from the desk of stinkpot

‘been practicing my trackstand for months now whenever i ride my bike to the lab initially, i’d treat drivers at intersections to morning real-life youtube blooper clips. as i tried to keep my balance and avoid taking my feet off the pedals when stopped at red lights, i’d wildly thrash around on my saddle like […]

it’s about 4pm on a tuesday and i’m ensconced in a glass atrium 5 stories about the street.  in front of me is a 60 foot high wall of glass, unbroken by frame or girder.  beyond that, a shrine to architecture is the horizon. due to it now being summer vacation at MIT, and this […]

i’m so excited — i’ve just walked out of the most enjoyable talk i’ve seen in my three years here at mit.  david macaulay, author of several architectural-themed books that i cherished as a child, just gave a one hour tour of how his imagination works over in the stata center.  there is no way […]

auntie danielle, my sister’s godmother and my mother’s best friend passed away last night.  i thought i’d leave a photo here of danielle that i took on our way to the philippines two years ago.

meet hubert, my octopus.  he came to visit last week while i waited for some particularly long modeling jobs to execute on the darwin computing cluster (more on that later). hubert’s timing couldn’t have been better, as his visit coincided with ned ruby‘s to mit.    here’s a picture of ned: ned is a microbiologist from […]

my body is officially in decline. up and through college, i would not exercise for months, suddenly go for a run or play some tennis and not feel any aches. today, i ran 4 miles for the first time since the fall and now feel like my knees are going to push right through my […]

petsi pies.  jacob, chris and i went over to the shop on beacon for a warm & delicious apres-brunch snack.  there, i discovered two things: 1) petsi’s mixed berry pie is heavenly — tangible proof of a benevolent, pie-adoring god.  2) the name petsi comes from the renee’s (the proprietress) childhood nickname.  renee’s parents really […]

i think a reasonable approximation of how interesting your day was can be gained by looking at the changes in your meal timing. dinner on schedule == nothing new. waiting an extra hour for dinner signifies something moderately unexpected (maybe good, maybe bad) came up. today, chris and i scored about +5 hours on my […]

it’s now 2.30 am and i’m still up trying to program on my dying powerbook.  christina fell asleep hours ago on the futon next to my desk. when it gets late, i try and take breaks to talk to subconscious christina. our conversations are usually very short and delightfully enigmatic. they’re like sleep haikus. slaikus, […]

gave christina her first squash lesson today. holy crap she’s talented. within an hour, she was able to hold a rally with me. of course, this was all to be expected. chris has got preternatural hand-eye coordination. last summer, i took her out to the baseball diamond across the street; she had never played baseball […]