Saturday, December 31, 2011

The Kindle: A Year in Review

For Christmas last year, I got a Kindle, which I've really enjoyed. So I figured I'd take the time to discuss the experience so far. So, on the plus side: The screen is really rather excellent. There's no difference between reading that screen and reading an actual printed page, as far as I'm concerned. Also, the number of books that are now part of the public domain, or distributed by the estates of their original authors for free or at least very cheap. I've gotten to read a lot of older books that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. For example, I bought a PG Wodehouse omnibus that included a lot of Jeeves and Wooster stories, which were an absolute delight. I think I paid a total of a dollar for it and got several thousand pages of quality reading. I also got a free Agatha Christie novel, a super cheap compendium of Conan the Barbarian stories, the novels that follow The Three Musketeers for free, they're all a lot of fun. One of the main things I enjoy about it is that I can just get a bug in my ear to read something, and then have it ready to go in a moment.

On the downside, there are a few issues with availability. I've been reading a lot of Iain M. Banks novels lately and really enjoying them. So I figured I'd grab one of his earlier books, so I looked it up, and discovered that it apparently was not sold in the US Kindle store, which is problematic. I understand that certain publishers have rights in certain markets, but if it was a physical book, I'd be able to find a copy at a used bookstore or on Ebay or something. With Kindle, I'm limited to their store and the books they're licensed to sell. So that's problematic. Also, the price of many books on the store is more than their paperback equivalents. I understand this is an attempt on the part of some publishers to protect the sales of their physical products, but as a consumer, I'm somewhat indifferent. Their cost of production for the digital book is effectively zero, so the price should be at least somewhat less. It also works against one of the primary reasons I like the Kindle, which is that I don't have to find storage for all my books. Seriously, there's a lot of them, and I don't have a huge amount of space to keep storing them all.

So it's pretty excellent overall, with again, the few drawbacks that will probably get better with time as e-books become less of a gimmick and more of a standard.

Monday, December 26, 2011

From the vault . . . Camping!

So, to recap some fun stuff that happened several months ago, about one week into school, I went camping up in the Sierras for my friend David Brang's birthday! Six of us went, and had a grand old time jumping by a lake! Not pictured: Grace, who was busy taking the picture.


Shenanigans ensued, including fun with an axe, hikes, rainbows, several bears, a lake of icemelt, and another friend getting naked. Two of those six facts are connected! Thankfully, it's the last two. Well, thankfully for the rest of us, as his reaction to the lakewater was less than splendid.


For reference, my friend in question is the white blur on the shoreline. We also had some of David Brang's famous camping margaritas, which are rather generously mixed. Seriously, the man knows how to make a margarita. It helps to be mildly intoxicated, as you have to sleep with the full knowledge that a bear is probably right outside your tent.


So yeah, a great time! Can't wait to go again, for so many reasons, not the least of which is mocking my friend for getting older. What a sucker. Also, all photos were taken by Grace Bohn, who's pretty awesome with that SLR of hers!

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

First Quarter Round Up

Dear blog,
I'm sorry I've neglected you for so long. Look, I brought you flowers! Okay, I lied about the flowers. In truth it's been a really busy quarter. I restarted school, with some small success, fenced, did the climbing thing I usually do, and rediscovered my incredible need for caffeine. Sweet, sweet caffeine. Actually, it's often bitter, but whatever.

I managed to pass my first quarter reasonably well, so that bodes well for the coming year. I'm enrolled in a thesis program, so I'll be in this for two years. I'm doing a lot of coding, mostly MATLAB, and a lot of linear algebra, which is pretty standard I think.

So, let's review what worked and what didn't. Because nothing makes for a great blog like endless self-examination, right?

