Forever-Digital is a look inside the life and mind of 
Archive for September, 2007
09.30.2007 | Friday Night Dinner
I’ve learned that I love to cook to de-stress and/or procrastinate. Seeing as I have a Linear Algebra prelim tomorrow and a paper due Tuesday, I thought Friday night would be the perfect time to exercise my olympic-level procrastinating skills. I’ve also realized that, not unlike my mom, I really enjoy cooking for others. Just provide the food and I’ll cook it for you. It’s really that simple. I get to learn more about cooking, and you get a nice dinner. Really.
It was kind of rainy and chilly out, so I wanted something warm and filling. I also didn’t want to eat it all by myself. Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I sent out a message asking if anyone was hungry. I actually got responses! HA! Dinner for 5 coming right up! 
The best part is, even though it was a completely spur-of-the-moment thing, I had ALL of the necessary ingredients already. Who says college students don’t have proper kitchens?
Chicken Parm is something I’ve been trying to master since this summer. As you can see from the photo, my first attempt didn’t go very well. None of the breading stuck to the chicken! It was a mess. I’ve only tried one other time, and though it wasn’t completely unbearable, I was still having breading issues.
I figured, hey, third time’s the charm, right? Right. Off I went. Three boxes of pasta. Two packages of chicken. 32oz of sauce, an entire package of mozzarella cheese. LOTS of food.
This time, I don’t know if I was just lucky or if I finally got the hang of it, but it was REALLY good. So good that there wasn’t even a DROP a chicken left. So good that the guys were standing in line waiting to do their dishes (yeah…they did dishes!) and were STILL eating because they were determined to get to the bottom of the plate. I’m kind of proud of myself. And I’m really glad I didn’t poison anyone 
I’ve always wanted to have a dinner party. The kind where you cook a lot of food, your friends come over, you all sit around the table and hang out and just have a good ole’ time. You know, like grown-up style. The kind of thing Jamie Oliver used to do on the Naked Chef. Friday night was it. And it was awesome.
P.S. sorry Dean, couldn’t help but post that pic!
09.30.2007 | Spoiled by San Francisco
During my stay in San Francisco this summer I had the chance to go to a bunch of different festivals and street fairs that really gave me a taste for the San Francisco way of life. I spent my first full day in California at the Haight Street Fair with a bunch of interns and also went to the Fillmore Jazz Festival a bit further into my stay. I absolutely loved them. The food, the atmosphere; just spectacular.
Yesterday a bunch of friends and I went to the Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival. It was kind of disappointing because it wasn’t nearly as impressive as the San Francisco festivals, but at the same time, it made me so “homesick”! It made me realize how much I grew to love the city and how much I want to go back! Seeing as Ithaca is, in some senses, a scaled-down version of some parts of San Francisco, it really wasn’t hard to evoke memories of the summer. Even some of the smells were similar!
While I did manage to have a good time, mostly because I was in the company of friends, which wasn’t always the case this summer, I’m still trying to push the though of hopping on a plane to SFO out of my head. Last year if I were to have gone to the Apple Festival, I would have thought it was the coolest thing on Earth, but now that I’ve had a taste of what these things can really be like, I’m having a harder time appreciating the smaller-scaled versions here at school.
The good news in all of this is that I’m 100% certain of where I want to be when I finish college. I want to be in California. I want to be near San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. And most of all, I want it to be less than 1 3/4 years away.
09.26.2007 | Geek Wishlist
I often spend a lot of time “window shopping” on the web. As a certified geek, I have a pretty extensive (and expensive!) list of gadgets and toys I would like, so I thought I’d share some of it with you. These are the things I would buy if I had millions of dollars:
Apple Pro
The Apple Pro is my current holy grail of gadgets. I’ve been lusting over one since this summer when Glenn Wolsey started showing off photos of his new setup. It’s a gorgeous and powerful machine with TONS of space which would come in handy considering how many photos I take and the fact that I have all of 15GB free on my current 250GB external hard drive. I keep a spot under my desk free for the day it finally finds a home there. If only the price would drop by about $1,000.
