Yesterday, if you weren’t aware, is Mother’s Day. As the years go by I find that my mother doesn’t quite enjoy my hand paintings and macaroni encrusted picture frames as much as she had when I was five. Nowadays I simply opt for her favorite candies, which are so much her favorite that it has become almost mandatory with whatever else I intend to get. This candy has become so prevalent in holidays that I almost consider it a tax, an ‘Andrew’ tax if you will, that I’ll be paying for years to come due to the hassle of raising me.
Now just to be clear I wasn’t a terrible child, I was simply difficult. Anyone who knew me at my younger stages in life knew that I had little regard for authority, a wild penchant for trouble-making and the curiousity of rabid chipmunks. I would do things like rip apart VCRs, push over large pieces of furniture, and stare at the sun. The fact that I am still standing here today is a testament to the sheer amount of work that it took to keep me chugging along all these years. Much later in life after my ego had deflated from several Earth-masses to the large moon it is today I realized that I had my parents ( and more specifically my mother ) to thank in all this. We’ll never quite see eye-to-eye but it’d be silly to expect otherwise.
Family Gatherings
Mother’s Day is a grand occassion in my family. We’ll hold a brunch/lunch of some sort at home or at some fancy restaurant and recount stories of yore. The stories are always funny and the food is always in ample supply and quite delicious. Unfortunately, the conversation always comes back to me because I’m such an easy target. I’m the oldest of the pool of kids that make up my cousins and quite frankly I have a much more interesting life than those glue eating brats ( just kidding, they’re all wonderful kids and are all past that stage in life ).
Yesterday’s gathering was a little more fun because it would be the first time anyone would really know outside of my parents and sister that I’m working towards my doctorate degree. This is mainly because my parents don’t really like announcing news that hasn’t been set in stone, fossilized, and then dug back up out of the ground. I have no clue why, I just deal with it and start recounting what I’ve been doing the past year. Roughly translated from memory, here’s how it went:
Me: Yeah it’s been fun so far. I’ve been working crazy hard, there’s this cool —
Grandma: Isn’t so-and-so’s daughter doing a Ph.D?
Grandpa: Yes that’s right! And she’s around Andrew’s age isn’t she?
Uncle( who I might add, always does this to me ): You’re single aren’t you? You should go and say hi.
Me: Uhh, yeah. I mean I’m still taking applications, it’s a long process. Loooot’s of paperwork
Grandma: I could introduce you, she’s a nice girl.
Aunt: Are you sure, I mean isn’t so-and-so’s daughter better looking?
Me: Wait, no, what? Well I mean, if you think so.
Grandpa: No we’re joking, no girls for you until you graduate.
This has been happening at every family gathering recently. Working towards a doctorate degree is big news in my family, since no one really has anything close. I like to think I’m inspiring my younger cousins towards greatness. This is before they start throwing rocks at me and chasing me around the house. Then I pretend I’m godzilla and they’re little twigs or buildings and start pushing them around.
It’s been about three weeks(?) since the Yahoo! Hack U event at UCSD and about several months too long since I’ve sat down to pursue one of my more enjoyable hobbies ( writing about myself ). So I’m going to ease back into this writing thing by talking about the Yahoo! Hack Day and all the fun involved in the hack, the demo and finally the win
The Team
Before anything else, let me introduce the wonderful team I worked with during those glorious 24 hours. They had to put up with my insanity and delirium and that was before the sleep deprivation began to take hold.
David and I had won last year’s Hack U, and were considered by many ( okay, maybe just me ) to be the team to beat. The pressure ever mounting, we needed a hack that would crush the competition.
Leilani was the idea person, she had originally came up with the idea for the hack and provided a flow of ideas throughout the process.
Lynn worked with us before in previous school-related projects and since she meshed well with the way we worked, was a very nice addition to the team.
