The Shameless Plug

Hello All,

It's Gwyn here. And after a loooong time away from the Bard of Lincoln I am back, but for very selfish reasons.

As most of you know, I am an artist.... doesn't that statement just reek of pretension? Blah... Anyway, it's true. I have had a bit of time off in-between jobs and thought this would be the perfect time to work on some art and set up a place where I can show it off! I present: PaperSlip! PaperSlip is my etsy shop where you can look, purchase, or even commission work.

What's Etsy? Etsy is an online commerce shop that focuses on vintage, handmade, or craft supply products (thank you wiki). You can find anything on Etsy, from beautiful furnature, to jewelry, to pottery, to whatever this is...

and now you can find my stuff too.

There are cards and collages ready now, but eventually there may be some of my other digital work up to purchase as well.

I love to hear feedback so shoot me a message and I will get back to you ASAP. I already have had a request for wedding cards so those will be in the process this next week!

Okay well thats all for me- I will write again soon... and next time it wont be a shameless plug about me but something fun that Scott and I did!

Awesome Site

I suggest everyone go check out this site: The Genre Labyrinth

If you like music, you will like this. Put in your favorite genre and explore. Be sure to have your sound turned on.

Strawberry Shortcake Cake Shortcake

Last week was Marissa's birthday, and she requested a cake with strawberries involved. I didn't really want to make sweet rolls and do shortcake, as that seems too easy. Also it is hard to serve that at work. It is also hard to make in to a big letter M! So I did some looking around and found this recipe that based this cake on. Thanks Ree.

Strawberry Shortcake Cake Shortcake

prep time: 2 hours
cook time: 2 hours
serves: 15-20 depending on if Marissa is eating half of it or not.

Cake:
These are for one single cake. See notes below.
1 1/2 cup Flour
3 Tablespoons Cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 cup Unsalted Butter (soft)
1 1/2 cup sugar
3 Eggs
1/2 cup Sour Cream
1 teaspoon Vanilla

----------------------------------------------------------

Whole Shebang:
2 Cakes

Topping:
1+ pound of Strawberries (as fresh as you can get, this means frozen is ok...)
A few handfuls of sugar

Icing:
1 cup Unsalted Butter (soft)
1 1/2 pound Powdered Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1/2 pound Cream Cheese (soft)

So I made two of these cakes in a 9 x 13 inch pyrex dish, giving me two 3/4 inch thick cake. You can use this recipe in a smaller pan, and then slice the cake in half if you would rather. But to be clear, the above ingredient list is for one single cake. I made two cakes, in two different runs, but if you have a large enough blender, you could just double the recipe.

Preheat to: 350 degrees

To start out making a cake, cream the butter and the sugar until well mixed, creamed you might say. Then add the eggs one at a time, mixing well each time. Once thoroughly mixed add sour cream and vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix remaining dry ingredients. Slowly add dry mix in to wet mix. Blend until well incorporated.

Grease the heck out of your cake pan. I used a pyrex dish, but you could use traditional cake pans, or other interments. If you are worried about sticking, you can throw down some parchment paper. Pour the batter in to the pan. Evenly spread out the batter, this is not as liquid-y as most cake batters, and it needs to be evened out.

Throw it in the oven for 40-50 minutes. This cake is going to brown and get crispy on the outside. It is ok if it is brown. Don't go for black, but a healthy brown color is great. Remove the cake from the oven let cool for a little bit, and remove to rack to continue cooling.

While your cake is baking you can prepare your strawberries and filling. Wash the berries, remove the stems, cut in to quarter pieces. Put the berries in to a large bowl. Add a handful of sugar, toss the berries around for a bit. Let this sit. As it sits the cut berries will let out some juice, this will then mix with the sugar making a nice syrup. After a little mash up the berries with a fork or potato masher. You need to break the berry down a but, not puree it. Add another handful of sugar. Let this sit for some more time. When I say sit, I mean 20-50 minutes, you want them to let off as much water as you can.

In a mixer cream together the cream cheese, butter and vanilla. Once well mixed add some powdered sugar, not all of it though. Mix well. If the frosting is to liquidy, add some more sugar. If the frosting is too thick add some milk. Whenever you add anything make sure to mix everything really well. It is easy to go too far in one direction. Once you get the right consistency, put the frosting in the fridge.

By this point everything should be done, and cool. Transfer one cake to your serving tray. Poke a bunch of holes in the cake with a fork, this will aid in getting the strawberry juice soaked in to the cake. If you are cutting a cake in half, just make sure to have the raw cake side up. Spoon out half of the strawberries, with syrup on to the cake. Spread out evenly. Apply a decent layer of frosting. Just enough to cover the berries.

Part way through construction.

Add the second cake, and repeat with poking the top with a fork, adding strawberries, and a layer of frosting. This time be careful as this will be the final covering. Continue to frost around the edges. You are looking to cover, and encase the berries in the frosting, but it is ok to have some poking out.

You are now ready to enjoy!

I was going to cut this one in to an M, but it was about 10:30PM when I got the top layer done. With frosting running low and patience thin, I just finished the side frosting and called it good. This meant that there was plenty of extra cake.

