I just finished reading the last book in the Narnia series. This is the first time I've ever read the books and I must say that I was blown away by them. The stories include some of the most beautiful and haunting imagry I've read in a long time. What I found really interesting is that C.S. Lewis has essentially created a primer of Christianity for children which reads like an epic. I'm really glad I decided to read it now, because all the allegories, morality tales, and and symbolism is a lot more clear to me than if I had read it as a child. Harry Potter, with each tome in the series, doesn't even begin to compare to the power in these slim novels.
Lewis is extremely opinionated about several things in the stories. While he includes Fauns, Saytrs, and the pagan Greek god of wine Disonyous within the "good" kingdom of Narnia (The Christian Realm), the neighbors of Calormene (very clearly Islamic Arabs) with thier god, Tash, are most definately excluded and described as a most unsophisiticated, barbaric, scheming, ignoble, and warlike people. The Greek pagans are in, and the followers of Tash (Allah) are out.
Most of the stories however, focus on the key themes of faith, redemption, and the mind-boggling benevelent power of Aslan, the Great Lion (God and Christ). Lewis has created a new kind of Christian iconography though these stories, much more accessable and personable than the ones in the old and new Testiment. The Lion imagry is phenomenal. Aslan sings the world into existance, can move through time and space, heal all wounds, and defeat any foe. He opens gateways to other worlds, and lives in a country beyond the edge of the world. There is never any rejection of those who repent or redeem themselves, but only for those who refuse to see. Lewis never uses the words "Heaven" "Christ" or "God", but does goes on to say quietly that Aslan goes by another name in our world, and at the end of the world, all worlds link together.
I highly recommend re-reading or reading this series. Most of the books took me 1-3 days to read, so its pretty quick reading. Finding copies at the library is the tricky part. The people at Hayden Library are rolling their eyes at me at this point since I've been requesting the entire series from ASU's cirriculum stacks.
The weekend! Time to get down to work. Too much stuff to get done. It's almost ten, and I need to get on to studio.
Oct 15, 2005
Oct 12, 2005
"Pungently Optimistic Green"
Today was an improvement over yesterday. First thing I called the pizza place; they had my card. So I biked down and picked it up. In studio, we listend to a lecture on good library design and asked questions to an ASU professor who also has a practice.
We also got our laundry list of things we need to have two weeks from next monday. Our library project, phase I, is due on Halloween. Phase II of the same project will take the rest of the semeseter. Cemeteries last year, libraries this year. I'm not complaining though. Library over a cemetary any day. Anyway, its a ton of work and they're finally turning us loose. Our studio teacher though was commenting on how the moment of greatest insight into what your project is about and what it needs to be occurs at the moment of least resources, right before you present your project.
I thought this was interesting and plotted it like a quantiy-price economic graph, with time instead of price. Insight became the supply line and Resources fit the demand curve. At the beginning of a project, you have literally all your resources in front of you including time, but generally no idea or insight into your project. Halfway, I suppose, you reach a peak efficiancy zone where you have equal insight and resources. The end, unfortunatly, is the reverse of the beginning, where you have neither time nor resources for your high insight.
Anyway, tons of work ahead. I'm not even quite sure where to begin, besides a simple floor plan which will get me to a model. Then I can start reacting more to the site.
I realized yesterday that Will Bruder was going to be giving a lecture tonight at 6 PM, the time I start work. I asked a few poeple if they wanted to cover for me, but found no takers. So I came to work as usual, beating myself up for not having the foresight to check the date Bruder was going to come in and speak so I could find a replacement.
For those non-architecture people out there, Will Bruder is THE architect in Phoenix, and is establishing himself on a national and international level. A lecture by him on architecture is comparable to a lecture on international affairs by Henry Kissenger.
Our library supervisor who was absolutely worn out from a hectic time of being four people during the busiest time its ever been, went home surprisingly early at 6:15. There is almost always two students working nights, and I knew the person I was working with wouldn't mind if I slipped out for a bit. I found myself in a bit of a moral dillemia.
This was the one lecture out of the entire year I didn't want to miss. Should I have missed it as a punishment and reminder to keep all my dates straight and plan better? The student I work with almost every time takes off for fifteen to fourty-five minutes to get something to eat. However, the lecture would probably be an hour or more. As anyone proactive enough in architecture to be at the library after school would be at the lecture, there wasn't going to be a lot of work to do. And, in this case, work refers to shelving books, something I could do when I got back. On the other hand, no matter how one colors it, it is deceit. My supervisor expects me to be at work, and is paying me for my time. Granted, she herself is bending the rules and paying me for two hours on thursdays when I only work for an hour and a half, out of gratitude for my flexibility on previous dates. When I took this job, I recognized that this was for supplementary income and that school comes before everything else. I only work 15 hours a week, and I get homework done while I'm working. The library staff consider me an incredible asset and every evening, my supervisor thanks me for repairing the damage done to the library during the day.
I looked at my priorities. The moral infringement I incur by violating my responsibility to my job, (though it's just sitting at the desk), did not outweigh the responsibility to myself to gain the widest and best architectural education possible.
So I went to the lecture, and I'm content with my decision.
The lecture was packed. They had it in the huge lecture hall downstairs and there was stading room only in the back. Even the side asiles were full. I missed the first ten-fifteen minutes of it, where he talked about his background and introduced the first building. Jen went to the lecture to take notes for me and actually offered to take my place at the desk so I could go see it. She also thought the lecture was amazing.
It was a great lecture. Will talked about a few of his projects here in the valley, what was built, what inspired him, how he worked. It was funny because a few of buildings I recognized from traveling around, and in fact, when Jen and I stumbled upon his new downtown scottsdale apartments I stopped the car and we both started talking about it excitedly, not knowing who had built it. It had a striking lime green accents to counterbalance perforated rust panels, and this color caused a dispute with the city of scottsdale for about two months. When Bruder went before a special planning comission to talk to them, when they asked what color they were fighting over, he blurted out "pungenly optimistic green." The board laughed and eventually Bruder was able to keep the color.
ASU is financing the construction of a Gateway center. This will put an entrance to the ASU campus and a strong direct link to Mill Avenue. Will Bruder called up his "friends in the field," the incomparable Sir Norman Foster (on par with Tadao Ando and Frank Gehry) and another architect and they designed the project togather. It was hilarious seeing Norman Foster's studio in the center of London, huge steel and glass tower loft with hundreds of employees and Will Bruder and Norman Foster working on a table with an ASU pennant behind them. The project is going to be amazing, like nothing Phoenix has ever seen before. The Gateway center combines retail, apartment housing, a hotel, the ASU visitors center, and extentions of the art museum, architecture building, college of business, and college of art. It's going to be amazing. Unfortunately, it will probably only be complete after I graduate from grad school.
We also got our laundry list of things we need to have two weeks from next monday. Our library project, phase I, is due on Halloween. Phase II of the same project will take the rest of the semeseter. Cemeteries last year, libraries this year. I'm not complaining though. Library over a cemetary any day. Anyway, its a ton of work and they're finally turning us loose. Our studio teacher though was commenting on how the moment of greatest insight into what your project is about and what it needs to be occurs at the moment of least resources, right before you present your project.
I thought this was interesting and plotted it like a quantiy-price economic graph, with time instead of price. Insight became the supply line and Resources fit the demand curve. At the beginning of a project, you have literally all your resources in front of you including time, but generally no idea or insight into your project. Halfway, I suppose, you reach a peak efficiancy zone where you have equal insight and resources. The end, unfortunatly, is the reverse of the beginning, where you have neither time nor resources for your high insight.
Anyway, tons of work ahead. I'm not even quite sure where to begin, besides a simple floor plan which will get me to a model. Then I can start reacting more to the site.
I realized yesterday that Will Bruder was going to be giving a lecture tonight at 6 PM, the time I start work. I asked a few poeple if they wanted to cover for me, but found no takers. So I came to work as usual, beating myself up for not having the foresight to check the date Bruder was going to come in and speak so I could find a replacement.
For those non-architecture people out there, Will Bruder is THE architect in Phoenix, and is establishing himself on a national and international level. A lecture by him on architecture is comparable to a lecture on international affairs by Henry Kissenger.
Our library supervisor who was absolutely worn out from a hectic time of being four people during the busiest time its ever been, went home surprisingly early at 6:15. There is almost always two students working nights, and I knew the person I was working with wouldn't mind if I slipped out for a bit. I found myself in a bit of a moral dillemia.
This was the one lecture out of the entire year I didn't want to miss. Should I have missed it as a punishment and reminder to keep all my dates straight and plan better? The student I work with almost every time takes off for fifteen to fourty-five minutes to get something to eat. However, the lecture would probably be an hour or more. As anyone proactive enough in architecture to be at the library after school would be at the lecture, there wasn't going to be a lot of work to do. And, in this case, work refers to shelving books, something I could do when I got back. On the other hand, no matter how one colors it, it is deceit. My supervisor expects me to be at work, and is paying me for my time. Granted, she herself is bending the rules and paying me for two hours on thursdays when I only work for an hour and a half, out of gratitude for my flexibility on previous dates. When I took this job, I recognized that this was for supplementary income and that school comes before everything else. I only work 15 hours a week, and I get homework done while I'm working. The library staff consider me an incredible asset and every evening, my supervisor thanks me for repairing the damage done to the library during the day.
I looked at my priorities. The moral infringement I incur by violating my responsibility to my job, (though it's just sitting at the desk), did not outweigh the responsibility to myself to gain the widest and best architectural education possible.
So I went to the lecture, and I'm content with my decision.
The lecture was packed. They had it in the huge lecture hall downstairs and there was stading room only in the back. Even the side asiles were full. I missed the first ten-fifteen minutes of it, where he talked about his background and introduced the first building. Jen went to the lecture to take notes for me and actually offered to take my place at the desk so I could go see it. She also thought the lecture was amazing.
It was a great lecture. Will talked about a few of his projects here in the valley, what was built, what inspired him, how he worked. It was funny because a few of buildings I recognized from traveling around, and in fact, when Jen and I stumbled upon his new downtown scottsdale apartments I stopped the car and we both started talking about it excitedly, not knowing who had built it. It had a striking lime green accents to counterbalance perforated rust panels, and this color caused a dispute with the city of scottsdale for about two months. When Bruder went before a special planning comission to talk to them, when they asked what color they were fighting over, he blurted out "pungenly optimistic green." The board laughed and eventually Bruder was able to keep the color.
ASU is financing the construction of a Gateway center. This will put an entrance to the ASU campus and a strong direct link to Mill Avenue. Will Bruder called up his "friends in the field," the incomparable Sir Norman Foster (on par with Tadao Ando and Frank Gehry) and another architect and they designed the project togather. It was hilarious seeing Norman Foster's studio in the center of London, huge steel and glass tower loft with hundreds of employees and Will Bruder and Norman Foster working on a table with an ASU pennant behind them. The project is going to be amazing, like nothing Phoenix has ever seen before. The Gateway center combines retail, apartment housing, a hotel, the ASU visitors center, and extentions of the art museum, architecture building, college of business, and college of art. It's going to be amazing. Unfortunately, it will probably only be complete after I graduate from grad school.
One of those days
Yesterday was really not my day at all. I was halfway to school before I remembered I had left my paper at home and so I had to turn around to go get it (better, I suppose, than remembering it before class). And that's how the day started. For the rest of the day I forgot things, dropped things, and nearly fell of my bike just riding on campus. When I went grocery shopping last night, I realized I'd left my debit card at the pizza place I'd eaten at for lunch. And then I had a reallly horrible dream in which I ate or otherwise lost both my arms at the shoulder.
It's these days that I have to slow myself down before I really get into trouble.
Grandma Case, however, has had a much more interesting time in Utah. Danger Betty, they call her. I managed to catch her online:
We went down to Moab for two days last week-end. We hiked in the big rocks. National Park Arches and the Canyonlands. that was fun. Didn't hurt my back and than we took a raft trip down the Co. River thru a few rapids. Had to paddle all the wayy. Most anyway. There was a guy from the New York Times that was doing a piece for suspose to be Thursday this week. They wanted someone to take the kyac and of course David volunteered. That left Brenda, the young girl guide little) myself and Carlotta to paddle and that went fine . It was sunny and nice. Stopped for lunch very nice. They know how to prepare a picnic in the sand. than Brenda did the little boat and the wind came up some so she traded back with David. Well when we were almost about 3/4 of a mile from our goal a storm came up rain and the wind was really strong blowin us back down the river. the guide banked it to turn the boat around and we got out and everyone almost got stuck in quick-sand like mud. Brenda had it up to her thigh. Carrie got stuck and pulled her shoe off. well what a mess. David had been watching for us and he ran down to where we were. About that time the wind died down and with David paddling too we were able to sail on home. Muddy but alive!
Wish I had days like that!
It's these days that I have to slow myself down before I really get into trouble.
Grandma Case, however, has had a much more interesting time in Utah. Danger Betty, they call her. I managed to catch her online:
We went down to Moab for two days last week-end. We hiked in the big rocks. National Park Arches and the Canyonlands. that was fun. Didn't hurt my back and than we took a raft trip down the Co. River thru a few rapids. Had to paddle all the wayy. Most anyway. There was a guy from the New York Times that was doing a piece for suspose to be Thursday this week. They wanted someone to take the kyac and of course David volunteered. That left Brenda, the young girl guide little) myself and Carlotta to paddle and that went fine . It was sunny and nice. Stopped for lunch very nice. They know how to prepare a picnic in the sand. than Brenda did the little boat and the wind came up some so she traded back with David. Well when we were almost about 3/4 of a mile from our goal a storm came up rain and the wind was really strong blowin us back down the river. the guide banked it to turn the boat around and we got out and everyone almost got stuck in quick-sand like mud. Brenda had it up to her thigh. Carrie got stuck and pulled her shoe off. well what a mess. David had been watching for us and he ran down to where we were. About that time the wind died down and with David paddling too we were able to sail on home. Muddy but alive!
Wish I had days like that!
Oct 11, 2005
Mission Statement 2.0
Reworked it a bit, trying to add in a little more about being proactive.
I am Alexander.The worlds outside and the worlds within
are mine to explore, to enjoy, and to create.
I shall never be lost, as long as I
drink from the spring of truth,
follow the river of knowledge,
walk the right path, and
stand on the earth of my family.
I fear not failure, but inaction,
which kills the breath of brilliance.
but by my courage, I shall earn success:
When I act, the world moves with me.
I shall walk all my days in sunlight,
and when my fading vision sights
the far and final wink in the west,
I shall wink back
because I did and was all that I can
and all that I am.
and I remembered to laugh.
Oct 10, 2005
When we pinned what we had up on the wall today in architecture, I had the widest variety of media exploring my project. Let me take a step back. There are three studio professors, I have the most senior one who is running the program. I just lucked out that way. We were given a handout of what was expected for presentation today. It was left extremely vauge and confusing. For instance, it only specified three 1' = 1/2" section drawing, but on a vertically oriented 11"x17" sheet of paper. This means that if you follow the directions, you can only show about 20 feet of a space.
