NaNoWriMo Year 3 Win

Belatedly reporting that I have my winner goodies from the NaNoWriMo website. Yay! I'm liking the fireworks theme this year. I'm glad to have crossed the finish line again this year, but I haven't finished my rewrites. Actually, I crossed the finish line on Tuesday, Nov. 17 and promptly dropped it in favor of Thanksgiving preparation, then later for Christmas preparation. (There's a lot to think about for a planaholic like me, but that'll be a different post). I only hope that I don't take this year's early win and challenge myself to win earlier and earlier. I have to admit that dropping the intensive writing mode was a bit of a relief, though.

The new scenes I wrote will make me change the ending. I have successfully avoided romantic scenes again this year. And I still have to integrate the new bits into the old bits. Over the Christmas holiday, I've transferred the first and second drafts into my new writing software on the PC. As I did so, I did some re-reading and I'm appalled at some of the scenes. Perhaps I should have deleted those outright. But as I'm still trying to figure out how to use Liquid Story Binder, I'll hang on to them for now. Maybe I'll be able to hone them into something better later. I'm glad I fleshed out some of the characters this year. They were only caricatures previously. I deliberately wrote in their points of view this time around so I could get to know them better, particularly my antagonist. There's still one main player I don't fully understand. But considering she inserted herself into the story the first year, I don't feel so bad waiting on knowing who she really is.

Overall, it was a satisfying, if shorter, Novel Writing Month. I'm sure I'll find a way to do it again next year.

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Cry Havoc and Let Loose the Tugs of War

Warning: You might want to turn your audio down before hitting play.

This was the championship tug of war match at our company picnic September 23. It was a single elimination tournament, four rounds deep. The team from front to back was: Me, Steve, Alex, Matt, Chris and Kurt at anchor position. As you can hear, I was in 'Cry Havoc' position.

Unbeknownst to the folks at work, the 'cry havoc' part is standard operating procedure for tug of war games at my karate dojo. It's been reported to me after the picnic, that my strategy of psychological warfare at the front lines was actually pretty effective. I think the quote was "You're scary." I guess it doesn't hurt to be scary, screaming girl at the front when you're the smallest person on a team built for tug of war.

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Novel Writing Nov. 12 Update

I was afraid that having to fill in scenes and flesh out details would slow me down this month because I'd have to think them through first and make sure it fits within what I've already written before I write.

I was wrong. I hit the halfway point on Nov. 8. If I keep up the pace, I'm looking to hit 50k sometime next week.

I'm having a lot of fun refining my magic system and the world. It feels a lot more solid and grounded to me instead of floating around vaguely while I hoped it worked. I've also decided to write scenes in other characters' points of view, particularly my villain so that I can get to know her better. I stuck pretty closely to my main character's point of view the first time. She didn't really know what was going on so it was easy to hand wave events. This time, I do have to know what actually happened to inhabit the other characters' points of view.

My other word count strength is dialogue. If I get several characters in conversation, I can chew through words pretty easily. I'll sit down to write, get a few people talking and there went 500 words, a quarter of my daily goal. I even remember to put in actions in between their conversation. A pair of my characters love to tease each other - they're a lot of fun to write.

I've hit a tricky part of the story so the next few days might be dicey. I think I'm going to have to ditch the location of the last half of my story and write in a completely new place. It should be interesting.

With that, I'll leave the rest of this post to an excerpt from my current story. I wrote this scene on Nov. 5. Hope you enjoy!

Excerpt:

It was well past dark when Evrhiel stepped into the Smith’s Buckler tavern by the docks. She had already sent Lysanna and Geoff in different directions to find other potential ears. “Drazehn only,” she had said. “They’re the best at this task and I don't want to risk having this fall into less trustworthy hands.” She paused a moment to allow her eyes to get used to the brighter interior before moving to corner table near the door that was unoccupied. The room was not particularly crowded. Several tables were shoved together on the left seating a group of blacksmith apprentices and a blacksmith or two. Another smaller group on the right looked like other locals. Several tables scattered here and there were singly or doubly occupied. She concentrated on the singly occupied tables for a few minutes before determining the one she was looking for. She made no pretense about sauntering over to her target’s table and claiming an empty seat.

The occupant of the table did not move to acknowledge her presence. He had chosen a seat that kept him mostly hidden in shadow. He wore dark clothes and wore his hat low on his forehead even indoors. He certainly acted like a good candidate for the Drazehn that she was expecting. Before saying a word, she laid a gold coin on the table and slid it across. That garnered some movement from the man. He picked it up and deliberately dropped it back on the table. Satisfied, he pocketed it.

“You have my attention,” he drawled a melodious baritone and Evrhiel knew she had the right man.

“I expect something in return for that coin,” she began.

“Well I wasn’t assuming that you handed me gold for my looks alone,” he said taking a sip from the glass in front of him.

“I want to know information around two subjects. One is if anyone is asking around about me. The other is if anyone is asking around about a noble lady’s recent death. In either case, I want to know who.”

The man inclined his head, “And how many more such coins are you willing to part with for that information? These questions seem somewhat indefinite and could take some time.”

“For delivery of the information, I’d be willing to part with 25 gold.”

“That’s a middling sum for information that may never appear,” he mused.

“So if you don’t hear anything, you don’t get paid. I don’t see that this is a problem.”

He shrugged, “And it doesn’t become a high priority for me to keep listening past, let’s say three days. I’m a busy man and I’ve many other potential jobs I could fulfill instead of waiting around for only the possibility of 25 gold.”

“You have that coin I already gave you,” Evrhiel dug around in the coin pouch at her waist and deposited another stack of gold coins. “And I’ll add this to it.”

He counted, then nodded slightly. “I’ll call that incentive enough. But I’ll need names, more specifically yours and your dearly departed.”

In answer to that, Evrhiel slid over a folded piece of paper. “The first is my name. The second is the departed. I will be in town for only a few more days, but I will still pay on the information should it take longer than that. The final name and inn is where you can find my associate after I leave town. It is also the same inn where I can be found now should you be so industrious as to find the knowledge I seek sooner rather than later.” She paused to let him read over the slip of paper. “You’ll be throwing that in the fire.”

He rose smoothly from his seat and paced towards the fire along the wall. In the firelight, she saw that he was clad in browns rather than black. The hat firmly upon his head did not allow the benefit of illumination. Once he was seated again, he said, “I think we have an agreement, Mistress.”

“Save for your name,” she replied.

He turned his head to regard her in silence. Then he finally came to a decision and intoned, “Bruvier.”

She stood at that, “Then our business here is concluded. Good eve.” As Evrhiel left the tavern, she knew there were eyes that followed her out the door, but none so curious as the man still in the shadows, twirling a gold coin across his knuckles.

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On the Darker Side of Disney

Welcome to our Halloween costume 2009. The picture above was taken at DNA Lounge by Jamie Zawinski, the club's owner. It's one of my favorites.

The rest of this post will be picture heavy and not particularly instructive in case you sort of want to get the idea of how to make your own zombie Mulan and Mushu costume.


This was the source of our inspiration. Feel free to follow the link for other Twisted Princesses he's drawn. They're all very cool.

Twisted Princess: Mulan by ~jeftoon01 on deviantART

Just in case you don't quite see the similarities, this is a handy Photoshop to help you.


We tried to do a group costume in the Twisted Disney theme, but only had one taker. Beast is my coworker, Chris.


Construction:
Most of the work was Mushu, as you can guess. My costume mostly involved taking a kimono and some scraps of fabric, stabbing it with arrows and distressing it a bunch. The cats were enthusiastic about helping with the distressing process. Especially once it had arrows in it.

I also discovered that Testor's Ruby Red Metal Flake model paint, when sprayed on clothing is a good fake blood substitute. The cricket on my shoulder was made out of pipe cleaners by Chris (Beast).

Makeup is not my specialty, but standard makeup I found in my closet is mostly what I used except I added gel blood from the Halloween store. The biggest bang by far, were the contacts. Yes, they're contacts and they're creepy.