It was really well received. Marissa loved it, all of my coworkers said it was the best thing I have made yet. Dang... I can't use box cake mixes anymore....

I forgot to take a picture before other people got to it.

To the Right Coast (don't worry, not the correct one)

Last Wednesday I hopped in a plane and left my beloved Spokane. It was hard to leave, but like my Father said 'Life is an adventure, this is just a new chapter.' The week before I had been packing everything. It is very different to pack for your car than it is to pack for a moving company. Everything had to go in boxes, everything had to be wrapped... The moving people showed up, things went well. And I packed for Pittsburgh.

Once in The Burgh, I got to enjoy some of my favorites including Pierogie Night with Gwyn, Sam, and Andrew, Pamela's with Skanda, ChurchBrew Works with Mrs. B. Jones, Mrs. Rohrer and Gwyn, and then Burgertory with Jeff, Bri, Sam, Andrew and Gwyn. I spent most of the day Thursday collecting information for my security clearance, I needed some files on my computer that was packed away, so that got lugged out. That evening we did some co-pilot training for Gwyn, she previously did not know how to drive manual, now she does. And she is great at it. Friday was spent packing up my car. I really wish Chelsea or my mom were there, they are great packers... It is the 'Georgia Hogle' packing gene. Every single nook and cranny filled, every space utilized. It was packed... and really full. I had to leave a few non essentials at Gwyn's house.

Hey! We have seen this picture before!

Saturday, my copilot and I took off on our vast journey east. First stop: Starbucks. Then to the open road! The road out of Pittsburgh was awesome! It was hilly and windy and great! It reminded me of driving to Leavenworth from the Tri. All the more reason that driving in western PA is like flying a spaceship, or riding a roller coaster. It would have been a lot more enjoyable if I didn't have all the weight in the back... :( just meas ill have to go back! The sound track for the trip was an audio book for 'World War Z' a great book that Andrew told me about, and I had finished the printed book on the plane ride to PGH, but Gwyn had not read it. I love the story, and the presentation it is great!

Driving was good. No problems, fun drive, lots to look at. It was overcast and lightly dusting snow (nothing accumulating). We hit our first destination after 5 hours of driving: Scranton! If you don't know the significance of Scranton, this means you don't watch The Office. Scranton is the location of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper company! I have been to the actual set of The Office in Hollywood with Chris and Cassie, but now I was in the town! And it was great! Gwyn and I both freaked out a little... then realized that the town is really tired and run down. It could just be that we drove through the tired part, we were only there for 15 mins... but got the iconic Office picture:

Watch the opening credits some time...

  From Scranton it was a short hop in to New York. The very first time I have ever been to NY! Sometime I should actually go to the city...

 Anyway, our hosts for the evening were none other than the great Mr. and Mrs. Evans and their lovely family! For those of you not up to snuff on Hogle clan lore, my Grandfather was transferred to Poughkeepsie while working for IBM. They lived there for 3-4 years (I never remember) around 1970 (+/- 4 years) and next to the Evan's. There have been plenty of stories from here, such as the monstrous driveway that would ice over in the winter, my grandmother's first experience driving in the winter, the legendary papier-mache Halloween costumes, summer nights in the screened in porch, and many other classics. For those of you who keep up to date with my blog, last summer Karen and her three nieces came to Pittsburgh for a concert and was the first time I had any contact with the family besides Christmas cards and e-mail. (you can read about that here). This time I got to meet the rest of the family! Karen's own kids, Maggie, Timothy, Kyle and their lovely dog Tanner. I also got to meet Lynn! the other daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Evans. We had a lot of fun sharing stories and laughing. Gwyn and I got to play around with the kids, they are all great! and so smart! I got to see some pictures of my family, including some of my Great Grandfather sitting in the house where we were. Mrs. Evans made us a wonderful dinner complete with 'Aunt Georgia's Oven Fried Rice.' A recipe that has been associated with my grandmother for a while, but she does not have any recollection of it.

The next morning Mr. Evans took Gwyn and I on a covert tour of my mom's old house. It was covert in the sense that the people who had been living there (since my Grandparents lived there) recently moved out. We managed to get in and took a little tour! It was so cool putting a place to all of the stories I have heard over the years. If your name does not end in a -ary, -onna, -erb, or -eorgia these will not really mean all that much, but here are a few pictures:

Yep... that is monster of a drive way.

I think this is my Aunts old room!

Me and Mr Evans. As he said, I am the 4th generation to stand there.

I want a screened in porch!

After feeling a little criminal, Gwyn and I set off for the State of Massachusetts. On the way we hit Connecticut, yet another state I had not been too (well I guess when we were over here as a family we might have taken the train through... oh well.)

I know you all know this, but New England States are small... we made it through Connecticut fairly quickly, and made it to MA!

ITS A TURKEY!

