EWB Seattle 2008

Just got back from a four day adventure called the Engineers Without Borders USA, International Conference, Sustainable Engineering and Global Health, some interesting speakers included William H Gates, from the Gates Foundation, NASA Astronaut and Engineer Bonnie Dunbar, and Bernard Amadei the founder of Engineers Without Borders. This conference has been alot of fun, but also exhausting with around 5 hours of sleep each day just to make all the events. Starting on Thursday, with Gates Sr. with a speech about the Gates Foundation and it's goal of Global Health. Later in the evening at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Dr. Bonnie Dunbar, Ph. D gave an inspirational speech that got a standing ovation from the crowd. The many presentations and seminars were not only interesting but they were extremely helpful, it was a great networking opportunity and a great chance to make friends, on Thursday while by myself because the rest of the team had not arrived, I met Lauren and Maria, who were from Clemson University in Greenville, South Carolina, we hit it off well.



So on Friday my friend David and I, gave our newly made friends a bite size tour of Seattle, we parked at the Seattle Center, and took pictures at the Space Needle, then took the monorail to Westlake Center, and then walked down to Pike Place Market to see the sights and shop, afterwards we walked down to the docks and stopped for a bite to eat at Ivar's and tried their famous clam chowder. After getting back to the UW campus we continued our seminar hopping and continued listening and learning, not to mention getting to talk to some of the groups that presented and asking detailed technical questions about their projects one on one. In the projects management seminar I even met an Engineer from Vanderbilt University, [ the team that beat Washington State last year in the NCAA basketball tournament, grrr...lol] who had a OLPC or One Laptop Per Child project, laptop and I got to chat in depth with him about the laptop, it was awesome being about to check out the laptop in person and being about to chat with an Engineer about what he thought about the Laptop. Saturday night there was an event that was labeled ferry cruse and since Lauren and Maria, were both on their last day, needing to skip Monday due to flight schedules, I came along, unfortunately it turned out to be just the Bremerton ferry down and back in the rain and dark and not much to see, it needed to be during the day, to be able to be enjoyed fully.

Finally On Sunday after sleeping over at my friend mike, his friend's place at Seattle Pacific University [SPU] we found out that the direct bus did not run so we hopped onto one that took us a few blocks, the driver told us to catch another bus and he gave us the number, then the next driver told us which bus after that to transfer to, unfortunately it turned out that the driver forgot to mention that at 8 am, the transfer she told us about did not start until 11 past so after consulting the information board, so we decided to just start walking, we caught a trail and walked about a mile or so around Lake Washington and got to the University of Washington campus, we even came just in time for the seminar and didn't miss anything except the morning welcome. The day was great and again even more information to digest and process, in total I took 17 pages of notes from start to finish, it well worth the registration price, I can't wait for next year. EWB-USA at Chicago April 3-5, 2009!!

TSA & EWB

Just got back from Taiwanesse Student Association or TSA and the Taiwanese Night Market event, it was a lot of fun but rather hectic.

Unfortunately, I did not get any homework done this weekend, and since next week the EWB@WSU club is going to the international conference in Seattle at UW it means that we need to get homework done early, well I guess that just means more last minute cramming before we leave, so it just means who ever is the least tired is going to end up driving.

Airplane II, Bun-o-vision, Oblivion

Caught the end of Airplane II: The Sequel on HBO, it is hilarious and my friend tells me the first one is even better, so adds another movie to my list of must see. Bun-o-vision, is something I ran into while surfing youtube, and it is awesome, remaking many of the memorable movies in the last few decades. Played though some more Oblivion and it is ridiculous how much stuff there is to do in the game, I put in some mods for convenience, but I can't help but notice that I seem to be having a hard time when it comes to fighting wildlife NPCs, bears for example are hard to fight, I almost sympathize with Steven Colbert, and his bear phobia.

Juno, & Homework for NATRS312, CE215, ME212

Just finished Juno, it is a charming little movie, I absolutely love it. So I guess it was fortunate that I went up to check it out if only just for the food, unfortunately not planning to actually watch caused a mass procrastination of my homework, yet in retrospect it feels worth it. Now I just have about 1-2 hours of reading for NATRS312, daily homework in CE215 Mechanics, and the last problem in the weekly ME212 Dynamics homework.

