Hiya friends, I haven't updated in a while, but things have been pretty routine lately. I've been biking about 10 miles through tecolate canyon, 3-4 days a week. Sometimes I take roads if I'm in a rush. I found a way through the golf course that was previously impeding my path, removing a hill and some roads from my commute. It's a nice and challenging ride, there are many streams to cross surrounded with patches of baby heads (tons of smooth round rocks of varying sizes from golf balls to footballs that often slip and create traction hell) and steep slopes, some features I have only been able to bike through after weeks of attempts.
I've put a new back tire on, my previous was a 1.95" kenda nevagal which had a hole in the side and worn down treads. My 2.3" nevagal up front is still sittin pretty, joined by a maxxis high roller 2.1" in a reversed tread pattern for extra traction. Seems fine so far! I've also put on the SRAM pc-991 chain that I bought for grenadine like 2 years ago, but I didn't change the rear casette, which has created some gear skipping, but only in the highest rear gears. So now I ride with the rear in the center gear and mostly go up and down using the front 3 gears, dropping the back when the front is low for granny gear and raising the back when the front is high for top speed. This seems a better way to run the gears overall, so I'm glad I ran into the gear skipping issue.
All this biking up hills (along with 2 hours of soccer every friday) has been creating new visible muscle groups in my legs. I had heard about pro cyclists having enormous legs, and now I'm starting to see it. Mostly, I'm enjoying the ease and speed with which I climb hills now. I spend much more time in high gear lately so I'm going faster overall. I've been tracking my routes and stats with my google phone gps.
Four weeks of class left in this semester eeee! I am going nuts. I have already registered for cmps 101 at UCSC, class begins June 22.
English 205 has been interesting, our curriculum for this 8 week class includes dawn of the dead (2004), fear and loathing in las vegas (the book and the movie), and fight club. The theme is: the american dream. I'll post some essays out of that sometime. I had fun with the dawn of the dead essay.
Linear algebra and discrete math have both been very theoretical and difficult to use. There are no formula sheets or calculators, just lots of proofs and operations that don't connect with anything real. It helps to think of them as puzzles. Otherwise the lack of application makes it hard to keep motivated, but I know linear algebra has many great applications to come, and discrete math is forming a strong theoretical basis for applications of logic. They have had about the same test schedule throughout the semester, which is nice after the tests to be able to relax, but it kinda doubles the stress before the tests. Last week was a test week, and I believe that I did very well, which is a big relief because I was a bit worried about passing Linear Algebra for a couple weeks.
Today I ate 9 homemade vegan tacos! And that was my adventure of the day
Oh, last weekend was Ludum Dare 14, the theme was 'advancing wall of doom' and I completed another game. The game is called 'advancing wall of math' (math on the brain much?). I've been posting my games to my new site: http://www.originowl.com
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Biked to school
Monday, 2009 Feb 23, Biked from Gila to Mesa College via Tecolate Canyon.
Trailhead at balboa & clairemont dr, biked south into canyon, a bit rutted in parts, could use bridges (esp close to mesa college). Encountered a rattlesnake on the trail, it rattled loudly as i cast sticks upon it, nearly missing. The snake slithered off continuing to rattle as I rattled on by. Harrowing.
At the Mt Arcadia road crossing, I entered the golf course, inquiring within I was unable to access a trail. Golf has failed me, building a golf course in my canyon without so much as building a small bridge to the trail that runs on the side of the golf course.
So, I bike up the road, up a long slow hill, instead of riding in my canyon, I get to the top, make a few rights and then I'm back in the canyon, only at the high part, so I have this steep descent in, it's very steep and swooshy, not the kind of danger I prefer on my commute to school. SOon I'm in the bottom of the canyon and there's about 4 spots that I had to disembike to ford.
Overall it wasn't great and took an hour, but it will be faster as I cut out dead ends, and there's lots of side trails and options to explore when I have extra time.
I biked home by roads. The hills around here are a good workout.
Trailhead at balboa & clairemont dr, biked south into canyon, a bit rutted in parts, could use bridges (esp close to mesa college). Encountered a rattlesnake on the trail, it rattled loudly as i cast sticks upon it, nearly missing. The snake slithered off continuing to rattle as I rattled on by. Harrowing.
At the Mt Arcadia road crossing, I entered the golf course, inquiring within I was unable to access a trail. Golf has failed me, building a golf course in my canyon without so much as building a small bridge to the trail that runs on the side of the golf course.
So, I bike up the road, up a long slow hill, instead of riding in my canyon, I get to the top, make a few rights and then I'm back in the canyon, only at the high part, so I have this steep descent in, it's very steep and swooshy, not the kind of danger I prefer on my commute to school. SOon I'm in the bottom of the canyon and there's about 4 spots that I had to disembike to ford.