Shortly after crossing in to Mass. there was a little incident. I was in the right lane of a 4 lane wide road, on the far left shoulder there was a large predator bird. A hawk or small eagle. He was looking in to something... possibly a dead animal, I don't know as I didn't really get a good look. But he was startled by something, and took off. Directly to where my car was going to be in 1.2 seconds. I saw him jet out across the first two lanes, which at that point someone in the car, I don't remember who yelled out 'BIRD!' There is an image frozen in my mind right before I blinked of a very frighted bird with its wings fully spread reacting to my car being there... I blinked, there was a very loud thud and a large smear from the center of my windshield to the top passenger corner. I have no idea what happened to the bird after that. We hope that it landed softly on the grassy shoulder of the road and picked itself back up again. After the adrenaline stopped pumping we stopped for lunch and inspected the damage. I was really worried there was going to be a bird stuck on my bike.... but no, there was just a giant mark to show for it.

We eventually made it to the suite. MIT put me in a suite instead of a hotel while I am waiting for my furniture, this means I get a small kitchen! Gwyn and I ordered some pizza and watched the super bowl! Neither of us were really all that interested, Gwyn was cheering for New England, I didn't really care. But we did make it!

Coming up: Moving in!

A Day of Sport (Baseball and Jousting)

Two weeks ago I got an email from Jessica to the effect of:

      "Do you want to go to the Pittsburgh Renaissance Fair?"

My response was:

      "HECK YES I DO!"

So this past Saturday was the day. I was stoked. There was a little problem getting there (Gwyn's car broke down on the way to the meeting point) but eventually all of us got there.

I have never been to an event like this, I didn't really know what to expect. Part of me was worried that it was going to be hokey, that there would be minimum wage paid teenagers standing in plywood huts, trying to not be bored. Upon walking in to the gates, I was amazed. This place was magical. There was not a single plywood anything, all of the buildings were solidly made to look like period pieces. Every single person who appeared to be working was dressed in full gear, and sporting an accent to match their character. It was amazing! There were random musicians walking around playing tunes, there were vendors walking around, there were people heckling passer buys to buy something or play a game (there were a number of mid-evil games, like axe throwing, and archery...).

One of the things that I rapidly realized was that only 1/4 of the people dressed up were working. Most of the people who were in non-normal clothes were guests. And there were some great looking people! Yes, the time period did shift a lot, there were pirates (both realistic looking ones, and women wearing 'mature' Halloween costumes), Kings and Queens, scots in kilts, guys in leaseholder, ladies in dirndl, and lots and lots of corsets (lets just say that is both a great thing and a horrible thing). I had no idea it would be such an event! I don't really know why I had that misconception, but it was great to watch everyone, and look at the detail in some people's clothes.

So events for the day:

I killed a dragon!

She (and by she, I mean Gwyn) was so happy!

All I needed was some Mead to wash it down with.

New favorite picture of Gwyn.

The Royal Processional

A Joust!

Fire Breathing!

Other things included looking through all of the shops (Gwyn had to try on a corset, she looked great) (I wanted a sword... but I resisted), watching a few performers, glass blowing demonstration and ended the day with a little 'Cast In Bronze':

Crazy Awesome.

This guy was playing a carillon, a rather large piano type instrument, but with bells instead of strings. It was amazing to watch, and hear. This guy is really good at what he does. If you want to check out more, Cast in Bronze.

On our way out... Great Day!

But wait! There is more!

Here is Pittsburgh, there is a change of feeling when the Steelers start playing (which they have for those of you who don't follow the NFL). Unfortunately, part of this change is that the Buccos end their season. But the ECE-Grad organization was able to secure $10 Pirates tickets  for one of the last home games of the season. So after packing up at the Ren Faire, Gwyn and I headed to PNC park for a relaxing night of baseball. I really do love baseball, and I really do enjoy the Pirates (sorry Mariners!). I now own 4 Pirates shirts, so I guess that makes me a fan (or it just means they give out a lot of shirts (EDIT 9/29/2011, as pointed out by my mother, shirts is spelled with a 'r')).

I am sooooo excited! LETS GO BUCS!

I have learned. At a Steelers even you bring your terrible towel, but at a Pirates game you bring your Pirate Flag. Good thing I already had one of those... But in games past, I just had the flag, and no pole to wave it on. So this time I brought a pole with me. With the help of a borrowed swiffer handle, I had my flag. And I used it as much as I could with out pissing off the people behind me.

Raise The Jolly Roger!

It was a great evening, the Pirates beat the Reds.

Sunday was relaxing, and enjoyable. SPYS (the youthgroup at Shadyside) went to Highland park after church to hang out. It was very fun to play around with the students. We eventually started a giant game of tag on the play structure (it is like the one in CDA, the giant wooden castle looking thing). All fun and games until one of the students broke his fall with his face. But he did pop back up and kept running around.

Later in the day, I helped Gwyn take out her AC unit in her room (this required a lot of moving stuff around) and enjoyed a lovely outside meal with her family and some family friends.

Monday and yesterday were full of robot business. Lots and lots of it. The labs are always due on Tuesday, which means Monday and Tuesday morning are full of testing. But we got it in, and it worked great! Now just on to MEMS work:

This one is going up on the fridge when I am done.

