Watch Ed Build!

2012: Resolutions & Goals

2012-01-17T17:33:00.000-08:00

Oh my goodness! 2012 is upon us! And I have no resolutions or plans yet! Time to change that. First to note a key difference between resolutions and plans. This is probably a distinction that exists only in my mind, but I always think of resolutions as being a change in habits, while goals are, well, goals. To use a common example, a goal might be to lose weight. The resolutions would be to eat better, work out more, etc. I hope that explains the seeming dichotomy between the two.

Onto the resolutions then!
1) To be more in the moment. I worry. A lot. A huge amount of my processing time and allotment goes to 'but what if this happens', and it's rarely in a positive or productive way. I've been getting better at shutting it off and just focusing on the task at hand, but there's still miles to go, which leads directly to resolution two.
2) Not to get discouraged. If I teach my kids one thing . . . Wait, I need a problem statement. One, assume children. Idealized, spherical children for computational purposes. Okay, moving on. So if I teach my hypothetical one-day children one thing, it'll be not to get discouraged. If I can think of one thing that's slowed me down in my life, kept me from achieving certain goals, it's the fact that I get pretty easily discouraged. For a long time, my default response to when I was having a problem with something was to basically whine and moan and say 'oh, why am I not good enough'. Mature, right? Anyhoo, I've been working on it, but I still occasionally catch myself slipping back to my old ways. I wish there was something more I could do to measure this particular resolution of mine, but I can't actually think of one. Ah well.
3) Eat out less. Since going to grad school, I've been eating out a lot, as it's rough to carry all your food for a day around with you in addition to books, a laptop and various other sundries. This quarter I'm planning to brown bag more often, and also to bring a wide variety of snacks to school so I don't wind up buying so many of Espresso Roma's delicious, delicious cranberry muffins. Also, I'm currently implementing my 'bring coffee to school' plan already, which should save me a fair bundle. Seriously, I drink a lot of coffee. I estimate that if I bring my own coffee to school every day, I'd save a billion dollars. I may also be bad at math, but you get the idea.
4) Blog more! Which in turn means doing more things with my life that are worthy of being blogged and suitably recording them.
5) Keep in better touch with my extended family. I've done a pretty crap job of this over the years, it's about time I got on the stick about it.

And now for goals!
1) To earn my B rating in foil. This is gonna be a rough one, I've been a C now for about three years, and there are very few B level competitions in my area. Plus, my skill in actual competition is still hanging me up a bit. In a brief recap of my last major tournament (Duel in the Desert), I was beaten like a red-headed step child. It did not go well. So I'm gonna have to up my game this year if I want to get that shiny new rating.
2) Get started on my master's thesis. I'm on my second quarter of grad school, so I've got to get a project picked and started soon in order to be out in a reasonable amount of time. This will probably be the most involved project of my life, so I'd like to get started on it sooner than later.
3) Various interpersonal goals that you're probably not interested in.

Next week, robot stuff! And less self-indulgence!

The Kindle: A Year in Review

2011-12-31T17:45:00.000-08:00

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.

From the vault . . . Camping!

2011-12-26T15:24:00.000-08:00

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!

First Quarter Round Up

2011-12-21T22:12:00.000-08:00

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.

My Every Day Carry

2011-10-01T23:02:00.000-07:00

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!

Blade Caddy

2011-09-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Tournament Report: September 18th Three Weapon Open

2011-09-19T00:08:00.000-07:00

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!

Moving on, moving on

2011-09-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Tournament Report: September 11th Three Weapon Open

2011-09-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

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?

Mesa Rim

2011-09-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

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!

Fencing Video Breakdown

2011-09-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

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!

With Apologies to Epic Mealtime

2011-08-28T13:30:00.000-07:00

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!

Comic-Con 2011

2011-08-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

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!

A video or two

2011-07-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

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!

Youtube videos!

2011-02-05T22:32:00.000-08:00

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!

Winter Fun!

2010-12-31T13:24:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Santa Fe! My snowman and I are happy to see you!

For reference, I know it's a crappy snowman. It was pretty lousy packing snow, so I did the best I could. Anyway, while I've been out here, I indulged in a bit of a culinary experiment with a Russian winter drink called sbiten. Following the recipe listed there, I assembled all the necessary ingredients. While there is an option to make a non-alcoholic version of it, that just seemed silly to me, so I actually got a decent bottle of wine to throw into it.

