I still enjoy photography

Portraits of two of my friends. Used my 50 mm F1.8 lens

6 pictures for you

So I've been getting into photography a lot more in the past. I love
it. It allows me to express myself *ahem BS*. No, it allows me just to
have fun. It does not express myself at all. Really, I'm not trying to
be sarcastic. It's just plain old fun. And my friend showed me how to
do macro photography two nights ago.

Oh, and I just found out I can email things to my account and it'll
post it. SO COOL!!!

Back at Olin

It's been a while since I've blogged! Sorry.

So the general happenings of nowadays:

New Classes

MIT Clean Energy Prize Competition

Flying

Other general stuff.

So classes. Here they are:

• Principles of Modern Biology - Just as it sounds. Normal biology class. It's hard, but I actually like my professor. He's a really cool guy. He tries hard to get to know the students. We have two parts to this class. On Tuesdays, I have two hours of lecture from Bram (my professor), and then three hours of lab, which is taught by Bram but more by Sadie, another professor. Sadie's not a great teacher. Really nice woman, but she doesn't understand the fact that some of us have only had a semester of biology in high school. Lab is pretty cool, but I wouldn't say I'm interested in it. We cloned something though this past lab. I'm not sure what it was. Bacteria maybe? But cool! I cloned something!!
• Electricity and Magnetism Theory - I had the option of being in the Modeling and Simulation section which would be implementing E&M Theory into simulations of cool situations. But I decided since I'm terrible at coding, and coding wouldn't help towards going for a mechanical engineering degree, and the professor in the Theory section was supposedly really cool, I switched into Theory. Every week we have a problem set due, so it's a pretty typical college class. The professor really is hilarious. She's Russian. Shhhh, but she brought in a Guiness to demonstrate an electrical effect with a can. She didn't open it, but still!
• Vector Calculus - Another standard class. Problem sets due every week or every other week. It's not too bad but it took me a while to integrate sin(pi*t) today. That was bad.
• Engineering of Distributed Systems - Same class as Mod Con last semester but just different people in the class. Same classrom. Same teachers. Although now we're doing a bit more complicated things. The lab writeups are sucky in general, but this pasts week was especially hard. Took two long nights of work, and I still only finished part of it.
• Principles of Engineering - A class which mixes electrical engineering with mechanical engineering. This is the cool class. First day of class we took apart printers/VCRs in groups and we tried to understand exactly how each thing works. There were some pretty amazing mechanisms in something as simple as a printer! We're not working with devices called PIC microprocessors, in which we write code in C and upload it to the microprocessor, and then that microprocessor will do whatever you told it to without any need for a computer connection. So for this class, there have been some pretty amazing projects that have come out of it. I'm thinking of creating an autonomous remote controlled airplane as my final project. Yup, you read that right. The sky is really the limit for this class. For past projects, go here...and I really encourage you to, there's some pretty amazing things.

http://ece.olin.edu/poe/projects.html

So those are my classes. Definitely not as great as last year, but not too bad. 5 hours of biology on Tuesdays is a killer.

So the MIT Clean Energy Prize competition is a 200K grand prize competition in which you submit just the executive summary of a business proposal. The final document is due on February 26th, so it's really crunch time right now. We've split up into two teams but we're still working together. We have two ideas, but I really can't say here on the internet what the ideas are - first of all it's a competition - second of all we might patent one of our ideas. Anyways, it's a very time consuming thing, but we're making progress on it. And if you're reading this and you've helped on it (you definitely know who you are), here's a public shout out to you. THANK YOU!!!

Flying. I've only flown two times since I got back from the break. The first flight we just did sharp turns and slow flight (flying at 60 knots, full flaps). The second flight, which was yesterday, we went out to Fitchberg airport which is a small uncontrolled airport about 10 minutes away. We did two full stop landings. On the second landing, there was a flock of bird crossing the area just before the runway. I told Maurice (my instructor) and he was like don't worry about the birds. But then as we got closer I became more aware that they were right in my flight path. In the end, all of them got out of the way, but one came probably 20 feet right in front of my propeller! And he was going in the direction of the airplane! Ahh I hate stupid animals. Nothing happened, thankfully. Anyways, it was really busy in the sky. Oh and when we were pulling out of our spot to taxi to the runway, we had to wait for a single engine taildragger being towed by a truck with a firetruck following it. Wow. Turned out that it was a brand new airplane, they forgot to pull off something or remove something before the flight, and they ended up with a low oil pressure and high oil temperature warning - aka no oil fllow. Oops. Everybody was ok though.

