maggied’s blag

Haven’t posted in a while. These past several weeks have been really busy (in a good way). I stopped working my UROP for the last few weeks of the summer, and dedicated myself to freshman orientation (as EC’s Room Assignment Chair and a DormCon Junior REX chair). Considering the fact that REX and the Friday Night Event were two big things on my mind the past few weeks, it feels pretty weird for them to be over. Both went really well, though, and even though term is going to start of hectic, I’m glad it will start on an up beat.

Other than orientation, there were a few other fun things from over the summer. As I mentioned in my previous post, a few of us went to Six Flags New England. It was really fun (we rode what is arguably the best steel coaster in the country) until rain started coming down in waves around 3pm. Can’t win them all, I guess.

A week or so later, Dale, Sarah, Rachel, Danielle and I went to New York for the weekend. We took the Lucky Star bus down to the Chinatown on a Friday afternoon. Even with a bit of traffic we made reasonable time. After leaving the Bowery, we walked through a fesitival that was going on in Little Italy. Lots of people were out eating late, candle lit dinners, and it was very tempting to get some pastries. After walking around a bit, we headed up to my house in Westchester for the evening.

Saturday morning we went to one of my favorite spots for breakfast (the Patio in Briarcliff Manor). Our early start was cursed, though, because after our brief stop over at Starbucks (damn MIT students and their caffeine), we were stuck in the rain. The storm was ridiculous, and my street flash flooded, preventing the Hudson Metro North line from running, and delaying the Harlem line. After a bit of a wait we made it into the city, which showed little to no sign of the storm. Our first stop in the city was Jamba Juice and the candied-peanut stands (mmmm Jamba Juice). We decided to sit in Central Park and finish our drinks. Next stop was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we met up with Vinayak and Charles, who were looking very hipster indeed. They had crazy modern art that I took a few pictures of. By the time we left the Met we were all pretty hungry, so we headed over to Union Sq. Unable to resist, we spent some time in Forbidden Planet and The Strand, which someone I know seemed to really enjoy. Now starving, we went to an Indian restaurant that Rachel had coincidentally also eaten at with her family before (at the same table!). Our last stop before heading back to Grand Central was Times Square. It was really amazing at night. Although Dale was the only one who hadn’t been there before, we all really enjoyed hitting up the M&M and Hershey’s stores.

Sunday I decided it was time for everyone to experience the awesomeness that is New York Bagels, so we walked into Briarcliff and ate a nice breakfast on the benches in town. Fortunately there was no storm this time, and we headed out to the city. Sarah really likes her Jamba Juice, so we stopped there a second time. Dale decided to try a piece of Junior’s cherry cheesecake, and it was really good. We walked around Central Park for a while, and relaxed on the grass watching puppies and families go by. In the early afternoon we headed back down to Chinatown, grabbed some fruit, and caught the bus back. Overall, a really fun weekend.

Dale and I also decided to hit up a few concerts this summer (and plan to go to several more during term, woo!). The first one (since I’ve last posted) was The Faint. The lead singer wore a lab coat and goggles. It was my first show at The Roxy, and it was amazing. They played a bunch of songs from their newest album, along with some of their great older songs. The next night we decided to switch things up a bit and went to TT The Bear’s Place (right next to the Middle East) for my first post-rock show. We went to see Yndi Halda, who were unable to make it due to a broken axle on their van. But Hadoken and Caspian were still pretty awesome. Even though it was a small venue, the sound was massive and really took over you. The last concert was Nightwish, which I went to with a whole bunch of people. It was at The Palladium again (I saw them last October, too) and put on an amazing show. We all left exhausted and covered in sweat after the show. Totally a great way to get ready for term.

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I’ve had a lot of down time after work and on weekends over the summer, and have spent a lot of it watching movies, reading, and getting out on the town. I’m sure I have forgotten about some things but this is as comprehensive as I can remember. I’ll try to avoid any serious spoilers.

