The summer is quickly winding down: however, I have a ton of things to do, so it’s time to quickly wind up and start getting things done.

• But before I try going insane, I hit up Music@Menlo and their chamber music concert, catching their last concert. Really, it's a shame I didn't catch more of their concerts, especially since they did a concert almost every day for a few weeks. Fairly standard performance of the Mendelssohn Octet, didn't feel there was anything very stand-out about it.
• Got my hands on the Kobo Touch, and finished re-reading Feynman's QED (Quantum ElectroDynamics) mini-lecture series with it. It fits nicely into most of my jacket pockets, and it's been nice to have a book within arms reach at all times. Tackling K&R and Advanced Linux Programming next. Review is forthcoming once I get a few more weeks under my belt.
• Techshop! Got some laser cutting in, maybe 30 minutes of the 120 I need to make the membership+class worth it, assuming $2/min. I'm not sure if I can break even, but I think I'm going to try.
• Happy hour is pretty standard. Not much to say, keeps me sane with social interaction.
• Reprap, build log is still being appended to. Some setbacks, mentally switched to a "when it's done" mode.

• Worked at home for the first time: needed to make a good impression with this whole demo thing
• Had a bacon cheeseburger pizza. It was deliciously decadent as it sounds

It doesn’t look like I did much this week, but I have made progress on the reprap. Yeah, really, that’s pretty much the extent of my life right now. I am doing some project write ups, too, but you know where to find those.

Oh my only a month left.

• Techshop laser class: I know, I already did a laser cutter class but Techshop is much more concerned with how their equipment is used than your usual hackerspace, and hence whatever previous experience I have is null and void. Which is a good thing, because my previous experience pretty much adds up to... null and void. Essentially. The class was very straight forward, and was geared towards people that would never set foot in a hackerspace. Hell, even some old lady that could've been my mom attended the class. Now, I have to put this class to good use, and I figure cutting for 2 hours will break me even. Better get started...
• Another outing to the San Francisco Symphony, this time to see the somewhat traditional Four Seasons mashup concert, featuring Vivaldi and Piazolla with their respective Four Seasons (no, I didn't like Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks). In contrast to last week's concert, the soloist was amazing: she had ideas that really challenged my preconceived notions of how the Four Seasons should be played, and just killed the Piazolla pieces. I need to get my hands on her Four Seasons album, and then be depressed I didn't at least seriously try playing as well as her.
• Happy Hour! The usual, except there was also a commercial space meetup at the same time, and I got to talk to guys doing space. Very different from the usual social media/analytics/ads dance in the valley, and gave me much needed perspective.
• ebook reader reconnaissance: earlier I've mentioned my thoughts on ebook readers, and how I lacked one, but recent developments have had me reconsidering my position. First is the fact I keep finding myself in public transportation with nothing to do, or sitting anywhere without anything to do. The second was finding out they have touch-based ereaders now, which may change my objections to the Kindle. Previously, I hesitated buying a Kindle because its handling of print-sized PDFs was subpar, and didn't want to shell out almost twice as much for a 10 inch model or one of it's brethren (really, $300+?). But upon finding out touch-based PDF handling was fairly snappy, I've given serious thought to the Kobo Touch. I went and tried it out at a closing Borders today, and got to see everything but the PDF handling. However, it's almost enough for me to order one, and I'll sleep on it for another night or two before buying one, receiving it in the mail, and reviewing it.
• Throughout the week, I've been working on my reprap. This is week 1 of the build, and I've been breaking new ground. Hopefully this won't stretch out to a week 3; eventually, I'll post my build log as a project, probably after I'm done with the mechanical build, hopefully sometime this week

Hit the teens! Almost only a month left, gotta go faster go faster go faster.

• At the SVI hackathon, I ran a web server from my phone. Since this is obviously the pinnacle of my life, I can die happy
• Went to a SF Symphony Concert. Solo cellist was less than spectacular despite his credentials, but the orchestra killed Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony, in a good way. Now I'm seriously considering hitting the SF again, for a dual Four Seasons concert (people seem to enjoy doing those?)
• Participated in the World Series Of Hack, put on by Mozilla in the Computer History Museum. It was as awesome as it sounds, although I started the 12-hour hackathon already tired, and I felt like absolutely shit afterwards (really, why do I do this to myself?). However, we completed something (oh, that's why), which I'll try to writeup soon
• I almost just now got my reprap kit in the mail (smaller than I imagined...). It's time to put off pretty much every other project to finish this as quickly as possible, which is what I'm going to go do when I finish writing this

Surprisingly, I skipped both the Lesswrong meetup and Happy Hour in favor of a concert and the hackathon, right after I thought they were becoming regular things. We’ll see how next week goes.