Na nu nu nu nu nu nu nu BATMAN!

I don't know why it has taken me this long to write about this... but I was inspired as I drove past the Mellon Institute yesterday... were it had apparently 'snowed' the day before.

So 'Magnus Rex' (aka The Dark Night Rises) is the third and final film in Christopher Nolan's re-imagination of the Batman story. Turns out a large part of the filming is happening here in Pittsburgh. I knew about this when about 2 months ago they had open casting calls for Pittsburgh locals to be businessmen, lawyers, police men, sports fans (yeah, Pittsburghers do that well)... ect. I would have totally shown up, but the majority of filming is taking place next week and the week after. Sadly I will not be in town.

Like I mentioned before, they are currently filming at the Mellon Institute, where you might see scenes like this:

Yep... it is definitely snowing in Pittsburgh... in 87 degree heat and 75% humidity

For those of you who don't know the geography of Pittsburgh, the Mellon Institute is on 5th Avenue, about 2 blocks away from the CMU campus, and right next to the Cathedral of Learning. Speaking of the CoL, outside, on Bigelow Blvd, taking up an entire block are all of the trailers and storage and whatnot for the movie. So basically the Batmobile is parked out front of the Cathedral of Learning. So stinking cool!

There have been many sightings of actors and heroes, Gotham City Police Cars, The iconic Batmobile and motorcycle. Check out this link. In general the city is getting really excited (as they should be.) Supposedly you can see this downtown at night (I have not seen it yet, but I am going to try before I leave):

Possibly the coolest thing that is going to happen will be this Saturday. Check out this link first. Basically there is going to be a scene taking place at a "Gotham Rogues" football game (aka Steelers). They are inviting as many people as they can get to come down and be part of the filming... I really wish I could be there.

The blog Boring Pittsburgh is so far the go to source for Batman stuff, if you want to read more, I suggest you check it out..

My Goodness I like Food

I know this is not going to be a surprise, but I am declaring right now: I really enjoy food. There are so many good things about it that makes me happy. Food is an excuse to hang out with friends. It is the ultimate conversation medium. Most of the time it is super good.

Anyway... all of this is inspired by my realization that I can link to my UrbanSpoon account. If you don't know what UrbanSpoon is, I suggest you check it out. It is a great way to find restaurants. You can either sort via 'Like' or 'Don't Like' or your can look at major publications reviews or you can look at user reviews. It is a great site, well laid out, so on and so forth. Yes, there are different sections, there is one for Pittsburgh and Spokane. Don't worry.

A while ago (I guess June) I decided to start becoming an active member of the site. Actually signing up and filling out reviews. I just noticed that I can link to my page, and you all can see where I am eating and what I like. I am only assuming that you would want to do this, it really is not all that exciting, unless you can actually join me (which you all can if you are in Spokane in a few weeks!). So here it is. I will also link to it over on the right hand side, under the '7 Seas of the Internet' section, so you can get to it easy in the future.

Hey! and if you get an account we can follow each other!

I present to you: The Maple Long John

During the summer my lunch time options have revolved around simple sandwiches. 2 or 3 slices of meat (most of the time seasoned turkey), 1 or 2 slices of cheese (Colby Jack!), some mustard, on a piece of bread broken in half to form the two sides. This has been working great, honestly it has been working for the last year. Inspired by Brian at LM, I went out and got a sandwich Tupperware. It is exactly what you think it is. It is a plastic container in the shape of a piece of bread. Brian pointed out that you waste a lot of money and trash on plastic sandwich bags. I got my sandwich holder for about a dollar or two at Walmart.

Ok, I am digressing from my story. Most of the time I use Larry's bread, seeing as I only use 4 or 5 slices of bread every week. And Larry normally buys a bag every week, and only uses half of it. At one point we had 3 half loves of bread in our kitchen. This has become the one single thing that I eat of Larry's, everything else is separate. But for whatever reason he has stopped buying bread. So on Tuesday I realized that I had used the last piece of decent bread. Then I forgot to stop by the store... and I found myself Wednesday morning breadless. So I packed my lunch meat, cheese and mustard in to my bag and headed off to work. I stopped by a Giant Eagle in Greensburg to pick up the bread I needed.

I realized while I was there that this was the very first time I had been in a Giant Eagle before noon. Ever. And I walked past the bakery section, and out of curiosity I had to stop and look at the Donut options....

Their so called "Maple Long John"

... And there it was. The closest thing to a Maple Bar I have seen outside of the west coast. On the donut rack there was a prominent display of Chocolate Long Johns, and 4 or 5 'maple' ones underneath. For the sake of science I had to get one.

