and I mean only video game that these senators ever get up in arms about and it should be obvious that these people are grandstanding for the sake of their constituents, trying to appear moral and upright and the like, all the while slowly gutting economic and social reforms and taking money from special interests and having their policies written by lobbyists. Grand Theft Auto is not the most violent video game out there. Not by a long, long, loooong shot. But it’s their talking point. It’s the only video game these idiots know. They hear the phrase ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and they’re just on a roll.
I may not be the most politically polarized man on the planet, but I am very, VERY, pro-video games. And if these twerps are going to try and tread on that, I’m never giving them my vote, or even my consideration. They’ve proven themselves to be fools, enacting laws on a subject they know nothing about. I know video games, and yet they’re the ones telling me how the games should be. Imagine if they’re like this on *every subject they have to vote on*. I suspect they are.
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to investigate Take-two and Rockstar, 355 to 21. Idiot quote of the day: "It appears that the publisher has blatantly circumvented the rules in order to peddle sexually explicit material to our youth." Right. Except that you're completely wrong. See above. Someone tell me how to figure out who those 255 were, because I’m never going to vote for any of them again.
Today was the software center picnic at work. It was good stuff. Lots of food which was delicious, lots of friends to hang out with, and some entertaining games to play. I believe I held the distinction of being the first person out of the entire dodgeball tournament. I am horrible at any sport that involves throwing things. Baseball, basketball, dodgeball, all of that. Really bad.
I also tried a new form of running today, which I have dubbed the ’20 minute run.’ Which is almost a complete misnomer, considering that it actually takes me ~40 minutes to do. The idea was to run in one direction for 20 minutes, then turn around and run back. I ran out of road at about 17 minutes, but it was a good workout nonetheless.
I’ve grown tired of porn. It’s done nothing but mess up my days for far, far too long. I end up staying up too late at night downloading and watching the trash, and I end up not having time to do the things I like to do, want to do, or even sometimes need to do. Well, okay, it’s never been quite ‘need to do’ bad, but definitely ‘want to do.’ So it’s no good, and I’m done with it. Today I deleted all the porn I own off my hard drive (with the exception of stuff I’ve written. :) No more of that, we’ll hope. Not to mention that I freed up crazy-lots of gigs of space off my hard drive.
I tried to do this once before, a while ago, it didn’t really work out. I suspect this won’t be easy to give up, but I also suspect its necessary.
-N
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Man, when it rains, it pours.
Just when a stretch comes along when I get worried that I’m not getting out with other people enough, something like this weekend happens and reminds me of the fact that I do, in fact, have a huge bloody lot of friends out there. They’re just pretty busy, like me, most of the time.
Highlights, then. Last week I got to teach another MATLAB class. They didn’t promise a gift certificate or anything, but since I’ve taught the class two times already and wouldn’t have to do hardly any work to get everything together, and because I really like teaching, I said sure. The class took place last week, went off without a hitch. They even bought us all lunch, which was actually pretty impressive. I brought donuts anyway. I guess the story is that this project was going to start using MATLAB and wanted someone to come by and give a quick introductory primer to a bunch of people that had never used it before, really. My bread and butter :). So yeah, good times, there.
Friday was a busy day. Well, at least it was in the evening. After I got off work, I went out to Volleyball for a quick bit with some friends before heading home, taking a shower to wash off all the sand, and then meeting those same exact friends at an Italian restaurant to say goodbye to a girl, who, notably, I’d never met before, who was heading up to the bay area and wanted a chance to sing karaoke with us.
I’m a big fan of the Karaoke.
So anyway, we all met up, had some pretty great Italian food, and then packed up in cars and went up to a karaoke-room place in Santa Monica. (Not a bar, one of those places where they let you rent a room.) It wasn’t particularly lush by any stretch of the imagination, but they had a pretty decent selection of English karaoke tunes, which was certainly a step up from most of the karaoke-room places I’m used to. They also had Japanese and Chinese songs, and so we were even treated, by a few of our multi-lingual friends, to some pretty nicely-performed foreign music. Generally accompanied by some really, really bad music videos, reportedly not the ones that originally accompanied the music in its native land. Oh, and evidently the Chinese selection doesn’t go past 1998 in age. A little dated.
I, as is my norm, was mostly about the big, loud rock stuff, which they had plenty of. We also popped up a couple of songs by Popular Rap Artist ‘Fiddy Cent’. I knew he was a bad rapper, but you don’t really get the sense of how bad he really is until you read and then repeat all the words in his music. “50…uuh…Bentley…uuh…” was one of my favorite lines. I’d put down some more lyrics, but they’re mostly unprintable. Sufficient to say that 50 has big wheels on his cars, a lot of jewelry, is a big fan of the ladies, alcohol, and drugs, in that order, and that he feels the need to explain ALL OF THIS in EVERY ONE OF HIS SONGS. And to think, there are rappers out there struggling to make money that have…wassitcalled? Oh yeah, *talent*.
