I woke up early this morning. After all, I’ve a schedule to keep!
On Saturday I took stock of my current list of hobbies, passions, and goals. I’ve been neglecting many of them for far too long. The result of this reflection was a schedule for the next week.
It’s a prototype of a large systemic change. And it’s exciting (to me)!
I start the day by waking up early to exercise and make coffee before getting cleaned up and ready for work. We bought a french press, and I enjoy doing science to it. So there’s that.
Studying for the GMAT is scheduled.
Taking the GMAT is scheduled.
Web design is planned.
Piano, voice, guitar, and harmonica are sorted.
Heck, even blogging is arranged.
Other goals (making ties, painting, etc) will filter in and out.
I love the metaphor of plans as gears, and this is a lot of gears working in concert. I am pleased as pi.
One part of flight I enjoy is crossword puzzles. I don’t usually take the time to seek them during my day-to-day wanderings, but the in-flight magazine brings them right to you.
Another thing in-flight magazines present is a good visual jam session. They provide some graphics and words, and it’s up to you to make them into something more interesting. This is their intention. It would be rude not to participate.
I recently found these fine examples while cleaning:
The visualization of all of the permutations is significantly more interesting than a simple (and clean) tool-assisted run.
This reminds me of the terrible Nicholas Cage movie “Next” wherein Cage’s character can see two minutes into the future. There’s a visualization near the end of him following all of his ideas out to their conclusion as he searches a warehouse. They composite together a bunch of different shots of him walking off in different directions, testing all of the possible decision branches.
Anyway, this is an impressive work. I’d love to see more people use this technique!
I’m building a 16-step tone sequencer using the Arduino Diecimila prototyping platform!
I’ve reached the first milestone: potentiometers for Volume, Tone, and Duration are all responding as expected (after correcting a few mistakes). Here’s a movie showing how it all currently works! [Read more →]
As part of a pre-marriage Manly Dinner celebration, me and my groomsmen went out chow last night. Some food was eaten, beverages were imbibed, and conversation flowed like a proficient rapper.
As the dinner wound to a close, Sean told us that some of his friends had recommended visiting the Whirlyball place that was (sorta) nearby. It took him awhile to describe it (since he had never been there himself) and we decided that it sounded darn cool enough that we should at least check it out.
Oh man.
It’s basically like basketball-flavoured lacrosse, played in souped-up bumper cars.
I heartily recommend that you go. And call me before you do, so I can come along!
[NOTE: Oops! Forgot to publish this a few weeks ago!]
On the plane trip down I saw three laptops open (including my own), and all three were Macs. Times: are they a-changin’?
I spent the weekend in beautiful Palo Alto, California attending Startup School hosted by Y-Combinator and Stanford BASES. It was great! We (all 600+ of us) filled up Stanford’s Kresge Auditorium and listened to a day full of speakers talking about tech startups from a variety of perspectives.
Meeting up with the other attendees outside of the conference was the best part of the trip. I talked with a bunch of people from all over the country (and even from up in Canada), and came away feeling energized to work on my own projects again.
There was a neat hacker party on Saturday night called Super Happy Dev House. I had never been to something like that before, and had a good time alternating between meeting more tech people and working my projects. A++ NERD PARTY. WOULD ATTEND AGAIN.
I didn’t get to sleep before 2:30 though, and had to get up at 7:30 this morning. Woe is me! I’m getting so old.