The Specs: 500GB in HD Slot 1; 750 in HD Slot 2; Two 16x SuperDrives; Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon; 1GB (2 x 512MB); 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB; Both Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and AirPort Extreme; Apple Care
The Damage: $2,703.00
Canon 40D
I’ve come VERY close to buying this camera on more than one occasion during the past few weeks. I finally had a chance to get my hands on one in Best Buy this weekend and fell in love right then and there. I’m currently shooting with a Canon Rebel XT that is just over its 2nd birthday. While it’s a great camera, I’d like to try something a little more powerful. I think I’ve reached the point where I’m ready to move on from the “starter dSLR”. I’m still debating whether or not I want the kit lens. I guess it depends on the deal I get.
The Specs: “10.1-megapixel CMOS sensor captures enough detail for photo-quality poster-size prints; 3.0-inch LCD display with enhanced Live View and broadened color gamut; 6.5 frame-per-second continuous shooting; sRAW mode; 35-zone metering system”
The Damage: $1,299.99 or $1,499.99
Aeron chair
I’ve only had the opportunity to sit in these a couple of times, but they are SHEER HEAVEN. I learned a lot about the wonders of an ergonomic workstation this summer thanks to Yahoo!’s mandatory ergo training and have actually been following the rules even now that I’m back at school. Paul Stamatiou reviewed a similar chair at the beginning of the summer. He had lots of great things to say about it. I’m sure I would too if I were privileged enough to have one at my desk ;).
The Specs: A medium sized fully adjustable seating delight. Complete with lumbar support and a ticket to the cool club. Includes a 12-year warrantee.
The Damage: $949.00
30″ ACD or 30″ Dell LCD
My current setup includes a 21″ Acer widescreen display. Over the summer I had the luxury of working with a 27″ or so display and it was wonderful. My productivity just skyrocketed! It was great for doing design mocks and things because you could zoom and zoom and zoom and still get a decent idea of what you were looking at. My only reason for liking the Dell a bit more than the Apple is, just like with the Aeron chair, ergonomics. Since I’m rather short, my monitor tends to sit very low. Apples don’t have that adjustability standard in their displays. I could get a Vesa arm, but since I have a glass desk that wouldn’t go over very well.
The Specs: 30″ widescreen display with [adjustable||fixed] height.
The Damage: $1,274 for Dell or $1,799 for Apple
Adobe CS3
CS3 is also something I get to use almost everywhere but on my personal laptop. It’s light-years faster than CS2 on an Intel Mac which slows me down more than I’m often patient enough to handle. I’d like the entire Creative Suite as I only have Photoshop (CS2) right now and would really love to learn Illustrator and Flash. It also has a lot of added functionality for manipulating color channels in photos and things. Quite nice. It would go well with my 30″ display, my Mac Pro, AND my 49D. See how it’s an absolutely necessity?
The Specs: InDesign CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Dreamweaver CS3, Acrobat 8 Professional, Bridge CS3
The Damage: $599.95 with Apple Education Discount
A Lifetime Flickr Pro Subscription
I’m a Flickr addict. It’s that simple. This one also kind of goes hand-in-hand with the new camera. Although Flickr doesn’t actually offer lifetime subscriptions, I’m perfectly fine with having it on this list. It is a wishlist after all.
The Specs: Unlimited uploads (10MB per photo), Unlimited storage, Unlimited bandwidth, Unlimited photosets, Archiving of high-resolution original images, The ability to replace a photo, Post any of your photos in up to 60 group pools.
The Damage: $24.95 * (however many years I live)
The No-Less-Important Miscellany
new lenses (specifically a sports-geared telephoto).
The Specs: 70-200mm focal length; f/2.8 constant maximum aperture; Micro UltraSonic Motor (USM) Includes case and lens hood. The Damage: $1700.- A monopod to hold up the giant lens above. The Damage:~$45
- OS X Leopard The Damage: TBD?
- Windows Vista running on a Parallels or Fusion install. The Damage $79.95 (Parallels or Fusion) + $329.00 (Vista Ultimate)
Not taking into account any taxes or shipping and assuming I live to be about 80, that puts the grand total of my wishlist at $12,201.89. Not nearly as bad as I expected! Hopefully I didn’t miss anything! What does your wishlist include?
09.18.2007 | School is Definitely Back in Session
It wasn’t until recently that I remembered back in high school where the general concensus was that junior year was, by far, the most difficult. Turns out, the same applies for college, too.