The Hack
So what is a hack exactly? Well it’s anything really. A website, a nifty hardware prototype, whatever you want. It’s an idea that is hacked together in a relatively short period of time to demonstrate it’s value or simply for fun. Yahoo! specifically mentioned that we were allowed to do either a hardware or software hack this year, possibly in the hopes of bolstering more participation from other disciplines.
So naturally I thought, “Let’s do both.”
The Idea
The idea was provided my friend and team member Leilani. She originally proposed the idea as a project for a course she had taken in the past and when I heard about it, I was immediately hooked. It’s simple, yet incredibly useful.
How many times have you been anywhere except in front of your fridge and wondered what exactly was in that cavernous white box? Numerous times I’d guess, especially when you’re at the market, or wondering what’s for dinner, or simply curious about when exactly the greenish chunky looking thing on the bottom shelf begin it’s stay there. Why bother making grocery lists when your fridge could tell you what it needs? No need to keep track of expiration dates or forget about foodstuff left in the back the fridge. The possibilities were endless! Ideas started to flow and the team worked together to flesh out the details of what could possibly be accomplished in a mere 24 hours.
We settled on a two part hack involving hardware inside a fridge collecting data and an iPhone application to display the data in a cool, user-friendly way. We had four team members, so ideally two could work on the hardware side and the other two could work on the application with plans to connect them through a server that kept track of all the data collected.
Pieces of the Puzzle
Keeping in mind that we had only 24 hours to complete a fully functional hack that not only worked well but looked snazzy, we needed to use frameworks and parts that would allow us to create a prototype quickly.
Hardware-wise, we settled on using an Arduino, coupled with a WiFly board for wireless communication, and force sensitive resistors to detect and measure the weight of items inside the fridge.
Software-wise, our server was written in python and to create an iPhone application we opted to use a mobile site that was skinned to resemble a native application using jQTouch. Our decision to create a webapp was due to the fact that only I had any previous experience with iPhone development and HTML + CSS + Javascript happens to be simpler to quickly prototype in my opinion.
I thought about writing in detail how everything was put together and how everything worked, but as I started outlining different parts I came to the conclusion that that would best be left for another post. There are simply so many different things working in conjunction that it would make this post dreadfully long. With that in mind, I will try to give a very brief overview of how it all works. The sensors are placed on the shelves in the fridge and as items are taken and placed on the shelf, it will be able to detect this and make note of it. This information is sent over wifi to our server where it is time-stamped and stored into a database. Finally, when a user opens up our application this data is queried and displayed in a snazzy interface. Pretty insane if you think about it. Most hacks in the competition are only one of these parts, while we had the bright idea of doing all three. There were many points of failure and a problem with any of those parts would ruin the entire hack.
The Demo
We had managed to borrow a mini-fridge to use in the demo and the setup was finished before hand. As we wheeled the mini-fridge into the demo room, all eyes were on us.
Here’s a summary of the questions that were asked of us as we made our way to our seats to await our time slot.
“What the hell do you have a fridge for?”
“Is there beer?”
Eventually, after much wait and observing other hacks, it was our turn. The demo started off a little flaky due to the very fickle nature of the WiFly board in conjunction with a weak wifi signal in the demo room. I manned the iPhone emulator that was being projected onto a screen and the rest of the team either walked through the process of adding more food into the fridge or explained the various intricacies of our hack. We also handed out our iPhones to the judges so that they could play around with the application for themselves. In all honestly we were a little flustered and quite tired from being awake for 24 hours so our demo did go quite as smoothly as I would have liked, but we managed to show off most of our features in the 5 minutes or so that we had for the demo.
The Win
As the judges scurried off and deliberated, there was a sort of electricity in the air. Tensions rose, people went around congratulating each other on the great hacks that were demoed, and others sat quietly waiting for the verdict. One of our team members left for another engagement and the rest of us talked to others, snacked on some food, or just sort of passed out in a chair due to exhaustion.