Mushu's head started out life as a bike helmet, cardboard, wire and styrofoam.


Craft foam, felt, paint and many sticks of hot glue later. The crowning jewel was the EL wire for pointless illumination.


The rest of the outfit was a fleece footed pajamas with craft foam and paint. We replaced the feet with built-in shoes from Payless. The talons we bought from the great store called the internet.


P.S. We didn't win any costume contests, though both contests I participated in (one at work, one at DNA Lounge) had the MC paying us compliments on the costume as we lost. Beast did win Scariest costume at work.

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'Tis the Other Season

Against my better judgment, I'm in on National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again this year, my third. I snuck up on it again. I told myself I'm not doing it, I have too many projects I haven't been getting to, I'm holding Thanksgiving dinner, family is visiting, blah, blah, blah. Then I decided I couldn't pass up the crazy productivity that is November writing and thought I could merely channel it into something I keep not doing - revising my 2007 NaNo. Strictly speaking, revising/editing doesn't fall under the purview of NaNoWriMo. It's new novels only.

But upon perusing the vibrant community forums at the NaNoWrimo website, I found others out of the 90,000 or so who had a similar plan to mine. And they called themselves Rebels.

So I'm declaring this a Rebel year. My goal is to write 50,000 new words for my old novel. Furthermore, I'd like to finish up by Thanksgiving. Which means I have 25 days to do it. Oh boy.

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'Tis the Season

Let's play spot our Halloween costumes. This is the poster for this year's Halloween costume contest at the DNA Lounge which has us in it twice! As far as I know, there was no bribery involved. Click the "Read More" link for the super sekrit answer.

We're third down on the left column (last year's costume) and top of the right column (2006).

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I Gotta Feelin'

My new favorite song. I don't think I'm capable of sitting still when this song comes on. The video above is a special version they performed for Oprah. The crowd is a flash mob of approximately 21,000 people that all learned the dance moves.


Now I want to spend some time with the following video to learn the dance, for no other reason than um.. I like learning dances to fun songs. For the record, my current dance is more like the one the lone girl in the crowd starts the song off with - a whole lot of bouncing and waving my hands in the air.



We saw them perform this live at Golden Gate Park at the Outside Lands concert at the end of August. They are definitely a high-energy, fun band to watch.

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Sourdough Failure #1

I've been nurturing a sourdough culture for the past few months (I've named her Hedwig) and today tried to make a sourdough rustic loaf. Perhaps I borrowed trouble by mixing recipes. The one that come with the sourdough starter from which Hedwig was born seemed too simplistic. So I consulted my Bread book. The Bread book is still over my head but I dove into the middle of it and found a sourdough pain au levain that sounded promising and followed those instructions with the ingredients of the simpler recipe. I even threw in the stand mixer to do the kneading for me which I'd never tried before.

What I ended up with was a soft, sticky, gooey dough that spread out over the entire pan threatening to be a pizza. It's now compost.

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Happy Birthday Ka and Zaia!

On July 12, Ka and Zaia turned one year old. They got a day of canned food and new toys - a feather toy for Ka (which he stole out of the bag, packaging and all) and a new puff ball for Zaia. Zaia killed her puff ball in roughly 30 seconds flat, but we consider that a success.



For perspective, here's a picture of them when we first got them. Note that they are sitting in the same cat tree in both pictures. When we first got them, we thought Ka would be the crazy, run-around-the-house cat, less of a lap kitty and more of a get-in-trouble kitty. Zaia would be the lap cat, more shy but loving with the people she's comfortable with. We were wrong on those predictions.

Ka loves to sit on laps. He'll follow us around the house, waiting for a lap opportunity. He sits on laps daily. He's also braver with new people - greeting new people within 10 minutes or so, where Zaia will likely retreat into her room for the duration of the visit. Zaia is more of a weekly lap-sitter, but indulges in daily insanity. She'll play with her toys, chase herself up and down the stairs, hopping in and out of boxes, behind the curtains and she gets a spray dousing for attacking the blinds every evening. She's shyer around people, but braver around gadgets. She was the first to use the robot litterbox and will sit near the vacuum cleaner longer than Ka. They haven't learned any new tricks in a while (primarily my fault for not teaching them anything new), but they still happily do their old tricks for treats.

They've been a wonderful addition to the household family so far and we look forward to many more years with them.

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Addicted to... Oatmeal?

I have apparently never had real oatmeal. Sure, I've had the little flavored packets I add water to. I was once partial to the cinnamon or maple flavors. But no more!

This weekend, I was too lazy to head out to a brunch place and I didn't want to have 2 pancake breakfasts in a row. So I tried the old-fashioned oatmeal recipe - the kind that takes half an hour to make. Nothing instant about it. I had oats (for granola) and milk (for yogurt) lying around and of course some butter and salt. I let things simmer, waited about half and hour and voila! The fluffiest, creamiest, toothsome oatmeal I have ever tasted. I sprinkled brown sugar over the first bowl. And when I went back for seconds, I tried honey drizzled over it. I would have tried maple syrup next, but my stomach ran out of room. It even reheats well in the microwave.

Guess what I'm having for breakfast this week?

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America's Test Kitchen Bread Rescue

Having gotten a good start on bread weapons, I thought it would be nice to learn how to make edible bread so I know what NOT to do for bread weapons making.

I turned to The New Best Recipe cookbook for some help. Otherwise known as the "engineer's cookbook", The New Best Recipe is made by the folks at America's Test Kitchen who also edit Cook's Illustrated magazine. Luckily for me they had a section on making baguettes.

I knew I had bitten off more than I can chew at first when the opening paragraph of the baguette section included, "Where we parted ways was on the question of whether you could actually create an outstanding baguette at home in a regular oven." Uh oh.

I spent a weekday evening reading through their thorough research. From visual cues how to tell that the sponge was ready, to when the dough is kneaded enough all the way to when the bread is done baking, they outlined it all. They had some nice pictures of the aforementioned sponge (the sponge is the first mixture of yeast, flour and water, I call it yeast appetizer, before the rest of the flour is added) which I found very helpful as an end condition to watch for. My sponge actually wasn't ready in the cookbook's estimated duration of 8 hours, but took the rest of the night into the next morning.

I already knew that I enjoy the kneading process - it's very relaxing squishing around a ball over and over again - but the new process made it even more fun. The reason I didn't reach the windowpane condition of the dough the last time was because I was adding the wrong ingredient to address the issue: flour instead of water. Adding water on top of the dough only made it feel slippery and hard to grip, but by "crashing" the dough, picking it up and throwing it down on the work surface repeatedly, it would not only splash bits of water at the counter, but incorporate the water into the dough. Best of all, when I pinched off a tiny bit of dough and stretched it, it didn't break and became translucent - the elusive, yet promised windowpane.

The baking process was also fun and much more active. I used my pizza stone to bake on rather than a regular cookie sheet. But on the rack beneath the pizza stone was a pan of water to keep the humidity of the oven air up as the bread baked and prevent the crust from drying out, hardening and preventing the bread from expanding. The bread was done when the inside reached a temperature of 205-210F, so I was having to spear hot bread with my thermometer through the blazing heat of the oven to see if it was done.

Then it was time to see the results. Before the taste test, I was able to actually cut the bread with a bread knife. The crust was slightly crunchy and the crumb inside looked relatively uniform. It tasted like bread! I thought it was on the chewy side, but not the kind of chewy I remember store bought baguettes being like. But it tasted like bread! Victory dance!

Next up, sourdough.

PS: Believe it or not, the photo in this post is actually my bread.

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Bread Weapon Making 101

Start with a clean slate - know nothing about making bread. It might be even better if you don't even like bread and wish for nothing better than inflicting bread upon your unsuspecting enemies. Next, find a cookbook with lots of pictures. Peruse the instructions to see if it goes into enough detail to seem helpful - you don't know how to make bread, how do you know what's actually helpful? Page through the bread recipes to find a type of bread that seems suitable for a weapon. I decided on baguettes due to their elongated shape - that way there's a handhold and still plenty of surface for bludgeoning. Perhaps a batard could be used as a projectile from a very high place, but I thought I'd start simple.

