Apples & More

Dad's been sending me pix of the shindig in England. here's one of me and my college twin, Julie.  She is so creative and I just love how spontaneous she is. We backpacked through Europe together, and we had a wonderful time in Marseille, Paris, Barcelona, Belgium, and Zurich. I promise I'll get around to posting pix from the Wedding and other trips eventually. I'm sure I will be the only one to actually look at them :)

We recently had the apple bake-off at my dorm, and I was impressed! our students did great, the best tasting was an apple upside down cake. There was a 3D apple sculpture "Susan's apple house". There was even a giant eyeball "apple of my eye" by Kathy and Sarah. Apples & creativity go well together.

Other than that, life has been super busy. I'm working on my oral exam slides right now and hope to do a test run on Monday and later that week. eeks.

PS. I also heard that a certain fightin frog will be having another baby! What?! Congratulations and wow. Also, a congrats to my friend Tad & Isa for their new addition, FT. wow! Must be something in the water...

PPS. I just bought a new steamer

Sarah & Joyce

I am cleaning out my way-backlogged inbox, when I get this link to Sarah's pictures. It was from when
Joyce was visiting. These good times were filled with our newest friend, Violette! We had our trip to Hahvahd square, a nice little lunch at Shilla, and a terrific time hanging out. Here's to Sarah for becoming the first soccer mom of us Miami gals! :)

First week of classes are over!

It's been a very busy week. Classes have just started, Jim and I are still getting used to the new lofted library he built, lots of new people on the hall. Its been exciting, and overwhelming at the same time. Meanwhile, I am working on a CHI paper and usability study. It will be the roxxor. I have started ta-ing the same class I TA every fall-- Tangible Interfaces with my advisor, Hiroshi Ishii. This year's class is oversubscribed, again, so it will be a challenge. Looks like a lot of good talent in the class, so it is exciting. I am looking forward to working with the new folks at the lab and building great things!

I was surrounded by consultants! We had a brief visit last week from alumni Paul Yarin, who was passing through town after finishing a documentary film project. It was very inspiring to meet and get his insight on my work. I am also pleased to have met his friend Eric, who was at the lab almost a decade ago. Those were the cool start-up times at the lab. I also got to try a nice restaurant, Cuchi-Cuchi, where we had tapas with Rich, it was entertaining and I would definitely go there again. Nonetheless, it has been a very very busy week. I have been designing my user study, and I hope that it will be a good one.... remains to be seen, no?

Anyway, I thought I'd put up a nice picture I found from our recent trip to England.
Its of my two cousins, Ray and Joyce, in Hereford. We're enjoying ice cream, and I have taken this picture with Ray's super camera. I'll be putting up more pix later of course, but there are just so many pictures.

back from england, in time for Rush 2007

Jim and I just got back from a terrific vacation with our families in England. There were tons of Castles and Cathedrals, and also lots of berry picking. The countryside was beautiful, and it was fun to spend time with my new family. There were also exciting fireworks and bonfires, to celebrate our new families! More pix soon!

Our students are back as well, and by the sound of the hammering outside, it looks like Rush this year will be fantastic. Already, I have heard people using a zipline across the courtyard, and the flume looks like it will be fun. Go EC!

Paul Rand

It is a rainy day today. Perfect reading day.Recently, Paul Rand's work has been on the forefront of my mind. Combined with thoughts from Marshall McLuhan, I believe that the tension between parts of media that are mutable with the intrinsic qualities that are immutable (things that can be perceived no matter what alterations have been made by the medium) gives us our experiences. The beauty of experience is that it is so subjective. Why can we make subjective assessments when presented with minimal information? Can we make quantitative assessments in the same circumstance? In general, reading the thoughts and philosophic ideas of those masters before me has been enlightening. I have a lot to learn from their wisdom and it is exciting to find new insights nestled in the pages of an old book. Writing is definitely a beautiful way to send a message through time.