Thoughly confused, but following the studio axiom of "when in doubt, draw for clarity" I drew sections on much wider peices of paper. I also did a bunch of little notebook pen sketches which I colored in with pencil showing various interior moments. Jen is a bit irritated that we have this assignment as it a lot of interior work and dealing with interior design issues.
I also wrote a short story detailing how the spaces felt and describing them as I moved through them, but then it turned into a horror story in which I described the spaces the character was running through to escape a Horror. I'll have to put that little story on here. The studio professor made me read it out loud. The last thing I did was write a top ten list of things I hate about hayden library and how I would improve them.
The other studio for today had to have NINE section drawings, and THREE section models, where they actually build about ten feet deep sections. I'm really glad I'm not in that class.
I desperately need to do laundry tonight. I'll have to buck up and pay the apartment washer price since the laundromat I go to closes at ten. All I really need is the essentials.
There are architecture students working in the building from 7 AM until 4 AM almost every night. No other building keeps its lights on 24/7 at ASU. Why is this?
Is it because we have more work than any other discipline on campus? I assumed this was the case all last semester. I don't think so any more. I think architecture students just tend to be more dedicated to the program. The program is so intense, especially the first two years, that it completely changes the way you percieve the world. Architecture becomes a lifestyle. I think it really transcends homework because your work becomes part of you. It's definately got that aspect of art. Its also amazingly fun. At least, it is at this point. The first two years were a struggle, and I dont think I had as much fun as I've had this semester. At this point too, everyone has paid thier dues, gone through the crucible of getting into upper division and that fierce passion for design is the glue which really holds the design community togather.
Anyway, I was going to write about something else which I have forgotten. This entry is long enough anyway.
Thoughly confused, but following the studio axiom of "when in doubt, draw for clarity" I drew sections on much wider peices of paper. I also did a bunch of little notebook pen sketches which I colored in with pencil showing various interior moments. Jen is a bit irritated that we have this assignment as it a lot of interior work and dealing with interior design issues.
I also wrote a short story detailing how the spaces felt and describing them as I moved through them, but then it turned into a horror story in which I described the spaces the character was running through to escape a Horror. I'll have to put that little story on here. The studio professor made me read it out loud. The last thing I did was write a top ten list of things I hate about hayden library and how I would improve them.
The other studio for today had to have NINE section drawings, and THREE section models, where they actually build about ten feet deep sections. I'm really glad I'm not in that class.
I desperately need to do laundry tonight. I'll have to buck up and pay the apartment washer price since the laundromat I go to closes at ten. All I really need is the essentials.
There are architecture students working in the building from 7 AM until 4 AM almost every night. No other building keeps its lights on 24/7 at ASU. Why is this?
Is it because we have more work than any other discipline on campus? I assumed this was the case all last semester. I don't think so any more. I think architecture students just tend to be more dedicated to the program. The program is so intense, especially the first two years, that it completely changes the way you percieve the world. Architecture becomes a lifestyle. I think it really transcends homework because your work becomes part of you. It's definately got that aspect of art. Its also amazingly fun. At least, it is at this point. The first two years were a struggle, and I dont think I had as much fun as I've had this semester. At this point too, everyone has paid thier dues, gone through the crucible of getting into upper division and that fierce passion for design is the glue which really holds the design community togather.
Anyway, I was going to write about something else which I have forgotten. This entry is long enough anyway.
Jacked in
Spent most of today writing the paper. I'll have to proof and edit it tomorrow. At least I can upload it to the school server and edit it on the library machines. Also today, I discovered a music library online that the school subscribes to. It's a massive digital database of streamed music- classical, chinese, contemporary jazz, and world/folk. I really enjoy the Pida and chinese percussion stuff. I aslo cleared off my desk and rotated my flatscreen so I can do word documents and read web pages more easily. Whenever I need to do more computer modeling, I can always rotate it back if it will fit easier that way.
Oct 9, 2005
Tradegdy, followed by a Sci-fi Thriller Western
Figures now place the death toll of the earthquake in Kashmir in the 14,000's.
14,000 lives lost in the disaster. Makes Hurricane Katrina look like a afternoon shower with its toll of "just" over 1,000. For me, even 1,000 lives lost is a bit hard to comprehend. I have to think about it as all the juniors and seniors at my old high school being killed in order to understand it. Even then, it still feel numb. Numb-ers do that. What is the numb-er gradiant where it doesn't feel so bad? If one person is killed, its the worst, because we can see that one person. We feel, poignantly, all that person was or could have been. When it becomes two people killed, it's a nastier shock, but not that much nastier. And so on. We recoil in horror when a bus of 14 people catches fire, but with nearly the same recoil, take in 30 deaths in a riot. It would seem we plateau- there are limits to our ability to come to terms with horrorible things. We simply don't have the emotional reserves to handle the magnitude. Perhaps it follows a logrithmic curve.
So when I see that 14,000 died in Afghanistan, I can only sigh with sadness. The immensity of it is beyond me. That over 30,000 died in the tsunami last winter felt surreal. There was nothing to relate it to. In product design, if something fails and causes more than one death, than it is said to be "catastophic". What is "catastrophic" multiplied many times worse? "Biblical" is the only word that comes to mind.
Anyway, I went to a really fun party last night where two friends of mine were celebrating thier birthday. It was a huge party, very sucessful, and I was surprised that the police never came by. It was pretty quiet by the street though.
Today I worked on my library project, drafting two sections and doing more hand sketches. I finished reading Blink!, so I need to pound out a rough draft tomorrow so I can edit it for Tuesday.
This evening I went to see Serenity with Jen and her mom, Diane. I'm surprised they agreed to see it, actually. When I first saw the preview for it, my first reaction was "this is going to be really corny and stupid." I was amazed, however, when it got an 81% approval rating on rottentomatoes.com . The movie is essentially a spagetti western set in space. One reviewer compared it to what Star Wars would have been like if Han Solo was the main focus. It was really a fun movie, and while it cobbled togather a story and some characters from other movies, it blended them togather really well, using complete unknowns for the roles. It's a genre-bender too: sci-fi, thriller, comedy, western. It's really got a campy feel to it, and even though the trailer gives all the good scenes away, its still a fun time. The director really did not take himself, nor the movie, as seriously as Lucas. Dad would like it the most, and I think mom would like it too.
14,000 lives lost in the disaster. Makes Hurricane Katrina look like a afternoon shower with its toll of "just" over 1,000. For me, even 1,000 lives lost is a bit hard to comprehend. I have to think about it as all the juniors and seniors at my old high school being killed in order to understand it. Even then, it still feel numb. Numb-ers do that. What is the numb-er gradiant where it doesn't feel so bad? If one person is killed, its the worst, because we can see that one person. We feel, poignantly, all that person was or could have been. When it becomes two people killed, it's a nastier shock, but not that much nastier. And so on. We recoil in horror when a bus of 14 people catches fire, but with nearly the same recoil, take in 30 deaths in a riot. It would seem we plateau- there are limits to our ability to come to terms with horrorible things. We simply don't have the emotional reserves to handle the magnitude. Perhaps it follows a logrithmic curve.
So when I see that 14,000 died in Afghanistan, I can only sigh with sadness. The immensity of it is beyond me. That over 30,000 died in the tsunami last winter felt surreal. There was nothing to relate it to. In product design, if something fails and causes more than one death, than it is said to be "catastophic". What is "catastrophic" multiplied many times worse? "Biblical" is the only word that comes to mind.
Anyway, I went to a really fun party last night where two friends of mine were celebrating thier birthday. It was a huge party, very sucessful, and I was surprised that the police never came by. It was pretty quiet by the street though.
Today I worked on my library project, drafting two sections and doing more hand sketches. I finished reading Blink!, so I need to pound out a rough draft tomorrow so I can edit it for Tuesday.
This evening I went to see Serenity with Jen and her mom, Diane. I'm surprised they agreed to see it, actually. When I first saw the preview for it, my first reaction was "this is going to be really corny and stupid." I was amazed, however, when it got an 81% approval rating on rottentomatoes.com . The movie is essentially a spagetti western set in space. One reviewer compared it to what Star Wars would have been like if Han Solo was the main focus. It was really a fun movie, and while it cobbled togather a story and some characters from other movies, it blended them togather really well, using complete unknowns for the roles. It's a genre-bender too: sci-fi, thriller, comedy, western. It's really got a campy feel to it, and even though the trailer gives all the good scenes away, its still a fun time. The director really did not take himself, nor the movie, as seriously as Lucas. Dad would like it the most, and I think mom would like it too.
Oct 7, 2005
A Retched Reduction
Today I went up to scottsdale to the arabian library. I took pictures of the site and inside the existing library, and made notes and measurements. I forget what an identity Scottsdale has created for itself. Even at the library, everywhere you look its slim, fashion-conscious moms in high-end SUVs. I do really appreciate the effort that went into and maintianing the desert landscaping in the city however, especially north of Shea. Gas prices up there are almost twenty cents higher per gallon than what I paid down here in Tempe. After scoping out the site and taking a lot of pictures I went over the Desert Mountian and Palomino library. I took some more pictures there (with the librarians giving me strange and hostile looks) and then took a quick peek inside the high school where I went.
It was so authoritarian, no one in the halls, it felt like a prison. It was such an unpleasant experiance I left after about five minutes without trying to look up old teachers.
I spent the rest of the day reading from Blink! finally taking a break to head down to Food City for sustainance. I was talking to Jen about what she spends per week on food, and I was blown away when she said $20. "I only buy stuff that's fresh" she said, in explanation. "Fruits, vegitables; milk is really the only expensive thing besides the frozen orange juice." So this time, I tried to only buy the really fresh stuff. I bought some potatos on sale, then some mexican green onion, then some regular onions, a bell pepper, and finally some ground beef chorizo. The meat was a little less than two dollars, and the vegitables were less than a dollar a piece for the quanities. I also picked up some limes for mixing with tonic water.
When I got home, I sauted the onion (but added too much oil) and added the chorizo. While that cooked, I added the green onion and the potatos I had coarsely chopped. What I should have done was cook the potatos separtately, maybe boiling them or something, because they refused to cook in the chorizo/oil mixture. I let it sit for about ten minutes with the chorizo starting to burn a bit, then added about two cups of orange juice. (I was thinking, yeah, liquid to help boil the potatos, maybe get a spicy/orange flavor out of it) Then I let it reduce and simmer for about fifteen minutes. Before slapping it on a tortilla and rolling it with fresh pepper jack cheese.
It was retched. By far one of the worst culinary experiments I'd done in a long time. I ate about half of the burrito before conceeding defeat. The armies of orange and the chorizo were attacking each other, and their corpses which littered my burrito were giving off a funky wang.
As some of you know, I have an esteemed history of culinary experiments gone wrong. At the age of five or six, I toasted a rice cake and suceeded in starting a small kitchen fire. If the Ig Nobel Prize had a culinary prize, I would have won it with this thing.
Speaking of the Ig Nobel prizes, they just had this years award. You can check them out here. I think its absolutely hilarious. Every year this international panel presents spoof awards to those experiments which should not be repeated. The winner of the prize for literature went to the many Nigerians for creating the diverse and interesting cast of characters who send you an email claiming someone died and they want to share the money with you- but they need a small amount for their expenses. I love reading those emails because they try to use high-sounding language, but are so ridiculous and obviously fake.
It was so authoritarian, no one in the halls, it felt like a prison. It was such an unpleasant experiance I left after about five minutes without trying to look up old teachers.
I spent the rest of the day reading from Blink! finally taking a break to head down to Food City for sustainance. I was talking to Jen about what she spends per week on food, and I was blown away when she said $20. "I only buy stuff that's fresh" she said, in explanation. "Fruits, vegitables; milk is really the only expensive thing besides the frozen orange juice." So this time, I tried to only buy the really fresh stuff. I bought some potatos on sale, then some mexican green onion, then some regular onions, a bell pepper, and finally some ground beef chorizo. The meat was a little less than two dollars, and the vegitables were less than a dollar a piece for the quanities. I also picked up some limes for mixing with tonic water.
When I got home, I sauted the onion (but added too much oil) and added the chorizo. While that cooked, I added the green onion and the potatos I had coarsely chopped. What I should have done was cook the potatos separtately, maybe boiling them or something, because they refused to cook in the chorizo/oil mixture. I let it sit for about ten minutes with the chorizo starting to burn a bit, then added about two cups of orange juice. (I was thinking, yeah, liquid to help boil the potatos, maybe get a spicy/orange flavor out of it) Then I let it reduce and simmer for about fifteen minutes. Before slapping it on a tortilla and rolling it with fresh pepper jack cheese.
It was retched. By far one of the worst culinary experiments I'd done in a long time. I ate about half of the burrito before conceeding defeat. The armies of orange and the chorizo were attacking each other, and their corpses which littered my burrito were giving off a funky wang.
As some of you know, I have an esteemed history of culinary experiments gone wrong. At the age of five or six, I toasted a rice cake and suceeded in starting a small kitchen fire. If the Ig Nobel Prize had a culinary prize, I would have won it with this thing.
Speaking of the Ig Nobel prizes, they just had this years award. You can check them out here. I think its absolutely hilarious. Every year this international panel presents spoof awards to those experiments which should not be repeated. The winner of the prize for literature went to the many Nigerians for creating the diverse and interesting cast of characters who send you an email claiming someone died and they want to share the money with you- but they need a small amount for their expenses. I love reading those emails because they try to use high-sounding language, but are so ridiculous and obviously fake.
Oct 6, 2005
Thin-Slicing and Andre Agassi's forehand
Learned some more interesting things at school today. In architectural history, our teacher is finally drooling over the Roman civilization. He get so excited in his lectures, he occationally has difficultly talking, and he gestures with his arms all over the place. Its still preferable to my human factors teacher, who is putting everyone to sleep.
We found out we're going to have the contractor teach us wood properties and construction next semester. This class we learned how to calcuate moment of inertia for section properties of beams by breaking the section down into its componant shapes. The moment of inertia describes the strength of the section (and the beam) and along with its bendiness (modulous of elasticity) and the forces on it, can tell us how much the beam will bend. It's all formulas and equations, although individually its pretty simple. He said at the beginning of the class that all structural engineering is bookkeeping.
I've started bringing my lunch to school again. The long school days plus the work meant that I was going for twelve hours without food, and that was just not working out.
In Finding purpose we talked about stress and stress management. Fun fact for the day #1, we lose most of the water in our body in the moisture we exhale. Less water adds to stress, so we especially need to drink lots of water down here. He talked about various types of stress from survial, to enviornmental, to internal, and work related. In discussing things we're worried about or thinking about, he said our body disregards the time of the event, so that when I'm really worried about a project due in a week, my body goes into the flight or fight mode right now. This energy has to go somewhere and its usually destructive. For people like me who get stress headaches, he recommended "face yoga" where you scrunch up and relax the face to get the muscle tension out. He also highly recommended walking and meditation.