Saturday would have included a jaunt out to a housewarming/going away party for a fellow co-worker, but I spent pretty much all day doing homework. I got one of the problems done, at least, which makes two out of three done in total, and it’s due on Friday.
I’ve also discovered that I’ve contracted a hideous, horrible disease. One that I’ve been overdue for. Senioritis.
Senioritis is what, traditionally, happens to high school seniors when they’re about to graduate. It’s that feeling of lackadaisical passiveness and general weariness that generally accompanies the students realization that they’re already accepted to college, none of their classes matter for graduation, and no one is ever going to look at their high school GPA ever again. Right about then, scholarly effort takes a bit of a backslide.
I didn’t catch Senioritis back in high school, but I’ve caught it now.
I blame the previous semester. I used to be able to force myself to do stuff I didn’t want to do. Last semester, despite being under tremendous academic pressure and having little-to-no time to relax, I still was able to force myself to accomplish things. It was miserable, and I hated it, but I had that sort of academic willpower necessary to hunker down and get things done, regardless of what else I wanted to be doing. That superpower is fading.
I’m finding it more and more difficult to force myself to forgo enjoyment in favor of school. I’ll be honest, I really just don’t care as much. Course, some relativity needs to be observed: I did pretty well on my previous two assignments, I understand the course material pretty well, so I’m not worried about the final, and we’re really only talking about skipping a few sections from a few problems, so it’s not like I’ve completely backslid. It’s just becoming harder and harder to care about school, mostly because all I want at this point is to be done. I don’t care what my grade is, essentially, as long as it’s passing. That’s what I busted my hump for on previous semesters, and it’s paid off, I got a pretty good GPA. So I’m allowed a bit of leeway here. I’m not worried about it that much, but I can definitely feel that inevitable slide toward being done with school and being quite excited about it. I mean, I’ve been in school for 20 years. 20 years! I’m very ready to be done.
But I did manage to keep myself at home and working on homework as opposed to going to the housewarming party, so I can’t have too serious an infection.
Sunday I went out with a co-worker, code-named J, to a few neat things. There was a Origami festival down in CSULB (California State University, Long Beach) and J was going and wanted to know if I wanted to come along. I said sure, because I’m a big fan of the ancient Japanese art of paper (Ori) folding (Gami). She also said she’d be going to church down in Long Beach and being as I wanted to check this place out, I accepted her invitation to come along.
First time in a non-denominational church. One would expect, by their nature, for them to be pretty different from each other, but it was a pretty nice service. We read some bible, heard some historical context, had some bread and what I believe to have been grape juice and had some good vibes all around. J and I went out to a local place for a quick eating of food afterwards and then hit the festival.
The location bears some mentioning. It was held in the beautiful Japanese Garden on the CSULB campus, which is a pretty massive place, with some nice paths, pretty bridges, lots of Japanese-inspired garden architecture (and some bonsai) and a huge koi pond with some some huge koi. The big ones were probably around two feet long.
Now you should note, at this point, that you can buy Koi food for the Koi fish and give them a good feed, which probably has to do with how big they are. They’ll come right up, too, and the place is structured so that there’s a little ‘beach’ where you can go down and the Koi can come right up and poke their heads out of the water and eat food out of your hand. Koi don’t have teeth. They have a huge suction-cup mouth that they use to suck the pellets right off your hand. I don’t know if you’ve ever had your fingers gummed by a Koi fish, but it feels really, really strange. You could pet them too. They were slimy, but it was neat anyway. Also, there were so many of them that they would crowd around and shove each other further and further out of the water and up onto the beach, eventually pushing out fellow Koi fish onto the backs of their compatriots and out of the life giving water. The top Koi would thrash around awkwardly until his friends let him break the surface and get some water to…ah…breathe, but that was a pretty good way to get splashed by fish, as J and I discovered. But yeah, the Koi fish were pretty sweet.
And then, of course, there was the Origami. Mostly it was beginner-level stuff (I consider myself intermediate on a scale between n00b and origami black-belt) but it was a lot of fun, and there were a few intermediate-level folds to be done among the easy stuff. They also had some neat displays of what I can only describe as Origami Art-Boxes. A little glass-topped box with a piece of paper that’s just been folded up all ‘neat’ inside. I thought they were quite pretty.
Oh, and first prize for awesome? The Origami Yoda. That was a winner.
We stayed there for pretty much the entirety of the 4 hours the place was open and I had a great time. I folded a neat little modular origami (defn: fold something simple several times, then join them all together) piece and the guy who taught described a more complicated version you could do with twice as many folds. I went home, figured it out, and made one. I’ll post pictures in a bit.
So not a bad weekend, and I have some upcoming plans, too. J…a different J, though, is performing on the drums with a band of his on Friday, so that looks fun and I plan to go, and then a bit after that we’re going to have a graduation party for something like 5 or 6 different people who are all finishing up their masters degree this summer.