Harry Potter and the order of the Pheonix Landing

An ideal Saturday. I woke up late (good sleep!), and Jim made me a sandwich. Then I hung out with my friend J, had a latte, and we saw Harry Potter's Order of the Phoenix. I was on the edge of my seat, it was goood!!! We then met up with V & R at Pheonix Landing. As usual, the food did not disappoint!! :) Then enjoyed the night (although a little cold) by visiting my old favorite 1369 Coffeehouse with V. Caught Minority Report back at home and ended the day on the ole compy. I had a full day! :)

Determine your bandwith

with Mr. T. Built by Jonah. :)

Rock Band Stage Demo

My friend/student Matt works for Harmonix. He recently gave a live demo at E3 '07 for the release of their new video game, Rock Band. The game is awesome, and makes Guitar Hero even more cool. Now you and your friends can rock out together! Matt can be seen doing his thing (he's the cool guitar player on the right) GameSpot Rock Band Stage Demo

Back from a beautiful Miami weekend

Jim and I are back from an exciting weekend in Miami. We met with tons of family friends and family, ate a delicious chinese banquet, and had a terrific time on the beach. Joyce helped me shop for my new dress. My friend Dan made it out from California to join us. Jim surprised me with a beautiful new ring, with all the things I like on it. It was quite a terrific getaway. We also got to stay on the beach and swim. I learned a ton of new swimming techniques, such as the prone float and prone float with glide, and we had a relaxing, sun-drenched time. (Maybe these techniques will be useful on my next big trip to an exotic locale.) There was even a small thunderstorm, which Jim really loves. Pix from Dinner Celebration event

This Is Broken

This Is Broken just about sums up my weekend.

Fourth of July Recap

Jim's parents and 2/3 brothers, and Gongke Shen made it up for the 4th of July holiday. We went to Kelly's along with Shannon (congrats to her for finishing her phD!). We also went to Sichuan bay, the Shen's restaurant in Somerville and had yummy spicy Chinese food. It was a food festival.
It was nice to see the Gouldstones, although I missed all the breakfasts because I slept in. The weather was okay, although cold at night when they got here. Then it drizzled rain on the 4th, but we went to see the fireworks anyway. It was the BEST view I've ever had of the fireworks, a full field of vision due to the lack of crowd! The fireworks were thunderous, and I was ecstatic. Pix coming ofcourse *wink*. We had just enjoyed ourselves with sushi and ice cream before, so we were quite happy. Despite the rain, I felt it was one of the best fireworks shows I've seen in years. I couldn't hear Mellencamp sing except for "Unchained Melody", but its due to our proximity to the fireworks. WHOAAA! Go America! Go Boston! NiCE! Of my favorites this year were the 3D cube, smiley face, and parachute lights. The other bifurcating tails and long-shimmer tails were also good, as were the slow motion trails. Simply amazing what fireworks can do.
Side Note: We could have done without the street drama later that evening, some kids had a rumble in front of the Biogen Path on Binney & Ames. They fled like ants when the cops came. I'm sure they made all the noise in homeroom. Kids today!

back from camping

This weekend we joined our students at their campsite in N Andover. That's me with a burning marshmallow. I'd never been to Harold Parker State Park, and it was nice and green. The stickmen went swimming, and even caught some fish at Field Pond. We made fire, yay! There were hotdogs and hamburgers, and lots of s'mores. I got to sleep outside under the sky and stars for the first time... it was nice until it started raining! Then we went and slept in the car. This morning I learned how to play Rummy and we drove back. Others pedaled back, and others stayed behind for more camping. It was fun, although we got bitten by mozzies. Still, lots of good memories and exciting happenings. Pix up later... props to Anand for the picture here.

Starfish

We took a trip to the pet store and saw some starfish.

Congratulations Miami Springs MAO!

My HS alma mater, Miami Springs Mu Alpha Theta, recently came back from State Convention with 39 wins, placing them 7th out of 56 in Florida. Great Job, Miami Springs Mu Alpha Theta! Special kudos to the amazing group of parents, teachers, and volunteers who were there to assist in those weekly practices and competitions. Good luck at Nationals next month!

End of May, June travels

sweet memories
Congratulations to the Class of 2007 Graduates! Particularly my 1W seniors, I will miss you all. Its such a nice time of year to reflect on how hard people worked, and how much they have achieved. Finals breakfasts are over, and so are finals! Its been nice to know you, my Stickmen, and I hope to hear great stories from you now and then. Carpe diem stickata. *sniffle*

I had to miss the graduation this year due to attending the NIME 2007 conference. I gave my paper to a terrific audience of fellow musicians/artists. There were many New Interfaces for Musical Expression-- and much of it was refreshing. The level of enthusiasm and mental energy in the work shown was quite high. I believe the Saturday jam lasted until near dawn...
I was also very pleased to have made the acquaintance of new friends and notable people from the field (from places like LOGOS, Penn, CMU, Stanford and Tufts-- you know who you are, I won't mention by name). It was terrific to see old friends and collaborators, and I enjoyed the brief moments, the sheer brilliance of some of the work I saw, and the enthusiastic crowd of conference goers. This year's conference was hosted at NYU at the ITP-- and it was a funky crowd. There were artists, hackers, and engineers and everyone was extremely psyched about their work,and psyched to see other people show their stuff. It even had a session on philosophy, which is normally absent from the other conferences I've attended. I will be posting my conference photos soon. NIME ROCKS. You should go.

