two-faced sky

taken at 7:59 pm

you dont have to give up to let go

on saturday maria alison and i went to POP at cow palace in san francisco. i had the most amazing time dancing for 6 hours straight! it was exactly what i needed, not having been to a live show in so long, and not having been able to move off the couch for 6 weeks. it was perfect! if only i didnt have to be one leg the whole night...

it was an out-of-this-world experience being there with 20k+ people in the same arena, just being completely... free. the darkness, the lights, being with everyone, and yet completely alone.

have you ever had a realization listening to a song, even though you have listened to it a hundred times before, that it was written just for you? that you KNOW what its talking about? its all of a sudden on a whole another level, and you just sit there (or stand, in my case) completely swept off your feet...


that, and an amazing show, made deadmau5 the highlight of the night for me.

oh jimmy jimmy jimmy

on my honest ade cranberry lemonade bottle

it says,

The joy of lemonade goes all the way back to 2nd century Egypt, where a Persian poet named Nasir-i-Khusraw chronicled his travels - and his drinking habits.

if i had to guess where lemonade comes from, egypt would not have been my first guess...

me135 open house

yesterday was the open house for the me135 class at uc berkeley, which officially holds the title of "design of micro-processor based mechanical systems." having audited the class and at the same time helped with the teachings and demonstrations and all, i was proud to see almost all the projects working or very close to it. here are some of the highlights/my favorites from the demo day yesterday:


an automatic etch-a-sketch robot. the software grabs any image, digitizes it to different shades of gray, and using different line spacings, draws the image. quite impressive. although it still needed some work.




"ben" the automatic chess playing robot. this one exceeded a lot of the expectations because it was very well done. the bot can play itself, play a human, and repopulate the board. the software is also very well written, and the gui quite impressive. something i learned during the demo of this robot: en passant




"a.r.m.s." the automatic mail sorter. this one reads the labels on the mails, and sorts them into different bins. the idea was not original, however it worked very well.




"battle duckies!!" if you ever played war in 5th grade, this would be your dream toy. two players each sit on a separate computer, and are able to move their ducky around, and shoot the other players ducky. taking turns, they shoot the air soft gun by clicking a region of the opponents war zone, which only shows the parts that have already been clicked.




autonomous helicopter, "s.p.a.r.r.o.w." (yes, that actually stands for something, dont ask me what.) a work in progess, this one is a shared project between the eecs department and the me department. they were able to get the helicopter lift off autonomously, which is quite impressive. there is a lot of controls going into that, which is not easy to describe. you can just trust me on that one.




the future of laptop cases (and also other electronics), this ongoing research project aims to someday provide us with laptop charging cases, using piezoelectric material. so imagine walking around with your laptop in your backpack, and as youre doing that, your laptop is getting charged. cool eh?




"fire" the automatic fire extinguisher. this one uses infrared sensors to detect fire, go close to the fire using a holonomic drive (which is a system that allows the robot to move in any direction freely,) and shoot some sort of fire retardant. it was quite well done, and the holonomic drive was very impressive.




the automatic drink mixer. imagine youre at a bar. instead of having to go to the counter and dealing with crowds and bartenders, you can pull out your phone, and order your drink from a list of already available options, or make up your own drink. in a couple of minutes, you get a text message with a code, saying your order is ready. you go the counter, punch in your code, and get your drink! the machine also does all the mixing, no bartenders needed. i guess you dont need to tip anymore, do you?

jonathan seagull

for a long time now, every time i walk into a bookstore, i instantly start thinking about a book i read, or actually we were read to, i want to say when i was in 8th grade. don't ask me why in 8th grade we were being read to - its just that my middle school and high school experience is quite different from the others, mainly because i was in a "different" school. (actually you can ask me later, but i dont feel like getting into it now.) anyway, once every week all the students from the same grade gathered in a room, and i guess one time reading this book was on the schedule (and the guy who read it was very good at it too). but i never really gave it any thought beyond that, and ended up forgetting about my favorite read of almost 10 years ago, until yesterday.

somehow i was reminded of the book again, and this time i felt inspired to find it and read it again. i only remembered a few words from the book, and all in farsi anyway, so it took me a while to find it, since i didnt remember the name either. but after some research, i was happy to find it available at the barnes and noble closest to my work, and so on my way to class i picked it up.

it is a very short read - it only took me about an hour, and im a slow reader. but i just finished it and now i remember why it was burned into my young 14 year old brain.

here is the first passage from "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," by Richard Bach:

          It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea. A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water, and the word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another busy day beginning.

          But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one... single... more... inch... of... curve.... Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell.

          Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonor.

          But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve - slowing, slowing, and stalling once more - was no ordinary bird.