A few stresses right now: A three page single spaced book report due tuesday for a book I've only recently started. Forutnately its an interesing book. More on that later. Also for monday I need to have three sections drafted from my library model along with support matreial in the form of narrative text on what the space to feel like, and colored sketched details. I'm also out of clean clothes. At least I'll have the weekend free to get all this stuff done, as Jen's mom is coming down for the weekend.
The book I'm writing the report on is Blink! The Power of Thinking without Thinking. Check it out at Amazon.com. The main idea of the book is that our subconscious mind is really good at making lighting quick analysis and decisions. Some people call it instinct, some people call it gut reaction, this author calls it thin-slicing. It's the idea behind speed dating- the singles get a slice of a person and either get an instant connection or instant dislike. One example from the book was of a study done by an insurance company which issued malpractice insurance. They wanted to see what kind of doctors were sued and which weren't. The first surprising thing was that who was sued was almost completely irrelevant to whether or not they made medical mistakes. People tend not to sue doctors they like. The ones who were sued didn't spend enough time talking to the patients, providing opportunities for questions, or telling them what they were doing. The researchers listened to a few minutes of recorded conversation, and were able to predict with good accuracy which doctors were more likely to be sued. One researcher took out the high pitched noises which made the words garbled, but left the tone, pitch, and sense of the converstaion. The same predictions were made with just 14 seconds of tonal speech.
Well, here I am thinking I'm writing my paper. Sorry about that. Jump to the good bit.
Andre Agassi had his forehand taped and anlyzed on tape. The researchers looked at it second by second, watching how he hit the ball. Agassi talked about how he rolled his wrist over the ball when he hits it, but the researchers saw that he hit the ball with a straight wrist, and rolled right after. In fact, its impossible to see the ball in the last five feet of flight. It's moving too fast for us to process consciously. But our subcounscious mind can predict where it will be and tells the arm how to hit it -I guess you'd call it muscle memory, but its really in the subconscious mind.
Anyway, going to see Serenity tonight with Jen at the drive-in. It's actually gotten some pretty decent reviews.
We found out we're going to have the contractor teach us wood properties and construction next semester. This class we learned how to calcuate moment of inertia for section properties of beams by breaking the section down into its componant shapes. The moment of inertia describes the strength of the section (and the beam) and along with its bendiness (modulous of elasticity) and the forces on it, can tell us how much the beam will bend. It's all formulas and equations, although individually its pretty simple. He said at the beginning of the class that all structural engineering is bookkeeping.
I've started bringing my lunch to school again. The long school days plus the work meant that I was going for twelve hours without food, and that was just not working out.
In Finding purpose we talked about stress and stress management. Fun fact for the day #1, we lose most of the water in our body in the moisture we exhale. Less water adds to stress, so we especially need to drink lots of water down here. He talked about various types of stress from survial, to enviornmental, to internal, and work related. In discussing things we're worried about or thinking about, he said our body disregards the time of the event, so that when I'm really worried about a project due in a week, my body goes into the flight or fight mode right now. This energy has to go somewhere and its usually destructive. For people like me who get stress headaches, he recommended "face yoga" where you scrunch up and relax the face to get the muscle tension out. He also highly recommended walking and meditation.
A few stresses right now: A three page single spaced book report due tuesday for a book I've only recently started. Forutnately its an interesing book. More on that later. Also for monday I need to have three sections drafted from my library model along with support matreial in the form of narrative text on what the space to feel like, and colored sketched details. I'm also out of clean clothes. At least I'll have the weekend free to get all this stuff done, as Jen's mom is coming down for the weekend.
The book I'm writing the report on is Blink! The Power of Thinking without Thinking. Check it out at Amazon.com. The main idea of the book is that our subconscious mind is really good at making lighting quick analysis and decisions. Some people call it instinct, some people call it gut reaction, this author calls it thin-slicing. It's the idea behind speed dating- the singles get a slice of a person and either get an instant connection or instant dislike. One example from the book was of a study done by an insurance company which issued malpractice insurance. They wanted to see what kind of doctors were sued and which weren't. The first surprising thing was that who was sued was almost completely irrelevant to whether or not they made medical mistakes. People tend not to sue doctors they like. The ones who were sued didn't spend enough time talking to the patients, providing opportunities for questions, or telling them what they were doing. The researchers listened to a few minutes of recorded conversation, and were able to predict with good accuracy which doctors were more likely to be sued. One researcher took out the high pitched noises which made the words garbled, but left the tone, pitch, and sense of the converstaion. The same predictions were made with just 14 seconds of tonal speech.
Well, here I am thinking I'm writing my paper. Sorry about that. Jump to the good bit.
Andre Agassi had his forehand taped and anlyzed on tape. The researchers looked at it second by second, watching how he hit the ball. Agassi talked about how he rolled his wrist over the ball when he hits it, but the researchers saw that he hit the ball with a straight wrist, and rolled right after. In fact, its impossible to see the ball in the last five feet of flight. It's moving too fast for us to process consciously. But our subcounscious mind can predict where it will be and tells the arm how to hit it -I guess you'd call it muscle memory, but its really in the subconscious mind.
Anyway, going to see Serenity tonight with Jen at the drive-in. It's actually gotten some pretty decent reviews.
Oct 5, 2005
How to Interact With Your New Mentor
I signed up for a mentor program which pairs you with ASU architecture alumni. Jen brought it to my attention as she's a mentor coordinator for the interior design association at ASU. The Allumni group is actually the one coordinating everything and they did a pretty poor job at advertising the event. There was a good mix of people there, for the about 20 students who did show up. Three landscape design, ten interior design, six architecture, two industrial design, and a few planning students.
At the orientation at the beginning, as the organizers were introducing themselves, I thought one of them looked familiar. I took a look at her name badge and recognized Michelle Watanabe. She was working on a business degree after her architecture masters and organized a group of three high schoolers for the "It makes a village" masonry event back when I was in high school. She was surprised to see me and didn't recognize me at first with my little jawline beard. She congratulated me on getting into upper division and gave me her business card. She's VP at a small firm I think she helped start.
Last years mentor program sounded like a flop. Apparently no one bothered to stay in touch with thier mentors after the first meeting, if they met at all. To rectify this problem, the organizers included a thick packet of worksheets and a callender specifiying when to send an email, when to organize a lunch, when the mentor would send a peice of advice, and worksheets of academic and professional goals to discuss with your mentor. I found it a bit ridiculous, especially the worksheet to fill out before returning in the spring: What did you do over your winter break? [etc.] Your mentor will ask you these questions and others during the welcome back mixer. Even our conversations are apparently scripted. I had a sudden vision of everyone standing around with thier mentor with thier nose stuck in the packet of scripts responding automatically to the questions the mentors read off of their sheets.
Anyway, the mentor-mentee group split off into our respective fields. There were six architecture students and about twelve mentors. Granted, not everyone could make it to the meeting that signed up, but I was still surprised by the amount of architect mentors there.
We wore name badges and essentially speed-dated each mentor, moving from each one and talking for about five minutes. At the end of the session, we would write down our top three choices of mentors and submit them. There was an interesting mix of architects there. There were a few project managers, a technical spec writer, a guy who oversaw tract housing design who encouraged me to take a few law classes, a Taiwanese architect who sounded really interesting when I could understand him half of the time, and an architect who worked for a firm which built projects for itself from investment.
Still need to go into the office to look over the profiles to make our final decisions.
At the orientation at the beginning, as the organizers were introducing themselves, I thought one of them looked familiar. I took a look at her name badge and recognized Michelle Watanabe. She was working on a business degree after her architecture masters and organized a group of three high schoolers for the "It makes a village" masonry event back when I was in high school. She was surprised to see me and didn't recognize me at first with my little jawline beard. She congratulated me on getting into upper division and gave me her business card. She's VP at a small firm I think she helped start.
Last years mentor program sounded like a flop. Apparently no one bothered to stay in touch with thier mentors after the first meeting, if they met at all. To rectify this problem, the organizers included a thick packet of worksheets and a callender specifiying when to send an email, when to organize a lunch, when the mentor would send a peice of advice, and worksheets of academic and professional goals to discuss with your mentor. I found it a bit ridiculous, especially the worksheet to fill out before returning in the spring: What did you do over your winter break? [etc.] Your mentor will ask you these questions and others during the welcome back mixer. Even our conversations are apparently scripted. I had a sudden vision of everyone standing around with thier mentor with thier nose stuck in the packet of scripts responding automatically to the questions the mentors read off of their sheets.
Anyway, the mentor-mentee group split off into our respective fields. There were six architecture students and about twelve mentors. Granted, not everyone could make it to the meeting that signed up, but I was still surprised by the amount of architect mentors there.
We wore name badges and essentially speed-dated each mentor, moving from each one and talking for about five minutes. At the end of the session, we would write down our top three choices of mentors and submit them. There was an interesting mix of architects there. There were a few project managers, a technical spec writer, a guy who oversaw tract housing design who encouraged me to take a few law classes, a Taiwanese architect who sounded really interesting when I could understand him half of the time, and an architect who worked for a firm which built projects for itself from investment.
Still need to go into the office to look over the profiles to make our final decisions.
Oct 4, 2005
Mission statement
In my Finding Purpose class we've been working on value clarification and excercises leading up to the creation of a mission statement. Mission statements identify core values and goals, and act as compasses as life can throw curves or begin to gradually shift you from where you want to be. This mission statements should be read every morning and should have an effective term of 10 years, when its time to re-evaluate where and who you are.
Here is a rough draft of my mission statement. We're supposed to mull it over for a few weeks, see what needs to be tweaked to be just right, and submit a final copy in november.
I am Alexander.
The world without and the worlds within
are mine to explore, to enjoy, to create.
I will not fear to face the sun
so long as I drink from the spring of truth,
swim in the river of knowlege,
walk the right path,
and stand on the earth of my ancestors.
I will not fear failure,
but by my courage, earn success.
When the last I see is the last wink in the west
I shall wink back
because I did and was all that I am.
Until then, I will walk in the sun,
and call the whole world home,
and take it with me.
Here is a rough draft of my mission statement. We're supposed to mull it over for a few weeks, see what needs to be tweaked to be just right, and submit a final copy in november.
I am Alexander.
The world without and the worlds within
are mine to explore, to enjoy, to create.
I will not fear to face the sun
so long as I drink from the spring of truth,
swim in the river of knowlege,
walk the right path,
and stand on the earth of my ancestors.
I will not fear failure,
but by my courage, earn success.
When the last I see is the last wink in the west
I shall wink back
because I did and was all that I am.
Until then, I will walk in the sun,
and call the whole world home,
and take it with me.
Oct 3, 2005
Under the Tucson Sun
Saturday, I kicked back and watched the ASU-USC football game which was completely sold out. It was a great game- up until halftime. ASU had USC shut down 21-7, then USC completely turned the situation around to a heartbreaking defeat in the fourth quarter.
Later that afternoon, Jen and I drove down to Tucson, less than two hours away. We stayed at Cassie and Whitney's apartment and hung out with them all night. Sunday morning, I showed Jen the highlights of University of Arizona before we headed back to phoenix so Jen could meet her dad. Jen, who'd never been to Tucson before, wasn't impressed. She said it reminded her of little towns in California. Road trips are always a nice break; they seem to make the weekend seem longer they actually are.
Today in studio we talked about different issues in layouts. It really feels like we're dragging our feet in this project, which is especially painful when we think about the vast amount of work we can almost see on the horizon.
Later that afternoon, Jen and I drove down to Tucson, less than two hours away. We stayed at Cassie and Whitney's apartment and hung out with them all night. Sunday morning, I showed Jen the highlights of University of Arizona before we headed back to phoenix so Jen could meet her dad. Jen, who'd never been to Tucson before, wasn't impressed. She said it reminded her of little towns in California. Road trips are always a nice break; they seem to make the weekend seem longer they actually are.
Today in studio we talked about different issues in layouts. It really feels like we're dragging our feet in this project, which is especially painful when we think about the vast amount of work we can almost see on the horizon.
Oct 1, 2005
School Spending
Thursday night, I went bowling with Jen, Chris, and a bunch of Chris' friends from work at BestBuy. The alley we went to was difficult to find, as its sign had burnt out and the building was set back really far from the street. Inside, it was absolutely packed. Thursday nights are a dollar a game (plus a buck for shoes). The alley had been redecorated last in the 1970's so that was kind of interesting. Combine that with all the college kids with pitchers of beer and the beat up old cars outside, and it felt like I was wandering around the 70's. It made me especailly conscious of the big soccer-mom minivan. Anyway, my bowling sucked. I can't even remember the last time I'd even been bowling. The second game was better, but not by much. It was still fun, though.
Yesterday, I returned some CDs to the library and took a look at Changing Hands bookstore down in tempe. I was instantly reminded of Brace Books and More in Ponca City- they had that natural thing going with beads and stuff for the house sold alongside the mixed new and used books.
I headed down to school where I picked up and deposited my paycheck from the library. Speaking of the library, the other night this very strange guy came in, and was extremely annoyed I didn't know how to print off a reciept showing he didn't have any more books that were being recalled. His whole attitude was so condescending and abrupt, it reminded me of a Ross customer. He had had three books recalled (that is, someone else puts a request in for them, otherwise you can renew to your hearts content) and immediately filled out recall cards to get them back asap. This guy had 551 books checked out, some of them doubles. Something was strange about this situation. I did some further research on this guy and found out he had reviewed all 87 cafes, restuarants, and bars in downtown Tempe, and cataloged every tree and bush on campus for an exhaustive areal survey book he published. Definately some kind of obsessive-compulsive personality.
Last night, Jen and I biked down to Mill Avenue where it was hopping from all the people going to and coming from Octoberfest down in the big park. We walked around, got ice cream, and people watched. Afterwards, we went on a bike tour of new asu construction. There are some really cool buildings. The first one we saw was a new applied science building, which was still pretty empty. A long courtyard runs the lenght of the building with second and third floor walkways. On the second floor, Jen was appalled to find Herman Miller and Knoll designer chairs and tables. These two compainies are the Mercedes-Benz' of the designer furnature world. The combined value of the 8 chairs and 2 tables is about $9,000. These were just sitting there, getting dirty, and able to be taken by the first unscrupulus person to come across them. She was especailly distressed to find them in an engineering and applied sciences building, where no one would recognize them. Similiarly comfortable and styled chairs can be had fo a quarter of the price, so why is the school spending tuition money on the designer label?
Yesterday, I returned some CDs to the library and took a look at Changing Hands bookstore down in tempe. I was instantly reminded of Brace Books and More in Ponca City- they had that natural thing going with beads and stuff for the house sold alongside the mixed new and used books.
I headed down to school where I picked up and deposited my paycheck from the library. Speaking of the library, the other night this very strange guy came in, and was extremely annoyed I didn't know how to print off a reciept showing he didn't have any more books that were being recalled. His whole attitude was so condescending and abrupt, it reminded me of a Ross customer. He had had three books recalled (that is, someone else puts a request in for them, otherwise you can renew to your hearts content) and immediately filled out recall cards to get them back asap. This guy had 551 books checked out, some of them doubles. Something was strange about this situation. I did some further research on this guy and found out he had reviewed all 87 cafes, restuarants, and bars in downtown Tempe, and cataloged every tree and bush on campus for an exhaustive areal survey book he published. Definately some kind of obsessive-compulsive personality.