For those of you who think this is a silly thing to be posting about, it is not. This is amazing. This cultural distinction of the Pacific Northwest fascinates me. Even more than how people get their panties in a wad about Pop or Soda (we called it both... or as Chelsea taught me 'bolth'), Even more than 5 Guys vs In-n-Out. Even more than Creek and Creek (it is creek, not crick). This anomaly gets me. I became aware of this when I was describing Donut Parade to Bill in college. I was telling him that Russ, one of his friends and I polished off a dozen super fresh Maple Bars. For you people in Spokane, if you have not been here, you should make it a point sometime soon, it as amazing. Back to the story, Bill looked at me funny and said: "What is a Maple Bar?" This question seemed so out of place. That was like asking what is a snickers bar? Or what is a Banana Split? Maple Bars are ubiquitous in Spokane. I would argue that 1/3 of Donut sales in Spokane are Maple Bars. Bill really had no idea of what I was talking about. Through an amusing discussion for both of us, we determined that in Kansas City, a donut most similar to a Maple Bar was a Long John. It was distinctly different in that Long Johns have Chocolate Frosting, and are often filled with cream. When I told him that what he was describing would be called a Chocolate Maple bar in Spokane, and that it would never be filled, he laughed at me. Eventually Bill did go to Donut Parade with his parents (who had never had a maple bar before either) and it became a family tradition from then on out: whenever Bill's parents were in town they would all go to Donut Parade.

So this factoid subsided. I just assumed that Kansas City was weird. But then one day, 3 years later at Lockheed, Jordan and I were talking about Spudnuts a local donut shop in Richland, when Mike over heard us talking about how good their Maple Bars were. Mike, a Michigan native, asked what a Maple bar was, and honestly thought we were pulling his leg. At that point I did a little research, aka a Wikipedia search, and found out that Maple Bars are unique to the Pacific Northwest. Yes, Yes, they have flooded in to California, but they just copy everything we do anyway.... This blew my mind. I had no idea that we were so special! I don't know how the rest of the US lives with themselves without the glorious Maple Bar. It is always great when describing what a Maple Bar is to someone to let them know that they can be served with Chili according to the Spokane School lunch system for the past 50 years.

Note: If you search for Maple Bars on Wikipedia now, you will get a very short 2 line page saying they are a donut. It used to have a lot more information about the Maple Bar, including a reference to Voodoo Donut in Portland, but since the WikiNazis have cleansed the page of anything interesting.

Oh! And as for the actual donut that I ate yesterday. It was fine. It was a little weird that it had filling inside of it. This kind of over powered the maple taste. Thinking back, I don't really remember eating that many donuts... I would say once a month or so I would end up eating one. Like at coffee after church, or vendors would bring them to LM when trying to sell us something.... But I did not expect that I would miss a Maple Bar as much as I did. It was a good substitute, but nothing can beat Donut Parade's Maple Bars. The rest of the world does not know what they are missing.

Tuesday Top Five: T-Shirt Designs

Thanks to my mother again, this weeks Tuesday Top Five will be covering my favorite shirt designs that I have made. Possibly next week, Ill do my favorite shirts... You all know how much I love my shirts.

"Scott's Top 5 Favorite T-Shirt Creations"

1) I Support James Bronder and His Cause. (47 shirts)

What started out as a joke, lead to one of the most iconic images of the graduating class of 2009 from the Gonzaga School of Engineering. While standing around one day, James made a self-defacing comment to the affect of: "Fine, why don't you all go around wearing shirts that say: 'I support James and his cause.' " So we did. It started as a joke among the 6 of us (Alana, Jamie, Dannica, Bill, Jake and myself), but then Jamie asked if we should tell the other engineers about it. To which I said 'Heck Yes!' So All in all 47 of us got shirts with James' image emblazoned on the back. We all wore them on the same day. He never saw it coming. From our senior year, there have been a number of 'I still Support James Bronder and His Cause' photo albums on face book, mostly supported by Jason (on of James' old roommates). The best is when wearing this shirt, and you are around James, and someone asks you about it. That is the best.

2) Hogle Clan, Christmas 2010 (12 shirts)

I guess due to secrecy, I never did talk about this around Christmas time. While doing my Christmas shopping, I headed down to CommonWealth Press, possibly my single favorite, non food business local to PGH. When I was there, I was standing around waiting for a shirt to be printed (yep, if you want a shirt, and they are out of stock, they will just print it, right there for you...) and Chris, one of the guys in charge of the shop started talking to be about a shirt design. Well I hung around for a while and talked with him about the whole process, from Photoshop to Screen burning to washing to the actual printing. It was one of the coolest unplanned events of December. Anyway, Chris made the comment that they live on word of mouth and custom orders... that got me thinking.... hhhmmmm... I like shirts. I like designing shirts... I should talk to Grandma about this. So Gummi and I planned and schemed and came up with an idea as a gift for the whole family. So this design was born. There is something for everyone of the Hogle-Tomlinson-Griffith clan in this crest, everyone is represented at least once. Even Cassie and Caleb. I really do like how it turned out, and I think there may have to be more in the future.

3) CJM Recycle Shirt (20-30 shirts.... I don't know)

I was 'commissioned' to make this shirt by Grandma or Gramps, I don't really remember, but we were looking for a design for the California Junior Miss (CJM) production shirts. The theme was 'Going Green' or something like that, so we wanted a good recycle image... and being production we had to include Earl! It should be noted that my design was hijacked by Gramps. The actual print of the shirt also includes a 'SG' on the bumper of the truck, something about giving credit where credit is due... I don't know what he was talking about.  