Now gather your ingredients, making sure you have the oldest ingredients possible. If it's aged, it has withstood the test of time and is worthy of being a part of a bread weapon. It's very important to read the instructions carefully. Make sure to keep the instructions handy at all times as you prepare your bread weapon so that you can cross-reference at will. This is a tricky process that requires careful calculation, patience only up to a point and endurance.

Another key trick is to only follow some of the durations in the instructions. If it says to knead the dough for 5-7 minutes, do it for as long as physically possible. 2 or 3 days should do it. And when it says to let it rise for 1.5 to 2 hours, do exactly that. Even though it tells you that the dough should double in bulk. They really mean that any change that you sorta, maybe notice is good enough.

Oh, and don't slash the bread right before baking. It becomes a weak point in the final product. Best to keep it an unbroken surface. Your weapon is done when your sharpest bread knife, cleaver, axe, won't even ding the surface of the bread. Take it from me.

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Granola, Now With Yogurt!

Apparently the problem with the yogurt wasn't that I messed up the heating/cooling/bacteria growing process. It was just that I didn't wait long enough. The instructions said 3-4 hours to set. Other internet sources said that the longer I let it sit, the more tart it gets and that depending on the number of live cultures in the starter, it might take 6 hours.

I started the incubation around 4:30pm. I checked it at 7:30. Milk. Well okay, that was only 3 hours. I'll check it again later. I fought some zombies on the PS3, so I didn't check again until 10:30 (total elapsed time: 6 hours). Still milk. Not even a hint of thicker milk. Just milk. I give up, figure I have another failure on my hands, swaddle up the jar again and shove it back into the dark turned-off oven and decide to deal with it in the morning.

I remember and pull it out the following morning at about 9:30. Lo and behold: Not Milk! (total elapsed time 17 hours) I shove it into the fridge, let it cool down for an hour and ask Lee to taste test. When he didn't immediately spit it back out, I tried it myself. It was thick, close to the consistency of Greek yogurt and not even that tart, just yogurty goodness.

Success!

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Granola Living

I read an article about saving money by making your own grocery staples a few weeks ago. It evaluated the cost-saving, efficiency, and taste of making bagels, jam, yogurt, crackers, granola, and cream cheese at home.

We'd previously experimented with this idea when we got Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" cookbook several years ago. We learned that we're happier making our own pasta sauce than buying - it's amazingly simple and we can customize the spices. (I find most store bought pasta sauces too sweet). We also learned that store bought pancake mix is much better than any concoction we could make. Our homemade pancake mix tended towards heavy, frisbee-like texture and taste. We never did figure out just what was different.

This time, I was intrigued by the prospect of homemade granola and yogurt. Lee is a big fan. Me, not so much. And I even spent several weeks eating it for breakfast in an effort to acquire a taste for it. I'm also intrigued by the bagels, but I haven't had a chance to try that yet.

So last weekend, I gave granola and yogurt manufacturing a try. Yogurt requires milk and a starter yogurt culture with live bacteria in it. Granola needs rolled oats, maple syrup, brown sugar, vegetable oil and other stuff you want in it, which in our case ended up being dried cranberries and slivered almonds. I used Alton Brown's recipe for the granola. For the yogurt, I referenced a recent New York Times article for what sounded like relatively straightforward instructions.

The granola was a clear win. It took a few minutes to mix the ingredients together, and an hour and 15 minutes to bake in the oven. The result was a crunchy, tasty granola that Lee was very happy with. I've even willingly had it for breakfast twice this week. Next time, I'll put a little less brown sugar and add another kind of nut, perhaps cashew, to the mix.

The yogurt experiment did not live up to expectation. It was relatively simple, but I got paranoid over the directive of sterile instruments about halfway through the process. I felt a little rushed with the waiting times (waiting for the milk to heat to the right temperature, then waiting for it to cool) because we wanted to start a fish dinner about the same time and I held dinner off with the idea that preparing both at the same time would impart a fishy taste to the yogurt. By the next morning, I ended up with yogurt-tasting milk. I think there were some miniscule globules at the bottom of the jar that may have actually been the right consistency of yogurt.

My internet research tells me that maybe the milk I used came from cows fed antibiotics that would kill the yogurt producing bacteria. Perhaps the yogurt starter I used didn't actually have the advertised live cultures in it. But the milk did indeed taste yogurty, so I'm not sure about that hypothesis. I might give this another try with different yogurt and milk brands.

My day with kitchen experimentation didn't end up a complete disaster. We've gone through half the batch of granola already and I'm looking forward to the next batch. I'm not sure when I'm trying the yogurt again. Maybe I'll switch to trying bagels next and come back to that.

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Witchy, Witchy Night

We took my youngest sister, Jessica to see Wicked for her birthday a week ago. I bought the tickets sometime in January so we had a few months of anticipation. I tried to see Wicked on Broadway when I was at a conference in NYC several years ago but it was always sold out. I'm happy to report that Wicked didn't disappoint. I laughed, I cried. I'm going to see it again and again (well maybe my checkbook won't let me).


Wicked is a stage adaptation of Gregory Maguire's book of the same title. I picked up the book because I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz and was intrigued with the premise of seeing the other side of Oz. In short, the book was a mess; a meandering plot that picked up complexities as if it were a collector with a cat's attention span. The musical plot line was cleaner, straightforward and well-suited for a stage presentation. The musical focused on the relationship between Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West and G(a)linda, the Good Witch of the North. Although Elphaba is the main character, the story did a good job of making Glinda more than just the opposite foil to Elphaba's goals. She had her own valid point of view even if I didn't particularly relate to her.

To my mind, the success of the performance really came down to the quality of Elphaba's and Glinda's actresses. I was a little nervous when our program notified us that the standby actress would be playing Elphaba's role. Vicki Noon had some big shoes to fill because I'm a huge fan of Idina Menzel, who played the role on Broadway. But my doubts went away when she sang her first notes of "The Wizard and I." Kendra Kassebaum played Glinda adorably. She had the lion's share of funny lines through the show and she delivered hilariously. I managed to get seats in the fourth row so we really got to see the actors' expressions and the details of their costumes. While the rest of the cast enriched the story (and we had some wonderful actors for the other parts - Patty Duke played Madame Morrible and David Garrison played the Wizard), it was only when either of the witches were on stage that the performance felt gravity defying.

Speaking of which, "Defying Gravity" closed out the first act and was the highlight of the whole show. Jess made fun of me for tearing up as that song closed but it's not as if I could have helped it. As Elphaba rose above the stage, haloed by a star of lights, her soaring voice brought with it such an overwhelming sense of triumph and hope that one can't help but respond.

A fantastic, magical event overall. Go see it! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to "Defying Gravity" again. And again.

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My Brute

Cute Flash game I found today. Very low starting effort - you just have to put a name in and click on links. Fighting is completely automatic, you have no control on your attacks or defenses, no choice in weapons, character attributes or bonuses whatsoever.

But there's something compelling about watching cute characters dueling on a web page and rooting for the avatar that represents me. It's so fascinating, I've made two.

Go ahead, click a link and become one of my pupils:

Luna Rage
Quimine

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Ka's Backyard Adventure

It was a bittersweet day.

The sweet part was when Ka donned his smart red walking jacket and ventured out in the wilds of the backyard. This wasn't his first outing. A few weeks ago, he wore his red jacket and yo-yo'ed in and out before he could muster up the will to stay outside. He would put a paw on the step outdoors, retreat to his room upstairs. Then he would come down a few minutes later and sit on the step. He would retreat upstairs again, then come down and sniff the patio tile below the step. It took him six or seven tries to slink over to the patio table and lie down in the moss. He cautiously explored the area just outside the door with me scrambling to make sure the leash didn't get tangled up in branches, chairs, or plant containers. This time, he didn't need the retreating iterations to get outside but it still took several laps around the backyard before he stopped slinking around. The sheer joy of pouncing on bugs probably did it. It was Lee's turn to "walk" Ka. Although Ka's pace was relatively slow, he would unexpectedly speed up to jump on anything of interest.

