Oh only one more week.

• Family Reunion! Wine-tasting and gun-shooting, not necessarily in that order. And eating. So much eating.
• Resolved to make up an Anki deck to keep my anti-religion rounds hot.
• The previous two entries might have something to do with each other, why do you ask?
• Cab vs. Uber: I got a chance to evaluate Uber (hot new taxi-ish service), especially after using a normal cab service only a few days prior. Prognosis: Slick service that feels like it belongs in the 21st century for only $15 more (both trips were between the airport and my home during off hours (4AM and 10PM) so the trips were comparable) as well as an overall more pleasant experience. I hear prices might not work out otherwise, and there isn’t a way to make reservations, but I wouldn’t mind using it again.
• Also, I flew Virgin America for the first time, and it really opened my eyes to what flying could be. Unique lighting, screens for everyone, BoingBoing.net TV, and an overall pleasant experience.
• First foray into wearable electronics: actually, this isn’t my first attempt, just the first attempt that actually got finished. Post and pics soon.
• Demo day at work: very low-key low-pressure presentation. I think it turned out well.
• Reprap – Mechanical build finished! Only took a month (ugh)! Like I said, though, it seems like I might not be able to get anything finished due to having to move across the country. Will keep everyone posted.

So there’s only going to be one more of these, next week, and then it’ll be back to school. Yup, school…

Oh god so much stuff to do.

Reprap: stuff is happening. It’s really coming together.

Family Reunion: hitch in the plans, currently on a short Family Reunion.

But yeah, so many irons in the fire. Workin’ in 2 more weeks for the summer, and then it’s quench time.

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

One of my friends floated the writing of a serial fairy tale to his Facebook (which was met with much enthusiasm) which he was publicly announcing so it would actually get started, and I got a 30 minute story idea too good to not write down (or too terrible to mention, depending on how you like your puns). So without further ado:

–

It would have been a wonderful day for flying; well, if she weren’t out for revenge.

Stupid humans.

Didn’t know why they had a liking towards prehensile appendages, and he didn’t care while it was restricted to an awkward affinity for feline costumes, but this time their obsession had gone too far. So far, her original concern for the fact that humans had managed to find an Akrasian agent, much less came upon him unawares, was almost incessantly drowned by the smoldering vengeance stirred in her heart. See, it hadn’t even lit yet. But that’s the level of animosity held exclusively for persons that had altered his anatomy in her sleep. Yes, limb theft.

Unforgivable.

The fact that the fragile kingdom of Akraisa had to be protected at all costs would only justify the slaughter of the hapless humans, and despite the huge difference in scale that disadvantaged him, the outcome was never in doubt. True, she’d bump up his kill count only a little bit, but that was acceptable for a personal vendetta like this.

One more gust of wind past her membranes, and one more updraft, and the humans were in sight. There. That one. The one with the spectacles.

Drawing his sword, she thought about the poor bastards below. They would never see it coming.

He folded back her wings, and dov…wait, a swordsman. The human had already drawn, staring right at him.

Fury enveloped her, as he hurtled down. An armed human complicated things, but it was a trivial matter.

After all, the human had her tail.

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.