4) Twohy Hall (40-60 Sweatshirts)

This was my first mass produced shirt design. There was a little competition to see who could come up with the best design for our hall Freshman year. Alex (my roommate) and I brainstormed and based off of one of my Flogging Molly shirts, that was based off of a Guinness logo, I came up with this. Jake did the signature for me. I ended up winning... but I don't really think anyone else tried, so that is not really all that impressive. What is interesting to me is that the administration either didn't care, or didn't notice that there was a blatant alcohol reference.

5) GU Whitewater Club

I don't know if this was ever made in to a shirt, but it could have been. I made this freshman year as well as the above Twohy Hall shirt. Alex, my roommate, was setting up the newly created Gonzaga Whitewater Club. He asked if I could make a logo for him. This was my first jump in to the 'crest' idea (one that I really like.... but need to develop a little). I am not really overly attached to this, but I was impressed with how it turned out, a little surprising for me. I don't know if it was ever made in to a shirt, but it was used by Alex a lot for the Club.

Come back next week, same time, for more top 5 picks from yours truly. If you want to contribute, let me know what top 5 things you want to know!

Hot, Hot Heat (And some new places...)

You may remember Jimmy McMillan from last fall. I saw this picture online last week, and could not help but laughing:

Amen.

Yes, Pittsburgh is part of the many cities on the East Coast that is affected by this ridiculous heat wave. More things to note about this: Sweaty Walls. Gross. Sticky Furniture. Gross Gross.

If you are a Honda Civic driver (Jamie!) you may have received a notice that there is a recall on the air bags in Honda Civics from 2001-2008 (or something like that). I received one of these notices, and took my car in to the service shop on Friday. When I dropped it off, the car was not in 100% tip-top shape. The Maintenance light was one (I have a feeling that the oil change people did something to it). The front, passenger head light was out. And the Mini Spaceship was dirty. I told the guy there, that I knew about the head light, and that he should not worry about it, and I told him about the maintenance light and asked if he could look at it. I also asked about how long it would take. He told me 2-4 hours. So I headed out for breakfast (more about that later). I was then walking to a coffee place to hang out, when I got a call from them. My car was done. And it was only 45 minutes after I walked out of the shop. Nice! Then when I got back to the shop, he told me that the air bag was good to go, the light was nothing to worry about and reset, and that the head light was replaced. This last point I rolled my eyes ( not actually, but in my head), as I had expected they would try to do this, and had attempted to clarify that I didn't want them to do it. The mechanic then told me that it would be $20, and that he knew that I asked them not to fix it, and if it was a problem, that he would take it off my bill. Turns out headlights for my car run around $15-$20 and the headlight assembly on the passenger's side requires you to take the battery out to replace it. So it was a deal for me in the end. They also washed my car. I was highly impressed, and rather happy as I went about my friday.

So this weekend was a great weekend for new food for me. It started with Friday morning brunch/breakfast while waiting for the car. I walked down to Ritter's Diner, a dinner noted by Pittsburghers for being an always open, greasy, sketch place, that was well worth visiting. And turns out all of the above were correct. Well, it was not that sketchy... but it was really solid diner food. I enjoyed a mushroom Omelet. It was a great way to start a Friday.

That night, the YadGrad group went to Presbyterian Night At PNC park! I was kind of expecting it to be a bigger deal than it was, there was not really any acknowledgement at all... but it was still a lot of fun. I finally brought my Jolly Roger to a game. Next time I am bringing a stick to tie it to, as to aid in waving it. Our seats were in the outfield box, all the way in the back. It was perfect. We were out of the rain (which it did the whole game), but we still had a good view, and the food was right behind us. Chicken Nachos are becoming my favorite baseball food. To rally for support, as we were entering the 9th inning, and behind by two, they played this (paraphrased) clip from Pirates of the Caribbean:



Man, what an epic way to enter the end of a game. The crowd went nuts. It was great. And then we lost. So no amount of Keira Knightley and epic overture will save a baseball game But it was still a lot of fun. And I got a free shirt!

Saturday, in the food realm, I had dinner with Jackie at La Feria an amazing Peruvian restaurant. I think it was my first 'Peruvian' experience, I don't really know... but it was great! I would certainly go there again. I had some Pollo dish, a pile of homemade cheese (resembled cottage cheese, but not as lumpy) with a super tasty grilled chicken breast, covered in a pesto-like sauce with rice and house salad (which was amazing). All of it was very good. And the company was wonderful as well.

Then after church on Sunday, Gwyn, Jackie and myself went to Pittsburgh Deli Company, a sandwich shop in Shadyside (aka where I will be living in a month or so). Jackie called it the land of $8 sandwiches. Basically all of their menu items are $8. And what I had (a jerk chicken pannini) was amazing. I am certainly going back there with Skanda to finally break him in to Reuben land.

