Life, Adventures, & Shenanigans

Top of the World

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:08:38 -0500

Imagine you are on top of the world..

There is nothing around you except for a field of grass and the blue, blue, perfectly blue sky. Nothing else. Just you, and this perfect scene. It’s warm, and sunny, and you’re perfectly free

"Full Circle"

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:01:14 -0500

Isn’t it wonderful when something comes “full circle”?

I.e. you meet someone a long time ago, and then you get to see them again? Or see a recurring theme, or end up in a similar situation to before..?

Actually I’m not describing this really well. But you know what i mean :p

“full circle”. yea

(courtesy of my friend Alana)

Another Day with Alana :)

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Though (and we counted) this is the only 5th time Alana and I have ever hung out (over a period of two years, mind you).. ever since we met something just clicked and we’ve been great friends since - hanging out whenever life permits our paths to intersect.

Though I don’t see her very much or know everything about her, I know Alana is one of those people who has played an important role in my life - we always seem to meet at interesting transition points in each others’ lives, and go on absolutely ridiculous and incredibly beautiful adventures

This time was no exception :)

“The Arch” at Panther Beach, just north of Santa Cruz, California. Going through (and later, out of) this arch was like entering another world - one more loud, peaceful, beautiful, secret, and surreal. When we exited, at night, through this arch, it really felt like we were leaving Narnia or something :P

Winter in Northern California :D

Too awesome, we decided we had to name this rock. After going back and forth for a while, we ultimately decided on “Mammoth Rock Ship”

Walking up to “Mammoth Rock Ship” - the rock formations were really cool

We found this awesome nook where we sat and watched the surf for [an indeterminate amount of time]. It was perfect - the surf would splash all around us, but never get us wet. [Later, we realized that we think we discovered a secretly romantic spot - because we saw 2 couples making their way to this spot later - we were just barefoot adventuring and stumbled upon it out of curiosity XD]

Watching the surf break against the rocks. The water was truly amazing - a bit to our left, we could watch the white whirling waves racing to the shore - it looked like thousands of bunnies (or unicorns, if you prefer) jumping over each other and racing to shore - beautiful :)

To make up for not being able to meet up last time, I brought a picnic - fresh pomegranate from our front yard, a cheese sampler, french bread + butter + honey (the simplest and most delicious dessert ever!), oolong tea, and Alana added martinelli’s and chocolate peanutbutter XD

This sunset lasted forever. It was incredible

We just sat on the beach for hours and talked about life - one of the big topics was learning how to ‘let go of control’ and “resist nothing” in life. How there’s so much complexity and you can spend your every waking moment and bit of energy trying to figure out “the best” decision - where to go, what to do, where to direct your life.. but you can (and will) drive yourself insane by trying to find an optimal solution. This is life - it’s messy, it’s diverse, it often doesn’t make sense, and it is highly unpredictable. Ever notice that things are almost never as you expect or don’t go as you hoped they would? Rather than trying to control everything and make the ‘perfect’ decision, if we focus on the process of making a decision, going with it, and then evaluating and adjusting and correcting for mistakes - we’ll be much better off. [I can rattle off examples of this, but won’t do that right here]

These are the rocks we sat in front of - every once a while we would look up, and be spellbound by the incredible shapes and contours of the rocks, as well as the contrast between their beautiful orange color (which doesn’t come out in this photo) against the deep, perfectly blue sky.

I also at some point went for a free climb (bare hands, bare feet, mmm :)) on the rock, and experienced something like meditation and a state of mental peace while slowly flexing my muscles and counterweighting my body to scale the cliff. Amazing - I miss feeling this alive!