So much for being a Hermit.
I didn’t get to run this weekend, but I’ve been putting in my days. Mostly I’ve been sprinting, because I’m so much worse at sprinting than I am at the full 3-mile run. Way very much worse. Also, I’m going to try extending my long distance run just go get in some extra exercise. Something like 4 or 5 miles. I’ll have to get into my car and run the odometer first, though, before I can map out a route. But I’m thinking about running along Westchester Parkway. It’s incredibly picturesque. Lots of people run along there.
I’ve been playing Trackmania: Sunrise, recently. It’s a pretty fun toy, but also very hard. Not a bad buy, though, for how cheap it is. I’m still only thinking about picking up Battlefield 2, I haven’t done so yet.
Oh, and I missed my mothers birthday. Happy ‘Your Son is a Looser’, day Mom! I am the ultimate winner! And S’s is coming along too. Good grief. I’m so bad with dates. I blame school, just cause it’s an easy thing to do. Blaming school, I mean. It’s easy. USC doesn’t talk back.
Well, that's all I have to say, then, I suppose. Come back soon for more exciting installments!
-N
Just when a stretch comes along when I get worried that I’m not getting out with other people enough, something like this weekend happens and reminds me of the fact that I do, in fact, have a huge bloody lot of friends out there. They’re just pretty busy, like me, most of the time.
Highlights, then. Last week I got to teach another MATLAB class. They didn’t promise a gift certificate or anything, but since I’ve taught the class two times already and wouldn’t have to do hardly any work to get everything together, and because I really like teaching, I said sure. The class took place last week, went off without a hitch. They even bought us all lunch, which was actually pretty impressive. I brought donuts anyway. I guess the story is that this project was going to start using MATLAB and wanted someone to come by and give a quick introductory primer to a bunch of people that had never used it before, really. My bread and butter :). So yeah, good times, there.
Friday was a busy day. Well, at least it was in the evening. After I got off work, I went out to Volleyball for a quick bit with some friends before heading home, taking a shower to wash off all the sand, and then meeting those same exact friends at an Italian restaurant to say goodbye to a girl, who, notably, I’d never met before, who was heading up to the bay area and wanted a chance to sing karaoke with us.
I’m a big fan of the Karaoke.
So anyway, we all met up, had some pretty great Italian food, and then packed up in cars and went up to a karaoke-room place in Santa Monica. (Not a bar, one of those places where they let you rent a room.) It wasn’t particularly lush by any stretch of the imagination, but they had a pretty decent selection of English karaoke tunes, which was certainly a step up from most of the karaoke-room places I’m used to. They also had Japanese and Chinese songs, and so we were even treated, by a few of our multi-lingual friends, to some pretty nicely-performed foreign music. Generally accompanied by some really, really bad music videos, reportedly not the ones that originally accompanied the music in its native land. Oh, and evidently the Chinese selection doesn’t go past 1998 in age. A little dated.
I, as is my norm, was mostly about the big, loud rock stuff, which they had plenty of. We also popped up a couple of songs by Popular Rap Artist ‘Fiddy Cent’. I knew he was a bad rapper, but you don’t really get the sense of how bad he really is until you read and then repeat all the words in his music. “50…uuh…Bentley…uuh…” was one of my favorite lines. I’d put down some more lyrics, but they’re mostly unprintable. Sufficient to say that 50 has big wheels on his cars, a lot of jewelry, is a big fan of the ladies, alcohol, and drugs, in that order, and that he feels the need to explain ALL OF THIS in EVERY ONE OF HIS SONGS. And to think, there are rappers out there struggling to make money that have…wassitcalled? Oh yeah, *talent*.
Saturday would have included a jaunt out to a housewarming/going away party for a fellow co-worker, but I spent pretty much all day doing homework. I got one of the problems done, at least, which makes two out of three done in total, and it’s due on Friday.
I’ve also discovered that I’ve contracted a hideous, horrible disease. One that I’ve been overdue for. Senioritis.
Senioritis is what, traditionally, happens to high school seniors when they’re about to graduate. It’s that feeling of lackadaisical passiveness and general weariness that generally accompanies the students realization that they’re already accepted to college, none of their classes matter for graduation, and no one is ever going to look at their high school GPA ever again. Right about then, scholarly effort takes a bit of a backslide.
I didn’t catch Senioritis back in high school, but I’ve caught it now.
I blame the previous semester. I used to be able to force myself to do stuff I didn’t want to do. Last semester, despite being under tremendous academic pressure and having little-to-no time to relax, I still was able to force myself to accomplish things. It was miserable, and I hated it, but I had that sort of academic willpower necessary to hunker down and get things done, regardless of what else I wanted to be doing. That superpower is fading.
