Sam's L33t Journal

Julie was in NYC this weekend for a bike ride event with her dad and Kristin and Emilia. I had a beautiful weekend at home with Erica. I belatedly realized that it was the weekend of Somerville Open Studios, and we wound up exploring several art galleries tucked into the Milk Row neighborhood on our way back from climbing on Saturday. On Sunday, we went to see the open house at the Friend Museum (i.e the home of Martha Friend; the exterior alone is a notable Somerville landmark). We caught a few more gallery and outdoor showings on our way back. Other highlights of our weekend included the art of Lexi Havlin, Kelly Ann Clark McCormack, and Akira Fujita. The scale of the event is really impressive, with over 120 places in the city participating.

The city is so beautiful in the spring. The moment that stands out most in my memory was standing under some overhanging wisteria that a whole crew of carpenter bees was busily foraging with an audible buzz.

There was some scattered rain this weekend, but the bits between were beautiful. We mostly managed to avoid getting caught out in it.

We did a lot of art activities at home, too: The big project was egg-decorating, from the Easter basket Mary got for Erica. Erica made a cord bracelet, and built some Lego.

After finishing Death's Door, I've started playing Spiritfarer . Which I guess takes a completely different take (in terms of game mechanics and whole general vibe) on exactly the same topic.

This week is Erica's school break, and I took Erica to Cleveland to visit my parents while Julie gets a focus week back at home. Had the Monday holiday off, but the rest of the week was "working from elsewhere" for me.

Last Sunday, our travel day, was very snowy overnight and rain and heavy clouds all day in Boston. Bad weather in Cleveland, too. As a result, our 10AM flight became a 4PM flight. Erica had bought a matching sweater-and-sweatpants set with her allowance at Target on Sunday which she wanted especially for the trip, she definitely got the most use out of her airport loungewear. Still, overall it was a reasonably pleasant travel day. And it was in a way lucky that we had to wear boots in the morning to wade to our airport ride, and thus had to have our boots and couldn't neglect to pack them. It's been snowy all week here, so we've been wading through snow all week.

There was another brief delay in our flight as the plane had to do an abrupt go-around before landing on the second attempt. It was a pretty dramatic maneuver, and someone a few rows back form us was overcome by motion sickness and lost their lunch. But of course it could've been worse.

On Monday, we got to catch up with Dan and Anne and Isaac and baby Naomi, who has doubled in size since I last saw her and become extremely engaged and vocal. I also got to catch up with Markos Monday evening, played a bit of kitchen table Magic. Took me back, though I kept embarrassingly misreading the cards.

On Tuesday evening, we went to a concert at CIM featuring Olga and Daniel Kaler with Michelle Bushkova. Was really great. Had to duck out at intermission because of kid bedtime (but had thought that might be the case).

On Wednesday evening, we saw a "Picasso and Paper" special exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

On Thursday evening, we went out to dinner at Tita Flora's, a Filipino restaurant which was really good.

Friday evening, had a nice Shabbat dinner at home and my Uncle Jonathan came over.

And of course Erica has been up to all sorts of activities with my parents during my workdays.

For lunch, I made excursions to a bunch of places nearby, mostly on Larchmere. I did get to Michael's Diner in Shaker Square, which I love (it's a wonderful, classic train-station diner). But Shaker Square does seem, as always, a bit cursed. A new cafe will be opening in the again-vacant cafe spot soon, at least. Brandon Chrostowski's restaurants Edwins Restaurant and Edwins Too closed on Monday, relocating to the former Nighttown jazz club space. Didn't get to go there again, but fancy for a random weekday, but at least I did get to go a few times. Lovely memories. I'm sure they will make the most of the Nighttown space, too, it's a great space. I did go to the other Edwins restaurant in the area, their bakery and deli venture, which as far as I know is staying put. Had an excellent pastrami on rye. The restaurants are all run by Chrostowski's nonprofit, which has a mission of helping former prisoners with reentry support and job training in the hospitality industry.

Hopefully tomorrow's return trip will go smoothly. Weather will be better this time at least.

Last week, we took a family vacation to the Netherlands for Erica's April break, the first overseas flight that Erica will actually remember and the first international travel I planned for the family since before the pandemic.

( Details under the fold )

Overall, it was a wonderful trip. And it's nice to have the weekend to decompress before we're back to the routine on Monday.