Anyways - here's the shibang of it all. My instructor said that next time we'll be doing touch and goes at Hanscom (once again, it gets as busy as Logan), and then the next time, if I do well, will be my first solo flight! AHH!! Exciting!

Well, besides that things have been going well. I've been really busy lately, so I should go now. Went to the ABC party last night in Man Hall. Errr - Anything But Clothes party. That was tons of fun. Pictures of my escapades at Olin are on Facebook, I don't have time to upload them to here.

Bai!!

BEEEEEEER!!!!

Last night was the Reel Big Fish concert in Worcester. It was absolutely crazy amazing. YUSSSSSS. So we left Olin at 5 pm. Drove up to Worcester, got there at 6. The line was already about 100 meters long so we decided instead of getting real dinner we just went to a cigarrette shop and got some snacks. Then we went to stand in line outside in the freezing cold. Doors opened at 7, and in the concert hall I was able to get kind of close to the front....maybe 5 or 6 people behind the fence. So first a small upcoming band called Tip the Van played and they weren't actually too bad. It was REALLY cool when one of the singers came down to the audience and put the microphone right in my face to sing, and then put it in some of my friends faces. Then with everybody pushing and shoving I was able to get to the very front (on the railing!!) in the very very middle during the middle of Tip the Van's set. Being on the railing was pretty painful. Even at Sziget, things weren't this crazy. Not just waves of being pushed against the rail, but a constant pressure from behind me pushing me into the railing. When Tip the Van finished I was happy that it was over and was hoping that the pressure would lay off, but it stayed. I also talked to the guys around me, they were all really cool people, not scary or anything like some of the people in the crowd (tons of lip piercings, real mohawks, etc).

Next band was Streetlight Manifesto. They're also a big ska band, so during that concert, the pushing got even worse. I actually thought that my ribs would break at some points....Oh the pain and the agony. But it was so much fun. One of the...long saxaphone, whatever those are called. That guy that played that instrument, he was so good! And he was able to pop his eyes really wide, it was so funny. Anyways that concert lasted of course longer than Tip the Van but still probably about 45 minutes. When that finished, I asked for the set list, and I was able to get it! I was so happyyyy!! To be honest though, that concert was good but not great, because of all the pushing and shoving and me trying to protect my ribs.

Oh and another thing. The bouncers that are in the front to pull people out who are crowdsurfing were pretty hilarious. After one of the bouncers pulled out a person from the crowd, he raised his arms in the air like a referree and yelled "TOUCHDOOOOOOOOOOWN!!!!"

Well, then it was Reel Big Fish. Their set list was AMAZING. They started off with Trendy (YES), then another FU song, and they played stuff like Good Thing and Your Guts (I Hate 'Em) and The New Version of You and yeah a lot more stuff that was awesome. Kind of towards the beginning, Aaron Barrett (lead singer/guitarist) threw his pick into the crowd but it didn't go far, so it only went to the front row area. It was kind of to my left, and uh, let's just say my baseball skills came in handy. I literally just yoinked it into the air at the very last second to catch the pick and quickly pulled it back. I couldn't believe I caught it!! Right after I caught it they played Nothin' But a Good Time and YES it was amazing. Funny things they also did were to play a bit of Enter Sandman, and in the pause during She Has a Girlfriend Now they stopped and Aaron said ok so I've been working on a sequel for a few years and I'm finally done with it. I don't know if it's good, but let me know what you think. And they played "I kissed a girl, and I liked it!" (song by Kate Perry, popular on the radio now) Bwahahahahahahaha. That was freakin hilarious. Oh, and I kept yelling out "BEEEEEER" as loud as I could in between a lot of the songs when it was quiet (it's one of their songs). And Aaron was like, NO! We don't drink beer anymore! And then after another song he was like "OK EVERYBODY. Time for the most requested song of the night. It's about a beverage, that I think we all love." And they started playing TEQUILA. Not a Reel Big Fish song, you know, the good ol' song tequila that's just a generally famous song? Yeah that was pretty funny. But then they stopped playing that after 30 seconds or so and they started playing Beer. And of course when the show ended they came out again and did an encore. I was REALLY happy because I realized they didn't play Sell Out or Take on Me! Sell Out is usually their last song, so when the played that without playing Take on Me I was kind of disappointed. But then they kept going! And for the last song they played Take on Me! It was awesome. Definitely. Definitely definitely awesome.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm BACK!

And HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody!