I’m finding it more and more difficult to force myself to forgo enjoyment in favor of school. I’ll be honest, I really just don’t care as much. Course, some relativity needs to be observed: I did pretty well on my previous two assignments, I understand the course material pretty well, so I’m not worried about the final, and we’re really only talking about skipping a few sections from a few problems, so it’s not like I’ve completely backslid. It’s just becoming harder and harder to care about school, mostly because all I want at this point is to be done. I don’t care what my grade is, essentially, as long as it’s passing. That’s what I busted my hump for on previous semesters, and it’s paid off, I got a pretty good GPA. So I’m allowed a bit of leeway here. I’m not worried about it that much, but I can definitely feel that inevitable slide toward being done with school and being quite excited about it. I mean, I’ve been in school for 20 years. 20 years! I’m very ready to be done.
But I did manage to keep myself at home and working on homework as opposed to going to the housewarming party, so I can’t have too serious an infection.
Sunday I went out with a co-worker, code-named J, to a few neat things. There was a Origami festival down in CSULB (California State University, Long Beach) and J was going and wanted to know if I wanted to come along. I said sure, because I’m a big fan of the ancient Japanese art of paper (Ori) folding (Gami). She also said she’d be going to church down in Long Beach and being as I wanted to check this place out, I accepted her invitation to come along.
First time in a non-denominational church. One would expect, by their nature, for them to be pretty different from each other, but it was a pretty nice service. We read some bible, heard some historical context, had some bread and what I believe to have been grape juice and had some good vibes all around. J and I went out to a local place for a quick eating of food afterwards and then hit the festival.
The location bears some mentioning. It was held in the beautiful Japanese Garden on the CSULB campus, which is a pretty massive place, with some nice paths, pretty bridges, lots of Japanese-inspired garden architecture (and some bonsai) and a huge koi pond with some some huge koi. The big ones were probably around two feet long.
Now you should note, at this point, that you can buy Koi food for the Koi fish and give them a good feed, which probably has to do with how big they are. They’ll come right up, too, and the place is structured so that there’s a little ‘beach’ where you can go down and the Koi can come right up and poke their heads out of the water and eat food out of your hand. Koi don’t have teeth. They have a huge suction-cup mouth that they use to suck the pellets right off your hand. I don’t know if you’ve ever had your fingers gummed by a Koi fish, but it feels really, really strange. You could pet them too. They were slimy, but it was neat anyway. Also, there were so many of them that they would crowd around and shove each other further and further out of the water and up onto the beach, eventually pushing out fellow Koi fish onto the backs of their compatriots and out of the life giving water. The top Koi would thrash around awkwardly until his friends let him break the surface and get some water to…ah…breathe, but that was a pretty good way to get splashed by fish, as J and I discovered. But yeah, the Koi fish were pretty sweet.
And then, of course, there was the Origami. Mostly it was beginner-level stuff (I consider myself intermediate on a scale between n00b and origami black-belt) but it was a lot of fun, and there were a few intermediate-level folds to be done among the easy stuff. They also had some neat displays of what I can only describe as Origami Art-Boxes. A little glass-topped box with a piece of paper that’s just been folded up all ‘neat’ inside. I thought they were quite pretty.
Oh, and first prize for awesome? The Origami Yoda. That was a winner.
We stayed there for pretty much the entirety of the 4 hours the place was open and I had a great time. I folded a neat little modular origami (defn: fold something simple several times, then join them all together) piece and the guy who taught described a more complicated version you could do with twice as many folds. I went home, figured it out, and made one. I’ll post pictures in a bit.
So not a bad weekend, and I have some upcoming plans, too. J…a different J, though, is performing on the drums with a band of his on Friday, so that looks fun and I plan to go, and then a bit after that we’re going to have a graduation party for something like 5 or 6 different people who are all finishing up their masters degree this summer.
So much for being a Hermit.
I didn’t get to run this weekend, but I’ve been putting in my days. Mostly I’ve been sprinting, because I’m so much worse at sprinting than I am at the full 3-mile run. Way very much worse. Also, I’m going to try extending my long distance run just go get in some extra exercise. Something like 4 or 5 miles. I’ll have to get into my car and run the odometer first, though, before I can map out a route. But I’m thinking about running along Westchester Parkway. It’s incredibly picturesque. Lots of people run along there.
I’ve been playing Trackmania: Sunrise, recently. It’s a pretty fun toy, but also very hard. Not a bad buy, though, for how cheap it is. I’m still only thinking about picking up Battlefield 2, I haven’t done so yet.
Oh, and I missed my mothers birthday. Happy ‘Your Son is a Looser’, day Mom! I am the ultimate winner! And S’s is coming along too. Good grief. I’m so bad with dates. I blame school, just cause it’s an easy thing to do. Blaming school, I mean. It’s easy. USC doesn’t talk back.
Well, that's all I have to say, then, I suppose. Come back soon for more exciting installments!
-N
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Yeah. Late post, guess why? Broken computer!