Last night, Jen and I biked down to Mill Avenue where it was hopping from all the people going to and coming from Octoberfest down in the big park. We walked around, got ice cream, and people watched. Afterwards, we went on a bike tour of new asu construction. There are some really cool buildings. The first one we saw was a new applied science building, which was still pretty empty. A long courtyard runs the lenght of the building with second and third floor walkways. On the second floor, Jen was appalled to find Herman Miller and Knoll designer chairs and tables. These two compainies are the Mercedes-Benz' of the designer furnature world. The combined value of the 8 chairs and 2 tables is about $9,000. These were just sitting there, getting dirty, and able to be taken by the first unscrupulus person to come across them. She was especailly distressed to find them in an engineering and applied sciences building, where no one would recognize them. Similiarly comfortable and styled chairs can be had fo a quarter of the price, so why is the school spending tuition money on the designer label?
Sep 28, 2005
interesting read
Just a quick post. I came across an interesting book today working in the library called constant touch: a global history of the cell phone. It discusses the history of the radio and its transition to the consumer, and its facinating because it talks about all the political, economic, and social factors which were amazingly heavy in its developement.
What I found interesting was that so many modern cell phone companies started off as military technology contractor spin offs. Orange was an arm of British Aerospace, and Vodafone began from the defense electronics Racal group.
The book also talks about why the major cellphone providers are predominantly scandinavian: Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm, etc. The nordic countries were the first to collaborate and decide on a international protocol. They had a strong influence in bringing the EU to use GSM.
Back in America, the split of Bell had massive repurcussions in the the development of the cell phone, because all of a sudden all these little different firms had control over tiny zones. With the rise in the number of users, even as the smaller firms were swallowed up, the US split the bandwidth even smaller, and began cutting up the seconds people talk- so that only 1/30th of a second was a voice and the other 29/30ths went to a bunch of other people. Nobody notices, so things stay the same.
Makes me glad I've got GSM. Anyway, its an interesting read which really hightlights the changes in technology and consumer culture globablly within the last twenty years.
Also, I added about ten of the best pictures from my european trip in thier full resolution and size to my deviantart account. You can get to them by clicking here. You can click on the thumbnails to get a larger view, and click on teh medium size to get the full size (bigger than the computer screen!) enjoy!
What I found interesting was that so many modern cell phone companies started off as military technology contractor spin offs. Orange was an arm of British Aerospace, and Vodafone began from the defense electronics Racal group.
The book also talks about why the major cellphone providers are predominantly scandinavian: Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm, etc. The nordic countries were the first to collaborate and decide on a international protocol. They had a strong influence in bringing the EU to use GSM.
Back in America, the split of Bell had massive repurcussions in the the development of the cell phone, because all of a sudden all these little different firms had control over tiny zones. With the rise in the number of users, even as the smaller firms were swallowed up, the US split the bandwidth even smaller, and began cutting up the seconds people talk- so that only 1/30th of a second was a voice and the other 29/30ths went to a bunch of other people. Nobody notices, so things stay the same.
Makes me glad I've got GSM. Anyway, its an interesting read which really hightlights the changes in technology and consumer culture globablly within the last twenty years.
Also, I added about ten of the best pictures from my european trip in thier full resolution and size to my deviantart account. You can get to them by clicking here. You can click on the thumbnails to get a larger view, and click on teh medium size to get the full size (bigger than the computer screen!) enjoy!
"Every man is Above Average, Sometime"
It was the best of tests, and it was the worst of tests.
My architecture history test was set up as follows: four slide comparisons of 7 minutes each, and two, 20 minute essay questions. I knew all 8 images on the slides, who built them, when they were built and where they were. I had all the factual data and the analytical data. I did fine on those I'm sure. I ran into trouble with the two 20 minute essays. The questions were so complex and had so many parts, I wasn't able to write all I could about them. Just didn't have enough time. I think I got a high B to a low A overall. I talked to the professor after the test. He definately knows me by now. He said it was his intent that we wouldn't be able to finish. I asked him how he could separate those students who knew what they were talking about but didn't have enough time to go into detail versus those students who didn't study at all.
He said he would know by the content of the essays. Anyway, we won't know our grades for at least a few months.
The second test I took yesterday was in human factors. The professor who teaches it is a portly, friendly guy with a white mustache and a nasal voice. He's the kind of guy I would expect to see in florida watching football on TV. He worked for awhile for Mattel and Disney, then kind of migrated back to teaching. His exam was laughably easy. Most of the questions had at least one throwaway answer too ridiculous to consider. My favorite question was:
The fallacy of considering the 50th percentile person as an "average" person is called:
(a) Average man envy
(b) the Fallacy of the Average Man
(c) The Average Man fallacy (this is the correct answer, in case you were wondering)
(d) Every man is Above Average, Sometime
Anyway, should see those results sooner than later, as it was all multiple choice.
My architecture history test was set up as follows: four slide comparisons of 7 minutes each, and two, 20 minute essay questions. I knew all 8 images on the slides, who built them, when they were built and where they were. I had all the factual data and the analytical data. I did fine on those I'm sure. I ran into trouble with the two 20 minute essays. The questions were so complex and had so many parts, I wasn't able to write all I could about them. Just didn't have enough time. I think I got a high B to a low A overall. I talked to the professor after the test. He definately knows me by now. He said it was his intent that we wouldn't be able to finish. I asked him how he could separate those students who knew what they were talking about but didn't have enough time to go into detail versus those students who didn't study at all.
He said he would know by the content of the essays. Anyway, we won't know our grades for at least a few months.
The second test I took yesterday was in human factors. The professor who teaches it is a portly, friendly guy with a white mustache and a nasal voice. He's the kind of guy I would expect to see in florida watching football on TV. He worked for awhile for Mattel and Disney, then kind of migrated back to teaching. His exam was laughably easy. Most of the questions had at least one throwaway answer too ridiculous to consider. My favorite question was:
The fallacy of considering the 50th percentile person as an "average" person is called:
(a) Average man envy
(b) the Fallacy of the Average Man
(c) The Average Man fallacy (this is the correct answer, in case you were wondering)
(d) Every man is Above Average, Sometime
Anyway, should see those results sooner than later, as it was all multiple choice.
Sep 26, 2005
"We can Rock Acrylic"
This weekend, quick recap: Friday night, Jen, Ben, and I made chocolate dump-it cake from the new york times recipie. We created a huge mess in the kitchen, had to run back to Jen's place for a tube pan, and the grocery store for more sour cream, but it came out absolutely beautiful. Jen frosted it for us and so we caked it up friday night. Saturday night, we studied history. Sunday night, we went to see Tim Burton's Corpse Bride which had a surprising amount of humor and groaners. In the dia de los muertos inspired underworld, a frenchman's head comes out carried by scurrying roaches. He's the head waiter. There's a few "dying to get in" jokes. On the whole, the style and characters are the biggest draw. It's amazing what they can do with claymation. The parents of both bride and groom are hilariously charactuered, as well as a solomn looking minister voiced by Christopher Lee. I actually saw a lot of similarities to Sleepy Hollow, although a lot more lighthearted.
Today finished memorizing the dates for my architecture exam, and working now on remembering specific details about the sites and various images.
Also today, we took a shop tour. The shop in the archiecture building is strictly limited to upper division architecture, interior design, and industrial design students. They can do pretty much anything to anything down there, wood, plastic, aluminum, steel(except stainless steel), but especially acrylic. "We can rock acryclic" was how the shop supervisor put it. They have a sandblasting booth, a vaccum-from, a plasma cutter, every conceivable type of welding equipment, band saws, table saws, grinders and sanders, metal benders and rollers. One really cool cutter worked like a giant paper cutter, with a really long foot powered lever for cutting sixteen gauge steel. Just snips it right off. Safety proceedures and proper were the main reasons for the shop tour.
Today finished memorizing the dates for my architecture exam, and working now on remembering specific details about the sites and various images.
Also today, we took a shop tour. The shop in the archiecture building is strictly limited to upper division architecture, interior design, and industrial design students. They can do pretty much anything to anything down there, wood, plastic, aluminum, steel(except stainless steel), but especially acrylic. "We can rock acryclic" was how the shop supervisor put it. They have a sandblasting booth, a vaccum-from, a plasma cutter, every conceivable type of welding equipment, band saws, table saws, grinders and sanders, metal benders and rollers. One really cool cutter worked like a giant paper cutter, with a really long foot powered lever for cutting sixteen gauge steel. Just snips it right off. Safety proceedures and proper were the main reasons for the shop tour.
Sep 25, 2005
Essay 1: of Prince Assurnasirpal II or King Mycerinus, who had the goofier name?
We have a test coming up in history of architecture. We need to know dates down to the year for about a hundred images. The time span is from 15,000 BC to 159 BC. I think its going to be a bit of a challenge. Guess what I'm doing this weekend?
Making a candleholder. I took a break from studying and working in studio on the library project to cast a tealight candle holder out of concrete. It's actually pretty cool. It holds nine candles close togather in a square grid, set into an inch thick concrete block seven inches square. Concrete is such a versitile medium, I'm surprised its not used more in home products.
To help study for the test, I've resorted to making little rhymes to help myself remember dates. Like "seven-twenty one KhorsaBAD mutha(watch your mouth!)" or "Temple of Aphais at Ephisos in five-fifty-six" and "in 1473 was built hapshetsut's mortuary"
Anyway, it seems to help. Also on tuesday, I have a test on Human factors which will be pretty easy I think, mostly a vocab test.
Making a candleholder. I took a break from studying and working in studio on the library project to cast a tealight candle holder out of concrete. It's actually pretty cool. It holds nine candles close togather in a square grid, set into an inch thick concrete block seven inches square. Concrete is such a versitile medium, I'm surprised its not used more in home products.
To help study for the test, I've resorted to making little rhymes to help myself remember dates. Like "seven-twenty one KhorsaBAD mutha(watch your mouth!)" or "Temple of Aphais at Ephisos in five-fifty-six" and "in 1473 was built hapshetsut's mortuary"
Anyway, it seems to help. Also on tuesday, I have a test on Human factors which will be pretty easy I think, mostly a vocab test.
Sep 21, 2005
Driving 'round with Ol' Bob
Last night, I was up until 3 am working on layout and printing my images (found in the previous blog) the problem is that the printer is wonderful, but prints really slowly, especailly for the 11x17s and it ran out of ink in both cartrages, so I had to replace them and start it again. I should note that nobody elese had borderless pages, either in 11x17 or 8.5x11. In the "sexier" building shots, the blue and blacks ran all the way to the edge of the page.
I got up again at 8:00 AM to take the minivan in to get the GPR systen fixed. Honda sent me a notice describing the exact symptoms and would cover all of it. Too bad I didn;t get the notice before they replaced the transmission. At least the warrenty covered it. Anyway, got down there in twenty minutes, handed off the van, and drove back in the courtesy van with Bob. Bob is over seventy years old with a big white beard and has lived in the valley for fourty years. The courtesy van was a granite green (gray) 2000 Honda Odessey. The same car I drove in with.
Bob drove me back, and I ate breakfast and checked emails while waiting for class at 1:15. I'm surprised to get another call an hour later that the valve was replaced and the van is ready for pickup. Would have just waited there if I'd known it'd be that quick. They sent Bob back for me, who enjoyed driving around because it helped pass the time better. I got the van back and it was running fine, no more surges or maintence service lights. One checkmark off on the van.
In studio today we pinned our images up and went around and talked. I was about falling off the stool. At least we got a 20 minute lunch break to wake ourselves up again before learning about our new project.
We're designing/remodeling a library, Arabian library in N. Scottsdale to be exact, which is located on the campus where Taylor went to school. I'm excited. I love libraries so much I'm working at one right now. The program is pretty involved and pretty complex. We got data sheets on each room detailing uses, size, furnature, technical specificiation, etc. For monday, we have to draw the rooms we divided up amongst ourselves.
At least we don't have to design a cemetery.
I got up again at 8:00 AM to take the minivan in to get the GPR systen fixed. Honda sent me a notice describing the exact symptoms and would cover all of it. Too bad I didn;t get the notice before they replaced the transmission. At least the warrenty covered it. Anyway, got down there in twenty minutes, handed off the van, and drove back in the courtesy van with Bob. Bob is over seventy years old with a big white beard and has lived in the valley for fourty years. The courtesy van was a granite green (gray) 2000 Honda Odessey. The same car I drove in with.
Bob drove me back, and I ate breakfast and checked emails while waiting for class at 1:15. I'm surprised to get another call an hour later that the valve was replaced and the van is ready for pickup. Would have just waited there if I'd known it'd be that quick. They sent Bob back for me, who enjoyed driving around because it helped pass the time better. I got the van back and it was running fine, no more surges or maintence service lights. One checkmark off on the van.
In studio today we pinned our images up and went around and talked. I was about falling off the stool. At least we got a 20 minute lunch break to wake ourselves up again before learning about our new project.
We're designing/remodeling a library, Arabian library in N. Scottsdale to be exact, which is located on the campus where Taylor went to school. I'm excited. I love libraries so much I'm working at one right now. The program is pretty involved and pretty complex. We got data sheets on each room detailing uses, size, furnature, technical specificiation, etc. For monday, we have to draw the rooms we divided up amongst ourselves.
At least we don't have to design a cemetery.
Project One Pictures
Here are some of the final documentation images from my last project. Our assignment was to create a box of certain dimentions, with half the walls made from concrete. My project was definately a crowd-pleaser.
Sep 20, 2005
Goethe and Chase's guardian angel
Moderately interesting Finding Purpose class today. We first talked about learning types: visual, auditory, and kinesthic. I am definately a visual learner. I unfocus my eyes when I'm talking and recalling information as an image, I notice textures, light, and colors first and foremost when entering a new space. Visual learners like to write stuff down and see it to understand it. According to his definitions, we talk quickly and with a higher voice. Many architecture people are visual learners. What I found interesting was that the instructor talked about working with construction crews, and how they are overwhelmingly made of Kinesthic learners. How they feel is very important to them, and they seldom hold back thier emotions. Kinesthic learners have to move, and learn by manipulation of phyiscal things. They build because they like building. It occured to me that this could be one of the root causes of the antagonism between architecture types and construction/contractor types. We process and work in completely different ways.
The other interesting thing was a quote he had at the end, mistakenly attributing it to Everest summiter Edmund Hillary and not the German philosopher Goethe.
Concerning all acts of initive and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splended plans: that the moment one definately commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise would have occured.
I found this highly interesting for a number of reasons. The first thing I thought of was the absolutely fantastic luck we had in Europe traveling with Chase. My luck was ill before we met, and vastly improved with him around. We would make rail connections with minutes to spare, find places to stay when we really needed them, find interpreters and good samaritans at crucial junctions, make and even subverted the evil Russian embassy bureauocracy. We were never mugged, scammed (while togather), and we had nothing stolen from us. I would have sworn we had a guardian angel standing over us.