Friends from Stanford

Spotted old colleagues and new at CHI last month. Not only are these talented technologists from Stanford also great kazoo players, they also take requests. Mike Bernstein, Dave Merrill, and Monzy from Stanford performed impromptu kazoo renditions of popular songs, like "Wipe Out" to entertain Wendy Ju and other CHI reception partygoers. They were definitely the highlight of the closing CHI ceremonies.

Toasty friends

It was fun to see Elwin and Mandy again at Legal's yesterday. Since Elwin was visiting from LA, it was a real trip to hang out and talk about life outside MIT. Mandy has returned from India (and doing artistic things). Also met Frank, who is the head of UCLA's alumni group. Missed Zahra and LiWei, but maybe next time!

Engelbart & Clinton

This week, our group met with Doug Engelbart, the inventor of the mouse. He gave a talk about his new vision. It was terrific to meet a living legend. It was great to spend time listening to him talk about where HCI should go and how representing knowledge in different ways would be useful to mankind. He was very positive, and just enthusiastic. The best part about meeting great people is how nice they usually are, and how happy they are about the work that they do. Usually they are very generous with compliments and his thoughts on what was interesting about the work he saw. For example, Doug also invented a chording keyboard, and he brought it out and talked about how people were able to use the keyboard effectively/efficiently even more with chording and how amazed he was by that. His enthusiasm for this chording feature was clear.
Reminds me of the time I met Douglas Dayton, from IDEO (and before that Hovey-Kelley), who drew the CAD drawings of the mouse for commercialization. Always cool to meet people who worked on a seminal project, and listen to their stories.
I'm rambling now, cause its 5:30am, but I recently caught Bill Clinton on TV talking to the Potomac school. It was great to hear such an articulate leader who had thought about the pros and cons of world situations. Again, his strong convictions on what America should do in Iraq and other places was clear, and he showed his understanding was more than surface level. He identified that Democracy is not just majority rule, but an idea based on respecting the greater good and minority viewpoints. The best thing I learned was that different ways of seeing things (e.g. multiple identities/sympathies) are good. He applied this to religion: we can have many different religions and celebrate their differences, but also having alternate identities than just a religious identity helps people understand their fellow human beings and celebrate mankind. By understanding differences in different ways, we can understand that there is no ONE correct or dominant way of doing things. As long as we respect each other and seek the greater good, humanity will always triumph.

It is impressive the amount of background knowledge this man had in his impromptu speech. Here are some interesting quotes that came from the Fairfax Times news article:

"...Study something they love, and to challenge themselves, make it difficult ... spend some time getting to know people different than you."

"Globalization is inadequate. Our world is too small, we all need each other, and divorce is not an option. You cannot escape each other."

"Everybody needs an opportunity to participate. People need to feel responsible for the success of an endeavor, a sense of belonging."

---

Other than that, I had a terrific time seeing my friends who I have neglected in a while. Lily and Ben, Rich and Virginia showed up for dim sum, along with Jim Barabas, Betsy, MayLin, Lily and Jordan, and new folks Jo and Nick. It was a terrific time, and I learned about what was going on with everyone's lives it was good to appreciate how hard everyone works and enjoys their jobs.

Congratulations to Lily & Ben for getting married! They are very happy and i'm sure it will be a motivating factor for Lily to finish her thesis so she can go on a honeymoon!

We went shopping at Costco today, too, and bought finals breakfast food. It will be an exhausting week but I'm sure we'll have a lot of good times as well.

Flowers everywhere

Everywhere around campus, there are azaleas blooming. Pleasant breezes and nice weather were the norm until today. Today it is rainy and full of thunderstorms. I'm going to go out in it, to have dinner at Penang with Aileen.