We ended our time on this amazing beach just sitting quietly and wondering at nature. For me, this day has been one in a long, long time when I have felt ‘alive’ again - and overwhelmed by the incredible-ness of life, and starting to feel in control of my life again. This (and yesterday spent in San Francisco), are the ‘jolt’ I think that will be getting me out of a year-long bad state of mind that I’ve slowly been growing into. :]

As we were driving back, the moon came out, in it’s beautiful large glory, to say hello to us :)

Dinner was delicious vegetarian Indian food to go - mmm

For dessert, we went on a ‘Quest’ to find cookie dough. (by ‘quest’ I mean that we went across the street to the gas station, but they were sold out, and we had to decide whether to persevere (which we did) or settle for cookie dough ice-cream). We ended up having a lengthy discussion trying to pick which store to try to go to (Trader Joe’s? Whole Foods? CVS?) and the merits/de-merits (I am strongly opposed to CVS) to go to to maximize our chances of finding cookie dough on the first go. Ultimately, we decided to try Whole Foods, which has CVS right next door as a ‘backup’, but, on our way there, we stumbled upon a SaveMart - woop!

The people there must’ve thought we were high off our rockers, because we stumble in (both of us are a bit tired from lack of sleep from our respective previous nights) and are on a ‘quest’ to find cookie dough. Then, we debate the merits of different cookie doughs, count the weight/cost ratios of each ones, and make our decision. On our way to the checkout isle, Alana shows me this - “Fun-Da-Middles”, something she and Melanie (a friend) had discovered a while back - oh the absurdity of American packaged food.. XD. Then, we arrive at the cashier, giggling, buying cookie dough, while Alana sees a cartoon vegetable advertisement and starts critiquing it, while I repeatedly push the credit card “accept” button, but it turns out i’m pressing the wrong one (it takes me like 8 tries until the clerk corrects me). We amble out laughing at the silliness of this scenario - and victorious, with our cookie dough.

My favorite part?

We end the night with a high-five, because we realize that it will be the last time that we can count all the times we’ve hung out on one hand XD.

Ah, so good.

Hanging out in SF with Helen, Stan, Carl, and Nick

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0500

So today I finally decided to get out of the house - and go hang out with some people! My parents and I drove to San Francisco and wandered around, and afterwards I met up with Helen, Stan, Carl, and Nick - who are all living in what essentially is a giant frat house, right in the heart of the Castro.

It’s an amazing location, and we had a blast hanging out, catching up, getting food, and, of course, drinking tasty booze!

Helen telling some epic story - I think this was a 30-minute tale about a flaming Hanukkah menorah

Eating out at a Cajun place

Carl making delicious drinks

Carl making delicious DEEP FRIED things XD

Even having to wake up at 6:30 the next morning was offset by the fact that the drive into Mountain View (where everyone works at Google) was beautiful :)

Mmm Jewish dinner :)

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:41:33 -0500

Mmm Jewish dinner :)

Days like this I really love being a computer scientist...

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:41:00 -0500

Days like this I really love being a computer scientist :D

(modeling the spread of disease through a “scale-free” network (analogous structure to that of the internet, and some social networks)

..and the earth began to unleash its torrential power on the...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:01:12 -0400

..and the earth began to unleash its torrential power on the humble state of Massachusetts today.

Soon, the snow is coming :)

Film :)

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 12:18:10 -0400

Recently, I’ve been struggling with the problem of ‘I take too many pictures’, given that I have a fancy dSLR camera - and after any given trip, I may have 300-1,000 photos that I’ve got to sort through, delete the blurry/bad ones, pick out the best ones, and then do what I will with them.

Well, when I was in Kenya, I had a couple weeks when I traveled and only had a film camera with me. In that time, I found that I immensely enjoyed taking pictures using a film camera, and basically fell in love with film.

The beauty of film is that you go from ‘let me try to capture (beautiful)” to “Let me think, decide what the most pivotal and representative moments of this trip are - and then think about how to capture them. And I only have one chance”. It’s a beautiful regression that actually is more of a leap forward - in terms of necessity of skill, lowered amount of post-processing work (film pictures generally come out more sharp, vibrant, and beautiful than digital), and less time spent sorting.

