Tag: personal

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.

weekend in the snow

A friend from Apple invited us out to spend the weekend in Bear Valley, in the Sierra Nevadas between Yosemite and lake tahoe. Day one was skiing (I actually did ski, instead of snowboarding, to see if I could remember how). The snow was amazing! Feet of soft powder everywhere:

I had never been in anything like it, looking down and seeing my knees disappear into the snow as I went along. Day two was sledding and snow-shoeing and general playing in the snow.

It was awesome. Check out all the pictures in the usual place.

couch! (some assembly required)

We finally did it. We replaced the couch that was gifted to me by Ali’s sister when I moved into my Speedway apartment. When I got it, it was a beautiful, happy, white couch with floral print pillows. It followed me across the country to the bay (after a brief pit stop in Seattle), and served us well here in cali. It being white and we being “heavy” couch users, it was a bit worse for the wear by the time it got to Fremont, so we got a slip cover for it, which is sort of a two-edged sword. It did look better, but was continually getting disheveled and generally driving me insane. So we decided we should replace it sooner rather than later, since we might be picking up and moving to another country in a few years anyway.

We didn’t want a nice couch, because nice couches cost real money, something we don’t have. Plus vis a vis our international living plans it would have been a rather rash purchase. So we did what all good poor students do and hit IKEA up for the best that $500 or so could buy. What we got was a couch that came in four (4) boxes, only three of which they actually managed to find the day we were there buying it, which was probably just as well since the last one may not have fit so well into Leslie’s jetta. The whole process of turning boxes into couch can be savored on gallery. I’ll leave you with the afterglow:

Red, and long enough for a 5′ 10″ person to stretch out on, or three people to sit together on without cuddling. I’m satisfied.

v-day dinner

Les and I try to cook when we can, and it had been a while since we’d done anything fancy, so we hit up epicurious for something challenging. Our Valentine’s day dinner, illustrated edition:

Main Course: Beef Tenderloin with Cranberry-Port Sauce and Gorgonzola Cheese

This was absolutely amazing. An “instant classic,” you might say. We were skeptical at first, since it incorporates so many random tastes (cranberry + port + blue cheese?!), but we were very pleasantly suprised. The preparation was easy, we just started with the base of every tasty western dish: butter, garlic, and onion (shallots, to be exact)

you can smell it...

We then added the port, broth, and cranberries, and reduced about 4:1. Then we soaked up the juices from grilling the beef with it and poured it over the top.
The package total.

The overall taste was perfect, and unexpected: the sweetness of the port, the cranberries combined with the sharpness and pungence of the cheese: heaven! I absolutely recommend this, and we’ll definitely do it again, though maybe not with $30/lb beef.

Side: Saffron Orzo with Asparagus and Prosciutto

Orzo is a tasty pellet-shaped pasta that I like to begin with. Throw in saffron, ham, and asparagus, and I’m in love. Step one was to fry the pork in some butter. After this, add more butter, then let the orzo just soak it up:

Mmm. Finish hydrating it with chicken broth and add the saffron for a beautiful golden color, adding the asparagus later for maximum crispiness.

Drink: Bishop

This tasty way to finish our bottle of port involves roasting an orange studded with cloves for 90 minutes then quartering it into simmering ruby port. Delicious accompaniment to some chocolate mousse we bought for desert.

all is bliss

The pace of life post-SIGGRAPH has been quite agreeable. I’ve got two classes: Visualization, which has been a lot of fun so far, and if nothing else a great excuse to buy beautiful books from Edward Tufte, as well as another graduate math class that, instead of having 20 hours/week of homework, has exactly zero.

tufte pic

I’ve had time to start work on my master’s report (then I’ll just one more to complete the set!), finish Dragon Quest (I give it rave reviews all the way through), as well as generally get back into all the parts of my life that withered during the madness. I’ve been back at yoga, back to climbing, back to eating sushi, drinking at Triple Rock. Yes. This is what grad school is all about.