from the desk of stinkpot

gee – i’d been reading about how bad the windstorms were back home in new york but i figured the problems were localized to nyc. silly me, i have to keep relearning the same lesson: boston weather always sucks more.

it hit me, literally, on the bike ride home tonight. as i rounded the kendall shopping center near cardinal madeiros ave., a gust of wind came out of nowhere and struck my right side, forcing me to lean my bike at a crazy 30 degree angle into the wind.

hanging a right at the corner, i found myself biking directly into the wind which by that point, was accompanied by some nasty nasty hail. christina, my weather.com oracle, never said anything about hail this morning. it was ridiculous – i was in one of my lowest gears and mashing on the pedals, just to keep from being pushed backwards. my sideways glance at the drivers waiting for the stop light in the oncoming lane didn’t help – those bastards looked like they were giggling.

at that point, my combined frustration and fear of being blown under the wheels of some car drove me to start screaming obscenities. looking to my right, i noticed that i had unnerved some pedestrians to my right; i guess they don’t see bikers weaving through night-time traffic while getting pelted by ice and swearing profusely too often.

i quit soon thereafter. luckily, i happened to bike by my bemused girlfriend on her way home from work and decided to walk at that point. that christina – always has the right idea.

i am really enjoying mit. as long as you’re not an undergrad here (they appear to just get pummeled incessantly) mit is a fun, and dare i say – laid back place. right, i am never going to eat those words.

in any case, what’s inspired my demeanor has been IAP: mit’s “independent activities period.” essentially, we’re given all of january off to spend as we see fit. as a bonus, the school sponsers a bunch of free and lighthearted classes like learn hebrew in 8 hours!, introductory blacksmithing and the battle of the brownies. heh, that last one sounds like a class the chemE’s back at columbia had to take to graduate.

i decided to get in on the sweet iap action by signing up for a digital photography course called “finding the light in the shadows” (or something to that effect). over the christmas break, i had parlayed my christmas gifts and a fair bit of personal savings into buying my first SLR camera – a Nikon D50 and a nice all-purpose lens (18-200mm). the iap class appeared to be perfectly timed to coincide with the new camera.

unfortunately, after attending the first class this past weekend, it doesn’t look like things are going to work out between “finding the light in the shadows” and me. for one thing, the instructor had this creepy predilection for the female students with long necks and “beautiful eye sockets.” eccentric instructors make classes more interesting though, so that wasn’t the deal breaker. rather, this class appears to exclusively teach studio portraiture; i was really hoping to learn a lot more about general photography: basic techniques like how to choose an aperture and more artistic ones too, such as how to compose a shot.

the four-hour session wasn’t a complete loss though. i did get to use $10,000 of lighting equipment to take some glamour shots of my fellow photography students:

the dude above is hide (accent on the e), a buddy of mine and captain of our biological engineering tennis team. these lights were phenomenonal – hide looks like someone out of an apple commercial. and ladies, i do believe he’s available.

the image below, however, is my favorite:

chatting with this gentleman afterwards, i found out his name was dmitri bertsekas. that name rang a bell and after mulling over it for a couple of moments, it hit me. he was the author of my undergrad probability textbook – high on my list of favorite textbooks. gushing like a school girl, i told him how much his book meant to me. i should have foreseen his reply: “which of my textbooks?” i’m not sure my fragile ego can weather this kind of punishment throughout my 5 to 7 (shudder) years here.

brendon pointed me to this flash game last night. it’s inventive and gorgeous to boot – exactly what flash games ought to be. go check it out.

“the best of google video” – looks to be a great time waster.

i’m now in too deep to this whole photography thing; i actually told someone i was “an aspiring photographer” yesterday. what a tacky thing to say.

in any case, i was reading up what you are, and are not allowed to do, with your camera the other day and came across this informative article. apparently, you can do some pretty ballsy things:

Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way. Aside from sensitive government buildings (e.g., military bases), if you’re on public property you can photograph anything you like, including private property. There are some limits — using a zoom lens to shoot someone who has a reasonable expectation of privacy isn’t covered — but no one can come charging out of a business and tell you not to take photos of the building, period.