A month or two ago, my power supply started making some funky buzzing noises. Really it just sounded like something was sticking into a fan, but it was *really* annoying, so I called up Dell tech support and they sent me a ‘new’ power supply. Really a refurbished power supply. Well Sunday morning, it conked out. I managed to get into work and get some homework done (not tons, but I’ll live) but I’ve been forced to play my measly ‘plethora’ of PS2 games for entertainment. Oh, the humanity!
Well I called up Dell tech support, and after going through their standard ‘is everything plugged in’ spiel, they agreed to send a tech out to fix me. Well right on time, he came over with a shiny (no, seriously, really shiny) new power supply, swapped it out, and I was good with game. Booyah. Course, then the Internet was down for a while, but my roommate, being the master of the Internets that he is, was all over that.
TKD news, we’ve started grappling. Originally, I was a little bit pensive. I’ve done grappling before, but I never really enjoyed it much. It just wasn’t fun like TKD is. TKD is a lot of fun, I just like doing it *so much*. That’s why I do it. Well we did some simple drills and I stomped them pretty heartily because, as anyone with a modicum of grappling experience will tell you, having even a little grappling experience will beat no grappling experience every time. Course, having a little more than a little experience will beat that every time too. It’s a really steep slope, but its easy to climb. So I was all over my partner this time, but I expect that with just a little bit of training, they’ll be flipping and tapping me out in no time.
And it didn't feel as unpleasant as it usually did when I sparred people grappling. Perhaps because now I have a chance, a good one even, of winning, whereas before I was generally grappling people that had experience on me. Cause pretty much everyone did. And like I said, with grappling, experience is everything.
Meanwhile, there’s a guy at work, we’ll call him ‘J’, that does grappling. He’s been doing it for about 4 years, which makes him so much better than me that I’d hardly even consider it a ‘match’, but I’ve heard that he’d love to meet up and just do some simple grappling. Mostly for two purposes:
1) I know, like, three submissions. The headlock, arm bar, and ankle bar. And I don’t think I’ve ever done an ankle bar on someone before. Point is, I should probably learn a few more. I don’t even know the…whassit called…chicken wing? That’s basic. Quite useful too.
2) If I keep whomping on everyone in TKD on grappling, I’m going to get an ego about it, and that’s just not good. Not for grappling experience or even for TKD. Last thing I need is to pretend I’m all superior to someone on the ground when we’re on our feet and get a good kick or two in the face.
Sparing went really well today, too. My opponent, (a junior black belt, which is the black belt they let you get before the age of 18) really wasn’t throwing a lot of kicks. I think he was intimidated (he was about half my size). But he kept dropping his hands, and I kept reminding him about why you, generally, don’t want to do that, uh, ever. I got some gook head kicks in. Course, his head is right around my chest, so don’t get too proud, here. It’s progress, though. I even threw some combos. Not enough, and not good ones, but it’s getting better. Woo.
Pretty much the only thing that happened this weekend, of note, was the pet adoption festival across the street from my apartment. I saw signs for it up around where I live and just strolled across on the appointed day. Which is a good thing, too, because this place was *huge*, and parking was scarce. Seriously, there must have been a hundred or more tents, filled with Dogs, cats, bunnies, and even a parrot rescue shelter looking to find good homes for…Polly, presumably.
Me, I went there because…ah…I love petting cats. Ooooh. They were so cute! They had some…okay, a lot of them, that were really scared to be there, but there were some that were very, Very, sociable. Very happy to see you and get their heads scratched. I miss that! There were a lot of kittens, too. Some really active ones which gave cute mews and pawed at you threw the bars and some that just cuddled up with about 5 of their closest friends in little kitty hammocks and looked adorable.
There were a lot of cats there, and dogs too, which would have been pretty sad except that there were a *lot* lot of people there. A lot. Lots. And some of them were really actively looking to pick themselves up a pet. I didn’t get one, though not for lack of wanting. It’s just that, for one, D is a little allergic, and for two, if you get a cat, you get a cat for 15 years, and I’m not quite stable enough for that. What if I want to go to Japan for a year. Sure, I’d *like* to take a cat along, but she’d end up eating all my sushi!
Monday I spent most of my time between Matlab runs at work looking at www.petfinder.com at pictures of cute little kittens. Good place to look if any of you are ever hoping to find a cat. They come all cleaned up and everything, mostly.
I also spent until 3 in the morning on Saturday playing the 1-level demo of Battlefield 2 over and over and over and over again. I may have to pick up that game, despite having so many others to play. I need my fix!
That’s it for now. Keep on truckin’!
-N
A month or two ago, my power supply started making some funky buzzing noises. Really it just sounded like something was sticking into a fan, but it was *really* annoying, so I called up Dell tech support and they sent me a ‘new’ power supply. Really a refurbished power supply. Well Sunday morning, it conked out. I managed to get into work and get some homework done (not tons, but I’ll live) but I’ve been forced to play my measly ‘plethora’ of PS2 games for entertainment. Oh, the humanity!