Ho boy

• More Rigging! I swear, I'll start animating in earnest... now
• Less wrong and Happy hour! Really, these are becoming regular events

I saw 2 folding bikes! Exciting, although they were better brands than mine (Dahon). I also swear that I’ll be putting out that bike review soon…

Yeah, not much noteworthy happened this week. Though, Stay tuned.

Happy halfway point!

• Rigging! (forever and ever) posted some silly videos to my youtube account
• Biked around Google's main campus, was terrible at DDR, and drank fancy grape soda. Oh, and discovered that Chromebooks are nicely built, like a really nice netbook. I mean, matte screen? MIND BLOWN
• Less Wrong Meetup! Missed the butter eating contest (I kid you not)
• Hacker Dojo Happy Hour!
• Super Happy Dev House! (notice a trend here?) Didn't really get anything done, unless you count a flyer re-design (which may or may not get pushed to my projects page) I did see the birth of a 3D printer (Rapman), and talk to a bunch of people, so that was cool

And, uh, yeah! That’s about it for this week. See you next time.

Another week, another update.

Mistake! There will actually be 16 of these, since I’m a dumb and didn’t actually count out the weeks, despite any piece of calendering software making this trivial.

• Hackathon! That was in a kind of weird format! (really, what hackathon goes for barely 8 hours?) No corporate endorsements! No draws! But we still made progress on Multipong! (Yup, multiplayer pong)
• Twilio "hack"! Read all about it!

So this week I didn’t really do anything. Looking back, there were a lot of big empty spaces of time. Oh well, I’ll figure out this whole “doing things” bit soon enough.

• I moved into a new place. No more couch-bed for me!
• Learned how it really feels to whittle down to an MVP, and try to keep it an MVP
• Attended the Anybots open house. The tech wasn't terribly exciting (and this Anybot shoots flames from its head!) but talking semi-shop with the employees was fun.
• Hit up another Less Wrong Meetup, and had a good enough time to miss my train (I'm really sorry guys)
• Hacker Dojo Happy Hour! I was somewhat apprehensive that it'd be only uber-geeks, but there were plenty of higher-functioning geeks too
• Read some more Russion SciFi by Lem, Tales of Prix the Pilot. Thought the ending stories lacked focus? This was brought on by the recent news that Solaris had been re-translated directly from Polish, but only in audio form #yes #Yes #YES
• Hung out at Noisebridge, becoming dehydrated and anti-social enough that I'll have to hit it up again to get a fuller experience. However, did get good work done

And that’s a wrap! I promise (semi-sincerely) that I’ll have something document-able by next update, instead of using all my free time socializing and goofing off. Geez, if I keep up the no-project output, readers might even get the impression that I’m a normal blogger and will soon start posting cat pictures.

Not that there’s anything wrong with posting cat pictures.

Okay, so I’ve been settling in for the last week, and a brief recap:

• Started work: somehow ended up doing computer vision, which I probably won't touch after next week
• Found a place to live that is not a couch
• Tried Xmonad, the amazing tiling window manager
• Failed to hit up Noisebridge, or the San Francisco Symphony
• Did run around San Francisco like a chicken with it's head cut off

Note: I really hate looking for housing, but not so much I’m willing to spend twice as much to just rent a hotel room. That’s just plain silly.

And I was wrong about the projects thing: now that I’m not spending every single night going out and trying to find a room to live in, now I might be able to finish something. Probably hardware-related, because my motivation to write code has dropped due to work.

The “head cut off” reference is because I walked all over San Francisco, because there was a street game of epic proportions. Now excuse me while I nurse my poor legs.

• Attended some graduations
• Tweaked the Arimaa Icon set up to version 3 4 4.1
• Attended a Classical Revolution session in Seattle
• Re-read Neuromancer
• Made progress on finding housing. I detest looking for housing. In fact, I detest looking for most anything.
• Failed to finish Halo: Reach
• Got to the Silicon Valley without dying

Start work next week! I should be able to actually start finishing projects again, so heads up for that.