I’m not taking as many courses as I normally do and I’ve even made a conscious effort to cut back on my extracurriculars, but for some reason, the work is just piling up like never before! Granted, this semester, unlike past semesters, I’m taking more “read and discuss” classes than lectures or project-based courses, but still…I really didn’t see this coming!
After dropping a course because I knew it would be too much to juggle this semester, I’m left with 4:
INFO415 - Environmental Interventions
INFO440 - Advanced Human-Computer Interaction Design
INFO515 - Culture, Law, and Politics of the Internet
MATH231 - Linear Algebra.
Doesn’t seem too bad, right? Well, aside from the fact that 3/4 of my classes are 400-level or above, all we ever do is READ! I still haven’t figured out a system that allows me to do ALL of my readings for a given class every single week. It’s just not possible unless I decided to convert to being a hermit or something! I don’t spend my weekends partying. So where is all of the time going? Or the better question is - where is all of this work coming from?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m actually enjoying some of the classes some of the time. They’re not ALL bad. It could just be sleep deprivation setting in or the cold weather combined with a cold that everyone on campus seems to have (thanks Phil…argh), but I’m just not a happy camper right now.
On the positive side of things, everything outside of class has been absolutely spectacular. I really love my apartment and our giant TV. I’m enjoying spending time with my friends and my clubs. TAing Intro to Web Design is a challenge, but a good one. Photo for the Sun has been great - I’ll be promoted to Senior Photographer by the end of the week. And I’ve managed to keep in touch with a lot of people I met over the summer at the same time. The career fair last week proved to be more fruitful than I had anticipated and I landed an interview the next day for a Program Manager position at a tech company. We’ll see how that goes.
So now I’m off to 415. I just finished my bibliography for a paper we have due the first week in October. Then the ISSA meeting and home promptly thereafter to commence my post-Monday/Tuesday insanity nap. It’s the highlight of my week.
Until next time…
09.07.2007 | One iPod Touch, Please!
When Apple announced they would be having an iPod-related media event, I have to say, I wasn’t all that excited. I’ve mentioned in the past, a few times, that I’m not a huge fan of iPods and their antisocial ways, but when I returned to my room on the afternoon of Sept. 5 to see exactly what Apple announced, I couldn’t have been more excited.
I’d been a bit skeptical about the iPhone since it came out this summer. I had the chance to get my hands on a few of them over the course of the summer (working in a world of geeks can do that) and while I was impressed with the interface, I couldn’t seem to wrap my head around the need for such a tricked out phone. It’s just a phone! I’d convinced myself that I wouldn’t get one until at least the 2nd generation. I’m SO glad I waited now - that price cut was crazy!
Despite the price cut, however, I still decided to go for the 16GB Touch. Why, you ask? I mean, it IS the same price as the iPhone and the iPhone has a phone in it too! Well, I have a phone that I’m perfectly satisfied with. And I love that it has tactile feedback while you’re typing. I can’t see myself typing all that quickly on an iPhone.
I also realized that I rarely carry around my iPod currently. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I even know where it is at the moment. The only times I really use the iPod (after I bought my external harddrive 2 years ago, that is) is when I’m on long trips or I know I’ll be somewhere for a long period of time and have a high likelihood of getting bored. I need background noise. Since that’s the case, the best option would be to go for the device with the most amount of storage. Score one more point for iPod Touch.
The final deciding factor for me was the idea that this new iPod will probably last me at least 2 years (unless, of course, it has a similar fate to my 3rd gen iPod that lived only for a year). My Blackberry will also probably last me 2 years. This brings me to the end of college. Perfect. By the time I’m due for a new phone and a new iPod, I’ll be out (hopefully!) in sunny California gearing up for my life as a full-fledged adult, with a salary and all. Sounds like as good a time for an iPhone as any! PLUS, by then, my other rule for the iPhone, the rule that I’m going to wait until it’s at least 20GB, will certainly be realized and I’ll be fully prepared to use the non-tactile interface because the of all of my typing on the Touch.
So that’s that. My mom ordered the Touch for me for my 21st birthday. Some kids want beer. Lots and lots of beer. Me? One iPod Touch, please!