Author: bryan

so many pretty pictures

Well, as my first official act as a grad student in graphics, I’m at SIGGRAPH in San Diego. One of the nice benefits of the conference is the free wireless everwhere, so as I type this I’m sitting in the keynote presentation. It’s being given by an astrophysicist who is talking about visualizing the form of the universe or some such thing. Very heady stuff.

Despite the ultra technical stuff (new Isotropic surface techniques with NURBS, anyone?), they also have a little theater set up where you can just sit and watch cartoons if you get burned out. I’ve already logged some time there. I’ll try to get some pictures taken, but they have this big problem with taking pictures of pretty things that other people made and want to sell, so I may not have much luck.

LA as paradise?

Well, it turns out in the end that we skipped right over Joshua Tree and headed straight to the great western metropolis. I’m a softie, what can I say? So these last couple days have been idle bliss here, as long as you ignore the traffic.

Yesterday, while Leslie taught, my brother and I went down to Venice beach. It was everything I’d hoped for, freaks and musclemen, cheap t-shirts and sunglasses, and lots of rollerblades. We then had lunch at “Hurry Curry,” and wasted the rest of the afternoon in the periodicals room in the big library at USC. A trip to Santa Monica rounded out the day.

Today, we’ve been lazy to the extreme, though we did make it to the Getty Center to look at art and old things. It really is a beautiful place; make sure you get there in the morning before the crowds get too silly.

Tomorrow morning, we’re leaving for SIGGRAPH. I’ll probably make another album in gallery for the pictures I take there. SIGGRAPH is more than just an orgy of pretty things, its also a major academic conference in this field that I’m supposed to be joining in the next couple of weeks, and subsequently devoting five years of my life to in pursuit of the brass ring, the doctor of philosophy. After that, there’ll be nowhere to hide. So, besides ogling the CG and collecting schwag, I’m also going to be trying to determine what I’m going to do for the next five years, and also trying to work out with a professor a way I can pay my rent for the next two months.

la biblia es la verdad… LEELA!

These were the words emblazoned on a hill overlooking El Paso as we sped through it this morning. It’s Spanish for: “the bible is the truth… READ IT!” This explains a few things about el paso to me, confirming (in cooperation with the many “desert-view” suburban “enclaves”) that el paso falls into the category of unredeemable shithole.

That is of course, unless your consider the goodness bestowed on it by its proximity to Hueco Tanks, the place with the Best Bouldering In The World, and it’s numerous dispensaries of snack foods and DVDs.

After an uneventful drive yesterday to the tanks, I spent the late afternoon getting spanked by my old foe, mushroom roof. Mushroom Roof very politely explained to me that just because I’m moving out of Texas and I might not be coming back to Hueco for a long, long time doesn’t give me permission to send V8 after not climbing much at all for 2 months. I did, however, do my customary cursing and ripping off of my fingertips anyway.

the rest of the evening was spent lazing about the campsite, then finally unpacking our “tent.” I use the term only tentatively because this “tent” had not been unpacked for at least five years, and it was apparrently packed during a monsoon, because every surface of the tent was covered with a festive black fungus that also had a very festive odor. It’s just as well that the tent was in this state, since neither of us had sleeping bags or pads that might have assisted tent sleep. So, we made other arrangements.

Today’s only point of interest was Saguaro NP which had some really big cactus. I’m sure that they were really interesting, and I looked at them and was kind of impressed, but I think my ability to really appreciate them was impeded by the fact that it was roughly 20 degrees cooler than the surface of the sun in the park, and so I kept having to rush back to the car to treat my burns or at least to get some AC. We did get a few pictures anyway.

Tomorrow we’re heading to Joshua Tree NP, another really outrageously hot place, but this one is in California, which is a state that at least has some places in it that have been known to be cool. It also happens to be the same state that has Los Angeles in it, which happens to be the city that has USC in it, which happens to be the place where TFA training is going on. What an interesting coincidence.

3000 miles of highway lie ahead…

it’s time for round two of my journey west; this time i’ll be going out for good (and by “good,” i mean for a while, maybe. permanence and commitment are not prime attributes of my life at this time).

on the schedule for this trip: Hueco Tanks. Not a new destination; well traveled by some accounts. Still, it’s a place that i can’t just pass by without seeing one more time, and one old friend in particular that i’d really like to conquer.

from there, we proceed to Saguaro National Park to… umm… look at the big-ass cacti, and then on to Tucson for the night. Unfortunately, we won’t be visiting Phoenix, so I won’t be able to tell Steve what’s there.

Then, on to CA, first stopping in Joshua Tree, then continuing on to LA to see leslie, and finally ending up in San Diego for SIGGRAPH.

You can download a map of the trip here.

leaving austin

Well, it’s about that time. Maybe it’s appropriate that at the time I write this, I’m sitting at a desk in my old room at my parents’ house, the same house I lived in when I was in middle and high school. It’s more than a little surreal; it makes me feel like the last four years of my life never really happened. But they did. I’m now the proud owner of a couple of bachelor’s degrees, and the part of my life where the big decisions seem obvious is over.