Overall it wasn't great and took an hour, but it will be faster as I cut out dead ends, and there's lots of side trails and options to explore when I have extra time.
I biked home by roads. The hills around here are a good workout.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Multigrain goodness
Hiya =]
Well, I know last week I said I was living in my van, which was true, but then I found a nice room for rent near my school, and decided to move into a more traditional living situation. I have moved in with an older Indian gentleman who goes by Kris (ala Krishna) and it's been nice. The room came furnished and there's like 15 fruit trees around the house. There's also two other people renting rooms attached to the house. Having a kitchen, fridge, and a private bathroom are certainly niceties I have missed. Not worrying about getting a ticket for camping in my van is nice too. I found out about tickets for street camping when I was awoken one morning by police officers =P.
This will be my pad for the next 3 months, then I will return to van life when I move up to UC Santa Cruz.
School has been getting busier, Linear Algebra is quite difficult and English has taken much time.
TaTaForNow
-Bryan=]
Well, I know last week I said I was living in my van, which was true, but then I found a nice room for rent near my school, and decided to move into a more traditional living situation. I have moved in with an older Indian gentleman who goes by Kris (ala Krishna) and it's been nice. The room came furnished and there's like 15 fruit trees around the house. There's also two other people renting rooms attached to the house. Having a kitchen, fridge, and a private bathroom are certainly niceties I have missed. Not worrying about getting a ticket for camping in my van is nice too. I found out about tickets for street camping when I was awoken one morning by police officers =P.
This will be my pad for the next 3 months, then I will return to van life when I move up to UC Santa Cruz.
School has been getting busier, Linear Algebra is quite difficult and English has taken much time.
TaTaForNow
-Bryan=]
Sunday, February 8, 2009
goings ons going on
> So the spring has sprung and it's still winter. Living
> in my van again has
> been a new experience during this wet time of year. Rain is
> lovely, although
> the musky smell in the van requires a dose of air to keep
> under control. So
> far so good.
>
> I am going to san diego mesa college this semester m-th. It
> is a really nice
> campus, much bigger and more populated. I'm glad to be
> attending a new
> campus, new architecture and style to appreciate.
> There's a beautiful
> building there I will post pics of soon. The only trouble
> so far has been
> parking and the many stairs between the parking and class.
> Parking should
> get easier as I arrive earlier and people drop their
> classes.
>
> It has been many weeks since a bike ride. My legs are sad
> pandas. I was
> almost ready to go when it started to rain again. Well I
> should use this
> downtime to get my bike tuned up. Mesa college is right in
> tecolate canyon,
> so I will be traversing that when the trails dry up.
>
> Last weekend I went to los angeles for the first global
> game jam. It's a 48
> hour game development competition, but in locations all
> over the world, and
> with teams. I arrived late, traffic, so I missed my chance
> to pitch a game,
> I got on a team making a flash game, flash isn't
> something I have developed
> with in many years, so I was only on game design duty,
> which is fun, but
> design doesn't take much of 48 hours, so I got bored
> and left early. The
> team still finished the game, and apparently ranked 2nd at
> our location.
> Good times.
>
> I will try to write weekly or so, this is coming from my
> phone, which I can
> type fairly quickly on now.
>
> Love,
> -Bryan=)
> in my van again has
> been a new experience during this wet time of year. Rain is
> lovely, although
> the musky smell in the van requires a dose of air to keep
> under control. So
> far so good.
>
> I am going to san diego mesa college this semester m-th. It
> is a really nice
> campus, much bigger and more populated. I'm glad to be
> attending a new
> campus, new architecture and style to appreciate.
> There's a beautiful
> building there I will post pics of soon. The only trouble
> so far has been
> parking and the many stairs between the parking and class.
> Parking should
> get easier as I arrive earlier and people drop their
> classes.
>
> It has been many weeks since a bike ride. My legs are sad
> pandas. I was
> almost ready to go when it started to rain again. Well I
> should use this
> downtime to get my bike tuned up. Mesa college is right in
> tecolate canyon,
> so I will be traversing that when the trails dry up.
>
> Last weekend I went to los angeles for the first global
> game jam. It's a 48
> hour game development competition, but in locations all
> over the world, and
> with teams. I arrived late, traffic, so I missed my chance
> to pitch a game,
> I got on a team making a flash game, flash isn't
> something I have developed
> with in many years, so I was only on game design duty,
> which is fun, but
> design doesn't take much of 48 hours, so I got bored
> and left early. The
> team still finished the game, and apparently ranked 2nd at
> our location.
> Good times.