Welcome back to the famous blog of me! But without the famous. And possibly without the me. But the blog will always be here!

So resuming from where I left off. The week where I got my wisdom teeth pulled was a pretty terrible week. I got my teeth pulled on Monday morning. Started feeling better and was able to eat more regular foods around Friday. Of course, on Thursday, I started getting sick. So I wasn't able to eat until the following Monday! So from Sunday night to Monday night a week later, I didn't have a single normal meal. Also, the drugs that I w

as on were pretty intense. I had to first sit down and then lay down during church on Christmas because of the drugs. So all in all I was out of it for the entire week and I lost a lot of weight.

Besides that, break has been mostly uneventful. Sitting at home. I have nothing to shop for really. My family does, because they don't live in America. I don't have much else to do though...Seeing the family, seeing the friends, and that's about it. Not much to do in this area.

However, we did go up to New Hampshire to visit our famikly friends last weekend. Stayed two nights in NH. Got to see my old friend from California days. He goes to Dartmouth and I didn't think he'd be there because it was the holiday break, but I called him just in case...and he was! Because they have classes already...So that was fun. And then the next day we drove down to Boston, went to my friend's house, mommys met, then we went out for lunch, and then to the mall. Then we looked at some houses in Winchester, then we drove down to Connecticut. We stayed in Mystic for a night. Dad had business in the morning.

 And then we drove home. Fun stuff. Mystic was a bit boring but oh well. We went to this one restaurant which was really good. Restored a bit of confidence in America's ability to produce something nice. Especially food. 

I'm exhausted right now if you couldn't tell. My brother leaves for Tokyo tomorrow, and then my parents leave Saturday for Budapest. Then I'm here with my grandma until the 19th, when my roommate will hopefully pick me up and drive us back to Boston.

Goodnight.

My teeth are all gone!

Well 4 of them. I got my wisdom teeth out today. Got them out at 9 am. All I remember was the nurse telling me to bite down, and then nothing. Then I remember being comfortable with my grandma's blanket on the resting table. And then I remember walking back to the car very drunk, swaying back and forth, but i thought it was a dream. Turns out it wasn't.

Next thing I know I'm awake and there's blood all over my pillow here at my grandma's house in New Jersey. She helps me take out the gauze and it's soaked, and then I ask for the more gauze that they said they'd give. Well, they totally forgot to give her more gauze. And the cleaning syringe. So she had to drive back and get that. Anyways then I was awake, and I was in a really good mood. Well for the rest of the day it's been me waking up and falling asleep. Kind of boring. Oh well. Goodnight.

No sleep and No service

What a week it’s been. I haven’t really gone to sleep before 5 am in a long time. I’ve been enjoying myself way too much to go to sleep early. Life after the swimmer project was done has been really relaxing. On Sunday night, we went to Cape Cod. Then on Monday night, at 8:45 pm, we started a Star Wars movie marathon. We watched all six movies from Episode I to Episode VI, right in a row. We went until 11:30 am. I was the only one who actually stayed and watch all of the movies. There were other people who came a movie into it and then stayed, and people who left towards the end. There was another girl with me who stayed the entire time but she fell asleep for a few hours so I’m not sure if that counts. She says it does because she was absorbing the Star Wars in her sleep, but I’m not so sure. Anyhow, we finished at 11:30 am. So it took a total of about 15 hours. Good stuff!! At 12 pm I had our Seeing and Hearing (a class) showing of all of our documentaries which was boring, and then at 3:30 I had my expo presentation until 5. So I basically didn’t get any sleep until 7 pm the night after I should have fallen asleep, and I only slept for around two hours. I actually calculated that including naps, I slept a total of 8.5 hours in the span of a little less than 4 full days. Is that healthy? I don’t know, but it’s definitely lots of fun.

Expo presentation went pretty well. I had a poster, stood in front of it, and didn’t really talk to many people but no matter. The two faculty members I talked to liked my little spiel, especially Mark Somerville, who’s always one to point out your faults. So that was good! I talked about the swimmer project, and how that’s taught me so much. It really has. I’d say half the learning that came from this semester came from the penguin project, and that’s saying a LOT, considering I’ve learned so much.