EWB Conference, also Mechanics and Dynamics Homework

The EWB International Conference, is the next weekend and so for this week it means that I'll have to go through two weeks worth of and Dynamics homework as well as the assignment that I'll miss for Mechanics, no to mention taking a quiz early because the club will be gone for Friday. All in all it will be worth it, with a great line-up for the conference, the Keynote Speaker on Global Health is William Gates, Sr., the Co-Chair for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. At the end there is also Bernard Amadei, the Founder of EWB-USA, who will close on Sunday, quite an exciting weekend coming up, can not wait.

A Cardboard Hope . . . Brilliant !

End of break, long road ahead.

Spring break is wrapping up and so it is time to prep for school again, finished the original バブルガムクライシス or Bubblegum Crisis, It is in the style very much like Blade Runner, a cyber punk anime released on February 25th 1987, it's older than I am. In fact the original company doesn't even exist anymore it was dissolved and it's assents distributed. I really love the Bubblegum Crisis OVA, at only 8 episodes it is a good length and wraps up well, there is a remake of sorts, バブルガムクライシス TOKYO 2040 but it is made by a different company and a few of the original people did not participate, not to mention that they changed some of the characters' personalities so not sure how that is going to turn out. Speaking of which I really need to go see Blade Runner, I keep seeing the works that are influenced by it and I've yet to see the original, maybe I should netflix it.

Another long drive back to Pullman, plus the way things are unfolding I think I am going to have to stay the summer to knock out some classes and maybe get an undergrad research position, to get through the summer and hopefully make some spending money. Even if everything works out it seems that I won't have another free summer for another 5 years, to just have some general fun or to go to Taiwan. This summer is classes and research, next summer would be with Engineers without Borders -> EWB@WSU and probably Morocco or Chile on an international aid project to survey the land and look for any possible problems, then the summer after would be internship at a company for experience, then after the completion of my senior project and after the EIT it will be back to Morocco or Chile whichever we decide to actually build the project. That is probably the farthest I've thought out my plans, maybe ever.

Spring Break

It is spring break, it is after the midterms so there is down time, having started Oblivion Elder Scrolls and loving it before the break, I'm now reminiscing over anime I remember to give a shout out to, one that I enjoyed very much was 時をかける少女 or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time by Yasutaka Tsutsui, the 2006 animated version is spectacular and a must see. Just finished 新世紀ヱヴァンゲリヲン劇場版 or The End of Evangelion, which is the movie remake I would say of the last two episodes of the original series, unfortunately it make nearly as little sense as the original, there is even an entire wikipedia section on what the ending means, I guess you just need to find your own interpretation.

ご愁傷さま二ノ宮くん, SGA and Dynamics

ご愁傷さま二ノ宮くん, Goshūshō-sama Ninomiya-kun or translated as, Our Condolences, Ninomiya-kun. Which is the title of the anime as well as the last phrase said to the main character Ninomiya-kun, meant to be ironic as the main character has all the girls in the school all falling for him but the two he is tied with two girls who if he kisses either causes long term memory loss to even a possibility of death as they take his life force. The entire series is very light hearted and comical, which fits with the fact that the series began as a light novel in a light novel magazine Monthly Dragon Magazine, this later evolved to become a full length set of 8 additional novels. At 12 episodes the series is short enough to enjoy a few sitting and considering that it can be found on youtube is quite a plus for an American fan with otherwise little to no access to Japanese anime.

Also have been trying to catch up on 亚特兰蒂斯 or Stargate Atlantis due to the fact that it is a controlled property it is thus hard to find on youtube and I'm disappointed that they do not follow the other big company's trail and put the current series online so those who have missed the show can catch up all refusing to do so just causes people to have to find the show on other sites, and with that they would miss out on potential revenue, like many fans out there I'm sure that if they put a their show on a stable delivery platform like youtube, which as one of the smoothest streaming video I've seen; along with my favorites of revision3's shows, diggnation and the totally rad show, I would be totally happy to put up with advertisements to be able to watch episodes online, it is fine if it is put up a few hours later so that the main stream TV finishes it's run, but for students like myself it would be great to have a place to watch if I miss the main run due to classes or the like. Oh execs did I mention that you could make money? besides did you really think that the people that want to watch would wait months until the DVD release or hope for the rerun? Notice that after big sites like NBC and CBS put up their select shows it became nearly impossible to find those shows on other streaming websites, because it was impractical to re-stream video already freely available with perhaps the exception of dubbed videos.

On another note ME212 dynamics midterm is coming around on Monday so tomorrow or rather later today due to the fact that it is already early morning I'll be getting together with a study group and going over problems and putting together a formula sheet, hope this test goes well, the last two; FSHN110 and CE215 seemed to go well, so hopefully this one does as well.