Something Out of Nothing

Well, the end of the year has come, and taken all of us seniors kicking and screaming. That is not to say that we are all done with everything. As it turns out, a little thing called my ceramics class has fallen through the cracks. I am pretty sure I have nowhere near the amount of work done as I should for the class. So its time to get a little creative. I need to figure out some way to make the small amount of work I have done look like a concise body of art. To do that I am going to need 5 lasers, 5 watch batteries, and a camera. We'll see if this works. I'll post the results if they are any good.

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Testing my Will

I just got back from the doctor's office for the third time this month and boy was a it a good visit. I have been pretty sick for almost all of April, which has been pretty trying. Each time I have visited the doctor previous to today they would take a look at me, shrug, and say "look like you have allergies, here are some sudafed." Super. Today a met with another doctor, because I just wasn't satisfied with the old "alergies" response anymore. There is just something a little frustrating about going to the doctor and having them point out that you are sick and wish you luck. Today, however, the practitioner was more concerned. She ran some tests (finally) and based on her professional opinion, believes that I am having a resurgence of mono. with a lil' bit of strep on the side. It makes me wonder, is there really someone up there pulling the strings, trying to test me? Or maybe I'm God's version of reality TV. Just give him BOTH so we can see what hilarity ensues! Either way; this sucks.

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What I'm Up to Now

It really is coming down to it now folks. The end of the year is nigh and that means I am almost done with my college career. So many things are going on right now; I'm putting the final touches on my last assignments, getting ready for final exams and papers, and wrapping up my undergrad research. As it turns out, that is only schedule for the next two weeks. After that its time for some senior week madness, where people that aren't quite ready to leave will get all together too drunk for an entire week. So many times I have heard that college is the best four years of your life and while I can't dispute that college is amazing, I am just as excited for the next stage of my life. I guess that I am ready to move out of the dorms and into a life of my own, which is exciting to say the least. I am going to be doing some really interesting and intense research in the upcoming years and I can hardly wait. I also look forward to doing a fair bit of traveling, as I am going to be spending three weeks in Italy between May and June! As it turns out now is the best time of my life and I can only hope that my optimism for the future will follow me through the years.

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Big bowl gold mushroom cowboy meat

Anyone that has eaten at restaurant in a foreign country that "caters" to the English-speaking knows that translation can be an issue. That being said, I don't think I have seen anything quite like what this guy encountered at a steakhouse in China. I'll have the "Salty egg vegetable sponge liver pig soup please." Oh yes, and I'd like to have a side of the "Cowboy Leg Beautiful Pole" and just some "Carbon burns fatty cow New Zealand" for the lady. Thanks. Comedic Gold, you can't make this stuff up. Hit the link for the full menu.

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Safety Dance

If you spot terrorism, blow your anti-terrorism whistle. If you are Vin Diesel, yell really loud.





I have recently been conducting some research involving hospital preparedness in the case of mass-incident chemical contamination. It is has been a generally depressing ordeal sorting through countless documents that chronicle horrifying events. However, during my research I came across a hilarious site that puts a light-hearted spin on preparedness. It takes real government illustrations and "interprets" their ambiguity in a funny way. Follow the link to check it out.

The image and caption shown are one example from safenow.org

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Everybody loves soap!

So, check this out. I was doing some thinking recently while washing my hands. "Hmmm." I thought. "I am getting a little hasty and rinsing my hands too soon and losing all that valuable soap!" "I sure miss that foaming pump that I used to have." I realized that I hadn't actually thrown out the foaming pump and so I got to thinking of a way that I could use the pump again. I figured it out and submitted my formula for breathing new life into an empty foaming dispenser to instructables.com . It is a really interesting website for any DIY project you can think of. Here is the link for my submission if you are interested in the technique. SOAP!

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Volver

This has been one hell of a week. I have been trying to shake illness for almost two week and instead of getting better it decides to get worse. The good news is I was able to convince my doctor to give me some antibiotics. The bad news is I have had more assignments due these past couple weeks than all semester. So it goes. On a ridiculously childish note, I have been assigned to put on my own rendition of a scene from Almodóvar's Volver with a group of my classmates in Spanish. Aside from being reminded of middle-school I am rather enjoying my directorial duties. I get to play a dead guy who is talking from inside a cardboard refrigerator. Neat! Anyway, sometimes its fun to butcher excellent films in a way that would have made the actual director cringe. Click the video to listen to the title song, I really enjoy it. It's called "Volver" by Estrella Morente

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Light Writing

I just recently learned a photography technique that basically lets you "write" with light. It's pretty cool. It reminds me of those Sprint commercials that have been airing lately. I will upload a few pictures to illustrate what I am talking about. Click the "Read More!" below to see a few more pictures and how I did it.