I’m getting ready to pack up and leave Austin. Everything I own that’s not already in Seattle will go in my car with me. I don’t know when or if I’ll ever call this place home again. It doesn’t seem real, because of all the other times in my life that i’ve left this place I just come back some days or weeks or months later. But it’s always been home.

I’ll miss it, but I think it’s time to go. One can only have so many experiences and memories tangled up in one place, and there are some movie theaters, parks and stretches of road around here that are getting dangerously crowded just with my own experiences. When I visit them I see ghosts–people I knew, things I’ve done. It’s really heart-breaking sometimes. Maybe going to a new place, attaching experiences to new surroundings will help free me, open a real new chapter in my life.

I know I’ll always come back here to see my parents, to see old friends who linger in this great town. I think I’ll always be from Austin, no matter how many years I put between her and me. Who knows–maybe someday I’ll return here to call it home. But for now, I’m pulling up my anchor to see where I drift. First stop: Seattle. Not a big jump, except in geography. We’ll see how it goes.

a new overt

After over three and a half years of service, my home-brew blog-like site was really starting to show its age. So, just like my old picture site, I’ve decided to retire it in favor of a open-source package: postnuke.

Since I’m leaving to go to grad school and abandoning all my friends, i’m going to try to keep overt updated more frequently with what’s happening in my life. I’ve also got the peer pressure of all my friends’ well-maintained blogs to egg me on. So, we’ll see whether this ends up being the last post for another half year…

news from quito

i’ve been in quito for a few days, and lacking a blogspot.com address, I thought i’d write an email to send to everyone about the trip so far. i’ll also post this on my “blog” at www.overt.org (it will certainly be an improvement on my twice-a-year updates).

quito is a bit daunting, being the largest and capitol city of ecuador. it’s in the middle part of the country, called the “sierra.” The people who live here are called “serranos.” There are two other important parts of the country: first, in the west on the coast (associated with the city of Guayaquil) is the “costa,” and to the east over the Andes at the headwaters of the Amazon is the “oriente” (which just means “east”). The sierra is associated with more conservative mores than the coast (think of quito as the dallas of ecuador, guayaquil the austin). However, the sierra is also associated with *no mosquitos*, which is a huge benefit. If there were mosquitoes, I would right now be taking anti-malarial medicine with side effects including enhanced sun sensitivity, “vivid dreams,” and “possible psychiatric manifestations.” But at least you don’t get malaria.

Quito is at an altitude of 8000-10000ft (there are lots of hills), and so it takes a little while to get used to the affects of the altitude (I had a headache for two days which has only just really gone away this morning). You have to get used to the idea that if you carry something heavy upstairs, even though it doesn’t bother you in Austin, you’ll be huffing and puffing here. Our activities so far have mostly been finding a place to live and socializing with friends of my father’s. The first night we spent with a flower farmer, the son of an engineer my dad knew when our family lived in ecuador about twenty-one years ago (I was like 6 mos old at the time, apparently). Flowers are the fourth-largest export here in Ecuador, trailing oil, bananas, and shrimp.

The next day we went to a neighborhood called Mariscal that he suggested would be good because it is where many of the spanish schools and hostels are located. We looked around at a few places and eventually settled on a place where we get a room with two beds and a shared bath (with hot water!!!) for $5/night. Not bad at all, considering my rent at 3006 came to about $23/day.

On sunday we drove out with another friend of my fathers, a civil engineer with a bilingual family (spanish and german, no rest for the weary english speakers) to the foothills of the andes and had a picnic. it was gorgeous. I took pictures, but I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to upload them given the extremely slow internet connections that are the norm here. Update: Ive posted a few pictures on http://gallery.overt.org During the picnic we were informed that we were living in the most dangerous part of quito. Great, we thought, as we’ve already committed to a month’s stay. Honestly, it doesn’t feel that dangerous to me, and we’re not carrying our passports or airline tickets or credit cards, so it should be okay, i think. If we get mugged they’ll get my cash and a little bit of my belief in the basic goodness of human nature. Suprisingly, the buses are considered the most dangerous places, because of the crowding and the ease of creating a distraction. we have no where to go as yet that is far enough away to demand a regular bus ride, though, and even if we do we’re not in for the nightmare that doug had/is having, since all of the buses basically go down or up one of two roads.

The food here is good. The way it works is that you have a little breakfast, a huge-ass lunch, then a snack around dinnertime. There is a nice symmetry to it, I think. We haven’t sampled too much of the indigenous cuisine, but I’m sure it won’t be long.

This morning we are headed to our first spanish lesson with a private teacher at the house of the civil engineer friend (henceforth “Hugo,” which may or may not be his real name. Okay, it is). He’s teaching Jeff and I for $7/hour, which is a deal even here. I’m looking forward to the classes, though in all honesty living in a hostel where no one speaks english, going out with friends who don’t speak english, and of course dealing with a general population that doesn’t speak english has already put the spanish part of my brain into high gear. I speak well enough to get by in conversation, but I make a lot of mistakes. I’m sure I must seem charmingly handicapped.