Post Sponsor week catch-up

Its been a looong week. After flying the red-eye back from San Jose, it was time for sponsor week. I think I must have slept a total of 8 hours the whole week. I took advantage of this weekend to catchup and see my friend Sarah (and my cousin Joyce) who was visiting from Miami. Sarah has a baby, Violette, who is ultra cute and quiet. It was nice to get our mani-pedis in Harvard, and just catch up. So much has happened since we were last together about 3 years ago. Its nice to know that things are going well. When you're in school it doesn't seem like time is moving. Its like a vacuum, or as TadT says, its a bubble that reflects in on itself. Still, it seems like life is good. Otherwise, things in school are coming to an end of a semester. Students are getting their plans together for summer, and all the end of year events are rolling by. It will be a busy end of semester, as many of the seniors on my hall are moving on to bigger and better things. We'll be doing some end-o-year events and as usual, it will be a busy but fun time.

Back from California

Me, Tom, Julie and Duff are having desserts at Mel's diner in SF here. I am back from a great time in california, after hopping off the red-eye to partake in Sponsor week at the Lab. I started off at CHI (flickr posts coming soon), then LA and SF. It was very nice to see a lot of ML alumni, get a sense of what they were working on, and give me perspective on what life could be like after MIT. The work that they're doing now out west seems satisfying and deeply meaningful. I was amazed at the level of detail, quality, and robustness of the engineering work being done at Oblong and BlackDust. Lots of startups. Tom's got Whooptones and some secret ones that will be announced soon...*hush*. These guys have visions on on the future of technology, and you can buy/play/live with it. More on this in a later post, after I get the pix up. I also had a terrific time meeting with old MIT friends, and soaking up the rays on a hike at Penitencia Creek Park with c/o 97'ers Julie and Duff-- its been too long. Here's a shout-out to the i-dogs "Arrouuuu!"

A recap of good things Summer 04

We have have all the good things here. I found my Summer Pix from 2004, and am seriously looking forward to this year's round of BBQs, outings, and Fairs.




We also have the summer birthdays and excursions from earlier that year. Jim frosted all those ladybug cakes! I baked popovers, cause he likes em so. In retrospect, it was a busy summer where people were moving around a lot. There were visits to and from family (UK, NY, and Long Island), Roo's Thermal Spray lab at SUNY, and then there was trips to the beach. We saw the HelloMoto boat and met the captain and enjoyed fireworks on the 4th over the Charles. We baked a lot, and looked out the windows onto the MIT dome from our apartment in central square.

Journey to Cinque Terre

Just looking at the pictures takes my breath away. I've finally uploaded pix of our Journey to Cinque Terre last spring break. It was one of the most captivating hikes I've ever been on, and I would definitely like to return. We had a terrific meal overlooking the gorgeous views, and met many kind people. Next time, we'll definitely go climb the castle and eat more frutti di bosc gelati!

ML Model Hack

Little green men have stormed the Media Lab Model . Looks like someone's research is causing quite a stir. Hold on to your thumbtacks and resistors, they might be commandeered by the troops.

Rubber ducky, you're the one!

A fun and wacky valentines day on Stickmen where we had some serenading, hearts, and tasty goodness. The last video is of the hall at the housemaster's studybreak. Its been a giggle of a term. The stickmen also rocked the house at the recent Cookie bakeoff. We submitted 5 entries (including a GRT entry), and they would have all won if we had enough prizes for them. Jim's GRT entry didn't get to be voted on, but I thought it was the best one (and I'm not biased at all!). Pix of the Cookie Bakeoff TBA. Congratulations to the power bakers Sarah and Kathy for their award-winning entries of Spagetti Cookies and the Great Dome Hack. We had the most innovative hall, with the spirit of Colin Cross revived in cookie form by Chris's "Colin Cookies"-- a hall secret recipe, and also the spirit of 3D creation from Kelly, which had people wondering how she made it!

Key West pics finally uploaded

I finally put up the pix from 2 summers ago of our drive to the Keys:Key west adventure. There were some very beautiful parts, like the sunsets, the super rainy downpour, and the waterspouts along the Seven Mile Bridge. We visited that Key Lime Pie factory, and ate some goodies, saw some "funny people" at the "ladies night" on the main drag, and enjoyed getting our tans. The drive was long, but it was kind of fun-- only 4 hours from Miami with cruise control. One nice part was hanging out with Jim and my parents, and enjoying the lighthouse views at the southernmost tip of the US. We went all the way to Mile 0 of I-95, the beginning of that beast of a road that makes its way all the way up to Boston! I found that my street is in the center of town, and we even saw a pirate store! Arrgh!