>
> I will try to write weekly or so, this is coming from my
> phone, which I can
> type fairly quickly on now.
>
> Love,
> -Bryan=)
Adventures in Canyonland
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Update
Hiya everyone =] Things have been going well, been busy busy with school, I've got less than two weeks left in this fall semester and so it's even busier now.
Well, my big news is that I've been accepted into the Computer Science: Computer Game Design program at UC Santa Cruz in Fall 2009! This is a selective major and it's taken a long time to get here, I'm up to 8 years of community college. (most of those years spent working) I've already looked at the curriculum and courses at UCSC, and I'll be in classes like: Game AI (artificial intelligence), interactive storytelling, game theory, many graphics/animation programming courses, and 3d/digital media art courses. My last three quarters will have game studios where the team based game development projects will happen. I should be finishing at the end of spring (June) of 2011 and will have my first graduation evar! (I accidentally dropped out of high school) After that I'll be considering graduate programs in computer science.
So yeah, fun stuff, as for what I'm up to currently:
Calculus 2 has proven to be my most difficult class evar. On ther other hand,
Physics: Mechanics has been the most fun class evar! We've had labs with ball shooters and fan cars and the stuff is all really interesting and useful for game programming. It helps to have a great physics teacher, she's really into it and gets us to exploring concepts in depth.
Economics online consists of three tests and two essays over 16 weeks, there's no discussion, no incremental progress, and no incentive for me to read the book, I just pop open the book for the tests and hardly learn anything from it. It's pretty boring stuff anyway. The final economics research paper is going to take up some good time soon.
Computer Science: Data Structures is a class I took in high school, and it's just 10 programs to write, no tests, so it's nice and easy. The final project coming up is to convert the midterm project into binary tree storage. The midterm is a contact book. Simple stuff.
Next semester I've got English 101 and 205 in 8 week sessions, and Discrete Math (for when you don't want people to know you're doing math i guess), and compsci: assembly programming, which will be new to me. I also need to take Linear Algebra in either Spring or Summer, it seems like it might be too much to add on to my spring schedule, but it'd be nice to have all my community college work done this spring. I've considered going to UCSC for a class in the summer, would help my schedule along, although it's costly. hmm.
This weekend (Dec 5-7) I've got a Ludum Dare 48 hour game development competition. Always a blast.
The garden is growing, many broccoli and cauliflower and swiss chard and peas and some nice looking winter squash have been vining up a tomato cage very quickly. There's other stuff too, will post about the winter crop soon.
Will write more later, ciao!
Well, my big news is that I've been accepted into the Computer Science: Computer Game Design program at UC Santa Cruz in Fall 2009! This is a selective major and it's taken a long time to get here, I'm up to 8 years of community college. (most of those years spent working) I've already looked at the curriculum and courses at UCSC, and I'll be in classes like: Game AI (artificial intelligence), interactive storytelling, game theory, many graphics/animation programming courses, and 3d/digital media art courses. My last three quarters will have game studios where the team based game development projects will happen. I should be finishing at the end of spring (June) of 2011 and will have my first graduation evar! (I accidentally dropped out of high school) After that I'll be considering graduate programs in computer science.
So yeah, fun stuff, as for what I'm up to currently:
Calculus 2 has proven to be my most difficult class evar. On ther other hand,
Physics: Mechanics has been the most fun class evar! We've had labs with ball shooters and fan cars and the stuff is all really interesting and useful for game programming. It helps to have a great physics teacher, she's really into it and gets us to exploring concepts in depth.
Economics online consists of three tests and two essays over 16 weeks, there's no discussion, no incremental progress, and no incentive for me to read the book, I just pop open the book for the tests and hardly learn anything from it. It's pretty boring stuff anyway. The final economics research paper is going to take up some good time soon.
Computer Science: Data Structures is a class I took in high school, and it's just 10 programs to write, no tests, so it's nice and easy. The final project coming up is to convert the midterm project into binary tree storage. The midterm is a contact book. Simple stuff.
Next semester I've got English 101 and 205 in 8 week sessions, and Discrete Math (for when you don't want people to know you're doing math i guess), and compsci: assembly programming, which will be new to me. I also need to take Linear Algebra in either Spring or Summer, it seems like it might be too much to add on to my spring schedule, but it'd be nice to have all my community college work done this spring. I've considered going to UCSC for a class in the summer, would help my schedule along, although it's costly. hmm.
This weekend (Dec 5-7) I've got a Ludum Dare 48 hour game development competition. Always a blast.
The garden is growing, many broccoli and cauliflower and swiss chard and peas and some nice looking winter squash have been vining up a tomato cage very quickly. There's other stuff too, will post about the winter crop soon.
Will write more later, ciao!
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