The bitter part came when he returned inside. During his adventure, Zaia stayed firmly inside. She also yo-yo'ed up and down the stairs, but the closest she came to outside was to stand at the threshold and sniff the air. When Ka came back inside, she made it a point to smell him thoroughly. Apparently what she found wasn't to her liking. They're no longer on speaking terms. Perhaps she's jealous that she wasn't able to experience whatever it was that made him smell so differently. But there was much hissing and growling within a radius of about 3-4 feet. Ka has spent the rest of the evening asleep on my lap. Zaia spent the evening cavorting in their room alternating with coming downstairs to see how close she could get to her brother before he starts hissing or growling. We did have some moments of peace when we had a trick and treat session, but it ended with Zaia cuffing poor Ka upside the head. As I type this, Ka is under my desk, hunched up, staring at Zaia who's on the other side of Lee's chair, similarly hunched up and staring at Ka.

Hopefully they'll remember they're each other best friends soon.

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Lifehacking

I have a fascination with efficiency and optimization. I'm not entirely sure how or when I developed this fascination. Perhaps it's laziness - I don't want to have to do more than I need to in order to get the job done. Come to think of it, that sounds pretty close to an engineering ethic. Or maybe it's just the way I learned from my mom about how to run errands.

Either way, when given a task or several at hand, my brain usually starts processing different options and methods to get it done efficiently. When I am forced to do something less efficiently than I'd like, I get grumpy. But not angry-grumpy, generally just annoyed-grumpy. This has led to conversations that go something like this:

Me: Why are you going that way?
Lee: We're going to the Best Buy aren't we?
Me: Yes, but we have to pick up the bridesmaid dresses first, so we might as well get those and park near the Pet Food Express.
Lee: Why the pet store?
Me: Because we need kitty litter and I don't want to have to walk across the parking lot lugging it. The Best Buy stuff won't be and we can just walk across the parking lot from there. And by the time we finish with that, we'll probably be hungry and we can head across the street to In-N-Out.
Lee: You didn't tell me there was a whole plan for this.
Me: I know, but I just thought of it.


So when I found Lifehacker a few years ago, it was like finding a secret room in my house I didn't know about with really nifty stuff in it.

Lifehacker is basically a website dedicated to sharing tips on productivity. They have a heavy emphasis on corporate and computer methods on Getting Things Done. When I first found the treasure trove, I concentrated mostly on software, gadget oriented tricks to do stuff.

On Lifehacker, I found the instructions to use my Apple wireless network to play my iTunes songs on speakers in other parts of the house rather than just the office where my computer is. I also found and downloaded a software program called Quicksilver, a keyboard shortcut application launching program for Macs. I also found their post on making the computer desk look neater by corralling the nest of cables underneath. There are also non-gadget, non-computer tips on there. I like that when I have a task or need to set up a system to handle tasks in my life, there's usually other people who have already thought through a similar process and can make recommendations on how they've addressed it. Less research for me and more time to do the thing I needed to do.

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Encounter of the Robot Kind

Robots made by high school students, that is.

I high-fived a lot of high school students this past weekend. The fun part was that I would have loved being one of them when I was their age. Because they had just designed and built a robot to accomplish a specific challenge - to compete at the FIRST Robotics Competition in Sacramento.

From FIRST's website: "The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard "kit of parts" and a common set of rules. Teams build robots from the parts and enter them in competitions designed by Dean Kamen, Dr. Woodie Flowers, and a committee of engineers and other professionals."

This year's challenge involved building a robot that could play a game and score by putting balls into the opposing team's trailer. There's some added workings that are probably best served with the Lunacy Game animation link. (Clicking the link plays a Windows Media Movie and may take a while with slower connections)

And of course, YouTube has video of the actual event. The following video is one of the playoff matches where the #1 seeded 3-team alliance battles the #4 alliance. The playoff matches took the game competition up a notch from the qualification matches of the previous day. These were robots that had already proven their functionality and performance and were out on the field to use the best strategy of offense and defense. They were competing to win an invitation to the National competition in Atlanta.



I volunteered at the event and got a chance to talk to a number of the teams. In addition to winning the game competition, the teams could win awards based on their robotics program to inspire youth to be science and technology leaders. The teams ranged from high school engineering academies, to Girl Scouts, to teams from brand new high schools. There were a number of awards for technical excellence as well as outreach excellence, in addition to acknowledgments such as team spirit and theme creativity.

What struck me about the experience was the sheer energy and enthusiasm of the kids. It was infectious. You'll get a taste of the sports arena vibe from the video above. I wore a smile for most of my two days there because of their unabashed passion for their work. The adult world can be full of cynicism, but at the robotics competition, I was able to escape that for a little while. Overall, the students played their hearts out and shook each other's hands at the end of the games.

Women in engineering is always near and dear to my heart and I was happy to see a good representation of girls on the teams, not just participating but leading them as well. There were three all-girl teams, 2 of which were in the playoffs and were also in top contention for awards.

FIRST not only encourages the spirit of competition, but it also emphasizes the concept of gracious professionalism. Teams were proud to tell me about what other teams had helped them debug their robots. One example of this ethic came about in the transformation of one of the robots from the first day of competition to the second day. Six other teams, on observing that this robot stayed immobile during the games, took it upon themselves to lend a hand. On the first day, the robot was merely buffeted by the other robots around the playing field. On the second day, it was mobile and contributing to its team alliance.

So I was happy and proud to have been handing out high-fives to a bunch of well-deserving high school students and their mentors. They could both remind and teach me a thing or two about why I went into mechanical engineering in the first place.

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Volunteerism

One of the themes President Obama highlighted in his campaign and continues to espouse during his presidency was service. I read an article recently about what First Lady Michelle Obama was up to and the article included pictures of her reading to kids, serving food in a soup kitchen and thanking various organizations in DC for their work in service to the country. The example and encouragement of our president's family got me thinking about my own volunteering experiences and attitude.

Simply put, volunteering isn't a regular habit with me. My volunteer experiences often came from school or work; either it was an extracurricular service group at school or organizations or activities sponsored by my employer. To be clear, I'm talking about active participation rather than monetary donations. I've done my share of donations to various causes, and while I understand that money is helpful to any organization, it keeps me distanced from feeling like I've made a difference. The usual thank you and receipt is just a piece of paper.

I have taken part in events that were fundraisers where the activity was oblique to the charity's stated ultimate goal for good reason. I have ridden my bike for Tour de Cure to raise money for the American Diabetes Association. I've attended many fundraising activities for my Team in Training friends. (But no, I will never run a marathon for love, money or charity) I've raised some money for NaNoWriMo. I don't have much expertise in curing diabetes or leukemia nor have I run a creative, inspirational non-profit.

But I think my favorite volunteer experience has been activities that are directly applied help. I volunteered with Rebuilding Together Oakland a few times via my employer. Per their website "Rebuilding Together Oakland (RTO) rehabilitates the homes of low-income elderly and disabled homeowners, so they may continue to live in safety, comfort and independence." One year, I helped build a handicapped ramp and another year, I put up some cabinets, demolished a dangerously-leaning shed and put a shiny coat of paint on the house. In both examples, I did get a chance to meet the homeowner, who was very grateful for our work. It wasn't so much the direct gratitude that makes that different, though it's really awesome. I think it was putting a face to the payoff of my volunteer work that gives it that extra oomph. Which is odd for me, being an introvert. Usually I dread the effort of socializing. Strangely enough, it almost always turns out better than I expect.

This coming weekend I'll be volunteering at the FIRST Robotic Competition event in Sacramento. Once again, this was due to my employer providing the opportunity for me. And once again, I'm dreading having to be around a bunch of people I don't know. But I get to watch the culmination of the hard work and learning that high school kids put into their robots. I'm sure it'll turn out better than I expect.

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Bali

Last September (was it really that long ago?) Lee and I went to Bali, Indonesia for vacation. We were looking for a vacation spot that was a little more adventurous, with scuba spots, good food and pampering. From the reviews we read on the internet, it seemed like Bali was just the place.