What worked: Studying with other people.
Okay, this is a no-brainer for most people, I understand. But I didn't really study with anyone in undergrad. Well, no engineers. It's hard to discuss structural engineering with political scientists and linguists, much as I probably wasn't a great sounding board for them. So studying with other engineers has been pretty helpful, especially near midterms and finals, as we could hole up in an office somewhere and review stuff for hours on end, clarifying small points for one another that we had missed somewhere. I felt like an actual grad-student!

What didn't work very well: Note-taking.
I had a couple professors this past quarter who did a lot of boardwork during lectures, illustrating everything and writing out all the equations, which made it pretty easy to take notes. I had another professor who basically projected the text on the screen and then pointed at the equations in question and discussed them at length. This didn't work very well for me, as I had a hard time figuring out what to write down and organizing what he was saying as he was saying it. So I identified this problem really early on, but failed to adapt and find another solution, and I think I took a hit as a result. I'm contemplating using a voice recorder next quarter in the eventuality that I can't take notes that work for me during the lecture alone.

My other note taking habit is to copy over my notes to a fresh notebook shortly after the original lecture so that I have a neater, more clear set of notes, and so I can correct any mistakes I made while transcribing them the first time. Overall, it really helped, so I'll be doing it again next quarter!

What also worked: The UCSD shuttle system!
I made extensive use of the UCSD shuttle program, hopping the bus from the graduate student housing most days of the week, and taking the Hillcrest shuttle the other days. At some point I'll probably figure out some manner of cost-benefit analysis of this whole thing, but that'll have to wait until I'm gathering actual data, and have time to do it. So expect it by, say, the time I graduate? Maybe?

Anyhoo, this is a pretty media free post, so here's a video of something my lab is working on!



More posts soon, I promise this time! Please do not go back and read the archives, where I have promised similar things and then not delivered on it.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

My Every Day Carry

There's a blog called Every Day Carry, better known as 'EDC', to which people submit photos of the items they carry with them everyday, in their pockets, purses or man-bags. For being a relatively simple concept, it's surprisingly engaging, and often just plain surprising. Apparently a lot of people carry guns! Who knew?


So my own carry is probably not going to be very exciting (I don't carry a knife, a gun, a cool tactical light, or even a multitool), but it is a little telling. I included the contents of my bag, as otherwise this would be really short. In fine EDC tradition, I'll start in the lower right hand corner.

1. Wallet, lip balm & keys
2. iPhone 3GS
3. Macbook (circa 2006)
4. Legal pad (for sketching out notes, scratch paper)
5. Moleskeine journal
6. Casio fx115ms calculator
7. Moleskeine notepad
8. Pilot G2 pen
9. Apple headphones
10. Saddleback Leather briefcase
11. Nalgene water bottle (not pictured)
12. Two gigabyte thumbdrive (also not pictured)

The telling part is my inclusion of the notepad and calculator, which to my mind scream 'engineer'. I must always have the means of performing long calculations at hand! Also, the briefcase was a present I got for myself a year or so ago from Saddleback Leather, a purveyor of fine leather goods. One of the main appeals of the bag was that it looked awesome, and came with a one hundred year warranty, which seemed to be a good deal to my mind. Some friends rib me about my 'Indiana Jones' bag, but since Indiana Jones is awesome, I failed to see it as a jibe.

Anyhoo, this will change with time, as my routine is about to undergo a major change, but covering every eventuality of what I'm gonna bring to school/life on a given day would be pretty pedantic and really boring! So this will have to be sufficient insight for now. Cheers!

Monday, September 26, 2011

Blade Caddy

My goodness, it's come at last. I've finally built something! My blog is true to its name! So, I had a problem. Foils are somewhat clumsy objects to carry around. Do you hold them by the points? The grips? Under an arm? They sell individual bags that you can use to carry several at once, but that didn't really appeal to me. So I figured I'd build a blade caddy. I already used lengths of PVC piping to hold cover my blades in my bag, to keep them from being damaged, so I figured that would be a good starting point. I sketched out a basic design, joining four of them together in a square configuration, with four 4.5" lengths of PVC at the bottom held together by three-way PVC junctions.