Well I called up Dell tech support, and after going through their standard ‘is everything plugged in’ spiel, they agreed to send a tech out to fix me. Well right on time, he came over with a shiny (no, seriously, really shiny) new power supply, swapped it out, and I was good with game. Booyah. Course, then the Internet was down for a while, but my roommate, being the master of the Internets that he is, was all over that.
TKD news, we’ve started grappling. Originally, I was a little bit pensive. I’ve done grappling before, but I never really enjoyed it much. It just wasn’t fun like TKD is. TKD is a lot of fun, I just like doing it *so much*. That’s why I do it. Well we did some simple drills and I stomped them pretty heartily because, as anyone with a modicum of grappling experience will tell you, having even a little grappling experience will beat no grappling experience every time. Course, having a little more than a little experience will beat that every time too. It’s a really steep slope, but its easy to climb. So I was all over my partner this time, but I expect that with just a little bit of training, they’ll be flipping and tapping me out in no time.
And it didn't feel as unpleasant as it usually did when I sparred people grappling. Perhaps because now I have a chance, a good one even, of winning, whereas before I was generally grappling people that had experience on me. Cause pretty much everyone did. And like I said, with grappling, experience is everything.
Meanwhile, there’s a guy at work, we’ll call him ‘J’, that does grappling. He’s been doing it for about 4 years, which makes him so much better than me that I’d hardly even consider it a ‘match’, but I’ve heard that he’d love to meet up and just do some simple grappling. Mostly for two purposes:
1) I know, like, three submissions. The headlock, arm bar, and ankle bar. And I don’t think I’ve ever done an ankle bar on someone before. Point is, I should probably learn a few more. I don’t even know the…whassit called…chicken wing? That’s basic. Quite useful too.
2) If I keep whomping on everyone in TKD on grappling, I’m going to get an ego about it, and that’s just not good. Not for grappling experience or even for TKD. Last thing I need is to pretend I’m all superior to someone on the ground when we’re on our feet and get a good kick or two in the face.
Sparing went really well today, too. My opponent, (a junior black belt, which is the black belt they let you get before the age of 18) really wasn’t throwing a lot of kicks. I think he was intimidated (he was about half my size). But he kept dropping his hands, and I kept reminding him about why you, generally, don’t want to do that, uh, ever. I got some gook head kicks in. Course, his head is right around my chest, so don’t get too proud, here. It’s progress, though. I even threw some combos. Not enough, and not good ones, but it’s getting better. Woo.
Pretty much the only thing that happened this weekend, of note, was the pet adoption festival across the street from my apartment. I saw signs for it up around where I live and just strolled across on the appointed day. Which is a good thing, too, because this place was *huge*, and parking was scarce. Seriously, there must have been a hundred or more tents, filled with Dogs, cats, bunnies, and even a parrot rescue shelter looking to find good homes for…Polly, presumably.
Me, I went there because…ah…I love petting cats. Ooooh. They were so cute! They had some…okay, a lot of them, that were really scared to be there, but there were some that were very, Very, sociable. Very happy to see you and get their heads scratched. I miss that! There were a lot of kittens, too. Some really active ones which gave cute mews and pawed at you threw the bars and some that just cuddled up with about 5 of their closest friends in little kitty hammocks and looked adorable.
There were a lot of cats there, and dogs too, which would have been pretty sad except that there were a *lot* lot of people there. A lot. Lots. And some of them were really actively looking to pick themselves up a pet. I didn’t get one, though not for lack of wanting. It’s just that, for one, D is a little allergic, and for two, if you get a cat, you get a cat for 15 years, and I’m not quite stable enough for that. What if I want to go to Japan for a year. Sure, I’d *like* to take a cat along, but she’d end up eating all my sushi!
Monday I spent most of my time between Matlab runs at work looking at www.petfinder.com at pictures of cute little kittens. Good place to look if any of you are ever hoping to find a cat. They come all cleaned up and everything, mostly.
I also spent until 3 in the morning on Saturday playing the 1-level demo of Battlefield 2 over and over and over and over again. I may have to pick up that game, despite having so many others to play. I need my fix!
That’s it for now. Keep on truckin’!
-N
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Vacation! More or Less.
I had a loooooong weekend this week. Raytheon not only gives us July 4th off, but this year we got July 5th off as well. It comes off our break at the end of the year, but that’s okay. I had a 5 day weekend!
I didn’t do anything ‘planned’ or ‘scheduled’. My favorite vacations (thus far, at least) generally involve just staying home and doing stuff I already enjoy. That’s how I’ve built my home, I just fill it with stuff I like to do. So when you ask what I did with my weekend, and I say ‘just stayed home,’ and you say, ‘ooh, sounds boring’, you’ve obviously never seen me at home.
Most of my weekend was spent on Star Ocean, and RPG that Chris brought down with him. I’m *totally* addicted to it, I love it when that happens. Sure it’s mindless and silly, but you don’t see me bashing your hobbies, do you? I enjoy this kind of stuff. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. It makes me happy. And happy is what I do on vacation.