Let’s start with movies. In no particular order:

• The Incredible Hulk - I had low expectations (other than Edward Norton), but this turned out to be pretty good. They didn’t focus on the back story as much which I think was a good thing.
• Wall-e - Most.Adorable.Movie.Ever. I love Pixar movies but I still think this one takes the cake. When I saw the trailer I thought it looked dumb but I could hardly control my giggles during much of it.
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army - Vinayak and I had an argument about how good this movie would be. Vinayak loses (sorry Vinayak). I really enjoyed it; definitely way better than the first one.
• Requiem for a Dream - A lot of people told me I shouldn’t watch this movie or I would be super depressed afterwards. It was definitely a bit of a downer, but I wasn’t particularly upset. I thought many of the scenes were kind of ridiculous, but really enjoyed the cinematography.
• Wanted - I read the graphic novel (which is nothing like the movie), and didn’t have particularly high expectations. The movie was ridiculous, and if you had any hope for it, you probably hated it because it was pretty silly.
• Equilibrium - To get us pumped up for The Dark Knight, we decided to watch a bunch of Christian Bale movies. I had seen a few of the scenes from the movie. It had similar crazy-action moments to Wanted or the Matrix, but I thought it actually had a reasonably decent plot.
• Batman Begins - Had already seen this one, but it was part of our Christian Bale stunt. Still enjoyable the second time around.
• The Dark Knight - We waited 3 hours to see this at midnight Thursday Night/Friday Morning. Totally worth it. Heath Ledger was impeccable. I loved his performance, and the rest of the cast also did a terrific job. Definitely intend to see this again at some point.
• Pink Floyd The Wall - Believe it or not, I had never seen this movie before. It was pretty crazy and took me until the end to figure out what was going on. Even then I was a bit confused.
• Persepolis - Second time seeing this one as well. Enjoyable in a sort of dark way, Persepolis is one of those movies that puts you in the shoes of something that you otherwise might not understand.

So that’s a lot of movies. Now books:

• Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez- I finished this early on in the summer. It took me a long time to get through with term and all, but I wound up enjoying it. Despite being different from the books I tend to enjoy, I thought it was a worth while read. Didn’t really like the ending all that much, though. I would like to see the movie at some point, but have not gotten around to it yet.
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely - I started this on the train to New York before my trip to the Caribbean; I finished it 3 days later. Loved it. The book felt highly relevant and had a lot of room for introspection.
• Wanted by Mark Millar - Crazy. Adrenaline filled ridiculousness. No wonder the movie was nothing like this.
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson - Stereotypical cyberpunk. I started the book and there were a few things about it that I thought were completely nuts and over the top. People had hyped the book a lot so I didn’t really know what to expect. Overall, it turned out to be fun, and Raven really is a total bad ass.
• Neuromancer by William Gibson - Haven’t finished this one yet. Just started it a few days ago; it’s been hard to get through (I don’t really know what’s going on…) but I’m trying to persevere, for now at least.

Other outings:

• Laser Dark Side of the Moon - The Museum of Science Planetarium has Laser Light Shows. A few of us decided to to one a few Saturdays ago. Holy crap. It was totally incredible. Definitely planning on going to another one some time.
• ArtBeat 2008 - Freezepop played this year! They played a fun set and even gave everyone lots of freezepops. Very tasty. We also saw Rota Temporis and Akrobatik. I took a few pictures.
• New England Sand Sculpting Festival - The Sand Sculpting Festival happened at Revere Beach again this year. This year the center piece had a bunch of comic book characters including the Hulk and Batman. I took pictures of most of the competing pieces. Sarah Hopp and I decided it would be a terrific idea to submerge ourselves in the freezing cold water, which didn’t work out so hot. Unfortunately it started to storm when we had only been there for a little while, so we came back to hall early.
• New England Aquarium - We went because I wanted to see the Sharks and Rays exhibit, the advertisements for which are all over Boston. Also Sharks3D. The aquarium turned out to be small and underwhelming compared to Monterey (I’m spoiled now, I think), but we saw a gigantic sea turtle get fed a head of lettuce and pet some sharks and rays. The IMAX 3D show was unlike any 3D film I had seen before (no more red and blue glasses). It made my head spin but was also pretty neat.

And I think that’s it. Things to look forward to:

• Six Flags, July 27th
• NYC trip, August 1-3
• REX planning (for EC and Dorm Con)
• The rest of the summer

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It’s finally time to write about my trip to Sint Maarten, Dutch West Indies. You can find more pictures here. I went with 5 friends from home (Emma, Erica, Jillian, Meredith and Michael). We departed from JFK on July 1st, and arrived in Sint Maarten in the early afternoon. The island is known for having a crazy airport. As we were landing, all I could see was ocean out the window, until all of the sudden we were touching down on the island:

Emma reserved us two nice rooms at The Atrium in Simpson Bay. There was a very nice view up the hill, and the beach was probably the best I’ve ever been to.