The adventure started just with the flight to Indonesia. We flew out of San Francisco airport on Singapore Airlines. Although we flew in economy class, we found out just how bad service had gotten on airlines in the US by comparison. We flew in a 747, which seats about 400 people - we were boarded in about 10 minutes. The fleet of staff went down the line to check our tickets and passports, pulled out anyone that needed extra help and handled them separately. Inside the plane, anyone struggling with where they needed to be seated or with carry-on luggage was helped and efficiently seated. The seats themselves weren't too cramped. I typically don't have too many issues fitting since I'm short, but Lee noticed the extra knee room immediately. I had my own video screen where I could control my own programming with some hundred or so channels including around five movies. I could start and stop them whenever I wanted and I could even rewind or fast forward as I wished. We had full hot meals and even real silverware and hot towels before the meal. We each got our own "sock packs" as I'll call them - a packet that had some socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and tissues. We had pretty lengthy flights, from San Francisco to Hong Kong, to Singapore then Denpasar on the island of Bali. For breakfast, I was delighted to learn that I had a choice of Western breakfast or Asian. I opted for the noodles for breakfast simply to get a different experience. This was also the trip when I started my current fixation with English tea. Black tea with milk and sugar. Normally, I'm a green tea sort of person. On these flights, there and back, I ended up watching Get Smart with Steve Carrell, Kung Fu Panda, Forbidden Kingdom, Fearless, Ed Norton's version of The Hulk and skipped right over Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. I saw a bit of the last one and decided it was so bad, it wasn't even worth viewing on an airplane.

Even the airports were interesting to spend our layovers. The shops were very high end, especially in Singapore. I don't think I'd heard of most of the shops there, but the ones I had heard of were the expensive type. I got a kick out of finding the Asian eateries and trying out their fare in between flights. Tea and rice could be had just about any hour of the day.

After about 20+ hours of flying time we touched down on Bali. We marveled at the exchange rate of rupia to US dollars. We started off the trip by withdrawing over a million rupia from the ATM! This only amounted to approximately US $100. The number of zeroes on a given bill certainly felt extravagant.

We split up our vacation into two different hotels. The first was so that we could get some beach time and the second because all the reviews said we should go into Ubud, the cultural heart of Bali.

The beach hotel was at Nusa Dua. It was billed as the resort hotel part of the island. I had tried booking us into one of the more popular beaches, but it seemed we picked a busy time. I think we chose a period of time when Australians were having a holiday and Bali is a typical destination for them. The streets are pretty narrow and crowded with the lanes acting as mere guidelines. Most of the inhabitants are on scooters that weave in and out of the trucks and cars, in dangerous proximity to each other.

The hotel at Nusa Dua was beautiful and we got our first taste of Balinese sense of decor - in a word, ornate. There were water features everywhere, pools and fountains, replete with statues. All the corridors in the hotel were open to the outdoors. I was surprised at the lack of mosquitoes. There were a few insects around, but given the heat and humidity, I had expected to have to wield my Deet religiously. Thankfully, I didn't need to. Our room had a balcony overlooking the gardens and wood slats seemed to be its theme. We had a welcome plate of fruit delivered shortly after we arrived with exotic fruits that weren't all recognizable. There were apples and later we found out that one of them was called snakefruit. There was another fruit that we dubbed "snotfruit" because the inside edible bits looked like seeds in clear snot. It was much tastier than it sounds though, slightly sweet. We took a shower and determined not to sleep until it was actually bedtime to combat our jetlag.


Come dinner time, we wandered off to the hotel buffet down a pathway through the gardens lit with candles. Bali, unlike the rest of Indonesia is primarily Hindu. One of their beliefs is that too much light at night disturbs the gods so they keep it very dim. I found it soothing and romantic. A dance troupe performed a traditional Balinese dance. I had to wonder if the performers weren't really trained for it. The music was compelling, but jarring in its tones and rhythm, but it sounded professional. Some of the dancers didn't seem comfortable with their roles as they kept looking towards the one confident dancer in order to mimic his movements. There was some sort of story to go along with the dance, but it was convoluted and hard to follow even when I read the synopsis later. It involved demons, some royalty, a rescue and death. The food was decent for buffet food, nothing too challenging. I had heard that they liked their food spicy here, but since we were at a resort hotel, it was probably watered down for the non-native palate.

We spent the following day on the beach. Sadly our beach was very shallow, but warm with no waves to play in whatsoever. Lee tried snorkeling a little bit deeper in, but didn't find anything worth reporting back. We rationalized that a bit of downtime was called for after our day of travel. Especially since the following day took us to the northeast coast of Bali for some scuba diving at Tulamben.

We had arranged for a day trip with Scuba Duba Doo (I wanted to buy one of their shirts because of their awesome name, but they didn't have any cool ones when we stopped in their shop). They picked us up, provided all the gear and meals for the day. We had 2 dives scheduled, both off the shore. The first was to a shipwreck of a US Liberty ship that had sunk in WWII. The boat wasn't very big and there wasn't really enough left to be inside a boat, but the skeleton remained. It wasn't quite as gloomy as diving under piers, but it had great atmosphere. Lots of fish feeding on coral. We even saw a school of tuna and a purple ray that was trying its hardest to hide in the sand away from our group of divers. Our second dive after lunch was to a coral wall. I found it a little less interesting than the first dive, but Tunas, our divemaster pointed out creatures along the way which included seahorses and a poisonous spiny thing that he pointed at with his fin so as not to get too near.

The following day, we hired a taxi driver to take us to our hotel in Ubud. There was no way we were driving ourselves in that kind of traffic. The custom with taxi drivers for tourists was to spend a day being taken to shops selling all sorts of crafts and souvenirs. The drivers would get a cut of what you paid to the shops. Bali has entire villages devoted to a particular craft, from batik to silver and gold jewelry, to wood and stone sculpture and painting. I was a little leery of the whole taxi system but our driver, Mudita, seemed very accommodating and only took us to places we were interested in rather than where he wanted to go. Of course, he was happy to wait as long as we wanted to stay. The only place we did go was to a batik shop. We marveled at the batik-making process, which they demonstrated to us. It's basically alternating between applying wax, dyeing, removing the wax, adding new wax, dyeing again, and so on until the intended pattern was realized. We spent quite a bit of time inside picking out souvenirs for family as Christmas presents as well as a few bits for ourselves. I was sorely tempted to buy a bunch of fabric myself so that I could make my own clothing, but that would have been quite a bit more expensive.


Mudita dispelled my wariness with his choice of a lunch place. He drove us to a restaurant in the middle of a rice field, somewhat off the beaten path. The restaurant was upstairs, overlooking the field as well as a beautiful pool that no one was swimming in. Lee ordered a sampler plate - rice, chicken satay, shredded chicken stew and some cone-shaped meat concoction that was very tasty. I had the mie goreng, a fried noodle dish with vegetables. The rice field was a lush green, with plastic bags fluttering on the ends of sticks, presumably to scare away the birds that eat the rice. The pool was a brilliant blue with a temple off to the corner. It was warm, but upstairs a breeze was blowing that made it very pleasant. After lunch, they brought out the standard fruit plate with papaya, snake fruit, honeydew, and watermelon.

Which reminds me that I forgot to mention the most memorable restaurant in Nusa Dua: Bumbu Bali. According to our travel books, the idea of restaurants is somewhat awkward to Balinese culture. When not eating at home, people are generally eating at a friend or family member's house. Bumba Bali was created so that tourists could experience that sort of home hospitality in a restaurant. They also give cooking lessons, but we weren't able to schedule one on our trip. We were greeted with plumeria blossoms to wear in our hair (and both men and women wear flowers in their hair there). We picked out two dishes, served family style, a beef in coconut milk and vegetables in peanut sauce. Luckily for us, they left us to add our own additional red spice in. They served it with three different kinds of rice, all grown on Bali. The yellow jasmine rice with turmeric, a brown wild rice and red rice. Each had a different texture and went wonderfully with the food. Perhaps they had also toned down the spices in the food as it wasn't too challenging to my palate.