To take light writing photographs like this you'll need a camera that allows you to edit some of its manual settings and a flashlight. I used a Nikon D70 and some LEDs. Set your camera to a long exposure time (15-30 seconds). You will need to setup your camera in a dark room.  It is very important that you have a tripod or something that keeps your camera from moving, otherwise the background and your light streams will be blurry.  Then once you press the shutter you can wave around your lights in front of the camera and voila you have a light writing picture.  It might also help to manually focus on the area you are going to be standing in with the lights.  If you leave autofocus on the background will be the focal point.

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Online again!

Well that sucked. In under 48 hours I was able to crank out enough posts full of babble to make the blogger system think that I was a spamming bot. Touché, blogspot, Touché. As it turns out I was not just posting a bunch of links to porn sites or seedy places to buy V I 4 G |2 A so I am back in business. Hooray for that.

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Verdant Japan

This is not the same garden. I don't really remember exactly where I took this. I think I took it on the grounds of "the Silver Palace." But look how seriously green everything is here too. This is also a good picture to see how foreign these bending trees look up close.

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Garden's surrounding Samurai Palace

This was one of the most astonishing gardens I have ever visited. The garden is situated within the walls of a samurai palace in Kyoto, Japan. It has been maintained meticulously since the 14th century and you really feel the history sitting within it. Everything was lush and green, however, the most striking aspect about it was how truly different the vegetation in Japan is compared to Boston or Miami. It is a seemingly tiny detail, I mean, who notices plants? That being said, I was blown away.

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The Foothills of Mt. Fuji

I took this photograph in the summer of 2006 on a trip I took with a couple of my friends to Japan. This building is situated below a clifftop graveyard nestled in a small town in the foothills of Mt. Fuji. It was an astonishing site not only because of its apparent beauty, but because this structure serves no important purpose. It is no feudal Shinto shrine, but an unassuming place of work for normal Japanese citizens.

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Looking Back

Yesterday I installed a program called picasa to help me organize some of my photos and upload them to this website. While I was setting it up I got to flipping through some of my older photos and realized that there are quite a few beautiful/interesting ones in the bunch. I thought it might be a nice thing to share some of these experiences so I am going to choose a few of these photographs that are particularly interesting or thought provoking and setup a little context for each of them.

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BEAMZ Music - Beats for Exceedingly Awesome Musicianz

This has got to be the funniest "instrument" to come from the guitar hero phenomenon. It touts the ability to have "potentially different arrangements" from each performance. Wow. For only $600 you will be making your own laser-triggered-semi-unique compositions in no time. You have to watch the video for yourself. The only words that come to mind are kitten & yarn.

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My Office

 

So this is a picture of the laboratory that I am working in now. The tiny workspace in the picture is shared by 4 people and there isn't an inch of counterspace to spare. It has been interesting learning what the guys in this lab have to teach me but I am ready to go elsewhere. Despite being in the brightest building on campus I can't help but feel that the atmosphere is a little opressive after our exodus from our old building. Philosophy aside it is a cool looking place to work. For those of you that don't do a whole lot of science, this is what a chemistry research lab looks like. It is generally really messy and there are 500 experiments all going on at once.

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Only Weeks

I am having trouble getting motivated to actually do things this week, not because I am lazy, but because I'm pretty much checked out. There are only a few weeks left in college and I am excited to go on and do something new. It's becoming increasingly more difficult to focus on middle-school-esque busy work assignments in Spanish when I know that it really has little effect on my life.

As it turns out, my professors didn't get this memo and are still hammering me with assignments. I have at least one presentation a week which I need to give from now until the end and I hate looking like an idiot in front of a class so I really do have work that needs to get done. That is why I am writing in a blog and not studying, that's where my free time is going, and that explains the guano on my shoe.

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A Blog?

I know. Lame. I have been thinking about starting a blog for a long time now and finally caved to the idea. It just started with thoughts of graduation and how in less than two months the people that I have spent the last four years with will be spread all across the country. That being said, I figured a blog might be an interesting way to keep in touch with a lot of these people. You guys can see that I am still alive and maybe even learn something new about me while keeping an open forum of going-ons. Then again this is kind of like a journal, and I suck at journals.

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