Took a mini-vacation to NYC this weekend, which was fun. Saw some friends and family (Aunt Ellen and Uncle Mark and their family, also my other cousin Ben and his fiancée), ate bagels and borscht, visited The Cloisters, caught a photography exhibition done by one of my cousins, drank lots of coffee, talked a lot about weddings.

Wedding planning has begun in earnest. There are a lot of logistics to figure out, but even focusing on the big structure of where and when is a lot of work. Everyone's asking me if we've decided on a date, we're pinning that down as quickly as we can.

Last weekend, I took a jaunt to NYC with Julie. On Saturday, we ate amazing croissants in Harlem and caught up with a long list of acquaintances: Emmett (a high school friend and animator), his sister Clio (chef and pudding shop entrepreneur), kmo (podcaster and online acquaintence who I had the pleasure of speaking with in person for the first time) and Olga K. (kmo's girlfriend, also a podcaster), and one of Julie's college friends. On Sunday, we joined Nikki for brunch on the town and ventured to an out-of-the-way gallery in Brooklyn to see some unusual art.

Lot of good stuff from the past few weeks! Political talk and commentary:

• Olbermann rants about 9/11(TM), as the Republicans spin it.
• O'Reilly defends Obama... what? The Daily Show team talks to Republican convention-goers about small-town values.
• John McCain slams Obama for... protecting children from child molesters? Of course, this is good for McCain.
• Obama discusses McCain's lobbyists.
• The Daily Show parody's John McCain's biography film, noting how his policy positions have totally reversed since 2000 (some as late as 2006). They also go over his acceptance speech.
• Joe Biden tears into John McCain, go Joe!
• Samantha Bee of The Daily Show talks to RNC atendees about Bristol Palin's... what's that word again?
• Questions that the media should ask Sarah Palin, as contrasted with what they probably will ask.
• Ron Paul endorses the third-party candidates, ALL OF THEM. Bob Barr asks Paul to be his running mate, with Root agreeing to step aside. I do hope he'll accept, that would be tremendously entertaining.

On games and gaming:

• Here's a paradoic (and hilarious) expose on GameStop's horrible business practices. And here I'd thought they were just garden-variety bad. I plan to avoid them in the future.
• SPORE has awful DRM, and apparently the gameplay is lackluster, too. I was interested in this one back during its development, but now I think I'll take a pass. The game accumulated a ton of negative reviews on Amazon from disgruntled fans (over 2000, most very negative, before Amazon deleted them all (update: they're claiming that was a technical glitch and have restored the reviews)).
• Meanwhile, there is some good news. Good Old Games is selling old classics via download, with no DRM, downloadable extras, and $6-10 price tags. They've just opened for their private beta test. Their EULA is still the usual (when is a sale not a sale?), but it's still progress. If you're looking to get your game fix now, Abandonia has freeware and abandonware games (copyrights fallen into the public domain by virtue of companies gone belly-up, mostly) available for download. I downloaded Ascendancy, since I really liked that game back in the day.

Regarding art:

• Here's a video segment about a painter born without eyes.
• And here's a short photo-essay about a painter (set of painters?) with dissociative identity disorder.

Miscellaneous bonus round:

• One on Shovelglove, an intersting DIY exercise technique.
• For technical-minded folks, here's an article on the history of the User-Agent string (and why Google Chrome is Mozilla, but in fact it's AppleWebKit, which is like Gecko (except not), but really it's just Chrome, which is pretty much Safari).
• Here's an essay on one employee's experience in the Rent-to-Own business.
• United's stock (briefly) tanked recently, after an old story about their bankruptcy was accidentally republished. danah boyd (she of the insufficient capital letters) took the opportunity to share another United Airlines horror story. Considering that my last airline horror story was also United, perhaps this is a good indication that they're another business to avoid.

Project Status-
Software Design: Complete!
Design Nature: Complete!
Physics: Complete!
Poster for Expo: Still not started.

Yesterday we presented our finished models for the wall climbing toys. Ours is pretty cool, but it doesn't walk well, although it would work great if we cut some tighter gears and got a new set of bellows and suction cups. But our design is awesome.

( Some pictures behind cut... )

Last night, I finished my physics presentation. This morning, I presented my model.

All that is left is my Software Design final (tomorrow) and my Expo presentation (on Wednesday). W00t!

It's been a crazy week.

A while ago, I posted a request for character art for my DnD character, Skikka (Male Scurrian Rogue) on the WotC boards. Today, the art was posted on the request thread:



I'd like to thank Oomi (on Wizards.COMmunity) for this wonderful picture.

Edit: Used picture to make a new userpic. What do you think?