See Duff talk at Google!

My friend, physicist/scientist/inventor/programmer, Mike Duff, will be giving a talk at google today. Hope those of you in Mountain view can go. Sounsd like he'll be talking about internet security at SRI, one of the coolest innovation companies around.

Congratulations Robbin!

A big kudos to my friend and colleague, Robbin Chapman, for her recent appointment to diversity recruiting in the MIT School of Architecture Planning. She's so positive and energetic, I think that she will make a big impact in the admissions process for our department.

One See in Four Stages, by Mat Laibowitz

Hey folks, this looks like a cool installation by Mat Laibowitz at EXIT ART. If you are in NYC, this might be a visual experience that changes the way you think about light, space, and time.

Marty Johns sent me Bubbles

Bubbles
Watch it become.
Thanks Marty! That's very nice of you. Makes me want to go to the circus.

Happy Chinese New year, happy valentine's day!

This is going to be an awesome year! Its going to be terrific, and I'll get to see my friends a lot more this year! I celebrated in style, with dim sum and dinner, with some good friends and my awesome hall. So this year, I know it will be easier to see my friends than in previous years. :) I might have good opportunity to fly to your neighborhoods, friends who are afar (SF, Dallas, Miami, NYC)!
I'll try to blog more this year, that way you can have constant updates! For those of you on RSS readers, you'll know the scoop from the source.
This is from my cousins in China:


As the weather would have it, I was snowed in on Valentines Day and ended up not flying to my conference in Baton Rouge. So I spent the day *working* next to my handsome man, and also hung out with my favorite students! It seems those close to me will also be close to me next year. Yay yay yay!

Congratulations Ian, my Guy101.

Congratulations to Ian for winning a BAFTA. You know you rock. That was the best winner's walk I've seen. Nice bling too! xxoxoxo! Watch him snag the prize!
Here's 2 my favorite Guy 101! *kiss* *kiss* snootchy bootches. *bye cutie*

Congratulations to Jonah

Lucky for me, I know lots of winners! Congrats to Jonah on winning for his entry Alerting Infrastructure, the OpenCall for Labcyberscpaces!

Happy Birthday Virginia!

We went to Amelia's Kitchen, in cozy Teal Square. I had pesto, everyone else had yummy pasta! yum yum! happy birthday Virginia, what a year!! hope that next year is even better!

Happy Turkey Day,Stickmen!

Kudos to my hall for making mondo food for Sunday's Thanksgiving feast. Click here of pictures of kevin Making Turducken. It was way cool, and we are way full.

Yummy!

Congratulations and good work to the students who entered the East campus Apple Bakeoff this year. There were many creative and colorful dishes, and some interesting combinations (e.g. thugfest brew). These shots of the food are absolutely stunning. You should have tasted them!

Congrats to Shwang and Reyna!

Just got email today from Shwang and Reyna that they're back from their Hawaiian honeymoon adventure. Their adventures were spectacular, from snorkeling to helicoptering around the island, and soaking up tons of fun and sun. They even got to experience a mild earthquake! We're glad you guys shared your pictures, looks like an amazing time!

nice weekend, cake, ice cream and more!

This was a nice long weekend. We went Apple Picking, got a lot of apples. Had some bday cake and lots of ice cream! Talked to Ben and my folks. It was good weather, and have a lot more energy than last week. Thanks for all the well wishes everyone! My hall is the bomb,yo, I got a rainbow color cake with all the miami pastel colors (thanks Sarah!). Makes me feel at home, surrounded by some pretty flowers! Its been a nice day, week, year! To many more!

Parents wanted a new USB cable  and phone case

Haymarket shopping experience

Here you see Maya buying groceries, photo taken by Peter.
For class, we recently did a study of shopping as it has become more mechanized. We went to the olde-fashioned Haymarket and compared the higher-tech experience to Shopping at Shaws. It was somewhat of a surprise how positive the shopping experience at Haymarket was, compared to shopping at Shaws. At Haymarket, the vendors were very friendly, while at Shaws, they were merely functional. It is interesting that the separation of job functions, and optimization of efficiency in the shopping process has also resulted in shopping being more task oriented in finding and aggregating, vs. negotiation and persuasion.
Check out my songs on the haymarket and shaws experience, made from sampled sounds by Sara and Peter.

Feldmeier on Jesus the Ride

IMG_2740.JPG, originally uploaded by bavetta.