It calls for a bottle of wine, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, honey and blackberry jam. After putting the wine on to boil, I started getting the ginger and nutmeg ready, and I may have put in slightly more than the recipe required, but I figured subtlety could wait until my second batch.

After the wine was up to a good boil, I threw in all the ingredients, including a whole jar of blackberry jam, which may be a bit of overkill, but I was following the recipe. So, I let it simmer for a while, stirring occasionally.

And then it was time to serve it! At which point, several problems became apparent. One, I should have put the cloves in a tea-ball or some manner of spice-bag, as I kept picking them out of my teeth. Secondly, it was THICK. I mean, it was less a drink than it was a flavorful, alcoholic porridge. On the plus side, it tasted great. Sweet from the honey and jam, with all the appropriate kicks from the nutmeg, ginger and cloves. Almost a bit overwhelming, actually, so I may scale back next time. I will also definitely scale back on the jam, perhaps using half a jar next time, in addition to a larger portion of wine, as I wound up making approximately 5 mugs worth of it. Still, I killed my portion, as I did rather enjoy it.

In any case, happy New Years! Here's to more adventures in 2011, and more regular blogging as well!

Moo Cow Milk Stout

2010-12-21T19:30:00.002-08:00

Several months ago, I noticed that my brewing crew, formally known as the Beat Attack Brew Shack, had not brewed anything in ages. Usually one of the other members would whip up a recipe and we'd all get together and brew it up, but since we'd run plumb out of ideas and enthusiasm, I opted to create a recipe of my own. Ever since I had Mackeson's Milk Stout, I'd always wanted to try my hand at a similar beer, as it's quite delicious. So I reviewed a number of recipes and cobbled together my own, as follows:

6.5 lb Two Row Pale Malt
1 lb of Crystal 20L Malt
0.25 lb Flaked Barley
0.75 lb Flaked Oat
1.5 lb Roasted Barley
1 lb Victory Malt
With hop additions of Cascade and Goldings hops at 30 minutes and 45 minutes into the boil, respectively. I also threw in 8 ounces of lactose during bottling, hence making it a milk stout.

It's turned out rather well. There's a bit of chocolate and coffee in the flavor, and while it's not super smooth, the lactose gives it a great deal of body. The hops aren't very pronounced, but I didn't want them to be. In any case, I'm certainly happy with how it turned out, and will definitely be brewing this again.

Fencing Recap and Tournament Report

2010-11-16T17:52:00.000-08:00

So I have a lot of footage this week, as you can see (presuming you have the patience for 6 minutes of fencing without any sound):

What I'm taking away from these bouts is:
1) I'm constantly getting caught out when I lead with a massive advance. It's a huge signal to my opponent that I'm about to attack, and it brings me into a distance where it's easy to get hit and pretty difficult to parry. When I don't do it, I'm usually able to at least get in an exchange of parries and potentially a riposte, which brings me to my second point.
2) I'm not disengaging or using broken time near enough. I keep trying to get by my opponent's parries with speed rather than getting around them, which rarely works.
3) My false retreats always need to be followed up with lunges. There are several spots where my leg goes back, and I just fence from a weird lunge position without actually going forward, which really accomplishes nothing.
4) I should probably edit these videos down to some sort of theme, such as a specific action or problem I'm having, this is kind of a 6 minute mess of a video. Plus, I should set it to music, but the only appropriate song I can think of tends to make people laugh out loud after about 30 seconds.

In other news, this past weekend was San Diego's premier fencing tournament, UCSD's Bladerunner, in which I actually did not do half bad. I place 13th out of 48 overall, losing out by a touch to Ben Dorn, who went on to place 3rd. While I'm somewhat frustrated with myself for the loss, I'm mostly really enthused about how well I did overall, especially since this was the first tournament of the season for me, and the highest I've ever placed at this particular event. It's a good start!

This week, I'm hoping to do a better job of incorporating disengages into my game, and also to eliminate my half-retreat problem. Stay tuned!

Fencing Recap 11/4/2010

2010-11-11T17:47:00.000-08:00

True to my word, I'm putting these videos together in an almost timely fashion! This is only a week old! In any case, there are two 15 touch bouts recorded here, one against Dave Drake and one against Mike Perry. I lost both, but it's pretty instructive.

