Taipei was a whirlwind of a week: two days travel (one on either end), three days on the ground. I packed about as much into those three days as I could: visiting a college friend, eating all sorts of fried goodies, wandering neighborhoods, visiting bars & dancing ’til all hours at clubs, and, oh yeah, doing a bunch of work. It was a good time, if way too short.
As previously mentioned, I didn’t have much warning about this trip, and I’m hoping the next one (January or so?) will afford the opportunity to spend an extra couple of days traveling somewhere in Asia. Tokyo appeals, in part because I’m already flying through there, so it’s just a matter of finding a hotel for a couple of nights and exploring. But I’ve also gotten recommendations for Thailand, the Philippines, and rural China. Nice to have so many awesome options!
Before I learned about the Taiwan trip, I bought some tickets to visit friends in San Francisco over Halloween weekend. I might not have planned it that way if I’d known about the 30 hours I was going to spend on a plane the week prior, but it worked out just fine. Thanks to Laura & Alex for their amazing hospitality, and to the Make-Out Room for living up to its name.
Finally, progress again on the robot arm! I found a power supply on eBay, and should be able to get back on the task of getting the motor drivers & control code up and running. From there, I’ll integrate Matt’s inverse kinematics code and see if I can’t get the whole arm moving around.
posted November 3, 2008 – 11:58 am
Just a quick note to say I found the secure notes app I’d been looking for on the iPhone. Check out mSecure. It’s $1.99, and does exactly what I want it to do. How often can you say that about something?
posted October 16, 2008 – 9:31 am
Well, a bunch of things conspired to postpone our $7/day food challenge. Another time, I hope…
One of those things is an upcoming work trip to Taipei. I just learned I’d be going last Friday, and leave on Sunday. I’ll be in the city for all of 3 days, and have plenty to prepare for the trip, so it’s left me a little stressed. I am excited to see a new place, of course, and also to reconnect with a college friend who lives there now. Hopefully I’ll have a bit more notice next time, and will be able to schedule an extra day or two to spend seeing more of Taipei.
Although I was a little disappointed not to be playing at Regionals this past weekend, I did make the most of my new-found free time. Drew, Jeff & I hiked up to Lake Stuart, in the Central Cascades, for a fantastic overnight.
For now, pictures are up on Drew’s Flickr account. We brought one camera up between the three of us, and though I did much of the button pressing, Drew did his fair share, too, and also did all the post-processing (which looks great). I’ll probably put up a copy of the photos on PicasaWeb soon.
posted October 13, 2008 – 10:03 pm
Recently, a friend in the public health field quoted an article or report that said the average American eats for about $7 per day, and then went on to suggest we should try it for a week.
The latest data I can find is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in their 2005 Consumer Expenditures Survey Results. Table A on page 3 shows the annual expenditure on food to be $5,931 per consumer unit, with an average of 2.5 persons per consumer unit (isn’t it nice to know how the government thinks of you, Mr. or Ms. Two Fifths of a Consumer Unit). This comes to roughly $6.50 per person per day. Yikes.
I’m totally game to try this, and am already fascinated by the changes required. No coffee from the espresso stand in the morning, no going out to eat (save perhaps fast food), very little meat, and so on. I remember being frustrated to learn after reading Walden that Mrs. Emerson cooked Thoreau dinner all the time; I’ll do my best to make mine a more authentic experiment, but I’m sure there will be some inherent unfairness and inaccuracies. I’ll post my thoughts after next week.
And it doesn’t go without saying, we’re incredibly fortunate to be in a position where this is temporary, and just an experiment for us. It does seem a good time to try this, though, given the financial climate. There’s an interesting article in the New York Times today that describes how economic down times can actually give people more time to focus on slow things like cooking and paying attention to their health. One (small) silver lining, I suppose.
posted October 6, 2008 – 8:56 am
Are you registered to vote?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhDRVKDcXQo]
posted October 2, 2008 – 11:42 am