In these circumstances, where we just WENT to Gimmelvalt without calling to see if they had any space, the only hostel there, they had space available for us. It was there or nowhere. We HAD to make the train to scandinavia. We would have missed it if the one platform conductor hadn't found us again on a different stair and sent us on our way to the right station where it was delayed. When we arrived in Budapest, with no clue of where the hotel was, who did Chase find in our car but an english-speaking member of the department of tourism with good maps and directions?
What was behind this phenomenal luck? We were traveling all or nothing, and I was initially discomforted by our lack of fallback plans and insurance. We made bold moves, like going to Budapest. Was it the movement of Providence that bathed us in such great luck? Was it something more prosaic like if we had had a backup plan in place, we wouldn't have hung around the train station trying to figure out what to do when the conductor found us? Did we generate our own luck by sheer determination of acomplishing the task at hand? Whatever the effector, the cause of boldness and totally committing seemed to do the trick.
This runs counter-intuitive to me, who always has a backup plan, and always has a schedule, especially concerning travel. My travel experiance with my family is "plan and expect for the worst to happen, and something disasterous happens at least once on every trip." Chase's travel philosophy is "Everything will work out fine" and the more adventurous we were, the less we worried about things going bad. I literally felt lucky, like I was surrounded by a golden aura. I need to work on developing this, especially as I tend to procrastinate and have difficulty initiating things. Creativity and Initive. How far apart are they?
The other interesting thing was a quote he had at the end, mistakenly attributing it to Everest summiter Edmund Hillary and not the German philosopher Goethe.
Concerning all acts of initive and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splended plans: that the moment one definately commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise would have occured.
I found this highly interesting for a number of reasons. The first thing I thought of was the absolutely fantastic luck we had in Europe traveling with Chase. My luck was ill before we met, and vastly improved with him around. We would make rail connections with minutes to spare, find places to stay when we really needed them, find interpreters and good samaritans at crucial junctions, make and even subverted the evil Russian embassy bureauocracy. We were never mugged, scammed (while togather), and we had nothing stolen from us. I would have sworn we had a guardian angel standing over us.
In these circumstances, where we just WENT to Gimmelvalt without calling to see if they had any space, the only hostel there, they had space available for us. It was there or nowhere. We HAD to make the train to scandinavia. We would have missed it if the one platform conductor hadn't found us again on a different stair and sent us on our way to the right station where it was delayed. When we arrived in Budapest, with no clue of where the hotel was, who did Chase find in our car but an english-speaking member of the department of tourism with good maps and directions?
What was behind this phenomenal luck? We were traveling all or nothing, and I was initially discomforted by our lack of fallback plans and insurance. We made bold moves, like going to Budapest. Was it the movement of Providence that bathed us in such great luck? Was it something more prosaic like if we had had a backup plan in place, we wouldn't have hung around the train station trying to figure out what to do when the conductor found us? Did we generate our own luck by sheer determination of acomplishing the task at hand? Whatever the effector, the cause of boldness and totally committing seemed to do the trick.
This runs counter-intuitive to me, who always has a backup plan, and always has a schedule, especially concerning travel. My travel experiance with my family is "plan and expect for the worst to happen, and something disasterous happens at least once on every trip." Chase's travel philosophy is "Everything will work out fine" and the more adventurous we were, the less we worried about things going bad. I literally felt lucky, like I was surrounded by a golden aura. I need to work on developing this, especially as I tend to procrastinate and have difficulty initiating things. Creativity and Initive. How far apart are they?
Sep 19, 2005
Alec In Narnia
As some of you might be aware, the movie adaptation of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is coming out in december. I had never read the books, and not wishing to miss out on a childhood meme, I read the first two books in the Chronicles of Narnia series. These books are brilliantly written, not as textured and descriptive as the Harry Potter series, nor as breathlessly fantastic and boring as Tolkien. Lewis uses simple, powerful prose, which does a geat job for description without being overly descriptive. What I found really intersting was that these stories are plainly allegorical for major events and themes in the Bible.
The Magician's Nephew has Genesis re-enacted, with Aslan the Great Lion (God) literally singing the world of Narnia into existance and calling forth all life from the ground. The children (adressed as Sons-of-Adam and Daughters-of-Eve) who enter that world inadverantly bring the Witch, personification of timeless evil, thereby tainting the land. Thier penance must be to seek out The Apple tree, and bring a fruit back to Aslan. There is temptation, hardship, and moral dillemas in this children's book. In the end, of course, Aslan makes everything right again.
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is a take on the Passion. A child sibling defects to the Witch's side out of petty emotions. When she demands his blood on old magic grounds, Aslan sacrafices himself to save the boy. He is bound, shaved, and subjected to ridicule, torment, and then killed. At dawn, a stoke of lighting splits the massive sacraficial stone, and Aslan reappears to battle and destroy the Witch and drive evil from the land, returning animals and people back to life from the Witch's stone curse.
This is pretty heady stuff for young children's books. I'm interested to read the rest of the series. Other books I'm reading inlcude Blink, a book about developing the ultra-quick subconscious decision making which people call instinct.
I did get my hair cut, I got a $5 off coupon for a hairstylist place called Grooming Humans so I got a shampoo, cut, and style for 17 dollars, just five bucks more than having Laquisha do it over at CostCutters. It's shorter, but looks pretty good.
This weekend, I worked on various homework, and went salsa dancing sunday night. I'm surprised by how much I still remember. At least we dont have to go to that class.
The Magician's Nephew has Genesis re-enacted, with Aslan the Great Lion (God) literally singing the world of Narnia into existance and calling forth all life from the ground. The children (adressed as Sons-of-Adam and Daughters-of-Eve) who enter that world inadverantly bring the Witch, personification of timeless evil, thereby tainting the land. Thier penance must be to seek out The Apple tree, and bring a fruit back to Aslan. There is temptation, hardship, and moral dillemas in this children's book. In the end, of course, Aslan makes everything right again.
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is a take on the Passion. A child sibling defects to the Witch's side out of petty emotions. When she demands his blood on old magic grounds, Aslan sacrafices himself to save the boy. He is bound, shaved, and subjected to ridicule, torment, and then killed. At dawn, a stoke of lighting splits the massive sacraficial stone, and Aslan reappears to battle and destroy the Witch and drive evil from the land, returning animals and people back to life from the Witch's stone curse.
This is pretty heady stuff for young children's books. I'm interested to read the rest of the series. Other books I'm reading inlcude Blink, a book about developing the ultra-quick subconscious decision making which people call instinct.
I did get my hair cut, I got a $5 off coupon for a hairstylist place called Grooming Humans so I got a shampoo, cut, and style for 17 dollars, just five bucks more than having Laquisha do it over at CostCutters. It's shorter, but looks pretty good.
This weekend, I worked on various homework, and went salsa dancing sunday night. I'm surprised by how much I still remember. At least we dont have to go to that class.
Sep 14, 2005
A very special brick
Good, easygoing day today. Finished my paper comparing the architectural spaces, although I still need to sketch an image of the law library. In studio, I took pictures of my model. I'm really impresed with how it turned out and it still surprises me by the way sunlight hits it. Our "interim" project is pretty fun: we're photographing our models. First a series of plain elevations, then some "sexier" shots with interesting angles, details, connections, lighting, etc. The last part is the creation of a photomontage to see what further ideas can be pulled out.
When I came in to work at the library today, I found Jen working with white gloves on at the reserved collections room. The architecture library has absolutely tons of original material concerning the Arizona Biltmore, photos, menus, preliminary sketches, original correspondance between the architect Albert McArthur and Frank Lloyd Wright. Among more intersting items in the collection was a brick from the construction which had been carefully wrapped for preservation purposes. Jen was doing a report on the Biltmore for her interior design history class, and what she found when I told her about the library collection was so in depth and interesting, she kept reseraching and reading far beyond what she needed.
The interest comes from the dynamism between Albert McArthur, a student under Wright for two years, and Mr. Wright himself. Of Wright's proteges, only McArthur really suceeded independnatly. A controversy which has never been adequately closed is how much of the Biltmore did Wright actually design, and most of the material in the collection centers on this.
Basically, McArthur's enterprising brothers financed a massive resort in phoenix, and wanted him to design it. McArthur was up to the task but wanted to use a concrete block bulding system developed by Wright. He wrote Wright to ask if he could use the system. We have Wright's written response, in which he essentially invited himself over to "possiblly asist and supervise." Other documents we found talked about Wright's financial and design crisis just prior, when he was threatened with losing Taliesin, and he had been out of work for awhile. A few years before this, Wright's own prized resort, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, had just been destroyed, and I wonder if he saw this as a second chance, even if only subconsciously.
Wright claimed he had a patent on the building system and charged McArthur a good sum of money for the use of it. About the time when the resort opened, it became clear that Wright had never filed any kind of patent for it at all. In the time between this, Wright moved his family to Phoenix and, according to his wife's book, made a lot of sketches, drawings, and design decisions about the hotel. We do see these sketches in her book, but not in the collection, and we dont know if these were sketches he made based on McArthur's plans, or if it went the other way around. We have a written affadavit, signed by Wright, that he had nothing to do with the Hotel's design, but the nature of the note seems somewhat amiss.
McArthur, for that matter, never liked Wright that much (he only spent 2 years as a fellow), and though he took a lot from his designs and style, they seemed to be at odds, as the patent episode demonstrates. To make a long story short(er), The hotel, which had Wright's trademark style, opened to great fanfare and accolades. All of a sudden, Wright wasn't so eager to dispell the idea that he'd had nothing to do with it's construction. He contradicts himself in several places and never makes a really clear stand. To me, it seems like the classic Mentor-Mentee relationship at its ultimate culmination: the mentor views the mentee as not having what it really takes, and the mentee seeing himself as equal to the mentor.
The mentee in question, Albert McArthur, was a really brilliant guy. We have his detailed and immacualte notes, equations, and essays. He studied quantum and light physics in college, where he developed an independant color theory which he continued to develop and exploit for the rest of his career. His color theroy is really interesting as he associates and compares colors to musical notes. The brightest, most intense colors occur at certain wavelengths, i.e. octives of music, and he actually derived the trademark shape of the masonry block at the Biltmore from a musical composition which was converted first to color, then into sculpture. It's really interesting to see the his handwritten notes firsthand, and peice these things togather yourself. It's an adventure, a mystery. There's enough material here to develop a thesis on it.
In more mundane news, I need a haircut.
When I came in to work at the library today, I found Jen working with white gloves on at the reserved collections room. The architecture library has absolutely tons of original material concerning the Arizona Biltmore, photos, menus, preliminary sketches, original correspondance between the architect Albert McArthur and Frank Lloyd Wright. Among more intersting items in the collection was a brick from the construction which had been carefully wrapped for preservation purposes. Jen was doing a report on the Biltmore for her interior design history class, and what she found when I told her about the library collection was so in depth and interesting, she kept reseraching and reading far beyond what she needed.
The interest comes from the dynamism between Albert McArthur, a student under Wright for two years, and Mr. Wright himself. Of Wright's proteges, only McArthur really suceeded independnatly. A controversy which has never been adequately closed is how much of the Biltmore did Wright actually design, and most of the material in the collection centers on this.
Basically, McArthur's enterprising brothers financed a massive resort in phoenix, and wanted him to design it. McArthur was up to the task but wanted to use a concrete block bulding system developed by Wright. He wrote Wright to ask if he could use the system. We have Wright's written response, in which he essentially invited himself over to "possiblly asist and supervise." Other documents we found talked about Wright's financial and design crisis just prior, when he was threatened with losing Taliesin, and he had been out of work for awhile. A few years before this, Wright's own prized resort, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, had just been destroyed, and I wonder if he saw this as a second chance, even if only subconsciously.
Wright claimed he had a patent on the building system and charged McArthur a good sum of money for the use of it. About the time when the resort opened, it became clear that Wright had never filed any kind of patent for it at all. In the time between this, Wright moved his family to Phoenix and, according to his wife's book, made a lot of sketches, drawings, and design decisions about the hotel. We do see these sketches in her book, but not in the collection, and we dont know if these were sketches he made based on McArthur's plans, or if it went the other way around. We have a written affadavit, signed by Wright, that he had nothing to do with the Hotel's design, but the nature of the note seems somewhat amiss.
McArthur, for that matter, never liked Wright that much (he only spent 2 years as a fellow), and though he took a lot from his designs and style, they seemed to be at odds, as the patent episode demonstrates. To make a long story short(er), The hotel, which had Wright's trademark style, opened to great fanfare and accolades. All of a sudden, Wright wasn't so eager to dispell the idea that he'd had nothing to do with it's construction. He contradicts himself in several places and never makes a really clear stand. To me, it seems like the classic Mentor-Mentee relationship at its ultimate culmination: the mentor views the mentee as not having what it really takes, and the mentee seeing himself as equal to the mentor.
The mentee in question, Albert McArthur, was a really brilliant guy. We have his detailed and immacualte notes, equations, and essays. He studied quantum and light physics in college, where he developed an independant color theory which he continued to develop and exploit for the rest of his career. His color theroy is really interesting as he associates and compares colors to musical notes. The brightest, most intense colors occur at certain wavelengths, i.e. octives of music, and he actually derived the trademark shape of the masonry block at the Biltmore from a musical composition which was converted first to color, then into sculpture. It's really interesting to see the his handwritten notes firsthand, and peice these things togather yourself. It's an adventure, a mystery. There's enough material here to develop a thesis on it.
In more mundane news, I need a haircut.
Sep 13, 2005
INTJ
Short post today, just feeling whupped by tuesdays.
We scored our Myers-Briggs test today. The test was actually developed by a mother and daughter, based on the work of Carl Jung and his theories of introversion and extroversion.
I was an INTJ: Introvert, iNtuitive, Thinking, and Judging. There were about a dozen other INTJs in the class when he asked, everyone was an architecture major. The prof said that many architects are INTJs. It was interesting to see what personality types were most heavily represented in the design field.
We also learned a bit about our 'inferior' type, the one which fails when we're under stress. The sheet listed 'sensing' as INTJ's inferior type, and while it listed exactly things which put us under a lot of stress, the reaction, the failure of sensing, I wasn't too sure about. It said we overindulge in sensing without enjoyment, like turning on music or tv or a movie and not cognizently watching it. It also talked about feelings of being overwhelmed with sensory data, and viewing the world as an enemy. The list of things which help read like a self-manual for me: "space", quiet, natural surroundings, using thinking to find solutions, etc.
Current stress triggers: 5 page paper due thurs comparing two architecture spaces. I have 2.5 paragraphs done on it. At least I have the notes and photos. I'm more than 50 pages behind with my History of Architecture readings. We've just been really busy at the library. The arch library is slowly circulating in 5,000 new books which need to be processed, plated, and shelved.
