Staticfree Blog

I went to Japan last week with my brother Cole, my dad, his significant other, Marie and her daughter, Minna where we met with my youngest brother, David. We traveled to Tokyo and stayed to explore for a couple days. Then took the bullet train to Kyoto where we stayed in a machiya-like hotel and ate bowls upon plates upon bowls of odd things that once lived in the ocean.

After we explored all variety of pagodas and temples over the course of a couple days, we headed over to Okinawa to stay on a military base.

The contrast between a ritzy traditional Japanese hotel and an American military hotel is astounding. The most notable differences were:

1. a poorly-designed ventilation system that was so noisy one had to talk loudly over it
2. general aesthetics and pleasantness; one place encouraged rest whereas the other seemed to find resting in one's hotel to be an afterthought
3. the toilet (of course)

Okinawa is famous for a few native fruits, notably: the Goya - a green, bitter melon that looks somewhat like a pickle, the pineapple, and the Shiisa which isn't a fruit. Shiisa are guardian lions that come in pairs: one with its mouth open to let out bad spirits and one with its mouth closed to hold the good ones in.

We just so happened to plan this trip around the same time that David was getting his promotion, so we got to see him become promoted to Corporal - the first big promotion in the Marines.

We snorkeled in the coral reefs on the north-western side of the island. As I wasn't able to put my glasses on under the goggles, I got to see coral, water and swimming schools of blurs. The water was warm in our wetsuits and the waves weren't too obnoxious. We later went to the aquarium and saw many of the things that lived in said coral. Okinawa is largely made of coral, so many things that are usually rock are instead coral, such as castles.

There are a few notable quirks about Japanese streets:

1. There are numerous vending machines. I only encountered a few of the wide variety of vending machines available.
2. Overly-friendly construction notice signs, complete with inspirational pictures.
3. The crosswalk man has a hat

I made it! I've finally gotten off the North American continent. My lack of Italian skills isn't as scary I thought, due to a common language of money, food and occasional English. I already knew how to read the wine bottles and many of the names of food. With a bit of French, Spanish and metric knowledge, I'm able to get by reading general signage.

I love the metric system: it makes so much sense compared to the highly deprecated and confusing English system. I've been using metric measurements everywhere I go for the past few years and have one place that I still need to convert: the kitchen. Metric measuring in the kitchen is done more by weight than by volume. It's looking like I need to get a nice digital scale.

The only thing I am not down with here is the exchanging of "." and "," in numbers. To me, "." is more important than "," and is something more important to leave in a thing. Dropping a "," in a sentence is less critical than dropping a ".". So when I see that "." is used for thousands separators (which can be left out) and "," for decimal separators, that does not make me happy.

I have some photos online and will be adding more. Check out my ongoing collection of photos from my trip to Firenze.

Having left France Telecom R&D in search of different waters, I arrived at the shores of the Media Lab, where I'm now employeed at NeCSys.

My first day was on Monday and I've already been overwhelmed with new names and faces. I am determined to fix that as soon as possible; there are some amazing people and projects here and I plan to meet them all. If you are at MIT and reading this, stop by E15-463F and say hi.

Tina and I went for a walk around town, enjoying the 10°C weather. We took my recently-modded Canon that now only sees near-infrared. I'm still working out the kinks with the mod, so some pictures are slightly blurry.

So, I finally got my Tux beret made. In fact, I got four of them made (one for a spare and two to sell).

But you've had a penguin beret before! True, but it was the Penguin Books penguin. Now I've got the right penguin and all is well.

If you would like to buy one of the two extras that I had made, contact me. Due to the small run, the costs were higher, so each one will be sold for $30 + shipping. They're all gone at the moment. I gave my last extra away recently.. If I get enough interest in them, I'll do a larger batch and can probably sell them for $20/ea.

So, Tina and I have a place. We've had it for a bit over a month now, but it's now starting to feel like home. It's in Somerville on one of the nicer streets in one of the densest parts of New England. Tina took some photos, and it still looks much like that. We are in desperate need of artwork on our walls - something that will be a long process of finishing (years?!).

It's the most wonderful thing to be entirely responsible for the leftovers in the fridge. No roomies leaving mystery containers of science experiments. The Chinese food is only as bad as we let it be.

So, life is good. And someone spray-painted single hearts in front of each of the houses on the sidewalk on our street.

My dad said that it would be cool if we have a New Years party at his new place this year. I only wish to use that, however, if we (the royal 'we'!) can't find a better venue. Anyone care to help?