Its very rare that I see pictures like this. Apparently one of the best photos from EC Rush this year.

Jonah's interview

Jonah was recently Interviewed by a media art site.

ANGEBOT on Sale

Image(057).jpg
Originally uploaded by a7emprl.

According to JimB, my robot is on sale. Just think, for 4.90, you can get 15 minutes with ANGEBOT. Apparently, its got 8 kabinens. It might be your only chance to experience what its like to be in her awesome company. L0LZ!

Anj at Penn State DIS2006

DSC05634.jpg
Originally uploaded by Indignant Chiuhuahua.

This is a picture taken by Wendy, of me at lunch with people at DIS2006. You can't tell, but outside, it is raining cats and dogs. Luckily the Vietnamese Pho was very warm and filling.

chinatown run

Today we went to Chinatown and had dim sum. It was rainy, but the dimsum was good. As always, I was able to get my coconut jello fix, and jim got his cha siu bao fix. Our hall residents came along, and it was nice to see V & R, Rebs, and Juana and Rob again. Next time we go though, I'll have to organize it later-- people have trouble waking up before noon. :) Although, the good stuff is usually gone and not as fresh later in the day. Tomorrow is a holiday, and hopefully we'll have a good day for the ec bbq.

1W rush pics

I finally got 1W rush pix up. We had a terrific rush, with a carnival theme organized by the hall chairs, Ryan and Kelly. They did a superb job, and it was fun. We got our palms read, fortunes told, and horoscopes dispensed. We played Tic Tac Toe, Ring Toss, Yoshi Mini Golf, Cork Gun gallery, and even had a working Skeeball machine with Stickmen scoring. Jim had the high score (32.5 (4 full stickmen, and 1/2 point)). The food was entirely awesome too, we had corndogs, deep fried oreos, and frozen chocolate-nut covered bananas. yum! You can hear your mortality when you bite a deep fried oreo, kinda tastes like a chocomuffin. We also slurped down our hall drinks: (virgin daquiris) and bagadodots.
In the days leading up to rush, we had Kevin's bday and also Chris finished his awesome Seurat painting. Go Stickmen Rush! As you can see, everyone helped out, and all in all, it was a success. Even many of the other floors came down to see what the fuss was about. Best of all, we got our hall t-shirts. Yay! This hall's got it together.

Catch Kristin Hall on Thursday at the Muddy

Thursday, August 31
The Muddy Charles Pub, First Floor Of Walker Memorial (Building 50), MIT, 142 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 8:00 - 10:00 PM and beyond...
Come on down! Have a drink and listen to some great tunes as you look out over the Charles River.
[The Muddy Charles is on the first floor of Walker Memorial, which is next to the tennis courts at the corner of Ames Street and Memorial Drive. The Pub is just to your right as you enter the front doors facing the river. There is on-street parking on Ames Street & in Kendall Square and it is just about a 5-minute walk from the Kendall Square T station

You can also catch her this Tuesday Tuesday Tuesday, August 29
Main Street's Market & Cafe, 42 Main Street, Concord Center, MA. No cover. Enjoy a great meal, a fine wine & leave a tip for the musicians. 7:00 - 10:00 PM.
George Deliyiannis & I are making a return to the stage at Main Streets! As always, it will be a night of fun music, great food & great drink. Come for the food, stay for the blues & new tunes.

[Main Street's Market & Cafe is right on Main Street (Route 2A) in Concord Center, between Walden Street and Monument Square . There is on-street parking and the municipal parking lot is about a block away. The Concord Center Commuter Rail stop is just a few blocks away. Google Map info is here.]

Jonah's on the move again

You can catch Jonah in Montreal on the 16th at this exhibition up in Montreal. He also forwarded me this cool link on the Simpletext project. Reminds me of Golan's Flong symphony.
Jim and I recently got MRI scans for fun. Jonah sent a link of these stand up MRI places they have in NYC. Wild.

Back from Colombia!

Jim and I have just returned from our trip to Colombia to see our friends, Rich and Virginia, get married. It was a wonderful time. We got to visit the countryside and enjoyed petting ostriches and riding horses. It was also nice to meet Virginia and Rich's other friends. We'll definitely have to post our pics soon.
Now we are still unpacking, and starting to get ready for the beginning of the school semester. Rush will start soon, and our hall is making some cool treats. Rock on Stickmen!

What a month!!!