We scored our Myers-Briggs test today. The test was actually developed by a mother and daughter, based on the work of Carl Jung and his theories of introversion and extroversion.
I was an INTJ: Introvert, iNtuitive, Thinking, and Judging. There were about a dozen other INTJs in the class when he asked, everyone was an architecture major. The prof said that many architects are INTJs. It was interesting to see what personality types were most heavily represented in the design field.
We also learned a bit about our 'inferior' type, the one which fails when we're under stress. The sheet listed 'sensing' as INTJ's inferior type, and while it listed exactly things which put us under a lot of stress, the reaction, the failure of sensing, I wasn't too sure about. It said we overindulge in sensing without enjoyment, like turning on music or tv or a movie and not cognizently watching it. It also talked about feelings of being overwhelmed with sensory data, and viewing the world as an enemy. The list of things which help read like a self-manual for me: "space", quiet, natural surroundings, using thinking to find solutions, etc.
Current stress triggers: 5 page paper due thurs comparing two architecture spaces. I have 2.5 paragraphs done on it. At least I have the notes and photos. I'm more than 50 pages behind with my History of Architecture readings. We've just been really busy at the library. The arch library is slowly circulating in 5,000 new books which need to be processed, plated, and shelved.
Sep 12, 2005
crit!
Crit: short for critique in architecture, where projects are presented, discussed, and criticized.
We had our first crit of the year today. For once, I was done ahead of schedule. I finished my model saturday, finished the drawings sunday, and had all my presentation materials ready an hour before the crit at 2. And I never stayed in studio past midnight, either.
One of the things I love about studying architecture is the time right before review. It's an intense time. People are puting final touches on thier models and drawings, setting up thier presentation area, checking out each others' work. The Project is finally done, for good or ill. The end of the long and weary road has been reached, and whether it ends in failure or sucess, the end is a celebration in itself. People dress up more for critiques, they're jazzed, buzzing, and chatting. It's a bit like show-and-tell combined with art class; everyone wants to show what they've done. It's a culmination of a lot of work.
Our crit had an usual format. They crammed all 48 of us into one studio WITH our models and drawings (thereby tripling it's normal density) and the first thing we did was go around and give the basic idea of the project in one minute or less.
For an identical problem with harsh constraints, we had a dizzying array of different projects. There was a small group of maybe five projects which were very similiar, but most were completely different from each other. Out of 48 people, only a few other people had a roof that wasn't perfectly flat, and only one other person had a roof that wasn't made of horizontal planes.
I was also surprised by the high level of craft people had in thier models. There's definately an improvement since last year. I guess those with better craft got in because thier portfolios demonstrated thier commitment to quality craftsmanship. We had two outside reviewers who worked with architecture firms, but the one in my more intense crit group left right before getting to my project. The woman who critiqued my project teaches one of the other third year studios and is fanatically by the project. I overheard her say that there was supposed to be only ONE opening in the structure as only one opening was described in the program. I guess she doesn't like to think outside the box.
Anyway, she didn;t hate my project, but I got the impression that she thought I had squandered this assignment. From her perspective, this assignment was about developing real-world solutions using real world connections. My take on the assignment was that this was for material and form explorations. We're both right, in a sense; it's just the inherant problems of building without a real program or context. She, and some other students, thought my project was too sculptural and had too much going on. I can appreciate both these comments. When designing the roof, I thought more about the opportunities and challenges of working with the torqued surface rather than the space which it defines.
As to the too-much-going-on critique, I suppose I should take it as a compliement that I had a lot of really good ideas that dilute each other. For instance, an angle becomes much more pronounced when its next to a straight line or a right angle. Throw a bunch of angles togather and you lose context of what is supposed to be straight- the angles lose thier angularity.
At any rate, this was what my studio prof said last time I talked to him, although I disagreed with him at the time. I was just really excited about the torqued roof structure, and it does look really cool. All in all, it was a good crit, although I wish I had more people review it. A lot of students took pictures of it, and I took pictures of a lot of other student's models I thought were interesting. Jen and a bunch of interior girls dropped by to watch the crit in process, and even without knowing I'd designed it, they went straight to my project because everyone else had basically a box. From here, I go on to plus/delta my design and design process.
Media I'm Grokking: Chronicles of Narnia, starting with Magican's Nephew. The Gorillaz Demon Days. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00082IJ08/qid=1126580951/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-2460545-4086348?v=glance&s=music&n=507846It's kind of poppy but extremely varied from electronic funk to dennis hopper reading a short story interspaced with melodic lyrical interludes. Also stuff by Cake is really cool.
We had our first crit of the year today. For once, I was done ahead of schedule. I finished my model saturday, finished the drawings sunday, and had all my presentation materials ready an hour before the crit at 2. And I never stayed in studio past midnight, either.
One of the things I love about studying architecture is the time right before review. It's an intense time. People are puting final touches on thier models and drawings, setting up thier presentation area, checking out each others' work. The Project is finally done, for good or ill. The end of the long and weary road has been reached, and whether it ends in failure or sucess, the end is a celebration in itself. People dress up more for critiques, they're jazzed, buzzing, and chatting. It's a bit like show-and-tell combined with art class; everyone wants to show what they've done. It's a culmination of a lot of work.
Our crit had an usual format. They crammed all 48 of us into one studio WITH our models and drawings (thereby tripling it's normal density) and the first thing we did was go around and give the basic idea of the project in one minute or less.
For an identical problem with harsh constraints, we had a dizzying array of different projects. There was a small group of maybe five projects which were very similiar, but most were completely different from each other. Out of 48 people, only a few other people had a roof that wasn't perfectly flat, and only one other person had a roof that wasn't made of horizontal planes.
I was also surprised by the high level of craft people had in thier models. There's definately an improvement since last year. I guess those with better craft got in because thier portfolios demonstrated thier commitment to quality craftsmanship. We had two outside reviewers who worked with architecture firms, but the one in my more intense crit group left right before getting to my project. The woman who critiqued my project teaches one of the other third year studios and is fanatically by the project. I overheard her say that there was supposed to be only ONE opening in the structure as only one opening was described in the program. I guess she doesn't like to think outside the box.
Anyway, she didn;t hate my project, but I got the impression that she thought I had squandered this assignment. From her perspective, this assignment was about developing real-world solutions using real world connections. My take on the assignment was that this was for material and form explorations. We're both right, in a sense; it's just the inherant problems of building without a real program or context. She, and some other students, thought my project was too sculptural and had too much going on. I can appreciate both these comments. When designing the roof, I thought more about the opportunities and challenges of working with the torqued surface rather than the space which it defines.
As to the too-much-going-on critique, I suppose I should take it as a compliement that I had a lot of really good ideas that dilute each other. For instance, an angle becomes much more pronounced when its next to a straight line or a right angle. Throw a bunch of angles togather and you lose context of what is supposed to be straight- the angles lose thier angularity.
At any rate, this was what my studio prof said last time I talked to him, although I disagreed with him at the time. I was just really excited about the torqued roof structure, and it does look really cool. All in all, it was a good crit, although I wish I had more people review it. A lot of students took pictures of it, and I took pictures of a lot of other student's models I thought were interesting. Jen and a bunch of interior girls dropped by to watch the crit in process, and even without knowing I'd designed it, they went straight to my project because everyone else had basically a box. From here, I go on to plus/delta my design and design process.
Media I'm Grokking: Chronicles of Narnia, starting with Magican's Nephew. The Gorillaz Demon Days. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00082IJ08/qid=1126580951/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-2460545-4086348?v=glance&s=music&n=507846It's kind of poppy but extremely varied from electronic funk to dennis hopper reading a short story interspaced with melodic lyrical interludes. Also stuff by Cake is really cool.
Sep 9, 2005
Statics with Mike and Pete
My most challenging class so far has been Building systems 1. The teacher is a professional mechanical engineer with his own contracting firm. However, he has never taught a college class before. I have a nagging feeling he's doing this because the architects he deals with have no clue what he's talking about in structure. This sets up an interesting personality conflict in class. The teacher talks like a contractor and moves really quickly because its second nature to him, skipping the little steps in the problems. There's so much he's got to cover, he can only outline the reactions at this point. The class of architecture students is extremely detail oriented; we want to know exactly how everything works. One class he drew a framing diagram with a bunch of joists 4' on center (neglecting to explain what "on center" meant) spanning two beams. He started doing the math for one of the joists, and half the class became really flustered because he didn't explain which particular joist he describing. With his limited experiance, it took him five minutes to explain that it didn't matter which one he was describing becuase the forces and loading on them were the same. When one guy asked which end the reaction forces were occuring, he told him that it didn't matter, becaue it was an equally loaded beam and the forces were the same at either end. "You can call it x and y, a and b, or mike and pete as long as you're consistant". We all thought this was highly amusing. He also told us to return the textbook (which I didn't pick up yet ha-ha) because it was useless and spend the money on beer.
The last two weeks we covered the very basics of beams, loads, and construction materials in a really fast overview. This week, we started on the math. None of us have ever done anything remotely like this yet, so its really taking us awhile to get the hang of it. At this point, given a total load per square foot on a floor supported by a frame, we can calcualte the pounds/ft on any beam or joist, the total load on any beam, and the reaction loads at the ends of any span. Ultimately, this tells us how much loading is on the collumns and how strong the collumns need to be. This is actually pretty easy stuff once one understands the why and the units. Anyway, at the end of the class, we should be able to calculate loading on any part of a building, draw loading and moment diagrams, and calculate bending and shear forces.
First project is due monday! I've finished the two walls and most of the framing. Just need to work on the windows. Here's a computer model of it:
click for larger view
The last two weeks we covered the very basics of beams, loads, and construction materials in a really fast overview. This week, we started on the math. None of us have ever done anything remotely like this yet, so its really taking us awhile to get the hang of it. At this point, given a total load per square foot on a floor supported by a frame, we can calcualte the pounds/ft on any beam or joist, the total load on any beam, and the reaction loads at the ends of any span. Ultimately, this tells us how much loading is on the collumns and how strong the collumns need to be. This is actually pretty easy stuff once one understands the why and the units. Anyway, at the end of the class, we should be able to calculate loading on any part of a building, draw loading and moment diagrams, and calculate bending and shear forces.
First project is due monday! I've finished the two walls and most of the framing. Just need to work on the windows. Here's a computer model of it:
click for larger view
Sep 7, 2005
Arizona State University of Tulane
My studio project is on track. Last night I worked till midnight finishing the formwork for my second wall. The second wall has a 4" wide round opening in it, so I used an old movie cup. I poured it this morning around 11, and it turned out pretty well. With both walls poured, I've begun work on the basswood frame structure.
A new guy came into our studio and was looking around at our projects. I got to talking to him and it turns out he's the first student from Tulane coming here. He was beginning their third year architecture program when they evacuated the school- apparently on freshmen move in day. He, and probably a quite a few classmates, will be joining us for the rest of the semester in our studios and other coursework. The current director of the college of design formerly taught at Tulane, and so encouraged thier architecture people to come over here. In fact, thier entire 5th year thesis students AND faculty will be taking up residence here. At any rate, ASU is set to become the new Tulane architecture campus.
The guy in our studio wansn't able to take anything from his studio with him, so now he has to go and restock everything! He said he spent about a hundred dollars on "small stuff" like pens, notebooks, and drafting supplies. He doesn't even have a board to work on, and the school is scrambling to find enough deskspace. Should be an exciting year.
A new guy came into our studio and was looking around at our projects. I got to talking to him and it turns out he's the first student from Tulane coming here. He was beginning their third year architecture program when they evacuated the school- apparently on freshmen move in day. He, and probably a quite a few classmates, will be joining us for the rest of the semester in our studios and other coursework. The current director of the college of design formerly taught at Tulane, and so encouraged thier architecture people to come over here. In fact, thier entire 5th year thesis students AND faculty will be taking up residence here. At any rate, ASU is set to become the new Tulane architecture campus.
The guy in our studio wansn't able to take anything from his studio with him, so now he has to go and restock everything! He said he spent about a hundred dollars on "small stuff" like pens, notebooks, and drafting supplies. He doesn't even have a board to work on, and the school is scrambling to find enough deskspace. Should be an exciting year.
Sep 6, 2005
Birthday Weekend
What a weekend! Friday night, Jen and a bunch of our friends from architecture went out to a college pizza joint, like Greasy Tony's, and then went on First Fridays in downtown Phoenix. Every first friday of the month, the galleries in downtown phoenix all open. There's a few particular areas along Roosevelt where there's a local art community. The galleries here range from very professional galleries to tiny homes people have converted the first floor of into their personal galleries. There's lots of live bands, a fair amount of drinking, and huge crowds. All types of people come out: matrons with baby buggies, I ran into a guy from Habitat down there, and tons of design students, artists, and artist/designer wannabes. This time, we spotted Dan Hoffman, one of the tenured professors taking in the artwork. One of the places, Monorchid, is an amazingly cool designers collective in a spectacular building of glass, concrete, and steel inside an old warehouse. It contains a huge gallery space, a private gallery/function space, library, and offices.
Saturday night I went to a party with some friends and afterwards, when I passed midnight, I made a mojito back at thier house. Everyone I talked to at the party couldn't beleive I wasn't going to do 21 shots of hard liquour or do the "Power Hour" where one goes and drinks for a solid hour at a bar. Such is the school I attend.
Sunday, I went over to Jen's and she made me french toast for breakfast. Then we went to see March of the Penguins. While I liked it, it wasn't exactly a billion dollar blockbuster. Afterwards, I bought a new pair of shoes to replace my sketchers, and a found a really good deal on some Bass leather sandals 60% off. That evening Jen took me out to AZ/88 a trendy American restaurant in Scottsdale.
Labor day, I spent working on my studio project, finally finishing the corrugated wall pour around nine pm. Today is long Tuesday. The human factors class is putting me to sleep, although the Finding Purpose class was theraputic as usual. It helps that the teacher is an acutal therapist. I'm looking more and more at architecture firms nearby. My top three local picks would be Will Bruder, Rick Joy, and Antoine Predock. It's really good working in the library because it exposes me to so much. We get new books in all the time, and I always take time to skim the books I'm shelving.
Speaking of which, I got my paycheck today which made me feel good. I can't beleive I'm being paid for this, especially after Ross and the bookstore. Granted, its not much, just $6 an hour, but for the actual time spent doing library "work" I think I'm actually making $18 an hour since I only do "work" about a third of the time.
Saturday night I went to a party with some friends and afterwards, when I passed midnight, I made a mojito back at thier house. Everyone I talked to at the party couldn't beleive I wasn't going to do 21 shots of hard liquour or do the "Power Hour" where one goes and drinks for a solid hour at a bar. Such is the school I attend.
Sunday, I went over to Jen's and she made me french toast for breakfast. Then we went to see March of the Penguins. While I liked it, it wasn't exactly a billion dollar blockbuster. Afterwards, I bought a new pair of shoes to replace my sketchers, and a found a really good deal on some Bass leather sandals 60% off. That evening Jen took me out to AZ/88 a trendy American restaurant in Scottsdale.