The car is loaded with most of my clothes, books, and tech and Rochester is giving one last dose of snow to cover it all up. I just heard the train whistling off in the distance for the last time and smile at not having to wait for it on Scottsville Road as it passes by. Of course, there will always be other trains in other places to slow my drive.

I'm off to Newton, MA (with a multiple-day layover in Rockland County to hang with Tina's family and friends) where I'll be living with my father (until I find my own place). I start work in January. Tina will follow shortly in February.

Goodbye school and Rochester; hello working life.

I am really going to miss Geekhaus.

I just beat college. The end bossexam was hard.

The first snow of the season falls on my last day of college classes. Yesterday, there was a thunderstorm that visited briefly. It had all the dramatics of hail and lightning, but left with the usual Rochester spittle. It's funny how weather can represent feelings (or perhaps it just affects them).

All that remains is the shuffling of paperwork and exams. Following that ... a bit of planned unknown.

Come the new year, my life starts in Boston.

It is the times when things are going the best that one finds themselves not writing in a journal. This is fine, generally, but it tends to leave the best parts to memory instead of being written down.

As you may guess, things are proceeding swimmingly. I'm doing well this quarter and enjoying my classes (admittedly, what is there not to enjoy about Foods of the World?). Tina and I are doing well, now living in the attic of Geekhaus.

I decided to not continue with RIT's graduate CS program and instead graduate with a BS in Computer Science this quarter (20051). Official ceremonies will be in June. I'll be heading back to Massachusetts eventually, where I'll be working in Cambridge starting in early January, 2006.

I plan to take a brief break between finishing school and working full-time somewhere. I'd like to visit people, so if you have been unvisited by me and would like that changed, contact me.

So, apparently there's an image of me in an ad for The Scene in UMass Amherst's newspaper, The Daily Collegian. I only learned about this because some of my friends at UMass saw it and called me (and sent me the above image - thanks Dyfrgi and Miraba). The image was taken from a photo that is on my website.

The original image, shown here, was taken by Aidenn some time back via my cellcam. I did not authorize the use of this image nor did the photographer. Now, to be slightly fair, there is no copyright information on the main index page that it is on. However, throughout my website there are notes that all the content there-in is available through a creative-commons license which prohibits non-attributed commercial use of the content. Moreover, any person who puts an ad in any commercial work should at least ask permission before using images they find on the Internet.

I will be contacting the advertiser as soon as I can. Getting a call about an image haphazardly used will hopefully get them to think more about non-permissive use of Internet-found images in the future. I'm guessing that the source was a Google image search of some sort; I get many hits from that.

So, for those who haven't heard, I recently was accepted into RIT's Computer Science BS/MS program. The program extends normal undergraduate studies and provides a MS degree in one extra year. It's sounding like it'll be a lot of fun, as I'll be able to continue my various RIT-related activities as well as go on and study nifty CS stuff. Practically speaking, however, this means that I get to partake of yet another of Rochester's beautiful winters. The good with the bad.

Tina will most likely be staying with me for that year here in Rochester, though we're not sure with whom else. Geekhaus shall be our home as, well, it's fairly cheap and full of geeks. Who can resist? If you're a person, you smell nice, you don't enjoy playing bad pop music loudly, and are looking for a nice place to live next winter, with a fast 'net connection - contact me. I can't guarantee an opening just yet, but soon enough there will be.

So, I did an experiment with my dad's shiny, new television: I turned on the V-Chip blocking for all ratings, G, PG-13, X. Now the television only displays ads (and the occasional sports game). I can now understand exactly how the system got in place: who could say no to something that would let the hooks be displayed, but hide all the meat?

With this on, you can't watch a TV-PG PBS special, but you can watch football, the home shopping network, ads, and infomercials.

My hair passes near my face and I smell it. It's familiar, but misplaced in time, like a yellow envelope of childhood photos found behind the past-forgotten classics on a bookshelf. A rich aroma of log cabins, battered-pan cooked beans and marshmallows stuck to fingertips. It smells of thick night woods and a spring sleeping bag that never seemed quite warm enough. It smells of earth: smoke-stained hair from a gentle beach-driftwood flame.

It found me again, this old-friend smell; the kind you don't realize you miss until you head home. I hope to come back, with a smile on my face and tell it about all the things I've learned since we went our separate ways. It will quietly listen, coughing politely with sputtering flames and seething embers. Together we will glow, exchanging stories and writing memories to scent and scent to body. I won't forget you, friend; we'll meet again soon.