We spent our first afternoon relaxing on the beach, and went to a restaurant recommended by the hotel for dinner. Things were very different for us on the island (one can gamble and drink at 18), so we all tried our luck at Black Jack for the first time. It went well for me this first time, but we all quickly learned that we weren’t cut out to be gamblers.

Our second day consisted of lots of lounging around on the beach: I spent time finishing Predictably Irrational (which was great, btw) and took a few more pictures of the beach. I was particularly fascinated by the crests of the waves on the sand so I took several pictures of them.

In the evening we went to what is (arguably) Sint Maarten’s best night club on the Island: Bliss. I enjoyed myself even though I’m not really big into the night club scene. There was a lot of dancing and the music was really fun.

The third day I finished Predictably Irrational and started on Snow Crash. Keeping with the tradition of the past two days, we spent most of the early afternoon on the beach, and we took some pictures of the sunset.

On our fourth day we finally went to the French Side of the island (they spell it St. Martin there). The city of choice is Marigot. We took the local bus service (which is actually a bunch of privately owned vans that seat 12 people) over to the Marina and had a great experience with conversion factors to the Euro. There were a whole bunch of fancy shops, but as was pointed out by several of my friends, you could just shop at those places in the city and it would probably be cheaper.

After our evening in Marigot we went to a fancy club called Mansion. The club was so “nice” that they gave Mike a hard time about entering in his shorts. It turns out that Mansion is basically a place for people with a lot of money to schmooze and buy handles of expensive alcohol. Not really my thing; there wasn’t even any dancing, but the music was so loud you could hardly hear your neighbor.

The next day we resumed the beach-bum tradition, and made dinner in our awesome kitchen. Fully equipped, we prepared a nice meal that was much more affordable than eating out all the time. We took more pictures in nice outfits, and headed over to Mansion again.

Day 6 graced us with a wonderful rendition of Yes’s Owner of Lonely Heart over lunch. I was very tempted to text someone the lyrics, but alas, I didn’t have my phone on me. We spent more time hanging on the beach and I read more and more Snow Crash. For dinner we went to Topper’s where the waiter was very friendly. They had fish on all the tables and ours was named Dick:

I don’t have any pictures for day 7, but it was totally awesome. We decided to go snorkeling on Creole Rock, which is one of the best spots on the island to do so. We took the scenic route; over the water from Simpson Bay on speed boats called Rhinos. I had no idea how much of a need for speed I had until I got behind the wheel of that boat. Sooooo much fun! Unfortunately being on the water for so long resulted in a fabulously streaky sun burn that lasted the rest of the trip and into the following week.

Day 8 was totally great. My good friend Jesstess also happened to be on the island, staying on the French Side with her family! We decided to meet up in Philipsburg (on the Dutch side; cruise ships frequently stop there). The beach was so picturesque, and it was nice to meet Jess’ family. We had lunch and wandered around Philipsburg for a while before I headed home for the evening.

I spent our final morning packing up while the others headed over to Philipsburg. We took a few pictures before going to the airport and waiting around (they kicked us out at noon and our flight wasn’t until 3pm). I had a great vacation, but I was also pretty eager to get back to MIT. Overall, a good decision I’d say

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At the Museum of Science, for a limited time only! The group I am working with is conducting a study over in Cahners Computer Place involving our latest robot. The Computer Place is pretty fun to hang out in; when the little kids aren’t around, occasionally the UROPs will sit at the computers and play old games like (my personal favorite) Star Wars Pit Droids. I don’t want to spoil the study for anyone, but it takes about 15 minutes, and is a lot of fun.

I’ll be at the Museum Saturday and Sunday, probably from about 10 or 11am until 5pm. The Computer Place is to right next to the Theater of Electricity; starting from the entrance, you turn right, enter the theater and turn left and head up the stairs.  Pretty straightforward. Unfortunately the robot is out of commision pretty often; she is kind of tempermental and gets a little stressed out with all the people around. But we swear, she is a star. Anyway, if you are curious about coming to the Musuem, admission is free to MIT students, and the Musuem itself is also a lot of fun to explore. Be sure to give me a heads up if you want to swing by and I’ll let you know if everything is up and running.

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Rachel and I decided to head over to Harvard’s Arboretum today. Neither of us had been before, and both had free time in the early afternoon. We took the scenic route to the Arboretum and back, to say the least. The directions we got off the internet were meant for cars and not bikes, and we got lost on the first turn. After stopping for directions, we eventually found our way over to Jamaica Pond. We didn’t know which way the Arboretum was, but we rode around the whole pond, and took a few pictures.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous out.