Further, they cannot demand your camera or your digital media or film. Well, they can demand it, but you are under no obligation to give it to them. In fact, only an officer of the law or court can take it from you, and then only with a court order. And if they try or threaten you? They can be charged with theft or coercion, and you may even have civil recourse. Cool. (For details, see “The Photographer’s Right.”)

sadly, i bet a lot of this doesn’t apply back in the nyc. for instance, i’m fairly sure it’s now illegal to take pictures in the subway or in tunnels. i wonder if you’re allowed to sketch things down there … or just take notes … or even just try really really hard to remember what you saw.

this is totally going on the things to do list.

a fellow over at inventgeek has made himself a vibrating lock picker out of an oral-b flosser. total cost is about $10 – how could anyone pass up building this? such a clever idea.

drool. what the hell though is up with the name “macbook”? then again, these are the people who got us all sticking “i’s” in front of words for no good reason.

i must admit, the part of the macbook that excites me the most is also the gimmickiest new feature: a magnetically connected powercord that gracefully disengages when people trip over your wall wart. as a bonus, having the powercord magically scoot into the macbook’s power jack makes this laptop a bonafide chick magnet. well, maybe at least here at mit.

in the spirit of spending time on the computer, i’ve spent a couple of hours this weekend uploading my photos from our trip to france this summer onto my photo server. i’ve got about 300 of them up now; there are about 700 or so to go (yea, i’m a shutterbug).

in any case, check some of them out here, if you’d like. all of them were taken during july 2005, when christina and i spent a month following the tour de france as they, well, toured around france.

it was spectular. we tooled around in a fantastically small car called the “twingo” that renault leased to us for tax purposes. it seems that by letting us drive the car for a month, renault could resell the car later as “used” and therefore avoid charging its customers the oppresive VAT. (if you ever go to europe and need a car for more than three weeks, i highly recommend the program we went through. ) we really bonded with that car … i think christina was a little verklempt when we had to return it.

over the course of the month, we saw a bunch of awesome things. we were lucky enough to get really close to lance armstrong, us postal, and a bunch of the other big names (ullrich, basso) on the galibier:

i even got to run with part of the peleton (just like on tv!):

also, i’m a big lance armstrong fan, which meant i was thrilled to meet the guy:

aside from getting to see the cyclists, following the race was also a great way to see the country. had we not had a race to keep up with, we’d have probably spent most of the month in two or three small cities or regions. instead, by tracking the tour, we logged over 1500 miles in the little twingo. of course, we didn’t go to every stage (given the traffic around each stage, that’d be impossible). but, this worked out well, as we had that much more time to go sightseeing.

there was even time to finally get a nice candid smile out of christina (it’s taken years to get a photo like this one):

things ultimately ended in paris, where we stood for 12 consectutive hours on the champs-elysees and saw armstrong take his 7th straight tour. afterwards, we spent plenty of time exploring paris and i managed to snap some nifty night shots, like the one below:

winter vacation has been fantastic so far. my general happiness has really increased, now that the burden of homework has been lifted. concomitant with my absolution from problem sets has been a decrease in time spent on the computer; i’m amazed at how much time i spent browsing the internet just because i was sitting at my desk.

nevertheless, i’ve now buckled down and replied to long-unanswered emails and blog comments. i’ve also made spotty progress towards locating a next lab rotation; i’m gradually realizing that my first-year of grad school is indeed finite and that come may, i might actually have to pick a lab. earlier in the year, i thought this wasn’t going to be such an issue, since i knew what i wanted to study: either neuroscience or biological approaches to alternative energy sources, such as hydrogen producing bacteria or solar panel fabrication via viral assembly. i’ve given neuroscience a try with my current rotation. but, as the year has progressed, energy has just come up so many times in the news and i’ve read a fascinating book on the subject (the end of oil); i can’t help but think energy will be one of the preeminent problems facing society in the coming decades. as a result, i think bioenergy has won my heart.

surprisingly, the opportunities for graduate research here at one of the world’s largest engineering schools have been limited in the field; i’ve only come across one person really thinking about biology and energy. of course, she’s just won a macarthur grant and her lab is packed to the brim. so, that’s left me with the increasingly disturbing prospect of not being able to work on what i’m really passionate about – which is what i thought grad school was all about. for now, i’m ignoring those fears and still reaching out to people who do work tangentially related to bioenergy, like microbial or metabolic engineers. but, there aren’t too many of them either …

note, if you’ve read the end of oil and are around this week, the author (paul roberts) is actually speaking at mit on 2PM thursday, in 4-370.

gee-whiz, i dropped over a dozen hamiltons on our last heating bill. although this is new england, i still find that staggering since our apartment really only has 4 rooms.

so, like any good american, i’ve declared war – on natural gas usage in our home. christina and i have made several home depot runs in the past few days alone. i’ve caulked the bejeesus out of our window frames and we’ve just finished seran-wrapping our windows. ok, ok, its not really seran wrap – it’s this funky plastic film that you cover your windows with and then heat shrink with a hair dryer. doing this buys you a nice air pocket between the window and your room; this is useful since air conducts heat much more slowly than something like glass. i’ve even toyed with getting the green light from our landlord to insulate our own floors, from our basement below. (prognosis on that is poor … it’s gonna cost several hundred dollars, which is a lot of money to spend on something you don’t own.) finally, i’ve installed a programmable thermostat. the energy star sticker on that sucker claims we’ll save “10-30%” on our heating bills. take that nstar!