I'm published! 1-31-13

I'm published. Well I have been before in a neighborhood paper called the Porch Press, but this is bigger. It's the National Audubon Society's branch for the Atlanta section. And to top it all off my article was featured in on the 2nd and 4th pages of Wingbars (the newsletter/paper)!

Part-Time Crusader 1-30-13

Yeah, I've been busy being an absolute nerd and complete geek seeing 3D printers, watching a friend weld, and struggling through trying to use twitter for my robotics team. Okay so you're tired of hearing me talk about silly little things that chuck fribees at you at 4000 revolutions per minute. Just you wait... when I'm ruling the world and my awesome "chunk of metal" can do cool stuff that's absolutely incredible. You'll thanks me. Admit it. Okay so I don't really want to rule the world with frisbees, but I thought you might have want to hear from one of my many imaginary me's. Can you imagine a world with no trees all metal machinery and smog that makes you choke? Sure there's people out there that are looking into the clean energy. The green alternatives. I'm not trying to discount anyone because boy are you guys out there are doing great work.

Do you ever hear though little thoughts in your brain conversing with each other saying things like. "I wonder how many feet of duct tape it would take to stick your sibling to your ceiling?" Or "How many licks would it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center?" in that video on youtube. Or what about "What can I do with his massive bag of zip ties and jell-o?" If not, then I say you aren't a prankster. Live a little! Within reason of course. Come on. Surely you've pranked someone at a camp, club, at school (if you go to one), or some other gathering of people. If not, perhaps you've been on the other end of the pranking. If so I'm sorry. We do it in good cheer, the one's who are good spirited jokers. 

But it seems as though avenging can go... shall we say too far. I mean people end up dead. I'm reading Romeo and Juliet and there's lots of avenging going on. I think that pranking back, so long as lives aren't in danger, is perfectly fine. You also can't cause permanent damage either. The prank has to be looked back at with a laugh later on in life. People get stomped on all the time but they don't ever prank back. Stand up! You can do it. But I warn you. Once you're into this pranking thing step carefully.  There are people like my friend Matthew who will take your prank, laugh, look carefully at the design, and then prank you back worse than you could ever imagine. Go and live! So:

"do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards."                  --- Edward Abbey

Das Blinkenlights 1-26-13

Every now an then I take a look back at what I've written and I noticed that I never gave an explanation to this post. I, as you know, have been living at Georgia Tech. There is a sign that shows this message posed on  one of the main bulletin boards. It's perfect for all of us to do live around das blinkenlights.

This term derives from the last word of the famous blackletter-Gothic sign in mangled mock German that once graced about half the computer rooms in the English-speaking world. One version ran in its entirety as follows.

ACHTUNG!

ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS!

DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKSEN.

IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.

ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.

This "silliness" dates back to least as far as 1955 at IBM and had already gone international by the early 1960s, when it was reported at the University of London's ATLAS computing site. There are several variants of it in circulation, some of which actually do end with the word blinkenlights.

"Oh my god you could go to the bathroom while on google+ chat!" - Maeve

"Oh look I've gotta show you the sheep head my mom got." - Maeve

"Why would you say be quiet Dexter when you could say shut up Dexter?" - Mattie

"You cannot rob my of my love of cleavage (starfish that is)." - Maeve

The quote of the day while talking to to Maeve, Dexter, Zeki, Aaron, and Mattie.

What were you thinking? 1-23-13

This a a VERY good example of the conversation that I've been having during the robotics season:


Casey: "Come on man... import those churros! We gotta get this stuff CAD'ed up. You're makin' me look bad."

Mei-Jing: "Churros? Oh you mean the 500 Cross hex tubes?"