We ran into a gigantic family of ducklings, and took a few pictures. More ducklings can be found here.

After hanging out on the Pond for a while, we decided to give it one more shot. Fortunately for us, the turn we needed just involved taking a different fork in the bike path. We arrived at the Arnold Arboretum about 5 minutes later. On bike, we decided to stick to the main trails. We went up Bussey Hill to the Overlook, hung around for a while, and took a nice nap. Coming down the hill was really fun. Some pictures:

I had a SLOPE meeting at 5:30pm, so we didn’t stay very long. Definitely would love to come back another time and take more pictures. On the way home, we got lost again, and wound up over by the Church of Scientology. With Mass. Ave as our reference, we managed to make it home alright.

As a side note, I decided to start playing around with collections on Flickr, so all the photos from today are in one here.

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Rachel, Dale, Drew and I went to see Iron Maiden on Friday. The concert was at the Tweeter Comcast Center in Mansfield, so we drove down in Rachel’s car. While seeing concerts at gigantic venues like the Comcast Center doesn’t feel quite as personal as smaller concert halls, in this case it allowed Maiden to do some absolutely crazy stuff. The crowd was really excited for the whole show, and the display Iron Maiden put on was absolutely ridiculous. Lots of backdrops, effects, and special guests (the beast, Eddie, etc.). Overall, this concert was probably one of my favorites. Pictures of the concert can be found here.

Not only was yesterday my birthday, it was also really great weather outside. I slept in a little late and wound up heading over to Porter Square with a bunch of people for cheap (but delicious) sushi. I’ve only had sushi a handful of times or so, but I’m starting to really like it, particularly if it’s affordable. The sushi place was in the Porter Exchange.  After sushi we visited a Chinese super market and I got some chocolate koala bears. Mmm. We arrived back in EC in time to go to a Rush meeting. Besides the usual wankery, we picked a name for the East Side party this year: Xanadu. The blurb includes excessive references to Kubla Khan and is pretty awesome.

We also made important decisions over at the Cambridge Galleria, where Vinayak spent quite some time deciding on an iPod to purchase. (He went with the 80gb.) For dinner, 12 of us headed over to Helmand, which was absolutely amazing. In the mid to upper price range ($15-23 for an entree), Helmand had a variety of dishes with Lamb, Beef, Chicken and vegetables. There was also copious amounts of bread and rice, which I was very excited about. Stuffed from dinner, we headed back to Porter Square again for Sarah, Vlad and Marty’s housewarming. The turn out was great, and it was a nice close to the evening. Pictures for the day can be found here.

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Finally have  a bit more time, so I’ll give a run down of all the bands I went to see.

Thursday:

We first arrived on Thursday around 12pm. Shows started later in the evening, around 8pm or so. There were not many shows this day, but we hit up MGMT, Battles, and Vampire Weekend. MGMT and Battles were both pretty out of control; I really loved the lighting for both of the shows. Vampire Weekend was also really great; the singer was a lot of fun, and made the crowd really pumped about the rest of the weekend.

Friday:

Umphrey’s McGee was this awesome band that combined Jazz and Prog-Rock; they were a lot of fun to just chill on the grass and bob your head to. Definitely a band I’m buying more music of. Stephen Marley (as you can probably guess from the name) gave a performance that was just like Bob Marley; he both looked and sounded like him. Next up was The Swell Season. For those of you who have seen the movie Once, it’s the band from that. They were really great live, although towards the end I got a little bored because all their songs seemed to have a very similar sound. We saw State Radio on a smaller and somewhat intimate stage, and they were really great.

Now for the show I was super excited about today: M.I.A. “I fly like paper, get high like planes” (M.I.A. in Paper Planes). I have never heard anything like her before. She had a great stage presence, and the crowd went nuts when she played songs from her second album. She finished the set with Paper Planes, and some people even threw planes at the stage! After M.I.A. we listed to some of Chris Rock, who was making a joke about how fat girls can diss skinny girls, but skinny girls can’t diss fat girls. It was alright. Up next was Metallica. Yes, Metallica was at Bonnaroo. This seemed to confuse everyone, and it showed as the crowd just wasn’t really into their concert until they played Sandman at the very end. Ending the night we saw My Morning Jacket, who were a lot of fun, even though we left early due to rain. Every time they hit an awesome guitar riff, someone would throw fifty or so glow sticks up in the air, and it looked really neat.