To hold the top together, I thought I could use two diagonal members, but it turns out that the 3/4" junctions I bought are specifically designed not to have piping run all the way through them, with a small lip preventing passage past an inch or so. So I wound up just using the same scheme for the top as I did the bottom, drilling holes to fit all of the foils. I also drilled some holes in the piping so I could hook in some small bungees that I could use to secure the foils inside, so that they don't fall out if I invert it accidentally. All in all, it seemed to work rather well! Then I tried fitting it into my bag.

So, I'd be a lousy carpenter, due to that whole 'measure twice, cut once' ethos. I knew I could fit a foil into my bag, and the caddy isn't significantly longer than that, so I figured it'd be fine. Turns out that the caddy's width top and bottom stretches the bag too much to accommodate it lengthwise. So, my plan for a caddy that would neatly fit in my bag is dashed, and all is ruin and decay. Woe am I, the engineer who didn't measure properly ahead of time! Actually, what I wound up doing is consolidating my equipment from two bags to one. So it actually still works out! Plus, it's getting some compliments at the club. So that's something.


Anyway, I'll probably wind up keeping it, as my previous 'two bag' solution, one for my foils and various gear and one for all my clothes was somewhat burdensome. I think this will work out better in the end, or I may even make some sort of cloth cover for the caddy, with a pocket or two, and a zipper so I can take it out easily. But that's another project, and thus, another blog post.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Tournament Report: September 18th Three Weapon Open

I return victorious from Long Beach, where I competed in another local open event! Rest assured, they're not actually weekly, unless I'm willing to drive up to San Bernardino on a regular basis to compete (Hint: I'm really not). After last week's disappointing start to the season, with five consecutive losses, my day this time around was significantly better. In the pools round, I won four and lost two. The two losses were probably avoidable, I think they are guys I can beat, but the first one was definitely a wake-up bout, and the second was as close as they come, I lost five to four. So, room for improvement, but a world better than last time.

In direct eliminations, I seeded seventeenth out of fifty five, which placed me in the top eighty percent, and thus advanced me into the next round. Normally everyone advances into direct eliminations, but this tourney had approximately fifty-five entrants, so the tournament organizers eliminated the bottom twenty percent right out of pools. I had my first bout against the sixteenth seed. It was pretty even for the first period, but afterwards I managed to take it by a margin of four touches. That brought me out of the round of thirty-two into the sixteen, in which I encountered the number one seed.

I observed his bout prior to mine, and tried to draw up a strategy. I saw he was really good, but I figured I could beat him on footwork. And I did! I was able to push him up and down the strip for much of the bout. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to land anything and was thoroughly beaten on bladework, and lost fifteen to five. A few friends of mine who were watching my bout commented that my problem was two-fold.

Firstly, my distance was off in that I was getting too close. As a result, my actions were correspondingly larger. The closer I get, the further I have to move my blade in order to effectively parry, beat or evade his blade. This isn't a new problem for me, my distance is perpetually off, always way too close. I get excited, my footwork gets too big, and I'm way too close to hit effectively. It's aggravating, because this has been a problem of mine for a long, long time and I can't seem to get it under control. But, it's good to have something to work on.

So last week I placed fifteenth out of seventeen, and today I placed at the very least sixteenth out of fifty-five. So I'm gonna call it progress, and I have something to focus on until then. And the next tournament is actually in mid or late October, so until then!

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Moving on, moving on

I'm about to embark on a new adventure! The grand adventure of grad school! I'll be working on a master's degree in aerospace engineering at my alma mater, UCSD, hopefully on the thesis track. I just stopped by the lab of my advisor, Professor Tom Bewley, and it looks like a really cool place, got to meet a bunch of people, see some cool robots. Check out the Switchblade!