Points about these bouts:
1) My front foot is slipping a lot when I lunge. This is mostly due to a lack of commitment to the lunge itself, I'm letting momentum take me rather than properly pushing off my back foot.
2) In both bouts, I'm reacting a lot more than I'm making them react. I have really bad counter-attacking habit that doesn't do me any good since it's not aggressive enough to make them miss or disrupt their timing. Basically, it only works if they're going to miss anyway, which isn't something I can ever count on.
3) My flicks aren't landing, mostly due to the distance. There's too much windup in the arm, so I'm way too close by the time I'm extending again. It needs to happen in front of my body the whole time so that my feet don't wind up too close to my opponent.
4) Towards the end of my bout with Perry, Tedd told me to stop angling my hand and body to the left in order to hit Mike, which really helped overall, I made a bit of a comeback at the end.

So that's what I'll be working on tonight. Let me know if there's anything I missed in the comments!

Nerd Collage

2010-11-06T20:46:00.000-07:00

So a little while ago, I joined a little social network called "The Node" which is specifically set up for nerds like myself, and one of the initial 'nerdsourcing' tasks they suggested was to construct a nerd collage of all of one's favorite nerdy items. I was probably a rare example of putting in some sporting equipment, but hey, it's what I do.

So you can see some fencing gear, climbing harness, comics, Lord of the Rings, Dr. Who, Fallout, my beloved macbook, homebrew, and my deerstalker, just to show my Sherlock-love. All in all, it's about as good a physical representation of all of my interests as I can put together. Anyway, just posting something until I can get the next fencing video up. 'Til next time!

New Projects!

2010-11-02T17:40:00.001-07:00

Hello interwebs! It's been a long while since I've blogged, and I've been working on some stuff in the meantime. And by 'working on stuff' I mean 'fencing and climbing a lot'. I've also been brewing, having recently come up with my first recipe. And most recently, I've started taking a metal working class in hope of learning how to actually weld! Affixing metal! To metal! With fire! It's really a blast.

This is an example of my current plasma cutting ability! Which is to say, it's not great, but it'll get better. It's supposed to say UCSD.
Recently, my fencing club has recently set up a camera system so we can replay our bouts and examine them. I took a couple and put them together. I lose both bouts, naturally, but they are somewhat instructive. You can see them below!

In any case, I hope there'll be more soon. And greetings chinese spammers! It's good to know that I've got readers still.

Project Updates

2009-06-17T18:21:00.000-07:00

Hello interblags!

Since last I blogged, I actually managed to achieve my season goal of earning my C rating in foil by taking third at a recent tournament. Huzzah!

Another project I was working on was preparing the guacamole for my friend's Tim and Chelsea's wedding. It took me a little while to figure out how to go about doing it, and I eventually came up with this basic recipe: 6 avocados, 1 mango (diced), 1 jalapeno(diced), 1 clove of garlic (mashed), garlic salt, and the juice of 4 limes, all mashed together. The avocado slicing and pitting was all done by the intrepid wedding crew, and I just had to mash it all together. Good times!

On a less winning note, we finished fermenting and bottling our beer. We named it 'Twue Wuv Wheat' in honor of Tim and Chelsea's wedding, and it was well received at the wedding. It was less enjoyed by the judges at the San Diego County Fair Homebrew Competition, who commented that it was, to quote "not a pleasure to drink". Ah well, win some, lose some.

Return to the kitchen brewery

2009-05-10T00:11:00.000-07:00

We named our little brew operation 'Beat Attack Brew Shack' to note our common obsession with a certain sport. At the urging of a certain financial backer of ours, we opted to do a wheat beer for our second attempt, and due to the enthusiasm of several of our members, we opted to go for a whole grain brewing process. This required us to go buy pounds and pounds of grain at our local homebrew mart, which was met with much enthusiasm.

To make a beer from whole grain, you have to make your malt from the grains. To do this, you cook the grains, not boil them, for an hour in order to leach out all of the sugars.

After we cooked it, we had to sparge it, which basically means rinsing the grain with hot water to ensure that all of the sugars wind up in the malt.

Then we just boiled the malt to make the wert like we did last time, and then tried something new. We had a cooling coil with some rubber tubing, and after some fancy taping, we managed to hook it up to the the hose and run reasonably cold water through it, shortening the cooling process to about one hour.

Then we added the yeast, and started the two week waiting process again. Until then!

UCI Spring Fling!

2009-05-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

Well, to chronicle those things I'm working on, I must discuss fencing. And so, here we go.

UC Irvine's fencing club threw a fund raising team tournament, so we got a small team together and headed up! The line up was myself, Ron King (the bearded fellow), Rose Forcier (the read headed one), and Ryan Richards (the other guy).