Labor day, I spent working on my studio project, finally finishing the corrugated wall pour around nine pm. Today is long Tuesday. The human factors class is putting me to sleep, although the Finding Purpose class was theraputic as usual. It helps that the teacher is an acutal therapist. I'm looking more and more at architecture firms nearby. My top three local picks would be Will Bruder, Rick Joy, and Antoine Predock. It's really good working in the library because it exposes me to so much. We get new books in all the time, and I always take time to skim the books I'm shelving.
Speaking of which, I got my paycheck today which made me feel good. I can't beleive I'm being paid for this, especially after Ross and the bookstore. Granted, its not much, just $6 an hour, but for the actual time spent doing library "work" I think I'm actually making $18 an hour since I only do "work" about a third of the time.
Sep 3, 2005
Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans...
What has happened in New Orleans is so appalling its almost surreal. Images coming out of the area look like bangladesh, and not one of the cultural capitals of the south. The aftermath of the destruction of the storm is a powerful reminder of the fragility of society. I was listening to an NPR interview with the head of the National Emergency Response department concerning the New Orleans Convention Center, and it highlighted the entire issue. NPR's reporters on the site described utter scenes of horror and chaos, 12 year old girls being raped, a mob driving off a battalion of police officers, rampant looting, and geriatrics lying dead on the side of the road. Even more appalling was the the head guy's outright denial that there was an issue with the convention center. The NPR interviewer, a station which is notorious for its sedate interviews, was absolutely livid with the national department head because he was refusing to send aid to the 2,000 people in the convention center because he hadn't been alerted to them through the proper channels. These people have had no food, water, or medical supplies since the disaster struck. On the other line, the reporters, actually on the site, were even more livid at hearing the department head dismiss their reports as "anecdotal" and thier bitterness at how the situation was being handled came pouring out in their speech. A few hours later, the department head recieved the report about the convention center.
Apart from the governmental response, I've been dismayed by the actions of the people living in the city. I can understand people who dont want to leave because they have no car, nowhere to go, or no money to get themselves anywhere, and people who are just plain uneducated and stupid. What I can't understand is the looting, shooting, and lawlessness. I've heard stories about people looting wal-marts for food and distributing that out, but what's with the all the looting elsewhere? Do these people think the commerical market is going to come back to town next week? Do they think that rapes and murders are OK now since there's no one around to punish them? These people are savages, they don't understand what a society is, nor will they ever belong to one.
What a mess. I was really hoping to spend some time down there, getting back in touch with my birthplace, enjoying spicy cajun food and jazz. It's going to take at least a year to get New Orleans back on it's feet. At least the French had the good sense to found the French quarter on high ground. I was talking to the janitor back in the architecture building, and it turns out he's also from LaPlace. He was amazed to find someone who actaully knew where it was, let alone come from there. Small world. Oh, here's a computer model of my architecture project so far.
Apart from the governmental response, I've been dismayed by the actions of the people living in the city. I can understand people who dont want to leave because they have no car, nowhere to go, or no money to get themselves anywhere, and people who are just plain uneducated and stupid. What I can't understand is the looting, shooting, and lawlessness. I've heard stories about people looting wal-marts for food and distributing that out, but what's with the all the looting elsewhere? Do these people think the commerical market is going to come back to town next week? Do they think that rapes and murders are OK now since there's no one around to punish them? These people are savages, they don't understand what a society is, nor will they ever belong to one.
What a mess. I was really hoping to spend some time down there, getting back in touch with my birthplace, enjoying spicy cajun food and jazz. It's going to take at least a year to get New Orleans back on it's feet. At least the French had the good sense to found the French quarter on high ground. I was talking to the janitor back in the architecture building, and it turns out he's also from LaPlace. He was amazed to find someone who actaully knew where it was, let alone come from there. Small world. Oh, here's a computer model of my architecture project so far.
Aug 30, 2005
Procrastination: I'll tell you about it later.
My 'terrible tuesdays' aren't as bad as I had feared. In architecture history we learned about cave paintings and stonehenge. Our reading homework is one chapter of the textbook a class, begining with chapter one. My finding purpose class was really interesting. The professor who teaches it studied art and design, but eventually became and still is, a practicing therapist. Today we talked about effective time management skills and it really started to ring a bell for me. He talked about time as a space, an area of hour blocks, with 168 blocks in a week. Many "technical errors" we make when planning I found myself I make.
Errors:
Tasks don't have a home -you don't set aside a specific time or occation to get the task done
Tasks are overly complex -needs to be broken down into simpler steps
Clean up my workspace -ordered, structured work areas translate to better efficiancy
He also talked about obsticles to good time management, various ways to prioritize your tasks, and about procrastination as a major impediment to good time management. He described procrastination as having two causes: 20% of the time you dont want to do it, but 80% of the time its caused from a fear of failure, a major fear of perfectionists. In a hall of design and architecture students, this really struck a strong chord. Ways to combat it were to just to start doing something, anything to get over that initial intertia, and giving it a home in your time/space.
What I found particularly interesting was his point on creativity and structured time. He said that structing your time actually increases your creative potential, as long as you set aside time for dreaming, zoning out, brainstorming etc. I'm not sure, but I'm willing to give it a try.
There was an interesting bit about prioritzing tasks, and how people who categorized the tasks 1-3 in importance always got the 3 tasks done, but seemed to finish the 1 tasks, even though they had very high personal priority. To combat this, he recommended something he does every day, which is to write down the three most important, vital things to get done that day in the morning, and to check back and see how you're doing 4-6 times a day. I think this is a great idea. I'm going to get my whiteboard and make a three line chart.
One last thing he talked about was the system of evaluating how he did for the day using the plus/delta system. It really reminded me of dad, when he talked about plus/deltas for road trips and other things. I miss them, they'd really enjoy this 118 degree weather back in chilly (for an arizonan) weather back in Moscow.
Anyway, today on my work, I flipped through a book on prision design and fallout shelters in the 1950s-onward.
Errors:
Tasks don't have a home -you don't set aside a specific time or occation to get the task done
Tasks are overly complex -needs to be broken down into simpler steps
Clean up my workspace -ordered, structured work areas translate to better efficiancy
He also talked about obsticles to good time management, various ways to prioritize your tasks, and about procrastination as a major impediment to good time management. He described procrastination as having two causes: 20% of the time you dont want to do it, but 80% of the time its caused from a fear of failure, a major fear of perfectionists. In a hall of design and architecture students, this really struck a strong chord. Ways to combat it were to just to start doing something, anything to get over that initial intertia, and giving it a home in your time/space.
What I found particularly interesting was his point on creativity and structured time. He said that structing your time actually increases your creative potential, as long as you set aside time for dreaming, zoning out, brainstorming etc. I'm not sure, but I'm willing to give it a try.
There was an interesting bit about prioritzing tasks, and how people who categorized the tasks 1-3 in importance always got the 3 tasks done, but seemed to finish the 1 tasks, even though they had very high personal priority. To combat this, he recommended something he does every day, which is to write down the three most important, vital things to get done that day in the morning, and to check back and see how you're doing 4-6 times a day. I think this is a great idea. I'm going to get my whiteboard and make a three line chart.
One last thing he talked about was the system of evaluating how he did for the day using the plus/delta system. It really reminded me of dad, when he talked about plus/deltas for road trips and other things. I miss them, they'd really enjoy this 118 degree weather back in chilly (for an arizonan) weather back in Moscow.
Anyway, today on my work, I flipped through a book on prision design and fallout shelters in the 1950s-onward.
Aug 28, 2005
Pictures from the first week of school
Washing clothes at the laundromat, our pink paper tower in History of Architecture, and my desk in the studio of the architecture building.
Aug 26, 2005
first week in review
Tuesday and thursday, I went to the history of architecture lecture at 10:40, my earliest class of the week. It's taught by this thirtyish bookish guy who lookes exactly like an architectural historian. He's got brylcreamed hair with a huge side part, round glasses, and a high nasal voice. He is however, very energetic and almost manic about the subject, describing how we'd "go across the sweeping expanse of asia to see the great wall, the forbidden city, and japan" like a radio announcer talking about a grand prize vacation. Jen's also taking the class to get more of a taste of architecture. Thursday we were given an in class assignment to build a tower out of six sheets of pink paper that had to be 44 inches tall (4 sheets high). It also had to withstand a "wind test" of a sheet of paper waved in front of it. Jen and I teamed up with another archtiecture student and we built a really nice looking tower with a triangular cross section.
After that, I went to my structures class. This is interesting as its taught by a professional contractor. The downside is that he was alerted he'd be teachign the class less than a month ago, and he's never taught before. It's good because he knows so much from the real world, and how the architect-contractor relationship works, but he doesnt know what we dont know, so we have to stop him constantly to slow him down and explain terms like "kips" etc. Lots of cool engeneering stuff.
After structures comes Finding Purpose, a class that is both required in upper division, and came recommended from a friend who'd already taken it. Basically, its a class about finding your personal direction, exploring alternitives in life and your career, managing time, etc. We're taking the Myers-Briggs test next week, and apparently we also go over things like interviews, and other real-work stuff. There's virtually no homework, just a journal after each class, and the final project is a 5 page autobiography. A nice, relaxing class.
The last class of the day is Human Factors, a class on designing ergonomically and humanistically with anthropometrics. Not a whole lot of fun at this point, but we'll see how it goes.
This week, I worked 14 hours at the library, although I'm still getting the hang of closing it all down. Last night, Jen and I went to the double feature at the drive in. In the sweltering heat, we watched The 40 year old virgin and The Wedding Crashers. I was surprised about how much I actaully enjoyed both of them. Today, friday, I had no classes. Sweet. I just worked in studio for about six hours on my project.
After that, I went to my structures class. This is interesting as its taught by a professional contractor. The downside is that he was alerted he'd be teachign the class less than a month ago, and he's never taught before. It's good because he knows so much from the real world, and how the architect-contractor relationship works, but he doesnt know what we dont know, so we have to stop him constantly to slow him down and explain terms like "kips" etc. Lots of cool engeneering stuff.
After structures comes Finding Purpose, a class that is both required in upper division, and came recommended from a friend who'd already taken it. Basically, its a class about finding your personal direction, exploring alternitives in life and your career, managing time, etc. We're taking the Myers-Briggs test next week, and apparently we also go over things like interviews, and other real-work stuff. There's virtually no homework, just a journal after each class, and the final project is a 5 page autobiography. A nice, relaxing class.
The last class of the day is Human Factors, a class on designing ergonomically and humanistically with anthropometrics. Not a whole lot of fun at this point, but we'll see how it goes.
This week, I worked 14 hours at the library, although I'm still getting the hang of closing it all down. Last night, Jen and I went to the double feature at the drive in. In the sweltering heat, we watched The 40 year old virgin and The Wedding Crashers. I was surprised about how much I actaully enjoyed both of them. Today, friday, I had no classes. Sweet. I just worked in studio for about six hours on my project.
Aug 22, 2005
Salt River Tubing and First Day of School
I spent the last day of summer doing the ultimate college break/arizona thing: I went tubing on the Salt River. I drove out with a bunch of friends from the architecture/design house (a minivan comes in handy) and one other car. There were about 10 of us, and we stopped for lunch at a Sonic on the edge of the city and for a second cooler. We drove out to the meeting point where we rented our inner tubes and hopped on a blazing hot bus for a five minute drive out to the beaching site.
It was a scorching day into 108 when we started around 1 in the arfternoon. More experianced people brought sheets they laid on the innertube as a kind of seat. We lashed the coolers to another inner tube and as a huge group, floated gently down the river. The river was mostly filled with 20-30 year olds, and most were holding cans of beer. It's a very relaxing way to meander your way, enjoying the view, working on the tan, and occationally soaking yourself to keep cool. At one point of the river, there was a small ledge that people jumped off, which seemed like a particualrly bad idea considering that the people who were doing it had had a lot to drink.
It was fun though, and we'd occationally hit "rapids" where the water level was so low, you had to raise yourself up on the tube to avoid scraping bottom. We cruised for about three hours, and waded out at the exit spot.
Also there was a young woman with her group who was nearly unconscious and vomiting, either through the effects of heat, dehydration, and booze, or more likely, all three. One of our guys ran over and helped load her onto the bus. We passed an ambulance with lights blaring on the drive back once we got back into our cars.
Today I had studio at 1:15 PM. Predictably, a bunch of people including me, showed up at 12:30. We knew when class started, we were just eager to get going. We were finally let inside and I grabbed a desk a row away from the windows so I got more natural light. It's so cool to finally get a desk. Its a status symbol, a reward for our hard work. We've earned these desks. There are 13 people in my studio, a couple people I know pretty well.
Our studio instructor is Thomas Hartman, apparently the coordinator for our entire class. He's tall, lean, and balding with glasses, looks very much the bookish professor sans a bowtie. He's reserved, but it seems like he's going to be a mild teacher, which is a double edged sword. On the one hand, he'll let you "get away" with more, but on the other, he's probably going to be less critical of your designs. He seems like a good guy though, and he knows what he's doing.
We sat around our big middle table and talked for awhile about the studio before we headed down as a class for the lecture introducuing the project.
There are to be three projects this semseter. The first one is a rectangular box 10' x 12' x 16' as a human habitation. Half of its walls have to be concrete, half framed with wood and clad with transparent material. The final project is to be at 1'=1" scale. Thats' the whole project.
The purpose of the project is experimentation with materials, aestetics, and tectonics (how a building is put togather and how that relates to the larger structure). He wants us to build big, becasue that will force us to look very materially at how a roof meets a wall, or how framed structures join the concrete. It's a fast project, barely three weeks. We actually only have 30 classes before the end of the semester.
Today (right now, actually) I've started work at the library. I'm working M, T, W from 5-10 pm. It's really quiet and I've been familiarizing myself with proceedures, browsing books, and taking a look around. There's a lot of stuff here, a phenomenal resource. This library job can only help me to familiarize myself with it.
It was a scorching day into 108 when we started around 1 in the arfternoon. More experianced people brought sheets they laid on the innertube as a kind of seat. We lashed the coolers to another inner tube and as a huge group, floated gently down the river. The river was mostly filled with 20-30 year olds, and most were holding cans of beer. It's a very relaxing way to meander your way, enjoying the view, working on the tan, and occationally soaking yourself to keep cool. At one point of the river, there was a small ledge that people jumped off, which seemed like a particualrly bad idea considering that the people who were doing it had had a lot to drink.
It was fun though, and we'd occationally hit "rapids" where the water level was so low, you had to raise yourself up on the tube to avoid scraping bottom. We cruised for about three hours, and waded out at the exit spot.
Also there was a young woman with her group who was nearly unconscious and vomiting, either through the effects of heat, dehydration, and booze, or more likely, all three. One of our guys ran over and helped load her onto the bus. We passed an ambulance with lights blaring on the drive back once we got back into our cars.