I’m so excited :D

(The pictures above are of the two film cameras I bought - one, for $5 in a local antique/flea market store, and the other for $15 (w./4 rolls of film) on eBay. They’re extremely sketchy - the first only has 4 positions for the focus, and the second only has two buttons, one of which doesn’t seem to do anything. :D)

Ironically, the above picture is taken with my dSLR and has no post-processing on it - the faded film-like look of the picture came from the lighting XD. Actually, as I’ve started using film more, I’ve found that I’ve become a better digital photographer too and appreciate my dSLR more. Go figure

Yerba Mate, Smoothies, and Ginseng

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 11:45:00 -0400

One of the things James and I purchased for our herbal tea order was American Ginseng - the fabled magical root that must certainly be the staple (and most definitely the foundation) of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

This particular root I added to a red/green Rooibos tea mix - which I’ll later turn into iced tea by adding some lime, lemon, and honey :)

Also, there was a smoothie made with Yerba Mate in it (a favorite stimulant drink of South Americans). Mmm weekends :)

The Reverb Works!!

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

So this summer, I’ve been working on developing a product called the “Reverb” for the ‘Regen’ division of the Noribachi group (see http://www.noribachi.com/index.php/products, click on ‘Regen’) - a $2,000-$3,000 solar-powered speaker (concept pasted below).

A render of what the Reverb should ultimately look like. We’re working to get it here by the end of the summer :D

Play time for up 10-12 hours (at more or less full volume) and recharge in 1-3 hours from the solar panels mounted on the back, and enough oomph and acoustic design to fill an entire warehouse full of sound :D (which is exactly what we did once we got it working)

Though we are addressing the aesthetics and manufacturability of the device, this summer we’ve (Jaime and myself) been mostly focused on getting the electronics up and running - spec-ing, testing, and building a solar-charger circuit, getting the audio driver to talk with the amplifiers, figuring out small features like indicators, low-battery voltage detect, and low-power operation - and today it finally worked! :D. We got everything together, and mounted on a ‘works-like’ prototype (seen below).

Enjoying some portable music :D

The stuff it takes to get this bad boy to charge from a solar panel and play for 10+ hours

So now, it works like it should (and can fill up a warehouse with sound no problem) - next, will be making it look like it should :). Yey product development!

Cooking!

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Sometimes, I cook:

Stir fry with brussel sprouts, onion, carrots, garlic, cilantro, and other goodness :D

Shiitake mushroom Quinoa

(most of what I’ve learned to cook this summer has been from my amazing housemates and their incredible cooking skills)

Day Off

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

What happens when I take a day off?

Cleaning, cooking, coding, and conundrums! (ok maybe not the last one - but it rhymed :P)

Using my housemate Ross’s monitor to do some coding & photo editing :D (and yes - those are three different types of tea on the left)

Getting creative with making bread :) (instead of water, I used tea - and then also added oats for some ‘interestingness’)

..once it’s all been mixed together

Making some roasted vegetables & onion rings

The cooked bread, as well as some roasted garlic & Kale chips :)

Camping at the Rio Grande Gorge

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

What a trip.

After a relaxing morning of sleeping in, eating multiple breakfasts (eggs, then potato tacos/chili relleno/etc. from a local New Mexican food eatery), and experimenting with brewing delicious iced Rooibos tea, we were charged and ready to go adventuring!

The ingredients for preparing iced tea: Rooibos, agave, lemon, lime, mmm :)

The finished product :)

The New Mexican place near our house doesn’t produce the best-looking food, but it definitely is tasty: especially the “Chile Relleno” - fried green chilies wrapped with rice, beans, and lots of cheese, with a deep-fried tortilla around

The plan was to go camping somewhere around the Taos area (~2.5 hours north of Albuquerque), and Jason found a campsite that was supposedly on the edge of the Rio Grande Gorge. And so we set out, and I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves :D

Leaving Albuquerque - beautiful clouds over the Sandia mountains ushered us out

Driving on this highway=pretty boring. (later) driving on windy mountain roads=much more fun :D

The nearby mountains are still on fire :/

We hit a spot (read: “really heavy rain”) of rain on our way to Taos, and Jason & James got hit a little bit by it in the back of the convertible :P

The rainy weather made for a really dramatic landscape, as the horizon was dotted with rain clouds showering down life-giving water

Light beams & rain in the horizon

beautiful clouds :)

sunstreaks breaking through the clouds

A view down from the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge

The sunset was unbelievable - the sun’s rays bursting through, and lighting up the mist/rain on the bottom..