Another thing that I got out of the swimmer project which I didn’t talk about during my Expo spiels in front of my poster was, in a way, a family. Our team is now known for being the ones that always hang out together now. Well, one member isn’t always there, but me and two other teammates are always hanging out together now, it’s really funny. But it’s awesome! Last night we went to iHop as a team. Good god I don’t know if I can ever go to an iHop again. First, we were pulling out of the parking lot, and Natalie hit her tire on the curb, and the tire just blew out immediately. So we had to change the tire in the freeeezing cold, get in Ali’s car, and finally go after like 30 minutes. We get to iHop and it’s really crowded. It was so weird, it was a Thursday night at like 2 AM! It took forever just to get our drinks, but our food came a bit faster. Then came the worst part. A guy walks past our table, and just as he gets next to our table, he pukes on the floor and keeps walking away. Great. It was really gross. I went and told the waiter and he said ok. And I went back to my table. And waited. What the hell! The waiter wasn’t coming to clean it up! I went to tell him again, he said ok. Went back to the table. He still isn’t coming! This time I was absolutely pJJJJJ off. I couldn’t believe the waiter wasn’t coming to clean it up. I went up and told basically told him

 

 “There is VOMIT on the ground, you NEED to clean it up. It’s disgusting, and I’ve told you two times already to clean it up.”

“Look, I’m busy, talk to the manager.”

“Are you kidding me? This is your restaurant, you’re all working together, you’re  an employee. YOU go talk to the manager.”

 

What an aJJ. I haven’t gotten angry late that in a while. I went and talked to the manager and he got some guys to clean it up. But wow. Yeah. Not a great iHop experience. And excuse my language, but it was that necessary.

Anyways, right now I’m on the train from Philadelphia to Lancaster. Going to visit my friend Sam from California! I’m really excited, especially since she was right next to Olin college during Thanksgiving and I didn’t realize she’d be there at the same time I’d be there as well until the night before she left (and therefore we couldn’t meet up).

Well, I’m going to watch some Simpsons I guess. w00t.

Spontaneous Roadtrip!

On Saturday night, I stayed up until about 5 am (as usual nowadays). Worked on ModCon final project, then went to a Man Hall party (fun!), then back to work on the project. But for some strange reason, I didn't wake up until 4 pm on Sunday. Luckily, we finished the project at about 10 pm, and after that, I decided that doing any more work would be unfitting for the night. On the other hand, I was a bit bored not doing anything. We started watching The Office on Hulu, when Natalie and Ali (partners for penguin project) came up and told me they were kidnapping me. They wouldn't tell me where we were going, and I was kind of scared about where we would go, but hey, I was kind of bored. So we ended up driving out, and we ended up at a Wendy's. How depressing! I was hoping for something awesome and we go to Wendy's. Well I got myself a little kids burger, and we were driving home and we were still kind of bored, so somehow we got into talking into doing a roadtrip to New Hampshire. We were about to go, but then we decided if we're going to go anywhere, we should plan it at least a little bit. So we go back to Olin and start looking at places in New Hampshire we could go to at 2 am, but nothing looked interesting. I'm not sure how we got the idea, but next thing I know we were pretty set on going to Cape Cod to watch the sun rise! And then we got two more people to come with us! Boris, and James.

So we brought blankets, warm clothes, cameras, tripods, and iPods with us, and we headed out for the two hour drive starting at 3 am. The ride down wasn't bad. We were expecting 2 hours, but at the speed that Natalie was driving we made it in about 1.5 hours. We were going to stop at an iHop, but unfortunately it wasn't a 24 hour one so it was closed. Anyways we got to Chatham (city in Cape Cod), drove around only a little bit before we found a parking place, and walked down to the beach. We found it to be quiet and peaceful and open to the public, so we brought out our equipment and blankets to the beach.

Well, at the beach, me and Bolo (my nickname for Boris) went nuts with our cameras, taking hundreds of pictures. In the end I took about 9 gigs of pictures, which is about 700 pictures. When the sun rose above the horizon, it was beautiful. Looking through my zoom lens at the sun was a surreal experience. Don't worry, I didn't look at it for too long though.

After the sun rose, we went to some small cafe/bakery for breakfast, walked around chatham a bit, and then left for Olin. The drive back was pretty uneventful, until Natalie realized a sign that said Plymouth - Next 5 exits. She was like oh that's where my ancestors are from, and that's when I realized that it was the same Plymouth that the pilgrims landed. So we woke everybody else and told them we're going to Plymouth!

We took the exit and started  driving down a road not knowing where to go. We got really lucky when we took this one right cause we came upon the museum for the settlements there...Too bad it was really expensive and there was literally nobody in the entrance/tickets area of the museum. So then we drove out onto this beach which was like a  2 mile long skinny peninsula that extended and hooked around the coast. It was so nice, and we we were really excited that it wasn't closed off or anything. I ended up going out about 1.5 miles while running on water barrier rocks which was tons of fun and actually really relaxing. We stayed in Plymouth for probably a total of two hours before we started to head home.