Finished DIS, came back, got good news (more to come), and had July 4th Festivities. It's been hectic recently. Between organizing the exhibit for Tangibles At Play at Emerging Technologies: SIGGRAPH 2006 and moving to our new place, its been hectic. Hopefully things can get settled and I can get back on the grid. Thank goodness I found my cellphone again! yay!

back from traveling

i just got back from traveling to Dick's Wedding in Alabama, and also from DIS conference in Penn State. It was my first time to both of those places, and the travel times were quite long. I also had connections, so it was quite tiresome. However, I'm glad I went. It was very nice to meet all these new people, and everyone has been extremely interesting and nice. I hope to keep in touch with them! I also got to reconnect with old friends, like Wendy Ju, Jofish, and Scott Klemmer. Looking forward to DIS2008 in CapeTown, South Africa!

G2P Beta: Using Google to locate MP3s

Jonah sent me G2P Beta. Now if only I could find my sense of peace. Have been in 6 different airports last weekend (BOS, CVG, BHM, ATL, PHL, and State College). I want those frequent flier miles! :)

Harvesting Peppers

I will have to post it soon, but I harvested the first pepper of the summer from my little pepper plant. It was small, but cute. I have another one growing, so we'll probably harvest that in a few days.
This weekend, I can't forget to re-pot the plants!

who's the cutest elephant walker in the rain?

whoop-whooop. shhhh! don't talk about the elephant in the room!

Congratulations to mako and mika!

Mako and Mika's Wedding

Wedding Blog on wiki.mako.cc. This weekend we went to our first Open Source Wedding. It was a lovely day for a beautiful wedding. full of music, food, and fun. We wish the happy couple a lifetime of bliss.

Jonah and K are going to Amsterdam

If any of you are in amsterdam in a few weeks, check out Jonah and Kaki's networked umbrella. You get to spend an evening with them and a workshop as well. More details here: Virtueel Platform - Scrapyard Research

Memorial Weekend in NYC

This was a terrific weekend. The weather was hot and sunny! We were finally done with our schoolwork for the term! And I went to NYC to see my friend Barbie, her boyfriend Duane, and also my brother Ben, and sister-in-law, Kelly.
Barbie, Duane, Jim and I did the double-decker bus tour of uptown, and Kelly and Ben made some awesome food. Ben and Kelly had gotten this GYNORMOUS flat panel TV and were laid back. The trusty FungWah got us there, but I think we'll lay off that for a while. It was a good time, and relaxing to get away from the stress of school. You can see the Memorial Day Weekend
pictures here.


here's to a great start to our summer!

OWL Movie!

Check out my owl movie! More to come in next few days.

Gigantic Crunchies from Montreal

In April, Jim presented his poster at CHI 2006 in beautiful Montreal. You can see us romping around Montreal. We had a terrific time, especially when we went to the IGA Louis Menard Marche and found these gynormous crunchies!
We also got a tour of XSLabs, thanks to Joey and Vincent! Whoo hoo! See Christine's blog for more pix.

Thanksgiving 05 Pix are up!

Thanksgiving at Ben and Kelly's

Jim's bday pix from my phone

Finally put pictures from Jim's birthday party last year up. Not bad for pix from an A1000.

Jim Gouldstone -- Ceramics

Jim and I took a
ceramics class this term. Check out our figurines. We learned our fab technique from Marc!!!!!!

What a weekend!

This was a pretty busy weekend. We managed to see a few movies, and I saw the Flavor of Love reunion (a disappointment but still a train wreck all the same). It was CPW, so the campus was full of frosh. I waded through them to go to my Tae Kwon Do practice, and it was a hard day of practice, but fun. I learned a new form. Practiced jumping backwheel kicks for the first time. Its a moment of weightlessness as you whip your leg backwards to the target. Cool time, though, and I am still sore. Need bananas.

I look forward to finishing fixing up the Shuttle machine and bringing it to lab to do heavy duty in our office. Its in tatters, but it works now, and I think it'll do well as a cad/demo machine. Its got a TV tuner in it, but I will have to wait to see if I can resurrect that. That's what you get when you inherit a broke machine.

I picked up the 3rd book from the Well of Echoes Series again. I was only meaning to read a few pages, and ended up plowing through 100 pages to the 3rd chapter. It was intense. I gotta be careful! Its addictive.

Yams is waiting for me to log into Animal Xing DS, and I have got to go to bestbuy to pick it up. Will do that soon!!! Can't believe the weekend went by so fast...