At our campsite, Jason and I did a bit of nighttime photography - it was really cool watching the rainstorms in the distance..

The craziest thing ever was the rainbow we saw (note: this is nighttime, and this picture is the result of a 30-second exposure @ ISO 3200) We also couldn’t see the rainbow colors ourselves (since only the rods of your eyes operate at night - and they can’t see color). To us it was a ghostly arc across the sky, but the camera picked up the colors!

The clouds drifting away and making room for the stars :)

The view from our campsite in the morning

Getting ready to hike down the gorge to the Rio Grande

We had fun swimming (read: “drifting down with the current and trying to avoid large rocks”) in the Rio Grande, and hanging out on this rock in the middle of the river

..hanging out on a rock :D

..doing some laundry - the hippie way :)

Meditating in the middle of the river :)

Doing some laundry - the hippie way

views on the way back :)

Lunch part 1

Lunch part 2

Lunch part 3 :)

The Storymaker!!

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Today, the $100 order that James and I placed for ‘energizing, enlivening, and mental focus’ teas came in. We plan to experiment with a number of caffeine-like stimulants, and then combine them into a drink called “the storymaker”.

This has much been influenced by our deep love for Yerba Mate and the ridiculousinizing effect that it has on most humans (if taken in the proper quantities) - ensuring adventure, shenanigans, and general awesomeness will ensue. So, we figure, why not apply science to the art of caffeine stimulants?

Also, there are a number of herbs in here that we plan to brew as a “daily tonic” - which will help us have long good health.

There’s just something wonderful about the reportedly near-magical powers claimed by these herbs and tisanes - something that draws us to try to figure them out and see if it’s true, and see what the Chinese and Russians and Indians and … have been talking about for thousands of years.. It’s really a chance to get back to (or rather, fully embrace) another aspect of our hippie roots :D

Yet Another Friday in Albuquerque

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Today was another one of those epic days: for the company we’re starting (http://solardistinction.com/), we just heard back from our manufacturer contact in China, and they were excited about all of the ideas we proposed to them (one of our main ones below)

One of our concept solar panels we’re working with our manufacturer to develop. This is ~230W model with cool hex-shaped cells and glass-on-glass mounting plates.

So that was exciting :D. I’ve also been talking to the company 3-form (http://www.3-form.com/) about using their materials as superstrates for our solar panels:

Some of the resin-encased/glass-encased organic patterns we’re considering using as a solar panel superstrate. Yes, it will reduce the efficiency, but depending on how we specify it, only by a small percentage

Now imagine having a solar panel with one of these patterns on top of it :D. In short, it’s been fun :).

After work, we went rock-climbing at a local bouldering/top-rope gym, and all of us got memberships for the next month, so we could go as many times as we’d like :D.

We ended the night with some time spent relaxing and a delicious vegetable dinner (onion, carrot, brussel sprouts, and kale, seasoned with mustard seed, soy sauce, turmeric, and some oregano & black pepper thrown in)

Woop! :)

Morning w./ Apollo

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 10:00:00 -0400

Last night, we had some people come over for blues dancing (one Kevin knew, and she brought a couple friends). They ended up spending the night, and this is the chronicle of what happened the next morning :D

The main guy we spent the morning with was ‘Apollo’, a self-named circus acrobat performer. We spent the morning juggling, laughing, body-balancing, doing an exercise dubbed ‘7 minutes in heaven’, and sipping yerba mate out of a coconut. It was fantastic :)

Our friend Apollo doing some random acting using the infamous “blue balls” - 5 blue McDonald’s playpen balls filled with 85 grams of sand - a surprisingly important part of a performer’s tool arsenal.

The “7 Minutes in Heaven” exercise involves 7 non-stop minutes of core exercises, starting with the front plank, involving this move, and ending in..