We also happened to break in Gwyn's new Carcassone... she got the newer 10th anniversary edition (like the one my parents have). It was a great afternoon, lots of laughing. Lots of Sandwiches. Lots of Diet Pepsi.

Other than that, I have been working hard on the Bohnanza game. Yesterday I think I finished the Host/Client game set up negotiation. I am now a socket master, and have started to work on my SwingWorker.doInBackground skills. All of it is going well, and I am learning a ton!

Targeted just for people like me

I was looking for a good chicken/pasta recipe today, and I came across this:

Cooking For Engineers

I am a particular fan of the diagrams and work flow charts at the bottom of the recipes.

Tie greatness

If anyone needs to get me a gift, or a gift for a guy, or a gift for a trendy girl, I point you in this direction: Ties that Don't Suck

I give you some of my favorites:

(none of these are mine... but I would wear them!)

Computational Photography Assignment #1

This is not nearly as exciting as the other project I posted. This is just a homework assignment; but, again I had to create a webpage.

Not much to enjoy, but here it is.

Computational Photography - Project 1

Well, it is here: September 7th, 2010 11:55 PM. I just submitted my very first CMU project.

I would suggest everyone go to the newly created web page showing it off. As a word of warring, I have not had a chance to size the images properly, to some pages take forever.... i mean forever.... to load. Sorry, Ill try to get that fixed inside of the week.

EDIT (9/9/10): So now it is also hosted on the schools web space. The proper link is here. 

You can get to it here. Currently it is hosted on dropbox. Hopefully tomorrow I will change that link to go to the cs.cmu.edu location where it should be located, but I am having troubles getting access to the right space.

The project was a ton of fun, and you can see that it turned out well. If you have any questions, let me know!

Mind-Blowing Idea #1 - Fourier Transform ++

Ok, time to push up your glasses and pull out your TI-89s. It is Enginerd time. I am guessing that most of you will not take much out of this; however, this is for the more technically minded.

Computer Engineers and Electrical Engineers should remember this, and I am sure James already knows this, but this guy Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier in 1822 proposed that every function, continuous of discontinuous, could be represented by a series of sine functions, or varying amplitudes and phases. This in its self is ridiculous and mind numbing, but we learned this all in Nelson's Signals and Systems class. That is not what this is about. If you need to refresh, go to the Wikipedia page, and here. Boiling it down, you can "transform" something from the "x," or space, domain to the "w" domain, or frequency domain.

So here is where my jaw dropped. I was in lecture for Computational Photography, and the professor was going over different ways to filter an image. He was talking about Gaussian filters, step filters, media filters... ok, they are fairly unique, bit all fairly intuitive. Then he starts talking about Fourier, I was a little apprehensive about him bringing up something that I briefly learned from Nelson, I was slightly worried that I was going to need to know how to do a transform sitting there in class. Most Picture files in essence are a large array of data points, each one corresponding to a given pixel. This would be analogous to the space domain, each value maps to each pixel. Some crazy genius decided that he was going to apply the same idea of a Fourier series on a image. Now, instead of each data point corresponding to a pixel, each data point corresponds to a sinusoidal image. The center data point would correspond to a 'flat' signal. The the horizontal axis would be a series of sinusoidal images oriented left to right. The vertical images would be a series of sinusoidal images oriented top to bottom. Each step away from the center increasing in frequency. The 'in between' data points correspond to sinusoidal images oriented in off angles and varying frequencies.

From Efros (CMU) and Seitz

 So starting with this image:

Applying a Fourier transform we get this:

Looks like a star!

To note, I shrunk the image a but as to weed out some noise, and I darkened the output to show the highlights. So first thing to notice. Very strong vertical and horizontal lines, this would be because the camera outputs images in a grid system, so there are a ton of "up and down" "Side to side" patterns. Then the center is much more populated than the outskirts, this would "low" frequency things, things that we can easily see, the whole image capturing process weeds out things that we will not notice, and discards them. Now the amazing part, notice the lines that are converging at the center. They end up representing the major "perspective" lines of the image, like the sides of the road, the light rays from the sun, the horizon.

This is a reversible process, as in if I were to perform an inverse transform I could return back to the original image. I am going to change it a bit first. I am going to take and zero out the middle of the image, there by cutting out any "low frequecies" and leaving just the "high ones." These are going to be the ones with the radical changes, or the edges:

Now I am going to do the exact opposite, and take out the "high frequencies," and I am going to get an image without any clear definition:

I only just learned about this process, I don't fully understand how to use it, or how to perfect it. I will let you all know when that comes up, I am sure it will!

I can see how this might be a very poor explanation of this process, and I also recognize that it is really late, and my mine is like that last picture, fuzzy. So let me know if you have any questions, or want more examples!

"The more you know..."

I did steal that first image from my professor's slides,  Alexei Efros 2010

Dad and Me

After driving over with me, my father was able to stay for 5 days. And because it was both of our first times in Pittsburgh, we did a lot of exploring! We used my very thoughtful gift from Holly, a tourist book of Pittsburgh!