It was a collegiate style team tournament, best of nine five touch bouts, and we wound up going undefeated for the day. I dropped two bouts, one of which to a USC epee fencer who continually tried to hit my toe.

Still, gold! More on brewing next time.

Adventures in Brewing

2009-04-08T18:54:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me apologize, I've left this blog lay fallow for awhile despite my resolution not to do so. I've been pretty busy with fencing this year, and haven't budgeted out a lot of time for this blog.

Myself and several friends have been batting around the idea of brewing some beer for a while now, and we finally got around to buying all the equipment yesterday, at our local homebrew mart, which may now be my favorite retail location ever. After several weeks of hard research, we decided to go with a red ale, because, well, red ales are pretty awesome.

So we went out and got the kit, which consisted of a large stock pot, a six gallon glass carboy to serve as a fermenter, a plastic bucket for use in bottling, an iodine based disinfectant, and all the ingredients we'd require (yeast, malt, sugar and hops).

We schlepped it all over to Dave Eltgroth's place to begin our day of brewing fun. We started by disinfecting everything that might come in contact with the beer.

We then boiled up two gallons of water. It turns out that a lot of brewing is boiling stuff, so there's a lot of time to spend doing other things. Namely drinking beer and playing video games.

After we'd gotten those out of the way, the pot had boiled and it was time for adding ingredients! We poured in the two bags of malt and 1.5 ounces of hops, which had been turned into pellets and looked vaguely like rabbit food, yet smelled amazing.

After that, it was time for more boiling. At the aforementioned homebrew mart, a very helpful guy had mentioned that one thing we wanted to avoid was a boil over, and so when we started the second boil, we made sure to continuously monitor and stir it, keeping the lid off. We kept it boiling for another hour (which translated to a few levels of The Force Unleashed, which is AMAZING), and then poured it into the carboy for fermenting.

Then followed the phase of waiting for it to cool down so we could add the yeast and begin the fermentation process. Let me tell you, waiting for five gallons of hot beer to cool down takes a long time. Which translates to a lot of video games, a visit to best buy, dinner, some more video games, a pretty significant amount of youtube, and then just waiting around. But lo, beer with yeast!

Then we just had to wait around for two weeks for it to ferment! More later!

A new year, and a whole new batch of resolutions.

2009-01-05T22:53:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been an unfortunate amount of time since I last posted. Sorry, December wasn't a good month for me to do projects, and I kind of let that slide by. But no more! I will, in fact, resolve that no such thing will occur! Actually, now that I think about it, I should resolve to do a bunch of other things. So, without further ado, my New Year's Resolutions!

1. Post to this blog more regularly. Which, in turn, means more projects. But if I don't manage to do a project every week, I'll try and find something to talk about, either in my own life or a little op-ed thing.

2. Exercise every day. Fence, work out, bike to work, yoga at work, swim, hike, whatever.

3. Hike more often, hopefully once a week.

4. Try to swear less, or at least more creatively. I think goats and their mother's will feature prominently. Also, the word 'frak'.

5. Do a better job of keeping in touch with friends. Getting back from Santa Fe, I realize that I don't speak to those guys and gals as much as I'd like to.

6. Earn my 'C' rating in fencing.

7. Study for and take the GREs.

8. Make a nerdy fan film.

I'd make more resolutions, but I feel like any more and it's just planning for the stuff I want to do this year. Which includes brewing beer, learning a new programming language, and getting wicked good at Guitar Hero. Here's to 2009!

No-Shave-November

2008-12-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

Against my the advice of many of my peers and friends, I decided last month to embark upon the adventure of 'No-Shave-November'. I was going to grow a beard. A manly beard. What I wound up with was an oddly red mustache, half a goatee and some fuzz on my cheeks. And, as is fast becoming a tradition on this blog, I made an embarrassing video to display. I'll try and come up with something equally horrific for next month, but no promises.

Son of Patch Jacket!

2008-11-30T23:59:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is one final hurrah before the big one. I got two patches for the project I work on, so I put them on! I only managed to stick myself a few times with the needle, so I guess that's an improvement?
And on the actual jacket!

Glider! Okay, the propeller just fell off.

2008-11-25T18:17:00.001-08:00

I decided to make a plane, but this time with actual airfoils instead of crappy balsa-wood flat wings. I sketched out a pretty simple design, square wings and rear stabilizers, and set up a little assembly line.