..hand-stand pushups

James was a bit tired, but joined us anyway :)

Sipping Yerba Mate out of a coconut ‘gourd’. Mmmm

Watching crazy inspirational body-balancing videos and learning about things such as the “mesa party” - a techno-rave-like thing that happens once a year on top of one of the mesas between Albuquerque and New Mexico.

A solid morning indeed.

Solar Panels, Dinner, & Sunsets

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:24:02 -0400

We just got back from an excellent ‘work’ trip to Santa Fe to meet with Ross’s parents and an architect family friend of theirs (Eric). We chatted with Eric and Mark (Ross’ dad) about their thoughts on solar, toured a fancy solar installation, had a two-hour dinner graciously sponsored by Ross’s dad, and drove back to Albuquerque watching the fires smouldering in the distance and the sun lighting up the smoke. What a day.

Touring some solar panel installations with Eric, the crazy (but awesome) Architect. Check out the glasses, and the ENORMOUS size of the panels behind him. This guy had enough panels installed to power his whole neighborhood (and he did).

Climbing a roof to check out some more panels

A closeup of the cells! They were actually pretty slick..

The first real rain we’ve had in New Mexico! Too bad it didn’t reach albuquerque..

Dinner with Ross’s parents. They treated us to a delicious meal and even more delicious wine

“The Vinigariette” as the restaurant was called, offered an excellent selection of salads :)

Also, hipsters designed their bathrooms. And did so really well

My favorite group of old (elderly) people ever. They just seem like a tight group of friends that grew up together - and I imagine this is what we’ll look like 60 years down the road :D

James’ meal. mmm

Watching the sunset, clouds, rain, and smoke on the way back to Albuquerque. I can’t think of a more wonder-inspiring combination

Assembly-Line Work

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

This is what the first 4 hours of every day at Qnuru looks like :D

We drill, tap, sand, assemble, and test light fixtures. It can be tedious, but also meditative and a great chance to listen to audio books :D

A job we did for UNM - retrofitting some of their outdoor lighting fixtures with LEDs. Pro tip: these all had to be hand-washed by interns :P

It’s not all gloomy though :P - we do have plenty of time (in the afternoons) to do brainstorming and work on other (really cool) projects!

Left to Right: James, Ross (from Dartmouth), Jaime, David (our CEO’s son), me, Jason. (Unspecified people are all from Olin :))

..and all the while this guy watches you and makes sure you don’t mess up :D. (though he is a hard-core rider (motorcycle) and probably runs his own gang, Rick, our resident badass, can also school you in crochet and looking like a cute bunny :D)

Indian Food, Borsht, and Trolololl!

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

An excellent sunday involving an all-you-can-eat Indian Food brunch, followed by a relaxing afternoon, cooking borsht, and watching this ridiculous movie called “Troll Hunter”, which we were convinced was a movie about “trolling” but turned out to be a fake documentary about this guy who wears metal bucket suits and hunts trolls that love Christian blood and hate Christian music and turn to stone (or explode) when exposed to vitamin D. Oh baby

Mmm Indian food..

James really happy :D

Preparing the ingredients for Borsht, following instructions handed down to me by my father

Ross pouring unknown but delicious liquids into our cups..

Possibly the best line from the movie :D

Rock-Climbing

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

One of the things we’ve been doing a fair bit of this summer is rock climbing :)

Jason, Jaime, James, and myself typically go a couple times a week to a local indoor climbing gymn, and have ourselves a good time - the physical challenge of going up the wall, the mental challenge of grappling with ‘how do i get up this’, and the adrenaline that comes with falling and balaying and finishing a climb. It’s been tremendous exercise and great fun :D

The secondary room of the climbing gymn

James beasting it up a really tough corner climb

Jaime & Jason doing a great job at balaying :D

Working out a tough challenge (5.11)

..and we’ve even convinced Ross to come out a couple times!

(plus, we started a tradition of ending our climbing sessions by doing dive-rolls over large rectangular sitting pads that they have lying around — super fun, and pics to come soon :D)