So that was the story. Such an amazing trip! We were all so happy to do it, despite the major lack of sleep. Some things in life are just plain worth it, and this was one of them.

Well, that's the story! School ends on Thursday, I think I'm going to visit Kristen, a friend from Budapest, and then on Friday I'm going to Philly (Lancaster, to be exact) to visit my friend Sam from California! Woohoo!

Star Wars Marathon right now! I, II, and III!

A week away from Life.

Last week, I lived a life that was not Chris Gallello's. The culprit was mainly because the swimmer project was due on Monday, and my group had a ton to do.

We had to get the forwards motion mechanism, figure out a way to link the drive motor to the actual mechanism (hard due to limited space), put it all together, make the skin, and get it working.

So I don't I don't want to estimate how many hours we spent on the penguin all together, but I will.

Monday - 4 pm - 11 pm = 7 hours

Tuesday - 4 pm - 12 am = 8 hours

Wednesday - 4 pm - 4 am = 12 hours

Thursday - 4 pm - 9 pm = 5 hours

Friday - Day off!

Saturday - 2 pm - 7 am - 14 hours

Sunday - 12 pm - 6 am - 18 hours

So that's a total of 64 hours in one week. That's longer than a standard work week.

It was mostly a blur. Honestly. I don't remember much about the week, but it definitely was a LONG week. Saturday, I have to say, was kind of satisfying. We got the main mechanism working and we started putting things all together. Stayed up till 7 am, and it started snowing. We were super excited! And then we went to iHop (I heart obese people) for breakfast.

MY GOD they serve a ton of food. I ordered pancakes with hash browns, eggs, and bacon. I was expecting it to be kind of big and was thinking "oh man I'm going to be full after this, but I'm hungry." But I got the meal, and it took up two full sized dinner plates. Ridiculous!

Anyways we got back and we ended up going to bed in the design nature studio at 9 am. We were able to fit me and a teammate on a small couch, as well as another teammate on two of those single couches put together.

We woke up to people alllllllll around us working in the studio, machines blaring, people talking. It wasn't unpleasant really, but it was just kind of funny. Well we pretty much immediately started working after the 3 amazing hours of sleep. That day we got everything put together, made a skin out of fabric (I sewed!). And then we put it in the water! And it worked! And we cheered! And YELLED! And hugged! And threw a party! Well, no party. But we were amazingly happy. So we cleaned up the room a bit and finally went to sleep at 6 am!

Woke up to everybody in the room, including our professor, at 9 am. We were all set to go, and the kids came at 10:30 am. We were at our table presenting the penguin to the students, and they seemed to like it! Then we had the demonstration, and lo and behold....The penguin doesn't work! Turns out the chain that we used for the gears got unlinked (it was a lego chain). And then a rod fell out of the truck. So he said to come back at a later time with it working. So we got it working. We put it in the water. It swam forwards for 5 seconds!

And then.....The penguin wasn't able to turn. And then...the wings stopped moving. This time the wire that connected the servo to the tail BROKE. So whatever. Our penguin didn't work in the end. But it was over!

DESIGN NATURE IS OVER!!

How amazing.

So now, I've been adjusting back to life this week. I found myself unshaven, nails long, emails not replied to, and in general out of touch with the world. But now I'm back to normal. I'm enjoying myself and doing what I want...It's a pretty amazing feeling in general.

So that was my week. Some fun, but crazy intense. Crazy, crazy, crazy intense.

Overall, it was a pretty amazing project. As hard as it was, it taught me so much. My skills with working in a group improved a lot. I learned from my mistakes. Always make a CAD model and keep it updated. Aesthetics is very important. A teacher can always be defied!

So that's that. I learned a lot. I made a new awesome friend. I was able to work with an existing one. And I got to know another guy really well! I was in Team List of Sheild of Bug Species Recorded In Korea, and we made Trevor LeRoy the Badger, a remote controlled penguin that swims in the water.

Going crazy

The penguin is making me go insane...

We have the butt working, it swings side to side and the servos are all hacked and waterproofed. The mechanism that makes it so that when the penguin eats garbage the circuitry gets cut off is also working.

But the main forwards motion has a lot of problems....Bleh. It's due Monday as well.

Ahh I have to make a 5 minute documentary by Friday and I'm just starting. It's 6 AM now though, I'm going to go to sleep.