Then I put the wings onto the previous plane I'd built, and gave it a try, and it turned out that it had a little too much lift, and would stall out really quickly. So I stripped those wings off, made some smaller ones for the rear stabilizers, and before I put it all together, I figured I may as well use them as canards to prevent the stalling problem. And it actually did stop it from stalling! It did not, however, prevent it from flying like a rock. Seriously, this thing followed a pretty newtonian curve, it was like high school physics all over again. And since I'd gotten impatient and used hot glue to attach the wings, I could not now remove them, and thus I was about ready to scrap it when the propeller fell off, and it turned out to be a pretty fair glider. Observe!

I'm planning to do this again with larger canards and a little bit more math backing me up. Then again, I think I always say that.

UCSD Rocket Project

2008-11-17T17:17:00.000-08:00

This is the launch of my senior-class project at UCSD. It was a hybrid rocket, burning nitrous oxide and a rubber grain. It was supposed to measure pressure as it went up, or something like that, I don't recall. I do remember that the nose cone only ejected because the engine shut off and it started decelerating at two gees, instead of our incredibly reliable ejection charge. This was the only class in college with which I got to play with explosives. Go aerospace engineering!

I'd like to note that this is actually filler, but I've got three things going on at once right now, and they'll all be up shortly. I hope.

Halloween Costume: The Finale

2008-11-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

Halloween has come and past, and I managed to wear the costume a couple times (and also slept in it, but that's a separate matter). I also managed to get the sonic screwdriver working, after I figured out that I couldn't actually make the sound thing work (it turns out that capacitors don't work as I'd thought), and I also couldn't use AAA batteries, so I had to make use of some smaller batteries I had in a flashlight. But it worked! I used a cigar tube for the main body, glued on a washer on top, a quartz crystal on top of that, and put a blue high-powered LED inside, with a push switch on the bottom. I also put on some paint black strips of balsa wood to break up the silver tube, and give it a little grip.

This is the whole get up:

And this is the embarrassing video I promised:

Rockets!

2008-10-27T22:41:00.001-07:00

I'd like to start by admitting that this is filler. It's awesome filler, but filler nonetheless. But this project has been sidelined by a couple of things, and is probably a little over-ambitious on my part, so be patient. I promise a HILARIOUS, and undoubtedly embarrassing video.

In the news lately, Armadillo Aerospace just won the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander X-Prize! I'd explain it, but this video does it better:

Apparently, in the second phase of the test, it crashed and burned. Which is actually pretty funny. But this is really awesome, a success for a small-scale space entrepreneur. Between that and the success of SpaceX's Falcon 1 late last month, the independent space industry is beginning to take off, which is super exciting.

In awesome news that I didn't know about beforehand, it looks like NASA is gearing up to launch another awesome rover to Mars! It's called the Mars Science Laboratory, and it's the size of an SUV, nuclear powered, and is expected to operate for a solid martian year (687 terrestrial days, 669 Martian days/sols). Which, given that the last ones were designed to last ninety sols, and are currently operating seventeen hundred sols later, so it's safe to expect that this bad boy will last until we're walking around on Mars to take over.

Halloween Costume: The beginning

2008-10-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

Halloween is just around the corner, and I've been looking forward to putting together a costume for a little while now. I actually had to make myself hold off on working on it until October. So for this Halloween, I decided to be the Doctor. From Doctor Who. It's a British sci-fi show, look, it's not important. So come October, I started hitting up thrift stores for a trench coat and a suit, and also got a pair of converse knock-offs, which make up most of the costume. The final item is a sonic screwdriver, which, for my purposes, is a cylindrical object that lights up and makes a ululating sound when it's switched on.

So I bought some LEDs, capacitors, a buzzer and a breadboard, and started to put it together based on a rough idea of how it should work. It turns out that the ululating buzzer is going to take some more work, but I was able to get the LEDs working. Which is actually not very impressive, but hey, it's a start.

The Black Hole (redux)

2008-10-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

This is something I wrote back in January for another blog, but I figure it's something that deserves mention.

From January 4th, 2008:
"The other day, Jon, Travis and I wandered up to Los Alamos to check out the infamous Black Hole, that repository of weird crap and awesome stuff that has attracted us so many times. We made our usual rounds, checked out all sorts of stuff, the geiger counters, oscilloscopes, welding masks, PA systems, vacuum tubes, fabrication equipment, coolant piping, and more junk than I can honestly remember. Then, after we selected our purchases (I bought five patches and two mildly radioactive marbles, and Travis bought a length of climbing rope), old man Grothus points to two model obelisks on his counter, and says that he's got the full size versions outside. I'm somewhat doubtful about this, but we go and take a look. Just a sketch of Ed Grothus, he's an eighty three year old anti-nuclear activist living in Los Alamos. Every time I've seen him, he's worn a pair of purple camouflage pants, a white shirt with a turquoise bolo and an assortment of pins. In this bitterly cold winter, he was wearing a jacket and gloves, and the gloves were torn along several of the fingers, leaving them flapping open.