Saturday:

We started Saturday off with Soul Rebels Brass Band. It was early in the day and the crowd was small, so we were right up near the front of the stage. These guys rocked. It was a nice, intimate setting, so all of the crowd was really into it. They really got everyone dancing by the end of the show, and it was a lot of fun. We chilled in the shade for part of Gogol Bordello; I liked the “gypsy-punk” thing they had going on. Up next was B.B. King, who made a lot of jokes about how old he was (82) and got a little over-sentimental on stage. Still, his performance was solid.

In the evening, Jack Johnson was the first one up. I am not really a big fan of Jack Johnson, honestly, but he brought out Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam which was kinda cool. Then came Pearl Jam who played for an extra hour over their allotted one and a half. They were really great, although Eddie Vedder was so bombed out of his mind he could hardly form sentences when he spoke to us.

Finally, ending the night was Kanye West. You may have heard about this controversy. Because Pearl Jam ran late, Kanye’s crew didn’t get the stage set up until 3:30am, but despite this fact the show didn’t start until 4:25am. By this time, Kanye’s Glow in the Dark tour didn’t seem like it was working out so hot. The show itself was great, even despite the lighting; there were craters on stage, and a hot female robot narrated you through the show. The show ended at 5:25, 2/3rds of how long it should have been, which was lame. Even though it was late and short, I still really liked the show. It was probably the best put together performance I’ve seen, so I still give him credit.

Sunday:

The last day at Bonnaroo (sad ) began with Rogue Wave. They seemed pretty fun, but I was tired and wound up taking a nap under a tree for most of their set. Up next was the Yonder Mountain String Band, who are absolutely awesome! The crowd was going nuts, and they even covered Crazy Train. Come on! After Yonder Mountain we caught the end of Solomon Burke, who at that point had 50 women on stage. He gave them all roses and sang “What a Wonderful World.” Despite being too old to stand through the whole show, this guy sure sounded great.

After Solomon Burke, we caught a bit of O.A.R. I’ve always sort of liked them but don’t know them that well, and they seemed pretty good live. On the way out of Bonnaroo, we heard a bit of Robert Plant, who was in a duet with Alison Krauss. He sounded great, but most of us weren’t a fan of his slower covers of Led Zeppelin songs.

And that’s about it! Overall, Bonnaroo was a total blast. If you want to hear more about anything in particular, feel free to talk to me

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Just got back from Bonnaroo around 2pm today. Am too tired to post a formal review of the bands, but have some photos for now.

Headed back up to Boston tomorrow morning, and then working the rest of the week. Good times.

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I’m sitting in my lovely air conditioned room, watching typ0 run a distribution upgrade from Ubuntu Feisty Fawn to Hardy Heron (by instinct, I almost typed our “other” name for this distro, but I managed to restrain myself).

Watching and praying that libc6 won’t break gets a little boring after a while, though, so I decided to take some pictures of my room, even though it is still in disarray.

Here is my new desk corner. Yay for two desks and AC! You can see Ubuntu whining at me on the CRT, too.

Up next is the full length mirror (I actually only had a very cruddy mirror in my old room). It has a crack at the bottom, but I’ll survive.

No lofted bed this time, folks. This is the first time I’ve slept on a non-lofted bed (for an extended period of time) since February freshman year, but it seems alright so far. Hidden to the right of the bed in that shot is the black hole. Hopefully I don’t get sleepy and roll right into it

Up last is a shot that has the lamp in it but is intended to display the full range of colors of the room. The top green is a sort of mint green that I think it pretty nice and was here when I moved in. The white trim was also there. I painted the middle blue and the blue trim (to replace a gross kind of yellow), and the light blue was also there when I moved. Although I originally considered painting the green part, it turned out to match the blues reasonably well.

I’ll post more photos when I’m done my room for reals, so you can see the layout better.

As a neat aside, I am way behind on this one but found that I really like Flickr. My photostream (which I’ll populate some more when I get my desktop running) can be found here.

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I moved all my stuff from B203 to B210 today. B210 is a complete mess, but at least I’m checked out. The next few days will be lots of sorting and organizing; I’ll post pictures when it is complete.

A web browser called Flock seems to be becoming more popular around on the internet; it’s basically an enabler for people who are super addicted to social websites of all varieties. I downloaded and tried it out and it seems interesting. Pretty well done and is intuitive particularly if you’ve used Firefox before. Am I likely to use it as a primary browser? Probably not, because I don’t really like the clutter and don’t feel the need to know that one of my facebook friends who I don’t even seem to recognize updated their profile.  Worth checking out, though.

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