Thursday, February 26, 2009

Three things

So... if you want to have all your clothes clean at once, you've got to be risk sitting around naked while they are washed. If you don't have a washing machine, completely clean is impossible (or not worth it at best). Life's like that: you've got to live with imperfection ... or be naked.

Whilst still lying in bed this morning soon after I awoke, out of nowhere I realized how to fold those flower-like games from elementary school. So I grabbed a piece of paper from my backpack and folded one... and it worked!

I don't know what made me think of it, but I was happy that the design in my head worked in real life. Usually twilight thoughts don't translate to reality.

This week, I've been eating fresh strawberries cut into strawberry yogurt infused with pecan bits. I like it a lot.

And I can't take very much credit for this because my duties on our Senior project team haven't dealt much with vision or navigation yet, but I'm still helping out. The car in the video below is following the green water noodle with a camera mounted on top of the car.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Bijana, Bijana

Happy Valentine's Day!

My dad shared an interesting article with me about Joshua Bell, violinist extraordinaire, playing as a street performer during a D.C. rush hour. Only a handful of people paid any attention to him. (I think it's interesting that the most consistently interested demographic were the young children). If you've got several minutes this article is worth reading, not only for the content, but for the fact that it has at least these GRE words in it: cupidity, banal, castigating, mendicant, august, coalesced and encomium (I never thought I'd see "encomium" used).

Someone else shared another article (through Google Reader) about alone time. I'm very much guilty of constantly being connected. With my iPod, I can always get my email or chat with people whenever I have Wifi -- and all the places I tend to be have Wifi. With my little EeePc, I can use my computer in class and connect to the ether.

Driving home a day or two ago, I listened on the radio to a discussion about watching TV -- about what people think is okay for kids and adults. The "expert" pointed out that TV viewing has become less of a family activity (as it was decades ago) and is now an individual activity. He refuted the claim that TV-watching habits can be reduced to "hours watched;" the content matters too!

And then I saw this commercial on TV for Dentyne. Yes, I was lazily watching TV after listening to the radio program on bad TV-watching habits.

So... all these combined have given me a desire to interact more and compute less -- to unplug.


And so, today we fixed an old PlayStation (thanks Amanda!) and were playing Grand Tourismo. You'll note that the PlayStation is running sans cap, like an fusty turn table.


(Using "fusty" was a stretch... yes, I know)