So he lead us outside to show us these obelisks. He opened up a shipping container, and there they were. They're white granite obelisks, ten meters long (thirty two feet) with black granite bases and black granite spheres to top them, representing the explosive core of nuclear weapons. They were disassembled, with the obelisks lying on their sides, but they were remarkably impressive to me (I won't speak for Travis or Jon) because they were the work of a single man. Most projects like this would take years of a city council's or similar organization's time to organize, purchase, politically wrangle, and finish. But this man did that work out of his own pocket. I found the entire thing to be a demonstration of the dedication that this guy, and probably most men, are capable of.

On the base, there is a message inscribed in fifteen different languages, seven on one, eight on the other. The message reads:

Welcome to Los Alamos, New Mexico, the United States of America, the city of fire. Our fires are brighter than a thousand suns. It was once believed that only God could destroy the world, but scientists working in Los Alamos first harnessed the power of the atom. The power released through fission and fusion gives many men the ability to commence the destruction of all life on Earth. The first atomic bomb was designed and built here. It was at Trinity Site (33 degrees, 44 minutes, 38 seconds North latitude and 106 degrees, 28 minutes, 29 seconds West longitude) on July 16 1945, at 5:29:45 AM that the first nuclear bomb was detonated. Trinity Site is 2 degrees, 8 minutes, and 29 seconds and 153.2 miles southwest of Los Alamos. Two cities in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by single atomic bombs on August 6th and 9th, 1945 bringing an end to World War II. Now 62 years later, Los Alamos, obedient to the almighty Pentagon, carries on its awesome, assigned mission to assure continuing nuclear capability. Nuclear bombs cannot be used rationally and dreams for safe and useful nuclear power may never be realized. It is only in Los Alamos that the potentials for unimagined, fantastic good and demonstrated, horrendous evil are proximate. There is no assurance that man will pass safely through the Nuclear Age to a benign Solar-Hydrogen Age.

On each face of each obelisk there is a peace sign surrounded by the latin motto "Semper Fabricate Numquam Consumite," which roughly translates as "Always Build, Never Destroy." Underneath this is Grothus' more recognizable motto, "One Bomb Is Too Many," and on the side, "No One Is Secure Unless Everyone Is Secure." He also has the name of Albert Einstein, his famous equation and birth and death years. So this whole thing is essentially eighty tons of granite, conceived of, funded, and brought into being by one man as an anti-nuclear protest.

I've personally never felt a great empathy with the anti-nuclear group. Their reasoning has always seemed a bit specious to me, and the majority of them seem to be luddites, terrified of something of which they have no understanding. Truthfully, I find a lot of their protests have only served to actually make nuclear technology less safe, especially with regards to the disposal of byproducts. They complain that nuclear technology creates a lot of dangerous waste (which is true), and then protest the creation of facilities in which to safely (as much as possible) dispose of said waste. And while Mr. Grothus is opposed to nuclear technology in its entirety, I find myself sympathizing with him more and more on the topic of disarmament, and find his comment that "one bomb is too many" makes a lot of sense. To turn back the clock entirely on nuclear power is not only impossible, it's probably not a very good idea. But the use of nuclear weapons can never be justified in today's world. It's almost impossible to use against a solely military target, and the corresponding environmental and collateral damage is nigh unjustifiable. So I find that the idea of nuclear disarmament makes a lot of sense, I just can't really see any practical means of achieving it."

It's worth noting that Esquire actually did a much more in depth and quality interview and profile of this topic.

Also, this is totally not filler. I swear.

Robot Madness!

2008-10-06T20:28:00.000-07:00

I figured that I'd get my white whale and finish with this robot contraption I've been focusing on lately. So, I rewired the robot, put it all back together with a hot glue gun, attached the 'antennae' and look at how pretty it is!

And so, I fired it off and let it go for a couple of turns.

And, lo and behold, it broke.

Part of why it's only pseudo functional is because the parts (the switches on top) were kind of junked, so I decided to just scrap the project. Still, it's been a bundle of fun, and hopefully only the first of many robots. Hopefully the next one will be more successful.