Casey: "Yeah whatever man... *derp grin*

Wheels turnin'... keep on burning 1-22-13

It's been a crazy ride full of mechanical wheels, constant loud noises, and lots and lots of sawdust. For some reason I have been able to put everything, meaning the noise, into a little corner of my brain, and I haven't been too upset by it. I think it's because I know I can walk out of the building any time that I want. But the people I am with make me so happy it's hard to leave every night, even though I know I'll be spending the never evening and the next one with them too. Among my team members are Jasmine an Tymirra who are the two newest girl additions to the team! Even though I love all the members of my team to death it was time to get some girls on the team. Recent guy additions would be Jay, Myles, Collin, and Josh (yes another one). Of the mentor we have good old Corey who is currently incredibly stressed out yet makes everything sound like he's the most relaxed person you've ever met, Ben who as always keeps the humor alive in the room, Alex our programmer who is always on the computer and lastly Casey who is a freshman at Ga Tech and is well let's face it an incredibly awesome geeky nerd. We have currently been having some internal issues with agreeing on designs, leadership, and authority in general but through some talking, a games of pingpong, and stories of failed adventures brought us closer.

 I don't know where we'd be without the mentors. I wouldn't have been able to sit for 1 straight hour fixing a bunch of mistakes and errors in one of the models that we made had it not been for Casey's humor, his bad song references, and overall geekiness in general the hour might not have been quite as fun and productive as it was. If someone doesn't finish a phrase Casey will, without fail, start singing a song that has the begun phrase in it.

I knew Collin and Myles before they arrived on the team. They are both homeschooled and used to/still go to LEAD (Learners and educators of Atlanta and Decatur [it's a homeschool group/co-op thingy]). I remember Myles as the weird kid that always wore his pajamas to class and had an amazing amount of curly blonde hair. We were talking today and he said, and I quote, " God what I have now was a 1/4th of what I had. I swear I had things living in it back then!" Now Myles likes to frequent hackaday.com, likes the smell of certain plastics when they are cut, is quite the skilled electrician, and is a computer hack builder.

 Collin, unbeknownst to me is a backpacking enthusiast. He is full of crazy stories of failed camping trips, kayaking disasters, Leave No Trace failures, and karma biting you in the butt. He's a machine when it comes to building. I swear they guy can crank anything out in record timing. I find that I have more in common with him than I ever though. Collin was always the kid at lead with the hair as long as the girls and who was kind of quiet and melted into the background.

 Had you asked me years ago when I saw these people, but didn't really talk to them. If you were to ask me whether I saw them as my friends in the future I would have answered with a resounding no. But now I kind of wish that I had become friends with them before. They are really fantastic people who make me smile everyday I see them. Needless to say I am having a blast despite my ridiculous schedule. :)

PJ clad math students 1-17-13

I'm sure you're familiar with the stereotype of homeschoolers. well at least this one because there seems to be many. The one I'm talking about would be "do you do you're school work in pajamas?" Why is that? Do we just give of a "we do whatever we want to do" aura? Because it's kind of true...

The whole reason that kids are homeschooled is because they or their parents or both don't like the public/private school system for one reason or another. Whether it's the school environment or the the teachers or the curriculum or the kids at the school. I know a lot of people who are out of school because they are tired of being "taught the test." Filling in the bubble for a test is not the be all end all of life. A letter grade is not going to bring your entire future down. And you say "but what about college?" And here comes the irony and sad part. A) colleges and universities are still warming up to homeschoolers and thus admit homeschoolers through their SAT/ACT scores more. Funny how you spent your entire "school" life trying to beat the system and then when/ if you decide to go to college a lot of it's riding on a test, because there isn't that shiny stamp saying that you did this that and the other (that's the irony). B) your future doesn't depend on grades. There are a lot of schools out there who want to see what you have done not what test you've taken. Many people don't know that's out there and they break their backs filling up a sheet of paper with extra curricular activities that they may or may not like (that's the sad part). In this respect homeschoolers have the upper hand. They have the time and flexibility and daring to go out and try that crazy circus act or paint that landmark or build that machine. These are the people who are interesting. These are the people you want to meet and get to know. Now don't get me wrong, I know some fantastic people who are from a typical school. But I'll wrap this thing up before that certain sense of pride eeks into what I was trying to say. What's I'm trying to say is being in a cardboard limiting box is boring! Aren't you tired of the same old same old? I am. But by god I'm going to keep wearing my pajamas while I read about the history of money! Done...