I'm starting to get really excited about this transition. The prospect of not having income is still a bit distressing, but I'm sure I'll adapt in short order, perhaps get a part time job. The idea of working on something challenging and interesting is tantalizing, and to get into a different culture is also appealing. I'm not wholly certain that my current place of employment is a good fit for me. There's a focus on adherence to rules rather than performance, and I've increasingly felt that I have to censor myself in more ways than I think are really necessary for a workplace. It's likely that this is true of any work-environment, but I'll have to wait for my next one to see. My thoughts in this vein are pretty well summed up by one of my favorite XKCD strips ever. It's time to break my routine and set up a new one, and I can't wait.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Tournament Report: September 11th Three Weapon Open

So, I'm having a hard time summing up something. I got whaled on yesterday. I mean, I barely showed up. I got my butt kicked. A fourteen year old wiped the floor with me (on a related note, happy birthday Ryan). There are any number of things I could say, excuses I could offer, but I'll try to do a bit of analysis instead.

I think my technique was pretty solid all day. I could complain about the slippage on the floors (Mira Mesa High School's gym is well maintained, but it apparently doubles as an ice rink), but it wasn't a huge issue. My problem was that I didn't fully get into, or at the very least didn't maintain a competitive mindset. I was treating the bouts like practice and taking my time to get mentally warmed up and engaged. And this didn't just happen early on, it lasted until my elimination bout. I remember an old teammate used to tell me to 'be hungry', and I don't think I accomplished that today. Not even a little bit.

So, proceeding under the assumption that I've found the problem, it's time to find a solution. My physical warm-up works out, now I need a mental one. I could do a decision drill beforehand, or do something to psych myself up. The thing about individual sports is that it's hard to do a rah-rah cheer when it's just you. The UCSD team used to do a couple different cheers, but they were pretty graphic and not really appropriate for the local opens I'm attending, which are all-age events.

I've got another tournament next weekend, so that gives me a week to come up with a plan. 'Til next time!

Updated: Here's a link to the results. I wound up placing fifteenth out of seventeen. So, not dead last! That counts for something, right?

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Mesa Rim

So this blog is called 'Watch Ed Build', so you probably expect me to build something at some point. To write a post where I talk about fixing or creating something. Well, this post is not that post. This is the post in which I discuss the wonders of rock climbing, and my gym in particular!

I've been climbing off and on for several years, but in the past year I've started going regularly to a gym with a buddy and working on my top rope and bouldering skills. I have to note about Mesa Rim, it is for certain the best climbing facility in San Diego, and I can say that, having tried them all. The walls top out at fifty two feet, the tallest indoor walls in San Diego, and the routes are constantly being updated by a really talented setting team. There are about seventy individual top ropes set up, plus a number of routes for lead climbing (lead climbing being the practice of bringing the rope up with you as you go). The ropes are also regularly replaced, which matters rather a lot, as ropes do not age well.


The bouldering area is also pretty excellent, offering a variety of inclines and heights and a couple of caves. The best part to my mind is the fully padded flooring, which makes any fall a painless tumble. In many other gyms, they keep a number of pads that you have to drag around and put down underneath where you'll be climbing, which provide all the cushioning of a sack of rocks. Actually, that may not be strictly true of all of them, but I had a bad experience the other week, so I'm gonna assume that they all do. For reference, if you're going to Vertical Hold, get two or three pads to make sure you're covered. Whatever part of your anatomy absorbs the impact will thank you.


A final word on the facilities: they evidently have a hot yoga room, a really solid gym, showers and a sauna. I haven't taken advantage of the sauna or the yoga room, but it's nice to know they're there. My last word on the place in general is that the staff is pretty excellent. They're helpful and friendly as all get out. And Allyson Boyd's boot camp class regularly beats the living tar out of me, and keeps me coming back for more.