I turned in my homework on Friday…okay, that’s a lie. I turned it in early, probably Tuesday…but the point is that I didn’t have any homework to do, and I got my class watched without too much agony. Also, my roommates girlfriend was up, and since my new roommate was here too, I spent a lot of time just sitting around with them and chatting and watching strange Japanese television shows. That was pretty fun, not to mention pretty entertaining. Japanese TV is so *weird*.
There were other notable activities, too. Small ones, though. Picked up Trackmania: Sunrise, which is pretty fun, but can be really challenging. It plays kinda like a toy, though. I can see just playing that for 15 minute stretches from now to eternity. Just for goofing off.
I sold off a bunch of my old/busted games to EBGames. They were all games I didn’t want anymore, and most of them were pretty old. Plus, if I didn’t sell them, they were just trash, so I took whatever they’d give me. I made about 24 bucks off the deal, but a few of the games got me 25 cents credit, which I think was pretty amusing, but considering how old and pretty much incomplete (just the CD) the games were, it’s hardly surprising.
So if I’m judging this right, there’s a bit of a ‘crepe’ thing going on in Japan. Evidently they’ve discovered that crepes are a pretty handy little food-delivery device for everything from meal-like items to sandwhiches to deserts. They don’t serve on a plate, either. They wrap them up like a cross between a burrito and pita bread and just hand you the darn thing. It’s pretty clever, really. There’s a crepe place right down the street from where I live, but I’ve never eaten there, though my roommate has because they serve boba (pearl tea) and he really loves the stuff.
Boba, (pronounced: Boe-bah) for those of you that don’t know, is a class of beverages that is very popular in Asia. They put little tapioca balls of varying sizes (often as large as a hefty blueberry) in your drink, and the drink can be anything from mocha-stuff to late-stuff to fruit-smoothie-stuff. Like I said, monstrously popular in Asian countries and, by extension, pretty darn popular over here, too.
Also did some writing, got about halfway through the next chapter, too. The one thing I didn’t do was play the drums. Guess I just got caught up in Video Games too much. Oh well, it’s not like I missed it because I was doing something I hate. I missed it because I was doing other things that I love. That’s okay.
TKD has a noon class, too, and I normally can’t go to it cause I’m, ‘yknow, working, but since I had Tuesday off, I got to go. Super-great! Now there’s a guy there that I finally got to spar, and for the sake of internet-anonymity, we’ll call him Mr. H. He’s actually only a freshmen in college, but we tend to call people by last names in TKD, so he gets a ‘Mr.’
Mr. H is built like me, which is to say big, but pretty darn quick for his size. Normally when I spar, I have a (really unfortunate) tendency to just absorb kicks because they really don’t phase me. I hate that I do that, and it’s one of the (many, many, many) things I need to work on. And now that I’m in the advanced class, I figured I’d eventually be sparring Mr. H, cause he’s actually a teacher, 2nd degree black belt. Good guy, too. And he kicks *hard*. My suspicion was that I’d eventually spar him and get that nasty habit that I have of absorbing kicks literally beat of out me.
Me: Come on, Mr, H, give me your best shot.
Mr. H: [best shot]
Me: Ow. I better start dodging!
Actually, it didn’t turn out nearly so bad. He didn’t get in any head kicks, which would have really hurt, because I kept my hands UP. If I learned anything from my college-age instructors, it’s to keep up your bloody hands! (I’m talkin’ to you, pandafoot!) So most people don’t manage to get my head. But like I said, he’s built big, and if he had slipped a spinning hook kick through my defense, it would have…ah…stung a little. But he didn’t, so that was good. I even took a few of his kicks, not because I consciously absorbed them, because he’s actually a really good counter-kicker. So I tried throwing some fakes in, which at least managed to keep him from flattening me outright with counters. I’d say he pretty easily got the better of me, but it was definitely a good sparing match, highlighting, once again, weaknesses that I just have to fix before I’ll be good.
Oh, that and I tried to throw a spinning hook kick and just *failed*. That was embarrassing.
June 10th there’s an adoption festival in the park across from where I live. I don’t want to get a cat quite yet, but I’ll bet they’ll have some there for petting! Plus it would be good to know how much, generally, owning a cat costs. Just for budgetary purposes.
Yeah, I’m typing this at work, but the license manager for Matlab is down, and without it, I can’t run Matlab. And without Matlab, I’m useless. So it was either this, or counting ceiling tiles.
-N
I had a loooooong weekend this week. Raytheon not only gives us July 4th off, but this year we got July 5th off as well. It comes off our break at the end of the year, but that’s okay. I had a 5 day weekend!