Today I had studio at 1:15 PM. Predictably, a bunch of people including me, showed up at 12:30. We knew when class started, we were just eager to get going. We were finally let inside and I grabbed a desk a row away from the windows so I got more natural light. It's so cool to finally get a desk. Its a status symbol, a reward for our hard work. We've earned these desks. There are 13 people in my studio, a couple people I know pretty well.
Our studio instructor is Thomas Hartman, apparently the coordinator for our entire class. He's tall, lean, and balding with glasses, looks very much the bookish professor sans a bowtie. He's reserved, but it seems like he's going to be a mild teacher, which is a double edged sword. On the one hand, he'll let you "get away" with more, but on the other, he's probably going to be less critical of your designs. He seems like a good guy though, and he knows what he's doing.
We sat around our big middle table and talked for awhile about the studio before we headed down as a class for the lecture introducuing the project.
There are to be three projects this semseter. The first one is a rectangular box 10' x 12' x 16' as a human habitation. Half of its walls have to be concrete, half framed with wood and clad with transparent material. The final project is to be at 1'=1" scale. Thats' the whole project.
The purpose of the project is experimentation with materials, aestetics, and tectonics (how a building is put togather and how that relates to the larger structure). He wants us to build big, becasue that will force us to look very materially at how a roof meets a wall, or how framed structures join the concrete. It's a fast project, barely three weeks. We actually only have 30 classes before the end of the semester.
Today (right now, actually) I've started work at the library. I'm working M, T, W from 5-10 pm. It's really quiet and I've been familiarizing myself with proceedures, browsing books, and taking a look around. There's a lot of stuff here, a phenomenal resource. This library job can only help me to familiarize myself with it.
Aug 20, 2005
My Run-In with the Law
It was one of my typical wild friday nights. Jen and I'd were driving back in the minivan after watching the 9 oclock feature of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" at Arizona Mills. The police quadruple thier presence late friday and saturday nights around ASU. One of them turned on thier lights and pulled me over. Thank heaven I'd remembered to reregister the car, so I had all the paperwork on hand for the police officer. I'd been driving with my headlights off. I hadn't noticed since the dashboard lights were on. He took my licence and registration back to his car, returned it, and let me go without a ticket and didn't even give me a warning. He probably felt bad for me, a poor student in his parents minivan, nicely dressed, just back from a kid's movie with his date. There were much bigger fish to fry.
The movie was really good, except they did some stuff with Wonka's childhood which was a little strained and completely departed from the book. It was a really intersting contrast to the original movie, much darker.
The movie was really good, except they did some stuff with Wonka's childhood which was a little strained and completely departed from the book. It was a really intersting contrast to the original movie, much darker.
Aug 19, 2005
Art (walks) and Architecture (meetings)
Yesterday, I got up early and went to my upper division architecture meeting. I was surprised to see so many people there, until I realized they combined our class with that of the upper division landscape planning for this meeting. From here on in, its just going to be us and they're going to do thier own thing. The meeting was about two hours long, half of it was a welcome lecture by the new director, Petrucci. Right now the college is going through a transitional phase. Instead of the College of Architecture and Enviornmental Design, the college was renamed College of Design. Each section got thier own department head and we have a new director at each post.
Our new director had an interesting story about how he switched to architecture in college.
When he was going to Tulane, his dorm was separated out by floor by major, with architecture students on the top floor. One day, he was surprised to see a student standing stark naked out on the ledge screaming that it was judgement day. The director assumed he was just a religious fanatic (although all the architecture students in the audience knew what he was talking about). The poor guy jumped.
Intrigued by what was going on, he went upstairs and looked around the rooms and studios. The model making, and drawing that was going on put the hook in him, and he quit his premed studies. He ended up getting his BArch from Tulane and two masters from Harvard, the second in urban planning.
The second part was logistical stuff and stuff concerning international travel, internships, etc. We were assigned to our studios, but I'd never heard of any of the professors teaching them. Monday is the first day of classes, and that's when we get to pick desks. Hopefully, we'll avoid the mad petty rush which characterized the interior design girls.
That night, I went with Jen and her parents to the downtown Scottsdale art walk. It's still outrageously overpriced, and the only decently priced artwork is "gliche" or printed by a large format printer on canvas. I did see a gallery that had some russian stuff in it like the ones I saw at the Tetrakov in Moscow. They had a nice one of the Nodichevy convent covered in snow. When the gallery owner asked me why I liked it, they didn't belive that I'd actually been there. Afterwards, we all got ice cream at the Sugar Bowl.
Our new director had an interesting story about how he switched to architecture in college.
When he was going to Tulane, his dorm was separated out by floor by major, with architecture students on the top floor. One day, he was surprised to see a student standing stark naked out on the ledge screaming that it was judgement day. The director assumed he was just a religious fanatic (although all the architecture students in the audience knew what he was talking about). The poor guy jumped.
Intrigued by what was going on, he went upstairs and looked around the rooms and studios. The model making, and drawing that was going on put the hook in him, and he quit his premed studies. He ended up getting his BArch from Tulane and two masters from Harvard, the second in urban planning.
The second part was logistical stuff and stuff concerning international travel, internships, etc. We were assigned to our studios, but I'd never heard of any of the professors teaching them. Monday is the first day of classes, and that's when we get to pick desks. Hopefully, we'll avoid the mad petty rush which characterized the interior design girls.
That night, I went with Jen and her parents to the downtown Scottsdale art walk. It's still outrageously overpriced, and the only decently priced artwork is "gliche" or printed by a large format printer on canvas. I did see a gallery that had some russian stuff in it like the ones I saw at the Tetrakov in Moscow. They had a nice one of the Nodichevy convent covered in snow. When the gallery owner asked me why I liked it, they didn't belive that I'd actually been there. Afterwards, we all got ice cream at the Sugar Bowl.
Aug 17, 2005
Alec, the Librarian
All the freshmen are moving in, and you can see them everywhere with thier parents: On campus, moving into dorms, at Target, and at Safeway. It's funny and touching to watch them, parents sending thier kids away, trying to give them all the last minute advice about college, like they were never going to see them again, and buying all kinds of useless junk for thier dorm rooms. Target is really on the ball this season with a full kitchen boxed set for forty dollars, including pots, pans, knife block, cooking utensils, collanders, and salt and pepper shakers.
I bought some storage bins for my winter clothes and misc stuff. Yesterday, I hit TJ Maxx and picked up a few new button up shirts. IZOD, Perry Ellis, and a brand I'd never heard of. Jen looked at birds and bird cages, and we went around to Petco, PetsMart, and Birdworld. Birdworld is a huge store with tons of birds and cages including a macaw, a few parrots, a toucan, and a bunch of other birds. Jen bought a cage and a baby hand-fed parakeet and named it Lola. It's a pretty bird, and seems stock-still scarred of its new surroundings. Sugar, Jen's parent's dog, don't help to relax it. It'll just take some time.
Today, I went in to interview for the position at the ASU architecture library. The supervisor is a very interesting guy. He always dresses immaculately in a black suit, and has a very sunken weathered face, with long black hair. Add a top hat and he'd make a very somber undertaker.
He's nice enough though, and he really didn't ask me any questions. He took Molly's recommendation of me very seriously. I filled in a few forms, and he showed me around the library. I got the job.
The job is ideal. I am to work at the desk, shelve books, and occationally work on special library projects like cataloging special collections. It looks like I'm going to be working about 15 hours a week, most of that time I'll probably spend studying at the desk, which is fine with him.
Two days ago, my birthday/upper division enterance present arrived via UPS. Dad picked out a docking station for my laptop and a new monitor. The docking station is cool since all I have to do is stick my in my laptop, and it automatically connects to my USB lines, monitor cables, and LAN internet cables.
The monitor is amazing. It's a 19 inch screen, brilliant bright colors, and I can move my mouse from one screen to the other, allowing me to see multilple open windows at once. Really cool.
I bought some storage bins for my winter clothes and misc stuff. Yesterday, I hit TJ Maxx and picked up a few new button up shirts. IZOD, Perry Ellis, and a brand I'd never heard of. Jen looked at birds and bird cages, and we went around to Petco, PetsMart, and Birdworld. Birdworld is a huge store with tons of birds and cages including a macaw, a few parrots, a toucan, and a bunch of other birds. Jen bought a cage and a baby hand-fed parakeet and named it Lola. It's a pretty bird, and seems stock-still scarred of its new surroundings. Sugar, Jen's parent's dog, don't help to relax it. It'll just take some time.
Today, I went in to interview for the position at the ASU architecture library. The supervisor is a very interesting guy. He always dresses immaculately in a black suit, and has a very sunken weathered face, with long black hair. Add a top hat and he'd make a very somber undertaker.
He's nice enough though, and he really didn't ask me any questions. He took Molly's recommendation of me very seriously. I filled in a few forms, and he showed me around the library. I got the job.
The job is ideal. I am to work at the desk, shelve books, and occationally work on special library projects like cataloging special collections. It looks like I'm going to be working about 15 hours a week, most of that time I'll probably spend studying at the desk, which is fine with him.
Two days ago, my birthday/upper division enterance present arrived via UPS. Dad picked out a docking station for my laptop and a new monitor. The docking station is cool since all I have to do is stick my in my laptop, and it automatically connects to my USB lines, monitor cables, and LAN internet cables.
The monitor is amazing. It's a 19 inch screen, brilliant bright colors, and I can move my mouse from one screen to the other, allowing me to see multilple open windows at once. Really cool.
Aug 14, 2005
Sunday morning
The apartment is gradually falling back into order and cleanliness. I finished cleaning my room and bathroom, the common areas and kitchen are clean, and the only thing out of place are Ian's boxes of stuff. The weather is settling down into just being really hot and a little less humid, although it looks like we've got thundershowers coming later today.
Yesterday, I went to Sara's 5th birthday party at Sally's house. It was good to see them again, and Gabriel is talking up a storm. Sara is still a princess, and recieved a profusion of pink presents; barbies, princess dress up clothes, learning games, and acessories for her new bike. Everyone was really impressed with the Russian doll the family sent. Sally told me about the a new Chino that opened up near Gilbert, so we'll have to go there sometime soon.
Jen came back last night too, so I made her a spaghetti dinner and funfetti cake. Her condo looks really good, very modern with a bit of 1960's retro to it. She got a small barbeque grill and an outdoor umbrella, so they're going to have a really nice backyard/courtyard.
I'm surprised how much jet lag is staying with me. I keep waking up in the early morning and falling back asleep. The last two mornings, I've gotten up at six, and this morning I got up at 8. On to order books online!
Yesterday, I went to Sara's 5th birthday party at Sally's house. It was good to see them again, and Gabriel is talking up a storm. Sara is still a princess, and recieved a profusion of pink presents; barbies, princess dress up clothes, learning games, and acessories for her new bike. Everyone was really impressed with the Russian doll the family sent. Sally told me about the a new Chino that opened up near Gilbert, so we'll have to go there sometime soon.
Jen came back last night too, so I made her a spaghetti dinner and funfetti cake. Her condo looks really good, very modern with a bit of 1960's retro to it. She got a small barbeque grill and an outdoor umbrella, so they're going to have a really nice backyard/courtyard.
I'm surprised how much jet lag is staying with me. I keep waking up in the early morning and falling back asleep. The last two mornings, I've gotten up at six, and this morning I got up at 8. On to order books online!
Aug 11, 2005
Back in the ol' Inferno
Got home safe and sound last night around 2:00 AM. Flight from Moscow was full, and lasted at least three weeks. When I landed at JFK, it felt good being back in the best country in the world. After spending three months in Europe, I am blown away by how convienant everything is here. When I got my bags, they made announcements about a travel desk. Everything is clearly marked and people are happy to help you solve your problems.
At the AmericaWest ticket counter, a few people who joined the obviously one line looked befuddled and confused because it was a line that served BOTH the ticket counter and e-ticket check in. These people need to travel more.
America is so convienant, you can buy an electronic device that keeps your coffee hot on your commute from the seat of your airplane. Airline personell keep you updated and tell you patiently where to go and how long you'll have to wait.
Speaking of waiting, my flight to Las Vegas was delayed by an hour. Half of it, off the plane, half on while they did another mechanic check. Everyone with connecting flights in Vegas missed them, but I got to stay on the plane and continue on to Phoenix. My good luck continues.
All my bags arrived, and there was a super shuttle waiting right outside the terminal.
Phoenix is miserable. Not hot, for phoenix, its only 87 right now, but with really high humidity from all the rain they've been getting. It feels like Oklahoma, but with a higher-watt sun.
Got to sleep around 3 and woke up again around 6. Cleaned my bathroom, and started working on cleaning everything else. I left my room in a disaster. Time for a Stalinist purge.
Suki was happy to see me, and I've not seen any sulky behavior at all. She seemed happy and healthy, except her mats have spread all up her back, so I'll need to take her to a groomer I think. I need to figure out a way to transport her.
Ian is still here, in Ben's room. From the depth of suki hair on the floor, I'd have to say he's not vaccumed once in three months, so I did that this morning and changed the mail address back here.
At the AmericaWest ticket counter, a few people who joined the obviously one line looked befuddled and confused because it was a line that served BOTH the ticket counter and e-ticket check in. These people need to travel more.
America is so convienant, you can buy an electronic device that keeps your coffee hot on your commute from the seat of your airplane. Airline personell keep you updated and tell you patiently where to go and how long you'll have to wait.
Speaking of waiting, my flight to Las Vegas was delayed by an hour. Half of it, off the plane, half on while they did another mechanic check. Everyone with connecting flights in Vegas missed them, but I got to stay on the plane and continue on to Phoenix. My good luck continues.
All my bags arrived, and there was a super shuttle waiting right outside the terminal.
Phoenix is miserable. Not hot, for phoenix, its only 87 right now, but with really high humidity from all the rain they've been getting. It feels like Oklahoma, but with a higher-watt sun.
Got to sleep around 3 and woke up again around 6. Cleaned my bathroom, and started working on cleaning everything else. I left my room in a disaster. Time for a Stalinist purge.
Suki was happy to see me, and I've not seen any sulky behavior at all. She seemed happy and healthy, except her mats have spread all up her back, so I'll need to take her to a groomer I think. I need to figure out a way to transport her.
Ian is still here, in Ben's room. From the depth of suki hair on the floor, I'd have to say he's not vaccumed once in three months, so I did that this morning and changed the mail address back here.
Aug 3, 2005
Venice Pictures
Venice was a bit of a dissapointment: while it's very picturesque, there's not a whole lot to do besides tour the Doges Palace. It's hot, humid, and full of tourists. One good thing is there are no cars in venice, as there are only pedestrian paths. A negative consequence of this is that everything is really expensive. We did stay at one of the nicer hostels we've vistited, although I was kept awake at night by the mosquitos.
Aug 2, 2005
Aug 1, 2005
Positano picutres
Positano is a small seaside town in southern Italy near Naples. It was one of my favorite places on this trip. The images are of both sides of the town, a cafe where we had our first dinner in town, and the last image is Pompei, the complete Roman city which was buried and preserved by the cataclysmic eruption of mt. vesuvius, seen lurking in the background.
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