overt.org

So, while in NYC I got an email from James about another paper, this one for SCA, that extends the one we submitted to SIGGRAPH. It should certainly shake things up for this semester. Due on 20 April or thereabouts.

In other news, we have officially reverted here in norcal to the standard 70-and-sunny configuration which should persist until November or so. It arrived just in time for Ali, who visited for a few days at the end of his spring break. He came in Wednesday night. Thursday he came up to Berkeley with me, saw the campus, had lunch with the graphics folke, and then we went to Ironworks to climb. He witnessed first-hand the shockingly over-rated (in difficulty) routes. Friday we worked, went shopping for a delicious lamb and mint sauce dinner Ali came up with, then went home and got (almost) too drunk to cook it. After dinner was savored, we went to a go-cart racing track we found in Fremont (Doug, reluctantly sober, drove us) and managed to place 1-2-3 (Doug, Ali, Bryan) despite our mild inebriation.

Saturday we slept in, visited SF, and ultimately ended up at my place. I took Ali to the airport the next morning.

Spring break. Two weeks. Nutty.

Leslie went to great pains to document our trip, and you can see the fruits of her labor now on gallery.

We just stumbled in a little while ago from an amazing trip to New York. I didn’t post any updates after the first day because, basically, we were always either out or asleep. Soon pictures will be posted with the full narration of our adventures.

Also, the new server is live (whee!). You might notice an improvement in performance (I do, anyway). Let me know if anything seems weird.

After an uneventful day of travel, we’re in New York. The view from the plane as we flew in was great… right up over Manhattan. We got in a cab and told the driver where to go. “Where is that?” he asked. So, I oddly found myself looking through a street map of New York finding the place. I really didn’t expect to be giving directions to a NYC cabbie, but hey.

Dinner was had at an excellent, mellow sushi place near George’s. George’s place itself is outrageous. A co-opy warehouse loft that get’s rented out for yoga and whatnot with about 10 people living in a cordoned off section. Infinite points awarded. I may die never living in a place as cool as this–fundamentally because I hate sharing a kitchen.

Tomorrow we’re tentatively scheduled to wander around Brooklyn, then make our 1pm reservations at The River Cafe, the swank-ass joint that Cam and Matt gave us brunch at for xmas. We’re also going to try to get in to see a UCB theatre show in the evening, but tickets are up in the air for that.

The semester has worked it’s way up to a gallop. One of my classes, “computational geometry,” has been computationally kicking my ass. My current plan is to stop taking it for a grade for my sanity’s sake. Otherwise things are peachy, I need to restart my research engine after the long burn of SIGGRAPH. Cool things of note:

• I moved into an office with some other graphics folks. This is significantly better even than my already serendipitous office down the hall from the graphics people. I’m also right next to the communal Xbox, which seemed a reason for concern but hasn’t been a problem yet.
• Speaking of Xboxes, I have one now, though I’ve yet to play any Xbox games on it. What I have done is disassembled it, solder a chip in its innards, and put it back together. Why? Because now the Xbox will, at my whim, run any NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, Gameboy, and Arcade game ever. I’m not saying that I have copies of all these games–what blatant piracy that would be! Ok actually I do.
• Going to New York the day after tomorrow. No doubt much posting of pictures and events will be done
• Awesome Valentine’s dinner

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Comments

cameron — 2005-02-18 08:45:13

I hope it is one of the newer Xboxes, not one whose power cord will burn down your apartment!

I can send Halo back with Leslie in March if you haven’t acquired it by then.

bryan — 2005-02-19 23:12:00

i tried halo on my mac, and was unimpressed, but i’ve heard it’s better on the xbox. i also have halo 2 (a friend gave it to me), but i don’t want to play it until after i play the original, so it would indeed kick ass if you sent her back with it. you may just have to sneak it into her bag.