Describe the world you come from, for example your family, clubs, school, community, city, or town. How has that world shaped your dreams and aspirations?

I live in two places at once. This is not because I have miraculously achieved a new method to manipulate space-time, but instead because my rural, secluded hometown of Bonsall and the bustling, lively area of San Diego County, surrounding Bonsall, are each homes to separate parts of my personality.

I’ve lived in Bonsall my entire life, in a house atop a grassy, tangerine tree covered hill surrounded by rolling hills and natural silence. Growing up as an only child, I have always entertained myself by satisfying my curiosity. This curiosity has developed into my constant quest for knowledge and my love to express myself by bringing my ideas into physical form.

My parents have always encouraged me and given me the freedom to explore any subject I like: I have made documentaries of local junior sailing events, built two computers (named Hal and Athen), assembled an eight-inch Dobsonian telescope, launched a website and web store (www.blondegeek.net), and I continue to feed my passion for physics and mathematics with growing piles of books. I jazz things up and “bass” about, make a complete mess of the dining room table with scraps of my latest sewing project, and tear up the local trails on my dirt bike.

My interests branch out from one another. Once I became a dedicated “trekker”, I started to develop a quickly growing interest in the cosmos, particles, and theoretical physics. After completing a quilt square for a 7th grade English project, I was ecstatic to realize that I could bring the clothing designs that filled the margins of my notebooks to life. All my hobbies seem to originate from similar happenstances.

Since I’ve been able to drive about the dynamic county of San Diego for the past year, many of my interests have extended far beyond the borders of Bonsall and I’ve become quite a social butterfly, fluttering about the neighboring cities and towns. I’ve met an entire “band” of people including my bass teacher, my current boss, and several friends through playing bass guitar with the Palomar Community College Jazz Ensemble and I’ve just begun to venture into Discrete Mathematics at another local community college. I never know where these new adventures will take me, but I know I’ll always learn something and meet new, amazing people. For these reasons, I consider the entirety of San Diego - its streets, freeways, cities, taco shops and beaches - as home, fostering my on-going passions.

While living in my personal space of Bonsall and the community of San Diego, I’ve created many goals for myself. Some are big, many are small, but all are possible. I want to journey to outer space, record a jazz album, write a hit science fiction movie that will inspire the next generation, sell a million shirts, sew a pair of pants, discover other dimensions that defy all known theories of spacetime and inspire others! I want to challenge my beliefs, thoughts, and abilities and use that knowledge to make a difference in the world, to leave it a little bit better than before. Then I’ll come back to Bonsall and stand on my old back porch and smile to myself as I remember that this is where it all started.

Labels: college essays, MIT, procrastination of homework, projects, summer

Posted by Tess |

Caltech students have long been known for their quirky sense of humor and creative pranks and for finding unusual ways to have fun. What is something that you find fun or humorous?

My dad and I use to sail Solings with the Mission Bay Yacht Club Soling Fleet. Our fleet had a reputation for being a rather rambunctious bunch that was always having fun. An example of this behavior was a harmless little prank we pulled on a friend and fellow Soling sailor Ian from Orcas Isle, Washington who would come down once or twice a year to race with our fleet.

Around Thanksgiving of 2001, our fleet was going to race in Long Beach and Ian and his crew were coming down to race with us. Ian was also going to take his boat and van that he had left the year before down in San Diego back to Orcas. During that past year the boat and van had been shuffled between fleet members, who would keep it at their house until the neighbors complained. The van was after all an ancient vehicle with a fading, splotchy, multi-hue, powder blue paint job.

Growing tired of the van’s physically unappealing condition or perhaps just seeing the opportunity for mischief, a couple members of our fleet had decided that it was high time to reinvent the van’s image by painting it PINK. So, the van had been painted the most annoying, Barbie bright, uncomfortable shade of pink right before it was to be reunited with Ian.

Ian’s reaction went something like this:
“So, where’s the van?”
“Over there.”
“You mean behind that pink…Oh my God!”

Since then, Pink Van has been a symbol for the vivacity and dark humor of our Soling Fleet and in that tradition Ian left the Pink Van down in San Diego for another year.

*****************************************

And the picture to go with the story. I'm sitting on the roof.

Labels: college essays, procrastination of homework, summer

Posted by Tess |

Since I'm on the theme of looking back here are some cached blondegeek pages from way back when. I can't seem to find a cached version of the first blondegeek site and there are definitely some redesigns in between these.

Many of the image links are totally broken, but if you go to animations on Version 4, you can see one of my ridiculous first flash animations with llamas dancing to "Love Shack".

Version 2 - 2004
Version 3 - 2004
Version 4 - 2005
Version 5 - 2007

Labels: procrastination of homework, spare time, summer

Posted by Tess |

Don't worry, Proust is not involved in this post.

I'm currently in San Diego, savoring sunshine before heading back to MIT. Being home has understandably caused an uproar of nostalgia in me. I've been looking through old notebooks, old essays, and other props of my middle and high school years. I figure it's a good way to look at how I've changed (or not changed) over the past 3 years of being at MIT - a good thing to consider heading into scholarship, fellowship and graduate school application season.

So what have I found? T-shirt designs that haven't (yet) made it to the printers, widgets waiting to be built, a finger-painting of a koi fish eating asteroids... you know, ordinary tokens of childhood. It's been very fun digging through my old things, so I thought I'd document this recollection. Maybe you'll find it fun too.

First the finger-painted koi fish. I finger-painted this after taking the SAT - by far the best way to rebel against the creativity-crushing nature of standardized tests.


I'm not sure what the arrow is suppose to represent, and the asteroids look more like burnt popcorn. But, I certainly remember having a great time reveling in an art form that I hadn't practiced since kindergarten.