I didn’t do anything ‘planned’ or ‘scheduled’. My favorite vacations (thus far, at least) generally involve just staying home and doing stuff I already enjoy. That’s how I’ve built my home, I just fill it with stuff I like to do. So when you ask what I did with my weekend, and I say ‘just stayed home,’ and you say, ‘ooh, sounds boring’, you’ve obviously never seen me at home.
Most of my weekend was spent on Star Ocean, and RPG that Chris brought down with him. I’m *totally* addicted to it, I love it when that happens. Sure it’s mindless and silly, but you don’t see me bashing your hobbies, do you? I enjoy this kind of stuff. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. It makes me happy. And happy is what I do on vacation.
I turned in my homework on Friday…okay, that’s a lie. I turned it in early, probably Tuesday…but the point is that I didn’t have any homework to do, and I got my class watched without too much agony. Also, my roommates girlfriend was up, and since my new roommate was here too, I spent a lot of time just sitting around with them and chatting and watching strange Japanese television shows. That was pretty fun, not to mention pretty entertaining. Japanese TV is so *weird*.
There were other notable activities, too. Small ones, though. Picked up Trackmania: Sunrise, which is pretty fun, but can be really challenging. It plays kinda like a toy, though. I can see just playing that for 15 minute stretches from now to eternity. Just for goofing off.
I sold off a bunch of my old/busted games to EBGames. They were all games I didn’t want anymore, and most of them were pretty old. Plus, if I didn’t sell them, they were just trash, so I took whatever they’d give me. I made about 24 bucks off the deal, but a few of the games got me 25 cents credit, which I think was pretty amusing, but considering how old and pretty much incomplete (just the CD) the games were, it’s hardly surprising.
So if I’m judging this right, there’s a bit of a ‘crepe’ thing going on in Japan. Evidently they’ve discovered that crepes are a pretty handy little food-delivery device for everything from meal-like items to sandwhiches to deserts. They don’t serve on a plate, either. They wrap them up like a cross between a burrito and pita bread and just hand you the darn thing. It’s pretty clever, really. There’s a crepe place right down the street from where I live, but I’ve never eaten there, though my roommate has because they serve boba (pearl tea) and he really loves the stuff.
Boba, (pronounced: Boe-bah) for those of you that don’t know, is a class of beverages that is very popular in Asia. They put little tapioca balls of varying sizes (often as large as a hefty blueberry) in your drink, and the drink can be anything from mocha-stuff to late-stuff to fruit-smoothie-stuff. Like I said, monstrously popular in Asian countries and, by extension, pretty darn popular over here, too.
Also did some writing, got about halfway through the next chapter, too. The one thing I didn’t do was play the drums. Guess I just got caught up in Video Games too much. Oh well, it’s not like I missed it because I was doing something I hate. I missed it because I was doing other things that I love. That’s okay.
TKD has a noon class, too, and I normally can’t go to it cause I’m, ‘yknow, working, but since I had Tuesday off, I got to go. Super-great! Now there’s a guy there that I finally got to spar, and for the sake of internet-anonymity, we’ll call him Mr. H. He’s actually only a freshmen in college, but we tend to call people by last names in TKD, so he gets a ‘Mr.’
Mr. H is built like me, which is to say big, but pretty darn quick for his size. Normally when I spar, I have a (really unfortunate) tendency to just absorb kicks because they really don’t phase me. I hate that I do that, and it’s one of the (many, many, many) things I need to work on. And now that I’m in the advanced class, I figured I’d eventually be sparring Mr. H, cause he’s actually a teacher, 2nd degree black belt. Good guy, too. And he kicks *hard*. My suspicion was that I’d eventually spar him and get that nasty habit that I have of absorbing kicks literally beat of out me.
Me: Come on, Mr, H, give me your best shot.
Mr. H: [best shot]
Me: Ow. I better start dodging!
Actually, it didn’t turn out nearly so bad. He didn’t get in any head kicks, which would have really hurt, because I kept my hands UP. If I learned anything from my college-age instructors, it’s to keep up your bloody hands! (I’m talkin’ to you, pandafoot!) So most people don’t manage to get my head. But like I said, he’s built big, and if he had slipped a spinning hook kick through my defense, it would have…ah…stung a little. But he didn’t, so that was good. I even took a few of his kicks, not because I consciously absorbed them, because he’s actually a really good counter-kicker. So I tried throwing some fakes in, which at least managed to keep him from flattening me outright with counters. I’d say he pretty easily got the better of me, but it was definitely a good sparing match, highlighting, once again, weaknesses that I just have to fix before I’ll be good.
Oh, that and I tried to throw a spinning hook kick and just *failed*. That was embarrassing.
June 10th there’s an adoption festival in the park across from where I live. I don’t want to get a cat quite yet, but I’ll bet they’ll have some there for petting! Plus it would be good to know how much, generally, owning a cat costs. Just for budgetary purposes.
Yeah, I’m typing this at work, but the license manager for Matlab is down, and without it, I can’t run Matlab. And without Matlab, I’m useless. So it was either this, or counting ceiling tiles.
-N