The cacophony of discussions, congratulations, and general hubbub suddenly ceased. The judges shuffled out from their place of deliberation pushing everyone to the edge of their seat. 3rd place was announced and cheers erupted from the group. 2nd place, even louder cheers. The team was getting a little antsy and I discussed how first place was probably some other team with my team members just as they announced our group. “Dude ( and dudettes ) we did it!!!!”, high-fives all around! I took a bottle of champagne, opened it and poured out glasses for people as we walked up to the stage. Since our demo didn’t go as smooth as I had wanted, this win came out of nowhere; a complete and utter surprise. A fantastic one of course, but still I was shocked.
Next time, I’ll provide a more technical discussion about the inner workings of our hack. There’ll be some code, some funny diagrams, and some insight into the difficult of creating a two-part hack.
A Quick Update
Some nice news coverage of the event ( with some mentions of the us and other winners )
It's Saturday and I'm bored after several non-stop hours of working on my projects and come to think of it, a tad bit hungry. Why not take a break I say to myself, do something a little fun? Live a little! That's why I'm sitting here, writing a long overdue blog post and catching up on shows through Netflix. Nothing screams lively Saturday night like 30 Rock and a glass of wine. So now for dinner.
Me: Let's make a pizza.
Myself: You're mad. Why not just order one? It's much faster and we're getting hungry!
I: Well we can also go grab a frozen one from the market, it won't be as quick but probably healthier.
Me: No forget that, we're making one from scratch. It'll be fun. Besides, we have all the ingredients.
I: That'd take forever! Why the hell would we want to do that?
Myself: Good lord man, he's two branches short of a tree. And so that's how I decided to make a pizza from scratch.
Pictures!
Here we'll start off with some pictures of the dough in action. If you imagine dramatic music playing in the background, these shots become simply that much better.
Being the lazy schmuck I am, ( or busy bee, depending on how you look at things ) I haven't had the chance to post the rest of my pictures for Italy.
So now with time winding down before my trip back to the states, I've been able to go through some of my photos and pick a couple I really liked. Sadly no funny stories or anecdotes this time ( but honestly, who reads those right? ), so pictures, pictures and more pictures!
I decided to do a quick burst of posts ( approximately one per day over the next week! ) inbetween what has turned into novels rather than actual posts for my other various adventures in Europe. Essentially, this is just to satiate any hunger you may have for more news of my adventures and, of course, my misadventures =]. But enough yapping and lets get ready to enjoy some of my favorites photos during a weeklong escapade into the fantastic nation of Italy.
Today we have the beautiful city of Verona! A small world heritage site nestled in the delightfully sunny, yet not too warm, northern Italy. Most famously known for fostering the original feud that later turned into the Shakespearean play Romeo and Juliet.
Here we are, where it all happened! Juliet stood right there! Romeo stood right where I am! The thrill of being in the exact spot where the beginnings of a horrible tragedy blossomed! Unfortunately, Juliet's house is quite the tourist spot and is covered in graffiti left by various lovebirds. As you can see in the second picture... some graffiti are much funnier than others such as the ones paying tribute to the likes of the Jonas Brothers and Justin Beiber.
"What about Romeo's house?", you say
Sadly, for those interested in seeing both Romeo and Juliet's abodes, Romeo's house is currently a privately owned residence. Sad I know, I could barely keep the tears back myself. But Verona really takes their fame with stride; All around the city you see various plaques here and there containing quotes from the play in both Italian and English. Their small streets, tasty bakeries, and beautiful surroundings make for a wonderfully quaint atmosphere.
And now we're off to see the other sites around Verona. First up is this nice photo I took within a small church near Juliet's house. It was terribly dark, and the only thing illuminating the room were these candles. For some reason I really like how it came out so I added it to this mix for kicks.
Next up is a tribute to Dante, the famous Italian poet and a beautifully ornate organ in another church.
Last of the pictures in this part is an old roman theatre that's still being used today! It's part of a museum that has lots of trinkets and statues from around Verona. I believe the museum itself was part of the theatre and lies right next to a hill. Walking up the museum you'll be able to reach the top of the hill and from there take in the great view of Verona. Also a great chance to rest, because the walk up is pretty vicious.
