2008 August » Karenism

First day in Alaska

Aug 302008

I’m in Alaska right now. The weather is mild and the sun doesn’t go down until 9pm. I’m with Justine on some crazy-fun adventures.

At SFO I had a veggie burger with bacon. Ya, that seems a little weird, but veggie burgers are reliably tasty. They almost always use Gardenburgers. The animal burger actually cost less than the veggie one which is very fishy. Then I noticed the additions. Ooooo jalapenos, yummmm blue cheese. I just couldn’t resist the bacon.

As soon as we got off the plane yesterday morning we went straight to the spa. Justine and I have our priorities straight. After several hours of relaxation and eating fruit, we went out to dinner at Glacial Brewhouse where we stuffed our bellies with delicious food.

My cajun crusted halibut was tender and sweet and very spicy. The snap peas where a little overcooked imo but they tasted fine. I also had a bit of Justine’s salmon and it was surprisingly good. I usually don’t like the taste of salmon but this fresh wild salmon was deeeeelish.

I also enjoyed the apple currant bread pudding. It was rich and moist and spiced with Christmas. The sauce it swam in was very sweet but I liked the rum flavor.

We were also lucky enough to be given a tour of their brewing facilities in the back.

A little tour of Glacial brewery @ Yahoo! Video

You can check out what we did today at Justine’s blog.

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The Erhu

travel, video No Responses »

Aug 252008

So there’s this old Chinese man that plays this two-stringed instrument in the bay area. I’ve seen him in Berkeley (on campus and outside bart) in downtown SF and Chinatown. It as an erhu, and when he plays it sounds like cats being skinned alive. When I was in New York in may I was lucky enough to hear some music from the erhu (along with another instrument I’m not familiar with). It was quite lovely. Here’s a shaky short video of the musicians. It was very pretty, and such a vast difference from the old Chinese man.

Musicians in the NY Subway @ Yahoo! Video

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View from the Fairmont

food, video No Responses »

Aug 222008

Here’s a little video timelapsing two hours of San Francisco from the 25th floor of the Fairmont hotel.

San Francisco city view from Fairmont Hotel @ Yahoo! Video

I love timelapse videos; I wish more cameras had that as an option. Pretty much anything sped up is more interesting. Science has proven that it is on average 42% more interesting, increasing with the fewer frames captured per hour, with the resulting video being a minimum of 10 seconds long. Take a look at this sandwich video:

Fast sandwich @ Yahoo! Video

Now imagine if it were in real time. Ya, way more boring. Imovie06 (I’ve given up on imovie 08. it’s terrible) has the ability to timelapse. You record a video and specify how many frames it takes a minute. This is much easier than recording a full video and then speeding it up.

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Women in games, who cares?

geek No Responses »

Aug 212008

I was quite amused by this article

Every few months, I am reminded that I am a woman. Not just any woman, mind you, but a woman in games
…
As a woman and, yes, a woman in games, I don’t think about my gender any more than you probably do yours, unless someone brings it to my attention.

When I was in college a professor once spoke to me about his concern about the segregation of female students in our department (I was a representative of a geek club otherwise I don’t think anyone would have talked to me…). He wanted the women to mingle more both socially and on projects and stressed the importance of equal treatment for all students because IRL the boys and girls will need to learn to deal with each other. Fortunately, it turns out that this is hardly an issue.

I’ve never had any interest in joining any Women in Tech social clubs (what’s the point? Hey, lets get together and talk about how boys are smelly…), but I’d love to join Awesomeness in Tech, if anyone wants to invite me.