Dad, Admiring the CMU campus

Day one (Tuesday): Mostly spent unpacking my stuff and getting supplies for the room. At some point we made it over to CMU for the first time. Of course we had no idea where we were going... so we just wondered. We were able to find a campus map, and we were able to find the many engineering buildings, not that it was very helpful, because there was not much to see in them. But it was a very fun self guided tour of the campus. That evening we decided to go find some Mexican food in a city that was very far away from Mexico (or the Tri Cities). We ended up going to a place called Mad Mex, a place that labeled themselves as "West Cost Mexican." It was interesting. Fairly far from La Fama. It was a good place, but not very Mexican. My enchiladas had zucchini in them, tasty, but not what I was looking for. After a nice meal we decided to give a self guided driving tour of the town. We had no destination, and we had no real direction. It was very pleasant, until I had to cut the drive short because of a full bladder.

Inside the bathroom at MadMex

Dad and I outside my new home away from home.

He should be more worried...

Day Two (Wednesday): Father and I got up at a very reasonable hour and headed over to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which is located right next to CMU. It was quite the place, highlights included a wonderful and huge exhibit on Gems, the famous Carnegie Dinosaurs, and vivid and dramatic dioramas of wildlife. I would highly suggest it to any person visiting Pittsburgh. This is a side story, but it is important: As we were driving on Monday, my academic advisor e-mailed me and asked if we could meet on Tuesday. Well I did not get my computer set up in time to see it, so I missed the meeting, he then sent another request to meet on Wednesday. (I will go more in to this fiasco later) Because of awkward communication mix-up, I was not sure if he was going to still want to meet at that time, but I wanted to err on the side of him being there. So I left Dad in the museum to go find this professor's office on campus. I was able to find the office, however he was not there (which was fine, I actually expected this). So I wandered around the building for a bit (the Gates Center, it is HUGE!). An older PhD student in the computer science department approached me and pointed me in the direction of their (I say "their" because I am in ECE not Computer Science) graduate coordinator. She was able to give me a lot of information that I was wondering about, and sent me off to get my student ID card. After getting a horrible picture taken (it was hot out side... I am all sweaty) I decided I was done dealing with school and headed back to the car. We had parked in Schenley Park where there was a farmers market assembling themselves. Now from what I remember in the Northwest all of the Farmers Markets started fairly early in the morning. Apparently here they all start in the middle of the afternoon, weird... I was able to get some corn and a cucumber for dinner that evening, and I met back up with dad, who apparently had a wonderful time continuing to explore without me. We headed back home for a great meal prepared by Larry. He made his Kabobs, with corn and green beans. It was wonderful. After dinner, Dad and I played an intense game of Carcassonne, which he won by 2 points!

 Day Three (Thursday): This was a great day for exploring Pittsburgh. After I dealt with school drama, we headed to the famous Primanti Bro's Sandwich shop. I enjoyed a Pitts burgher Cheese steak (their 2nd most popular item, after beer) and dad had a Pastrami sandwich. The unique feature of these sandwiches is their size and unusual inclusion of coleslaw and French fries inside of the sandwich. To my discomfort they use peperoncinis somewhere in the sandwich, something that my body decided it did not like, and I suffered through a little allergic reaction, with itchy

spots popping up all over my upper half. After I recovered we headed over to the famous Duquesne Incline (yes, just for Chelsea, a funicular). Amusingly we drove up the mountain to the top of it, instead of to the bottom and riding it to the top, we were a little confused as to the directions. At the top station there is a great museum of Pittsburgh and how it has grown over the years. Outside there is an amazing over look of the city, this is also certainly a must see for visitors. We took lots of pictures. From here we headed to the area known, I think, as the north shore. That evening at 7 ish we were going to be attending a Pirates game, but we got there around 3, so we wondered the downtown area where we happened to be. We admired some architecture, and some bridges (because of the numerous rivers this city has a bunch of bridges). We made it to the confluence of the Monongahela and the Allegheny rivers, and took a plethora of pictures just for Gramps. This moseying was all very fun and enjoyable, we took in a lot of that area. This whole time we had been walking around PNC Park (where the Pirates play) which made it easy to get to the game. First, it is a great, new, modern ball park. It is very well laid out, and very comfortable. Second, Dad got us great seats. We were about 15 rows up from the field, and almost directly behind home plate. The right field of the park opens up to a view of the downtown area just over the river, great sights! The Pirates however are not the best team, and ended up losing, but it was still a great evening.

Look! The Confluence!

 

Day Four (Friday): I had orientation (I will post about that later). Dad however had a great time. I am not 100% sure where he went, but I know that he made it to what is called the Strip District (don't worry mom it is not the risqué type of area). I was told stories of a great History museum and really interesting foreign shops. 5:45 ish he made it back to CMU to pick me up. We went back home and found Larry and took him to Friday night pizza at Vincent's Pizza Park. It reminded me of a shadier 5 mile heights pizza, with great pizza! It was a very good last night, very relaxing, good company.

Look at the Pizza!

Day Five (Saturday): Sadly at 4:45 in the morning I had to drive Dad to the airport, bringing a close to our awesome trip.

Hey! Look! More Pictures!