Nothing like kicking back and enjoying an italian opera I always say.
"But Andrew", you say, "you never say that.
"I know", I'd reply, "But you know the saying... when in Rome do as the Romans do"
"You're in northern Italy, you're nowhere close to Rome", you'd say clearly getting frustrated.
"All roads lead there anyhow", I shrug humming to myself and skipping towards the nearest road.
"You're not even making sense!", throwing your hands up and simply accepting the fact that I can generally be a dork.
Antics aside, the highlight of my trip to Verona was watching the opera Aida in an ancient colosseum-esque site known as the Verona Arena. Absolutely, positively awesome. If I ever head back to Verona ( and mark my words I will ) I'll definitely need to invest in better seats. I mean I've had my fair share of bad angles, but to watch an entire opera from the side is... well it's just plain lame. Still, the experience was amazing and afterwards we headed out to a nearby bar and had a couple drinks while watching the occasional opera singer or other member of the cast come out of the Arena. Fantastic night, and certainly one my favorite locations in Europe thus far. The atmosphere, the food, the people, all superb.
Phew. Alright, let's cut this one short so that I can work on the next day. Next up is Milan! Expect lots of epic photos from the top of the Duomo =].
It’s taken me forever to write and upload this update. So I hope you enjoy it!
It’s been a rather eventful week here in Liechtenstein. Practically in the span of a day or two I must have traversed the entire country several times. Now before you scoff and point out that Liechtenstein is more or less the size of your living room, I must point out that:
You have a very large living room, and
These little trips are incredibly tiring as most of the time is spent waiting for buses, waiting for people to stamp/finish paperwork, or just simply waiting.
However at the end of it all, I’ve got some fantastic pictures to show you guys and a couple amusing anecdotes.
Since it’s such a small country, the general modes of transportation usually amount to the following:
Walking
Biking
Taking the bus or
Driving an expensive German car.
Walking
Walking is generally enjoyable. Plenty of beautiful sights to see and the weather is amiable enough that you can stay outside without any worry. That is until the large pollen gangs start roughing you up. I’ve never had trouble with pollen or any other allergens, but they are 100x worse here for some reason. They run free in the streets and fields like wild animals with no disregard for your well being. Large swaths just come by and reduce you to sneezy, coughy tears. Luckily as time goes by it gets better. The pollen gangs move on to other targets and you can freely walk the streets again.
Biking
I haven’t tried this myself, but biking is definitely the easiest way to navigate the small streets. There happens to be plenty of bike paths up and down the countless hills and mountains which can only lead me to assume that biking around Liechtenstein would be quite the aesthetically pleasing experience. Signs like these, however, deter me a little bit when I see them.
“That third one looks like bikes allowed. Well that’s great!”, I say to no one in particular, “Wait a minute what’s that fourth one… Wheelies only? Only one wheel on the ground at a time? I don’t understand.”
It certainly can’t mean dangerous path, I mean it’s just a straight, flat dirt road next to a creek and a field. But then again, if this really is a wheelie-only sort of path, I wouldn’t want to make a fool of myself.
“Hah! Look at that boy”, a Liechtensteinian would say, “He’s riding a bicycle with both his wheels on the ground. What a laugh!”
“Do try not to stare”, another would caution, “He’s probably very sensitive about his… incapacities.”
I decided at that point that it wasn’t worth the demoralization to ride a bike around these parts.
Bus
Studies have shown that bright neon green is the best color to use if you want to catch the attention of a fellow human. Liechtenstein has taken this fact and ran with it. They have bright neon green buses that travel across the nation on a regular interval. Perfect for the day-to-day commuter or tourist who wants to get around the country on a small budget. This is currently my primary mode de voyage at the moment. Occasionally there’s a double-decker bus ( which is a humorous sight to see lumbering down a small country road ) that let’s me take in the view and enjoy the surroundings.