Now, I've had a hard time trying to come up with a way to show my climbing on this blog. I've seen very clever things done with photography, taking a number of pictures and then making a mosaic out of them to show the progress up the wall. I've thought about using one of those nice GoPro cameras to perhaps record my ascent, but I don't have one, and also I'd look really silly wearing one on my head around the gym. So I'll work on coming up with a good way to demonstrate that and get back to you. 'Til next time!

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Fencing Video Breakdown

So this fencing recap video is a little different, as I actually took the time to examine all the individual clips and group them into something that's almost coherent. I broke it down into three basic actions, counter attack, long attack and ripostes, and then good and bad examples of each. I went through several hundred clips, which I eventually whittled down to less than a hundred, for a three minute video.



On the counterattacks, there's not much to say. I tend to succeed when I step into it with a my arm high and fully extended. I bring it back in to close out a lot, which isn't ideal, but it gets the job done. The failures are often because I'm not properly countering, but rather sticking my arm out while being run down, or because my hand is low and arm isn't properly extended.

As for long attacks, I'm landing when I've got the distance right and my hand in the right place. A lot of the time those two are linked, as when my arm isn't extended, I take an extra step in to make up the distance, which puts me in the way wrong distance to hit. Also, the most successful touches in this set are when I vary my acceleration on the attack, to draw a parry or force another reaction.

Moving onto ripostes, it seems I'm hitting when I properly disengage or feint past the first parry and then hit. I'm also hitting from prime (the top-down shot) a lot, which I need to clean up, as it's a bit of a desperation move. My lesser/lousy riposte moments come when I'm too close, or parrying in weird positions. It helps to keep the blade right in front of me so I don't have to bring it back into center to riposte.

Well, that's it! Stay tuned for more fencing fun!

Sunday, August 28, 2011

With Apologies to Epic Mealtime

So, much like most guys who like to compensate for their lack of perceived masculinity by watching a lot of men-children cavort on video screens, I'm a big fan of Epic Mealtime. Their videos are almost always hilarious, and the food occasionally looks good too. Having watched a number of them, it got me thinking of odd food mashups, things that haven't necessarily been done before. And, living in San Diego, home of the best burritos in the world, according to no less an authority than World Champion Judah Friedlander, I wondered if the greatest burrito of all, the California Burrito, could be morphed into another form. Perhaps unrolled, placed on a pizza stone and baked? A California Burrito Pizza? Madness! Could such a thing actually succeed? I had to find out.

So I decided to do it at my friend TJ's bar-completion party. I rounded up all the ingredients and proceeded to Dave and Katherine's house, the site of said party, to start prep.

Ingredients:
4 avocados
2 limes
4 greenhouse tomatoes
1 onion
1 jalapeno
1 Trader Joes package of carne asada
1 Trader Joes package of pizza dough (this blog brought to you by Trader Joes! Just kidding, no one would pay for this)
1 package of mexican mix cheese
1 order of McDonalds french fries

First step: Make the guacamole and salsa. This went pretty easily, as I'm a certified guacamole ninja, as seen here.
Second step: BBQ the carne asada. I relied on my stalwart companion Ashok to complete this difficult task.
Third step: Lay out the pizza dough. Dave Drake's pizza expertise proved invaluable here, as he laid out the stone, peel, and corn meal and proceeded to knead the dough into the proper configuration. We then applied the guacamole, then the salsa, and then layers of carne asada, fries and cheese, in that order.
Fourth step: Pop in the oven! It took a while to cook, because it's a pretty topping-heavy pizza, and most of the ingredients have a lot of water in them. Still, after a while, it was done, and ready for devouring.


And here's a close-up.


It was actually really good overall, as evidenced by my roommate, who fully devoured about a third of it in short order. However, I'll say this: the cost is somewhat prohibitive. I spent about $50 on this pizza all told, which is really not worth it in the long run. It was a fun experiment, and might be good to try again, as I definitely bought more ingredients than I used, but probably not a staple meal, as it were.