I'll post some juicy undergraduate college essays later.

Labels: exciting times, itch, MIT, pictures, procrastination of homework

Posted by Tess |

Labels: procrastination of homework

Posted by Tess |

This post is dedicated to Anonymous of the previous post and the Pummelo I am currently trying to demolish. 1/2 of the pummelo has been conquered and the other 1/2 is glaring at me with hostility.

Pummelos are by far the most unruly of citrus. In taste, they are everything I wish a grapefruit would be, but they are a real hassle to peel. Apologies to grapefruit enthusiasts - the bitterness gets to me. But my eating of grapefruit provides ample amusement for others since the bitterness causes me to make twisted sour faces.

Like celery, pummelos must have the "negative calories" deal going for them, just because it takes that much effort for me to get them open. Then again, I have a history of having trouble with peeling things. A great example of this was when I tried to unshell a hard-boiled egg by making the holes on the top and bottom of the egg and blowing through one of the holes. In case you've never seen this done, I refer you to here. Needless to say, it didn't work too well for me. Problem 1, didn't use baking soda. Problem 2, it was a soft boiled egg. Messy.

Thankfully, I have been more successful in other efforts of mine. I've been back from break for two weeks now doing some classwork and working on a healthy amount of outside projects. Semester hasn't actually started yet so it's a more relaxed atmosphere on campus. MIT has winter break for two weeks and then an optional 4-week Independent Activities Period (IAP). We're currently on at the beginning of week 3 of IAP.

IAP has been often compared to rehab since during IAP students can take classes that they wouldn't normally get a chance to take during semester (Ex: Build Your Own Electric Guitar, Make Your Own Decorative Paste Paper, Play StarCraft 2...more here).

I'm currently taking architecture classes for credit, which has been quite a bit of work so far, but plenty of fun. I'm taking an intensive version of the 2nd undergraduate studio course and a free-hand drawing class for architects. Those of you who have taken studio probably think the term "intensive" is redundant.

Besides classes, I've been working on an art installation project with a few friends and plotting schemes of modifying old blondegeek code. I keep mentioning the art project in posts, but I won't say more about it as to not ruin the surprise. :)

I haven't been working on physics since semester ended, but the research group I work with just published a paper! Check it out on arXiv. The paper addresses to how to extend physicists' ability to detect light in detectors (specifically Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers) that utilize strong electric fields. The issue is our light detectors (photomultiplier tubes - PMTs) cannot be used in a strong electric field, since PMTs use their own electric fields to create a signal cascade which creates a signal of approximately 10^10 electrons for every photon detected. Our solution is to use an acrylic lightguide which guides the light through internal reflection from an area in a detector where a strong electric field exists to where the PMTs sit, where there is no external field. The acrylic lightguides are coated with a chemical, TPB, which serves the purpose of shifting the wavelength of signal photons from UV, which our PMTs are horrible at seeing, to blue.

Back to pummeling the pummelo. I'll be sure to post some pics of my architecture projects soon.

Labels: architecture, IAP, MIT, physics, procrastination of homework, projects, pummelo

Posted by Tess |

Two students are working at two adjacent computers in the Athena cluster in building 12. One of the students, currently taking 8.04, is enjoying a cup of soup from Cafe Four.

The hungry, soupless student turns to the student with the cup of soup and says, "You know you're not suppose to have that in here. The sign on the wall clearly says 'No Food. No Drinks.'"

The student with the soup briefly ponders this and replies. "You know, soup's a funny thing. It's not food and it not a drink."

The other student retorts "That's because it's both."

"No," the semi-soup-saturated student says "it's definitely not both."

"Then what is it?" asks the other student.

"It's a Soup-erposition."

The other student rolls his eyes and continues trudging along on some p-set, while the 8.04 acolyte's wavefunction was observed to be in a souply satisfied eigenstate.

Labels: 8.04, MIT, physics, procrastination of homework, yay

Posted by Tess |

There are a spectrum of careers (and perhaps career titles) that appeal to me. On one side is Architect and on the other is Physicist. (There also Rock Star somewhere orthogonal to this 1D spectrum, but we'll talk about that some other time when I have more time to cuddle with my guitar.)

I'm not sure which part of the spectrum I'm at right now, but majoring in architecture is looking pretty good. Actually, doubling in architecture is looking pretty good. (Don't worry physics I won't leave you.)

In other words, I haven't started on my Physics homework yet because I've been looking at Architecture classes. (Fall '10 Schedule came out last week)

(I think I need to read up on how to appropriately use parenthesis. I know I'm not doing it right, but hell it works with math.)

As of now, I have ppllllleeennnnttyyyy of room to do a minor in Architecture (6 classes) but the 4-B major (some different spiffy customizable version of the regualar minor) is 13 classes, which includes a thesis. That would make senior year painful. I also don't have space for 5 of those classes. That screams to me, TAKE AN EXTRA SEMESTER.

I don't see how I could do it otherwise (and stay sane with a decent gpa), but understandably I'm a little reluctant to stick around.

Okay, back to watching Bednaya Nastya (Бедная Настя) for Russian class. Gotta prep for my final for it on Wednesday and finish my soup. (It's Italian wedding soup in case you are curious.)

Labels: architecture, procrastination of homework

Posted by Tess |

...all jazz musicians, take your fakes books out now!

Anyway, being from California, I have never seen the trees turn to such deep reds and yellows. So seeing stuff like this (see below) is pretty amazing. Once again, these are just photos from my phone, but they get the point across.

Labels: fake books, jazz, leaves, leaves on the trees in the breeze before I freeze oh geez, photos, pictures, procrastination of homework, the autumn leaves

Posted by Tess |