Back to our trip to Ubud. We didn't stop in any other shop. We spent quite a bit in the batik shop and weren't up to more shopping already. It wasn't for lack of interest in the wares offered. We saw some benches and statues that would be fantastic additions to our back yard garden but would probably be cost prohibitive to ship. I thought it would be great to have one of the parasols with red fringe over a bench to replace the rickety one in our yard, too.


The Furama Villas and Spa was just north of the center of Ubud. As I had mentioned before, Ubud is the heart of Balinese culture as the center of the arts villages. We had gotten a villa and frankly weren't expecting anything extravagant for the price. Boy, were we in for a treat. Our greeting included a cool towel and a lemongrass lemonade. We were also told that a free Italian dinner came with our stay as well as a 15-minute Balinese massage. I wondered faintly about why the dinner was Italian instead of Balinese, but I wasn't about to turn down free food. We were delighted but not quite done with being delighted yet. They loaded us up on a golf cart with our luggage to our villa. We rode past the hotel swimming pool and were told that we wouldn't care about that since we had our own. That comment was the preview for the awesome villa we saw next. When I read "villa" in the description, I didn't really take it seriously. I just thought it was a cute name for whatever room they put us in. But it was indeed, its own building, large enough for a huge bedroom and bathroom. With its own yard, and yes our own pool. In the yard, we even had our own pair of spa tables in case we wanted a massage at our villa. The front porch had our dining table. Behind the building, with tall walls around it, we had an outdoor shower - Lee's favorite. We had to spend a while marveling at the awesomeness that was our vacation digs. We had opted to have our free Italian dinner that night but we still had time before then so we went up to the spa for our free massage.

It was only the first of several massages we ended up getting at that spa. We even had a "surprise" one - we were planning on going for a second scuba day, but Lee got food poisoning and ended up having a villa and spa day instead. We kept doing their spa deal of the day (which saved some money) and was typically a package of some sort, involving a dry rub and tenderizing routine. The Balinese massage was one of the hardest pressure massages I've ever experienced. I could have sworn that my masseuse was standing on the table to apply that much pressure. It felt ridiculously awesome. Add to the fact that the spa room was elevated, open to the air behind screens and facing the sunset and you can see why we went back a few more times. We also tried Thai massage which is a combination massage and stretchy poses.


One of the activities I insisted on was catching one of the dance performances in the center of Ubud. Bali has a number of traditional dances, each telling a story in ornate, gilded costuming accompanied by similarly decorated instruments that looked like xylophones. The dances that we saw looked like the dancers were trying to mimic moving versions of the 2D sculptures that were all through their temples. They had exaggerated, wide-eyed expressions, and their foot and hand positions were mostly aligned sideways. It was a fun performance that was unfortunately truncated by a downpour. With the costuming and make-up they wore, I wasn't surprised that they beat a quick retreat, abbreviating their dance performance smoothly at the direction of the band leader.


We were repeatedly encouraged to visit the Monkey Forest (one of a number, apparently) while we were there. Lee brought the telephoto lens thinking that it would be similar to our wildlife outings at home, beautiful outdoors with the occasional and faraway glimpse of the animals. We couldn't have been more wrong. An environmental and monkey protection group sold tickets to enter the forest, which was set among temples in the trees, but they also sold bananas for the tourists to feed the monkeys. We opted not to buy any bananas, which was a lucky thing since the hungry monkeys all hovered at the entrances waiting for such tourists. Apparently the monkeys viewed banana-bearing tourists as walking food trees. If they were unhappy with the rate at which they received the bananas, they had no hesitations whatsoever about climbing the person/banana tree to get their share. We even saw one monkey, climb one woman and dig into the tote where she had hidden her bananas. The monkeys were many, they were up close and personal and they were endlessly fascinating.

There were many activities in Bali that we didn't get a chance to experience. On our next trip there, whenever that may be, I think I'd definitely go back to Ubud, perhaps hit a different beach experience and try the northern coast for scuba diving. It was a sad day to have to come back.

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What I Did at Karate Camp

I practice Shotokan karate, an Okinawan martial arts style founded by Gichin Funakoshi. I've been practicing for about three years on this most recent stint. I started way back in ancient times when I was in college, took a break and now I'm back. Last weekend I attended my dojo's semiannual karate camp. It's like going car camping - days of strenuous activity, eating, no showers, sleeping and rising with the sun.


Our karate camp is held at the dojo. We sleep on the hardwood dojo floor. The rhythm for the weekend is practice-eat-sleep starting Friday evening and going until mid-day on Sunday. Typically, Sensei picks out an advanced kata (training form) and breaks it down in detail so that we better understand each move. This is usually through application or "bunkai". Every move can be used as a block or counterstrike against a particular attack. I find this also helps me remember the kata sequence. The advanced katas tend to be long and short sequences of movements may be similar to other pieces of katas, so memorizing the sequences can be tricky. And I typically don't do these longer katas in my everyday training (I tend to work on a particular kata in preparation for my next belt test). Trainings also range from breaking down a particular advanced move to pure endurance/cardio tests to oblique activities that may not, at first blush, be directly applicable. But of course, Sensei doesn't make us do anything that's irrelevant.

This time, I learned 2 advanced katas, Hangetsu and Jion. We only practiced Jion the first day and worked on Hangetsu for the rest of the weekend. The bunkai for Hangetsu was probably the most complicated I'd tried so far. But I did work with a couple of our black belts so that helped me understand. Even though Sensei changed it up as we were still trying to practice the original application.

We also worked on moving around blindfolded so that we could develop sensing our environment without relying so much on sight. We practiced moving around the dojo around obstacles as well as trying to sense when others were near and their relative location. I wasn't very good at finding other people, but I did try and employ the sense you feel when someone is reading over your shoulder. I think that was effective a handful of times.

There's also a philosophical aspect of camp. That's one of the precepts I like about this practice - I'm working on mind, body and spirit instead of just body. Since Sensei is Sufi, which I understand to be a mystical study Islam, he views Funakoshi's teachings of karate through that lens. Which is a bonus because I learn about Sufism and karate teachings all at once. Most camps, the philosophical segment is primarily done through our after meal talks where Sensei will talk about his past, the meanings of his faith, karate teachings and how it applies to living life outside the dojo. This time, the philosophy segment was augmented by a movie we watched called Bab'Aziz. It's an allegorical movie set in Iran about a dervish wandering the desert with his granddaughter in search of a gathering of dervishes. It was only later, when I had access to the internet again that I understood that a dervish is a Sufi Muslim mendicant ascetic, known for extreme poverty and austerity (Thanks Wikipedia!). I had thought dervishes were weather phenomena in the desert like mini tornadoes. It's a beautiful film with a beautiful score but I'll need multiple viewings to fully understand what's going on. The dervish meets other travelers along is journey and we find out about their goals and search as well.

One of the two things I took away from this viewing was in the opening screen. It was a quote that said, "There are as many paths to God as there are souls on Earth." The other concept I liked was when Bab'Aziz, contemplating his death, explained that it was his wedding night to eternity and there's every reason not to fear it.

Our final practice on Sunday morning is Qigong. It's not nearly as energetic as our regular practices but in some ways it's actually more physically difficult. Holding poses for minutes at a time takes its toll on my muscles. But the fascinating thing for me is feeling the chi energy that we're focusing on. I'm not enough of a qigong student to really sense the power of it, but Sensei says that you can defeat enemies simply with chi. I suppose for the time being, I'll just have to take his word for it. My engineering brain can't visualize how that could possibly work and believe it.

Before I started going to karate camps, I used to dread it. But as I've attended several now, I find myself looking forward to the whole experience, especially the learning part.

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Dancing Globally

When I could use a big smile, I watch this video.



The sheer exuberance of the dancers from all over the world captures the joy and magic of dancing for me. And the fact that their dancing is largely goofy, perhaps even dorky, unselfconscious and utterly gleeful is my answer to anyone who has deprived themselves of the experience of channeling the music into movement. Try it, you might even enjoy yourself like these people did.