Robot . . . The Revenge

2008-09-28T21:09:00.000-07:00

I'd make a big long post here, but all I did was re-superglue some stuff and solder it together properly. It still needs some work, but this video is pretty funny, so here it is!

Cheers!

A robot with no name . . .

2008-09-21T22:21:00.000-07:00

So, by popular demand (from all two of you. And, okay, one of them was me), this week I did a robot, and in doing so, discovered several special things. One, soldering is harder than I remember. Two, when following instructions, it helps to get all of the proper parts. So I set up my little laboratory, and got to work.

So, following the tutorial, I ran into a few problems. One, I had the wrong battery casing. Well, that was about the entirety of the problem, as I could solder to it, or affix the motors to it, so I wound up creating a horrible monstrosity by comparison. Oh, and it also didn't work.

And in short order, with a few changes, I completed the basic model.

Then I tried to plug in the batteries, and it broke.

At this point, I figured out that I couldn't actually glue the motors on (as there wasn't enough surface area for the glue to make a strong bond), so I slept on it and figured out that I could glue on some balsa wood to make a larger surface to glue to. And thus was born this monstrosity!

And it kind of worked! It spun in circles! So I think all I have to do to make it actually functional is reverse the wires on one of the motors. But, naturally, it broke. And, in attempting to fix it, it broke even more. So I'm calling this one a bust for the time being and moving onto other things. Again, I will return! And perhaps fail less.

Balsa Wood Plane: The Revenge

2008-09-14T18:29:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the last time I embarked upon this quest, the results were less than auspicious. So I retreated for a while, to the realm of sewing and coming up with other ideas. But I eventually just figured that I already had the materials, I'd give it another whirl. Building off of the mistakes of last time, I made sure to assemble the fuselage and propeller before attaching the wing, and also giving the wing a higher aspect ratio, to make it more capable of gliding/getting lift. I also ran out of balsa wood rods, so I cut the frame of the wing out of a flat piece, which I think/hope reduced the weight significantly. So, at twelve inches long, with a twelve inch wide wing, I present the second incarnation of the Pogue Balsa Wood Plane.

So, after trying several powered flights in light winds, I found that it actually functioned somewhat better as a glider. And thus, after several attempts, there it goes:

I think this is going to be a recurring theme here, with different configurations and more complicated airfoils. Stay tuned! Next time: V-tail!

Luke Skywalker's got nothing on this guy

2008-08-26T22:01:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I've got all these great ideas for things to do here, but sadly, math is hard and programming is harder. So, here's something really cool from the good Dean Kamen, the guy who invented the Segway, which is really cool, even if it isn't the world-changer we all hoped it would be (at least until they ban cars in metropolitan city centers). But this is really cool. I think I'll let him explain it.

So I think this is what Ray Kurzweil would call 'the knee of the curve,' the point at which a technology starts getting exponentially better. It's scary and exciting to think that this is version 1.0, and that this sort of tech will only be getting better and better. There's a quote, I don't know who said it, but it goes something like "in the future, it will be a liability to be completely human". This is a freaky and awesome first step in that direction. The only real problem I can notice is that it makes those whirring noises, but hey, it's a 1.0 thing. I suppose the real race is going to be a three way between the ability to a) regrow limbs, b) clone them and reattach them, and c) creating the perfect prosthetic. God, I love science.

Next time: Actual project. I promise!

Ferromagnetic Fluid Art

2008-08-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've been a terrible blogger. I've failed in my 'build one thing a week' mission, primarily because building things is hard and expensive. So, while I will endeavor to continue to build things at a more sedate and manageable pace, I will also post up cool engineering/science/transhumanist news and items I find on the internet, plus random ideas I have. So, onto the actual subject matter!

I was cruising one of my favorite blogs the other day, io9, and found this. It is the work of a Japanese artist/professor Sachiko Kodama, who uses ferromagnetic fluids and magnets to make magnificent works of art. For the curious ones in the audience, ferromagnetic fluids are colloidal suspensions of iron particles in water or a compatible solvent that react to magnetic fields in interesting ways. Ironically, the closest thing I've had to an art appreciation class (Making of the Modern World six) utterly destroyed my appreciation of art. I mean, honestly, a urinal set down on its side? This was a big thing? There's a reason I'm an engineer. Anyhoo, below is the video of her work, which is pretty damn awesome. The main thing that gets me is that it is all real. This isn't some computer generated effect, it's the basic laws of physics applied in a new and interesting way to make dynamic, otherworldly structures.