Credit for the pictures goes to Florence Lee, who only needed to be poked about three or four times to send them. Just kidding, thanks Flo!

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Comic-Con 2011

Well, it's been a while, I should probably report in.

Comic-Con this year was a blast, as usual! The highlight for me was, as ever, walking the convention floor. The cosplayers were out in fine form this year, but my personal favorite was a mash-up of Darth Vader and Super Mario. It's a complete non sequitur, but that's why it's so amazing.


I also came up with a terrible game to play on the convention floor, which I called 'makeup or skin condition'. I make no excuse for how terrible that is, except I actually had back to back moments of genuine confusion, where I realized that one person actually had fake blood on their face, and not rosacea, followed immediately by making the converse realization about another person. Again, I'm sorry I'm occasionally the worst person. It happens.

My favorite part, however, wasn't strictly a Comic Con event, it was rather Con-adjacent. It was the ever-hilarious, nerdy and moving W00tstock, as put on by Paul and Storm, Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage. The guy who rather stole the show for me was Patrick Rothfuss, the author of two of my favorite fantasy novels of the past couple years. In the video below, he reads an old advice column he wrote for his college newspaper.



So imagine if the whole show was that funny. For four hours. That's W00tstock, people.

Another Con-adjacent show that blew my mind was the recording of the Nerdist Podcast Live, with the normal Nerdist crew plus Wil Wheaton, and then the guests of honor Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, known for their roles on a little TV show known as Dr. Who. The part where my brain exploded was when Wil and Matt started discussing how it was to pilot the Enterprise and the TARDIS. NERDGASM. You can find the whole thing here! Sadly, I did not receive a TARDIS burrito from Matt and Karen after the show. Still, well worth it.

Something that's always been a big part of the Con for me is the swag. I could probably get most of the same stuff online, piecemeal, but this lets me do it all in one go. Plus, it lets me meet a bunch of artists and writers whose work I admire greatly. This year was a pretty minimal haul, but I'm pretty stoked about it.


True to form, I bought a lot of comics! Clockwise from top left, I bought the Questionable Content book (the last one he had!), Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi (whose work I've always loved in the Flight collections), Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, the latest Penny Arcade collection, Orc Stain by James Stokoe (probably the weirdest comic I've read in ages, but it's a hoot), and the second Astonishing X-Men collection (signed! But since the signature is illegible, I don't know who by). Okay, I'm done abusing parenthetical statements, rest easy. The print is the cover of the Japanese edition of the first Scott Pilgrim book, the shirt on the left is a Dr. Who joke on the NASA meatball logo, the middle one is a Game of Thrones bit of swag I got in the redemption room, and the tanuki plumber shirt on the right is from Sam and Fuzzy via Topatoco. Come to think of it, that's actually a lot of swag. So it was a good year!

Finally, the thing that really made my Con this year were my friends. Or rather, the fact that I have friends, and rather more than I thought. Hanging out with Dave and Katherine and Ashok one day, then Raymond the next, then Peter, Hillary, Ruth and Kiana the day after that, and then my dear old friend Thomas who rolled down from LA, I was reminded of the fact that this is not an event to do alone, as I've previously thought. Con is an event that is always enhanced by the company of the people you attend it with, and I'm grateful that I had so many people to hang out with. Oh, and dressing up as Sherlock Holmes was awesome too. Pics to follow.

Anyhoo, this is my Sunday crew as we were rolling out on the trolley. Can't wait for next year!


Friday, July 8, 2011

A video or two

Hello! I've been terrible about posting lately, or should as I say, as usual. So here's a video of me fencing!


And here's a video I made during a hike back in Santa Fe!

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Youtube videos!

Hello my loyal readers! By which I mean, hi Alice!

Anyhoo, I haven't kept up with the updates, and so this is to remedy that particular mistake. With proof, no less!

See, in November I fenced a lot! Here are some videos!





And then in January, I went skiing!



Hopefully I'll have more updates for you guys soon!