Author: bryan

summer begins

I’ve tried but failed to describe our kick-ass road trip more succintly than Leslie. It was awesome, I love driving around with that girl, what can I say.

I’m sitting now in the my completely deserted office at Berkeley. All seven other students are gone at internships for the summer, five went just to pixar (seems like it’s even more hip than Google around here these days). So although it’s a bit lonely, I’ll probably have plenty of time to get distraction-free work done. My main project at the moment is to decide what I’d like to do for the next three years or so, which will hopefully be enough to keep me busy.

Other exciting stuff: Ali is visiting starting tomorrow with his new girlfriend, and this weekend I have my first weekend of paragliding lessons. I’ve been talking about it for a couple of years now so I figured it was time to actually get out there and do it. Jeff’s doing it with me, so that should also be awesome.

paraglider

Other projects for the summer: German, guitar, catching up more on restaurant reviews? Who knows. I’ll keep you posted.

berkeley food #16: triple rock

1920 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, 94704
(510) 843-7625

Leslie and I have been to Triple Rock many times now. I’d say it’s our favorite brew-pub in Berkeley. Since I’ve had so many experiences there, I’ll just give an overview of the experience. The main event is the beer, which is all brewed on-site and features seasonal specialties. Probably the most infamous is Monkey Head, an exceptionally alcoholic arborreal ale (8% i think…) that is served in a large bottle with, well, a monkey head on it. You drink it socially, everyone with a little glass. It promotes toasts. There’s even a card that you get stamped each time you buy a bottle, and at 10 you get to keep the bottle and you get a t-shirt. How can you beat that? The catch is, monkeyhead is only served on Thursdays. Other good beers include Titanium, “light but strong,” and the Triple Rock classic, Red Rock. If you go, I’d suggest trying at least two or three different kinds.

The food consists mainly of burgers, with a few standard bar appetizers like wings and nachos. It’s not the greatest, but the burgers in particular are quite good, and by all means when you order one spend the buck fifty to upgrade your cole slaw to fries–they are light, crispy, with just the right amount of salt.

The biggest problem with Triple Rock is its popularity. They’ve recently installed two huge flat screens that are constantly playing the sports game du jour. Most nights of the week the place is packed, and there is no hostess seating, so you’re out of luck unless you want to stand around for 15-30 minutes stalking a table (although you might get lucky). We prefer to go around 6-6:30, when there’s almost always tables available and the atmosphere is a bit quieter.

berkeley food #15: sushi california

2033 Martin Luther King Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
510-548-0737

Leslie and I went to sushi california last week as celebration for studying German. It got a couple of good reviews on yelp, so we decided to check it out. We wanted to go for a mix of cooked Japanese and sushi (a change for us), so we ordered grilled saba (mackerel) and fried clams along with a assortment of sashimi.

We weren’t impressed. The mackerel, while tasty, was overcooked. The clams were nice but too oily for my tastes. The sashimi was pretty flavorless and unremarkable. I don’t think we’ll be going back any time soon.

here comes the summer

Well, yesterday I ticked off the last thing I had to do to get my SIGGRAPH paper all submitted. I’m sure you all are crazy about the idea of reading the freshly posted preprint which you can get here.

I’m not sort of heading in to the end of the semester, working hard on a couple of class projects, but mostly just living the beautiful life of a grad student. Les and I went last weekend to check out a couple of possible spots for the wedding in the area, nothing concrete nailed down, but I think the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden is high in the running. There’s serveral other random beautiful places in the Berkeley hills we’ve been looking at.

Plans for the summer are vague but are sure to include me forking over huge sums of money to learn how to paraglide (no, it’s not actually the thing at the resort where they drag you behind a motorboat), a years-delayed roadtrip with Leslie up to Canada, and who knows, maybe even a jaunt to Africa if finances allow. What it won’t involve is any sort of job, save research, which I’m quite excited about.

spring marches on

Let’s see… there’s been a bit going on recently other than getting engaged. I found out a few days after I got back from belize that our SIGGRAPH paper submission was accepted at the conference, which was a bit of a surprise but definitely welcome news. This paper is a lot like the one we did last year except we have stuff moving around and interacting with the smoke. You can check out our videos, including a more playful one that will be showing in the SIGGRAPH animation theatre here.

It’s finally stopped raining in the last few days here. I know it’s a tad absurd to ever complain about the weather in northern california, but for the last month I think we have surpassed Seattle both in total amount of rain and number of rainy days. I feel kind of ripped off by this but it’s taken only a couple days of gorgeous sunshine and weather in the 60’s to make me satisfied again. I know that by the middle of the perfect summer I’ll be yearning for a cloud or two.

These days I’ve been mostly working on getting the final version of our SIGGRAPH paper ready and working on semester projects, and my master’s thesis, which I’ll hopefully file before the end of this semester. The summer is a great yawning emptiness ahead of me as I have no scheduled job for the summer, which I think is a first since I was of legal age to work.

belize: the arrival, caye caulker

After what was probably the best layover of our lives in Dallas with Leslie’s parents, including two great meals, Cameron and Matt, and Murphy, we left on Sunday for Belize. We got extra early to the airport, which was deserted, ended up all seated together in an exit row, and watched Pride and Prejudice for the three hour flight. Then we had a painless run through immigration and customs, and quick taxi ride to Belize City where we caught a water taxi to Caye Caulker. The ride took maybe 30 minutes, with nice, dramatic clouds everywhere. We were greeted on the island by Amanda, whose house we’re staying in. The island is so beautiful, laid back, perfect. The motto: Go Slow.

Go Slow!

Check out the gallery for all the pics from the first day. Today we’re heading out for our first day of diving, the camera is all prepped and ready to go. We’ll probably upload those pics tonight while we sleep.