Sachiko Kodama

Comic-Con!

2008-07-29T18:10:00.001-07:00

Hey guys, here's a quick recap of what I've been doing. I went to Comic-Con last weekend! That was awesome. I got to meet my favorite web-comic artists and get some sketches. Randall Munroe of XKCD paid me a dollar to hit Gabe from Penny Arcade with a cardboard tube! My friend Justin and I had a competition to see who could get their picture taken with DC and Marvel cosplayers. Suffice to say, the Marvel guys did not show up in sufficient numbers and I lost by a slim margin.

Still, Doctor Strange was cool. We also ran into Master Chief of Halo fame, and I managed not to get teabagged. My friend was not so lucky.

Anyhoo, good times!

Patch Jacket

2008-07-19T09:50:00.001-07:00

Well, for this week's project, I went with something I've been putting off for a long time. I'm bringing back my patch jacket. Well, my patch piece of clothing, because before it was just a crappy school sweater onto which I stitched an inordinate number of funky patches.

Around my sophomore year of college, I had to give up this wonderful garment because it was falling apart, and people looked at me funny when I wore it. So I put away all the patches, and eventually found a nice jean jacket that would serve as a suitable host. And then I slowly started putting it together, and by put it together, I mean I asked Emily to do it for me. Thanks Emily!

So, I finally got around to putt together the rest of this thing. Here are all the patches that I had left:

And a few nights of drinking beer, sewing, and watching television later, my patch jacket is reborn!

So, naturally I decided to do this in the middle of summer. In San Diego. When it's really hot and there's no good time to wear it. But come, say, September, I'll be sporting this thing full time. Until I decide that being a social pariah, and/or 'that guy with the jacket' is no longer an acceptable situation for me.

Revisiting an old friend/challenge

2008-07-11T16:33:00.000-07:00

So when I was a young engineering student, in my first aerospace class, I was given the task of working with a team to build a small propeller driven airplane out of balsa wood. I had three other team-members, one of which was my roommate, James, and we decided to split into two teams in order to build two planes, the better of which would become our entry.

So my roommate and I worked hard at designing our little plane (not really) and eventually started cutting our airfoils out of balsa wood. After hours of painstaking cutting and gluing, we discovered that this wasn't really working out (we were also covering the frame of our airfoil with saran wrap, which was not the greatest idea). So, we hit upon the idea of solid wood wings. Yeah, that's about as good an idea it sounds. James and I tried a few tests on the ground, which didn't work, so I figured that if we had a little more time in the air to gain lift, it might work out. So I took it to the third floor of the building, wound up the propeller, and let her fly. And she dropped like a rock. Then came the competition, and that's exactly what happened. My roommate went on to be a political science major, and given how four years of aerospace treated me, he might have had the right idea.

So now, having graduated with a degree in aerospace engineering, I am returning to the challenge that bested me all those years ago. I will build a functional balsa wood propeller driven airplane! Or die trying. Well, probably less 'die' and more 'be ashamed'.

So, I went out and bought some balsa wood, tissue paper, glue, and an exacto knife. I sketched out a basic design, with two rear horizontal stabilizers and a fin, plus, a flat, angled wing strategically located at the center of mass of the the rest of the plane. And, of course, a propeller up front.

Construction went easily enough, despite my lack of a ruler. I just built a basic frame for the wing, and reinforced the joints to keep it sticking together, and took a length of balsa wood and glued together the fin and stabilizers.

Then came the affixing of the tissue paper, which was fun, it worked out pretty well. Smear glue, attach tissue paper. Done. Then I attached the wing! Which was a bad idea, as I didn't have the propeller, and couldn't actually put the wing at around the center of mass. So I guessed.

Then I went out and tried to buy a propeller, for which I actually had to buy a kit balsa wood plane, which I felt somehow defeated the point of building my own. So, I got home and attached the propeller!

So, now comes the flight test. Joy and excitement! So, that center of mass thing is actually pretty important, because any lift the wing got caused it to pull up until it lost lift, and then fall backwards to the ground. So I put some weight on the nose and put the wing at a higher angle to generate more lift. The result? Well, it's just about the same.

In a good headwind, it'll still fly somewhat, but not fantastically. So we're gonna call this a beta product for now. I probably should have done some math with this, just to get myself halfway right, but I cracked open my old aerodynamics textbook and promptly remembered why the midterm left me a sobbing mess behind the computer science building. Next week, something a little more domestic, I think.