Since the other interns and I live in the same house, we often travel on the bus together. A pack of young Americans whose knowledge of German is on par with a pet monkey. The unfortunate side effect of this is that whenever someone, and by someone I mean native Liechtensteinian, has a question they tend to go through us one by one.
“Wo bin ich?”, someone would ask. “I don’t speak German, sorry”, one of us would say.
Turning to the next intern, “Wo bin ich?”. “I’m sorry. I don’t speak German”, the other would say.
“What luck…”, they’re probably thinking, “I live in one of the smallest and isolated countries in the world and I run into two English speaking travelers in one day!”. Turning grumpily over to me, “Wo bin ich?”.
Here are some random pictures from my phone, taken as I traveled from place to place. The first is beer made by the only brewery in Liechtenstein, which is super delicious. It’s slightly sweet, which really adds to the experience.
The second is picture taken on a quaint country road as I traveled in a double-decker bus. This thing basically towered over the rest of the street and was a fun experience.
Next on the list is a nice view of the Prince of Liechtenstein’s castle. It’s nestled beautifully on a hillside overlooking the capital city of Vaduz. This is the original castle, I believe, built way back when and surprisingly the Prince still actually lives there! Awesome possum, right? I know!
The last is a rather boring picture of the border to Austria. Although interesting fact: You can go from Switzerland to Austria, taking a single bus, in less than an hour!
Sprechen Sie Englisch?
After a week or so, I’ve begun to learn some German. My limited vocabulary along with some frantic arm waving has served me well so far. Sometimes sitting on the bus or standing on the street there will be someone who mistakes me for a native and begins to ask me things in German. This usually ends in horrible disappointment on their part and a slightly awkward shrug of regret on my part.
Worse is when I’m shopping for groceries and I’m not really sure about a particular item. I mean, yes, you could always ask but there’s always that slight hint of embarrassment. Rather, I simply follow someone who looks like they know what they’re doing.
“This girl obviously knows German. She immediately grabbed that bar of chocolate without even looking at the label.”, I think to myself. “Must be some sort of rocket scientist”.
Tomfoolery aside, I find this a great way to shop. Especially if you’re in an aisle completely filled with unknown goodies. I simply loiter around the aisle for a while, have someone come in and grab something they were looking for and prompty seize it from them and run away. Alternatively and most often I glance around and look at what other people are getting to receive a general understanding of what seems to be edible. Then I throw all of this aside and simply poke at things and toss whatever looks remotely interesting into my basket.
The Princess is in another Castle
Many internships I’ve been in usually have some sort of welcome dinner to make the new interns few welcome and give everyone a chance to learn more about each other in a more casual environment. In this case our casual environment is one wonderful mountain-top castle turned into restaurant.
Picture a castle on a mountain top. Now picture the old kitchen of this castle has been renovated and turned into a fine place of German cuisine. This is exactly what a mountain-top castyle turned restaurant looks like.
You have two options in terms of seating areas. One, is the inner courtyard which has a fantasic atmosphere since you’re surrounded by the old walls and buildings of the castle itself. Two, is inside the castle with a wonderful view of the Austrian city beneath you. We opted for the view of the city, which was a marvelous choice in my opinion. The sun doesn’t set until very late here, and we had a grand view of the city bustling beneath us. And once you’re tired of that view, glance around the city and you’ll see some picturesque mountains. Not sold yet? Glance inside and you’ll be greeted by rustic tables and various antiquities of some era now since long forgotten.
“Show me pictures! I want to see! I want to see!”, you say.
Now unfortunately, I don’t quite have pictures of the castle and it’s innards, since this was in fact still a very professional dinner and I can’t just up and gallavant around taking pictures while my boss and bosses' boss are discussing the very project I’ll be working on for this summer. But fortunately for you I was able to take a quick video of the surrounding area for your enjoyment before we entered the restaurant. Although unfortunately this was done with an iPhone 3GS camera, which although decent, not really that great when it comes to capturing the great view. Had I also turned around, you would have seen the sheer cliffs right beside the castle which I think add to it’s grandeur.