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My New Favorite Band: Journey

They're not a new band. I didn't even know they had a new lead singer until my sister sent me a text yesterday to the effect of: "filipinos rock! did you see the new singer of journey? Since I was in the yard when I got the message, I didn't see it. So I headed to youtube to find out what she was talking about and found a huge list of Arnel Pineda singing 80s hits from Bryan Adams, Aerosmith, Sting and yes, Journey. He's an amazing singer and an amazing mimic. I played his Journey renditions for Lee, who knew something was up since I asked him who was singing when it was obviously Steve Perry to the ear.

But it's the sight of this Filipino guy belting out rock ballads of the 80's that makes me a new fan. The video above is his performance at the pre-game show of the Superbowl yesterday.


After I devoured a bunch of his songs with his band The Zoo, I headed to Wikipedia where I read a story that could be a Rock Band game story or a Hollywood flick. Here's an interview CBS News did with the band. I especially like that he sounds so much like Steve Perry in song, but speaks with my relatives' accents when he speaks. Pinoy Pride!

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Video Games the Musical

We have finally succumbed to the Guitar Hero/Rock Band tidal wave of video games. I think it was the drums that did it. Oh and playing Guitar Hero World Tour (the full band version) at a friend's house. Aside from my lack of drumming skills, it was fun. We'd played Guitar Hero at another friend's house a few years ago, but with my repetitive stress issues with my wrists, I didn't think it would be healthy for me to injure myself on a video game, playing a mock instrument I hadn't previously expressed any interest in learning.

So when Guitar Hero added drums and vocals to their game, we perked up. Rock Band had already started out with the full band experience, but all reviews pointed to the guitar controllers of Guitar Hero being better made. After test playing it at the aforementioned friend's house, we headed out to Target and gave it to ourselves as a Christmas present. I later found out via internet research that the controllers for Guitar Hero World Tour would also work for Rock Band 2 so we got that also. After a few weeks of playing it, we've mostly switched over to Rock Band 2 (with Guitar Hero controllers) as our music game of choice.


Our music game collection (at my instigation) started with something very different: Dance Dance Revolution. I saw these in the arcades and movie theater lobbies and I was intrigued watching the people who were clearly very skilled at it. They had their water bottles and towels nearby, hopping in intricate patterns in time with the arrows scrolling by on the screen. In many cases they weren't even looking at the screen; they had memorized the steps from playing it so much. Over time, we bought the game and all subsequent releases, and even upgraded our flimsy dance pads to hard plastic ones in the quest for mastering harder and harder songs. Then, I pulled my Achilles tendon playing ultimate frisbee. Once I healed (many weeks later) I got back into my DDR habit only to find that it was painful. I have this weird quirk where I'll ignore non-excruciating pain when I'm really focused on achieving a goal (finishing a song or 15 in this case). I thought it might be best for my health if I put it away.

But there was a game preview on one of the Dance Dance Revolution games that bridged the way to my next music game obsession - Karaoke Revolution. With my dreams of Dance Dance Revolution divinity dashed, I turned to the less physically strenuous activity of singing. But it was more than just singing, this game would tell me when I was off pitch and possibly train me to sing more acceptably in bathroom acoustics. I come from a musical family. My sisters and mom are all trained singers, performing solos and in choirs, etc. My Lolo (grandfather on my dad's side) would always serenade my Lola (grandmother) whenever there was a microphone and an audience available. For my part, I once attempted singing in public, but it was probably an event best left to the bloopers reel.

At any rate, with practice in my own home and a scoring system, I got up enough confidence to agree to semi-regular karaoke parties at Todd and Ali's house complete with cocktails. Once again, I collected every version of Karaoke Revolution and SingStar games that they put out and have now started the collection on the Playstation 3.

This meanders me back to the Guitar Hero/Rock Band 2 acquisition. The nice thing about the band experience is that if my arms start to hurt from the guitar, I can switch to the drums and even if that starts hurting, I can fall back to the singing. Nothing like cross-training to keep the music flowing. According to Lee, who has actually been part of a rock band, the games actually do a decent simulation of the cohesive feeling playing in a band and trying to keep the songs together. I suspect, having never been in a rock band, that the real thing did not require near blinding focus on little colored bars or dots scrolling by on the screen (concert band, marching band, pep band, jazz band: yes. rock band: no. Yes, I was once a band geek, why do you ask?).

Rock Band 2 seems to do a better job at actually teaching beginners how to work with the instruments than Guitar Hero does. They have tutorials on the disk for guitar, vocals and drums - how to read the symbols on the screen, how to make the guitar work and beginner practice sessions and even trickier tips for the more advanced. For the drummers, they have a whole series of beats and rhythms to practice without getting scored. It also has a wider selection of downloadable songs for pay. We've probably spent an additional $20 on additional songs for Rock Band 2 and haven't bought any for Guitar Hero.

There's character creations for both games. A friend of mine insists on creating as close of a personal likeness as he can, while I prefer trying on the craziest outfits I can find. I did try creating myself in Rock Band 2 this past weekend and my normal t-shirt and jeans just doesn't look like it belongs on that sort of stage. I figure if I were actually a rock star, I would have a wardrobe and makeup to match the production level of the concert. I might be more casual for a small bar setting and crazy glammed out for an amphitheatre setting. My latest phase is creating my favorite video game characters so that I can watch them rock out in this video game.

One thing I don't think these music video games does is teach you how to play the actual instrument. Perhaps vocals might be the closest, because you're actually using the real thing - your voice. But as I said earlier, it mostly helps you find the right pitches in song rather than teach you how to sing well. Drums might be the next closest. There are fewer drums in the game than you can actually play in a drum set. But it does make you practice rhythms and coordinating your eyes, hands and one foot to follow the screen. While they do provide you with real drumsticks, I'm sure the drums themselves have a completely different feel. The guitar is the farthest away from the real thing. Unless of course you take away five of the strings on a real guitar and make that remaining string really thick. Interestingly, a lot of my friends who actually do play guitar seem to enjoy the mock guitar playing anyway.

I don't have any delusions that I'm going to take my music game prowess on a public stage, but it combines my love of music, satisfaction in improving a skill and the capability to gather with some friends and enjoy an evening of gaming. Who ever said gamers can't be social?

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Oh, Happy Day!

I knew I was going to watch the inauguration of our 44th president today. I expected to fire up a live feed on my computer and watch from there. Then my office offered to have it showing in one of the conference rooms on campus. Which was better because I would be able to be with other people, other Americans witnessing this moment in history. Then I found a text message from a friend inviting me to watch the inauguration at the Oakland Arena. Without much further thought, I went and bought tickets. My inauguration-watching experience was even better - I managed to talk Lee into going with me so that I could weep at will on his shoulder and I got to feel the energy of an arena full of hopeful, cheering people. We the People, indeed. Before Biden and Obama took their oaths, we were asked to stand. Lee wondered whether that really included those attending via live television. I felt, and apparently the rest of the people in the arena did also, that since I was witnessing the ceremony, I was a part of it and was therefore included in the "Please, rise.." request. (Admittedly, I might have felt a little silly standing had I been watching at my cubicle.)

While I could have done without the tv pundits bloviating over the video feed, I did learn from them that after noon today, he could officially drop the "elect" part of his title and become President Obama, per the 20th Amendment. However, he can't execute power as the president until after he uttered the oath. Yay, for learning about our Constitution!

I thought President Obama's inaugural speech was excellent. I still think he's one of the finest orators of our day. It was grittier and more somber than I expected. I thought he would employ soaring rhetoric as might have been called for under these ceremonial circumstances. But perhaps the grittier, more realistic look at the challenges we face as a nation is more appropriate for the times. I think I'll have to listen to it again later to digest it better. Ah, the wonders of the internet.

I liked the musical interlude, composed/arranged by the awesome John Williams and played by a quartet that included a clarinet player (REPRESENT!). My favorite may have been the end of Reverend Joseph Lowery's benediction: "...help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right." It's not so much the words, but his delivery and cadence that brought a smile to my face for the umpteenth time this morning.

Have I ever watched an inauguration before? Not until this time. Have I ever paid tickets to join hundreds of other people in watching said televised event in an arena? Not until this time. Have I even seen a presidential election process through to the very end and felt like I was a part of a proud, national process? Not until this time. I think I'm going to need some champagne before dinner tonight.

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I Like to Read: Past, Present and Future

One time, shortly after my sister was born, I gave my parents a fright by disappearing for several hours. At the time, I figured with all the hullabaloo about the new baby no one would miss me heading off to entertain myself. I was 10, I had a bike and an afternoon to myself. I'm not sure what horrible, perhaps criminal scenarios entered my parents' minds at the time - maybe they imagined me loitering at the mall, vandalizing neighborhood property, doing drugs/alcohol, trespassing on some abandoned industrial building or somesuch. Alas, I was a much nerdier delinquent than that.

I had gone for a luxurious visit at the local library. I spent hours poring over my favorite sections, doing as thorough a sampling as my attention span would allow of the authors I hadn't read yet in the mystery and sci-fi/fantasy categories. A kid's bike and a healthy anxiety around traffic could only get me so far on my afternoon of freedom. But at the library - the books there could get me to so many more places and situations! When I got home I got in big trouble. (Hey, I was even home in time for dinner.) But it remains a cherished and amusing childhood memory for me.

My family still teases me today about my reading appetite. But their teasing is a little less warranted these days. I only get a chance to read books on vacation or any flights where I know I'll have a lot of waiting around to do. I'm far too easily distracted with gadgetry (computer, PS3, iPod, and other shiny, powered objects) to pick up a book in my daily life.


Come to think of it, most (but certainly not all) of what I'm trying to do on such gadgets is read. Web content provides me news, further information on my latest obsessions, gadget reviews, troubleshooting guides, a whole slew of opinions ranging from well-informed to comedic. Not only can I search for any of these things, I also have choices of sources when I find them.

Right before Christmas, Lee got an Amazon Kindle as a company gift. When I first heard of the e-reader idea, I was skeptical although I'm not entirely sure why. I'm fine with reading on gadget screens and being able to cart around an entire library of books in the size of a single book seems like a fantastic idea. It would make vacation packing easier. I think now it was probably more of a knee jerk reaction to changing the way I've always interacted with books. Despite my love of gadgets, I'm not an early adopter type; I prefer that new things have been proven out for a bit before I latch on.

Now that I've had a chance to interact with the Kindle, I'm less skeptical. I probably wouldn't mind one of my own so I don't have to distract Lee with a Terry Pratchett paperback so I can read a book on the Kindle. In the meantime, Lee was happy enough to share his new toy.

It's roughly trade paperback size and comes in a leather case that makes it look like a Moleskine notebook when closed. It turns out that the case actually helps make it usable. Buttons span the length of both sides where you would conceivably grasp it. And since very few people tend to stick their thumbs on the screen they're trying to read, it makes for some accidental page turning when you first pick it up. This layout makes the case the only thing you can comfortably grasp without hitting buttons. I think they're fixing this in the next generation device.

The Kindle is based on e-paper technology which is much easier on the eyes than the typical computer screen. The text is dark grey on a light grey background - not quite the black ink on paper look but a pretty comfortable approximation. There were a few times I was so engrossed in the story that I forgot I was reading on the Kindle and looked for a page to turn instead of a button to push. The font size is adjustable on the fly. It uses advanced cell phone network to download the things you want to read, both pretty quickly and with no need to find a Wifi hotspot. You can download books from Amazon's store, subscribe to newspapers, blogs and probably some other stuff I haven't thought of using it for. Buying is linked to your Amazon account - so you don't have to fiddle with entering transaction data on the Kindle (even though it's got a keyboard). Battery life is excellent. The e-paper technology doesn't consume power to merely display the image on the screen, only when it changes the image on the screen. As a matter of fact, when you turn it "off" it puts up a random literary image. During a 2 week trip over the holidays, it was charged only once and even then it was more of a due diligence act rather than really needing it.

How will these e-readers affect how we read books in the future? With Amazon, a main-stream distributor and store, and Sony, one of the largest electronics manufacturers jumping into the fray, the e-reader has definitely entered general consciousness. It's still an expensive gadget, but within the same range as Apple's iPods. Will books end up like vinyl records - accessible and wanted only by the uber bibliophiles? People have been predicting a similar destiny for newspapers for some time now and indeed, the newspaper industry has been struggling and making cutbacks for years in an effort to stay alive.

I think we'll still have books on paper in the long run. In the vinyl record/book analogy, I think there's one important distinction. With music, each format needs a player to enjoy the content. Vinyl records need turntables, CDs need CD players and mp3s need mp3 players. E-books need an e-reader. However, books in their current printed form don't need a specific gadget to deliver content. Nor do they need battery power. I think that alone will stave off any pending demise. It's actually easier to consume book content in its current form than the new, emerging form. But as e-readers, handheld computers (Blackberrys, iPhones, Google phones of the future) become more prevalent, the issue of ease of consumption changes. On the other hand, it's easier for content providers to provide many copies of content (books) in electronic form than in physical form. If the money starts coming from electronic content rather than physical content, that's where the providers will focus their efforts.

Which brings me to the other side of the equation: the source of the reading content. With the internet came the advent of the new information model. It used to be only a few providers would funnel information, entertainment, etc. through to the masses. Compared to the numbers of consumers of such information, such providers were very few. Only the few television networks, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses could provide content to the masses. If you wanted to get out your message, you needed to go through these gatekeepers to access the consumers. The internet has changed that to open up the content sources to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. Youtube serves up user created mini-movies. Wikipedia serves up definitions of people, places, things as defined by many people. Bloggers have served up everything from news to opinions to obscure hobbies and much more. Self-publication in terms of providing electronic reading content is trivial. There is a button at the bottom of this Blogger window that says "Publish Post". Obviously I've hit that by now, or you wouldn't be reading these words on my little blog.

Self-publishing has been encroaching into the book publishing world as well. Many authors, frustrated with the process of trying to get agents to represent them to publishing houses and possessing a lot of self-promotional enthusiasm and skills, have published small runs of their own work and sold them to book stores. A small percentage of these self-published authors have garnered enough attention that a publisher decided it wasn't so risky to take them on and publish their work in larger runs. Which seems like a win-win situation. The book publishing business isn't particularly lucrative in the average book's life. Obviously, at the Harry Potter level of bookselling, there's a lot more money. But that's more of a dream realized every once in a while rather than the norm. Agents and publishers wade through thousands of manuscripts searching for the next Harry Potter and are unwilling to risk publishing and advertising costs to something that will sell only hundreds of copies. Which makes the chances of getting published seem miniscule. Authors who have taken on the cost of that initial small publication and advertising and have proven successful enough to gain a wider audience represents less of a risk for the publisher.

Common wisdom among author wannabes is that self-publication doesn't get authors street cred. "You're not a real author until someone else has judged your work and deemed it worthy of publication." But recently, I talked to a fellow Nanowrimo writer who had attended a writer's conference. She told me that there were some agents at the conference who expressed the opinion that self-publication may be a legitimate future for the book publishing industry. So perhaps this common wisdom is softening and turning around.

Which brings me back to Amazon and their Kindle adjunct system, the Digital Text Platform where anyone with an email address and SSN can publish their work to be bought on the Kindle. They don't charge you for publishing, but they need a bank account to deposit your earnings into. I plan on looking into this system more closely if/when I have work that I feel would warrant digital publication. Perhaps even multiple things that would warrant publication. After all, if a reader likes an author, they tend to want to read more things by that author. At least I do. Judging by my content producing pace (glacial), it might be good for me to have a couple things ready in that happy event people actually like my novel/writing to want to read more.

Regardless of what format my reading takes, I know I'll still hopelessly be addicted to it in the future, even if I write my own stories in order to read something!

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