I finally landed in Liechtenstein around 12 hours ago. A rather quick 11
hour hop from LA to Zurich due my napping through the entirety of the flight
and then a rather adventurous trip through a foreign country’s public transit
system to get to where I am now.
I’m up at 4am Liechtenstein time because jetlag sucks. So why not do
something pseudo-productive and write a blog post, I ask myself. Ok I tell
myself, but let’s not waste too much time on this, nobody actually reads
these things.
Well then, let’s just get started. Here are some things I’ve learned and
thought about during my first ( solitary ) foray into a foreign country.
Also, If you rather just skip to the pictures at the bottom thats fine with
me =].
Swiss Airlines Rocks
First of all, the amount of space given to me in my econo-seat wasn’t that
great. In fact it was horrible. But their other wonderful features make up
for this disappointment. So we start off with a -10 points in my arbitrary rating system
Entertainment System: “Hold it right there, mister”, you say, “Every
plane has an entertainment system nowadays”. Yes but what other plane has
episodes of 30 Rock and the soon-to-be award winning movie
Toothfairy, starring the Rock? That’s right, only Swiss Airlines. (
+10 points )
Delectable Croissants: Maybe I was delirious after 11 hours or so of
restless sleep, maybe instead of water I asked for a tiny bottle of wine.
Whatever it was, it was darn tasty. Not only was it fluffy, like some sort
of fluffy cloud, but every bite was one slightly buttery, yet crispy and
wonderfully baked heaven after another. I asked for one more, but there must
be some sort of croissant rationing going on ( I’m assuming this years
croissant harvest was dreadful, and the shortage has no less caused riots ),
because the flight attendant simply said no. ( +1 million points )
In-Flight Sudoku: If you are the insatiable addict like I am, this is a plus.
Otherwise you have to sit next to someone who stares at the screen in front
of him and mumbles seemingly random numbers every so often. ( +3.14
points )
British Who Wants to be a Millionaire? is hard
I don’t know about you, but guessing the name of the Queen’s pet dog
might be common knowledge across the pond, but by golly I couldn’t answer
those sort of questions if my life depended on it! Every single question
seemed to depend on knowledge that growing up in the UK would have given me
ample time to gain, but otherwise I’m just a talking ape.
Perhaps this could be an entirely new idea for a comedy game show ( I’m
looking at you BBC ). We bring young Americans onto the show, throw
questions at them that only UKians would be able to answer in a heartbeat,
and then laugh at them when they can’t answer.
And you’d think that after a while of guessing my ratio of wrong to right
answers would head towards .25 ( 1 right answer out of 4 ), but no beans.
Ok, maybe I was a little biased and only picked answers that sounded right
after I read them aloud in my horrible British accent, but still.
It’s ok if you don’t know German
Frankly, I was slightly afraid of bouncing around the Swiss public transit
system without knowing a word of German. What if I got lost? Who would I ask
for help? Luckily, the nice people at the Zurich Airport station were able
to explain my route to me in english. Albeit, I didn’t exactly take that
same route, but I got to my final destination nonetheless. In the end,
knowing how to read maps is probably handier than anything else. If all else
failed, I thought I would I simply walk up to someone who looked like a
conductor, give him my itinerary, and grunt. Of course many people here know
English, so that wouldn’t actually happen. I would more or less start
off in English, and they more or less would tell in me in broken to good
English where I needed to go next. A smile and a danke later I’m off to my
next stop.
Pictures!!!
Well… I didn’t take out my camera until much further into my journey. Unfortunately,
it’s rather difficult to stop and take pictures while lugging around a big suitcase and
a duffel bag but I managed a couple nice shots at a train station in
Buchs. Hopefully I can get some wonderful shots today as we explore
the town and countryside a little more!
