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Bobblehead Benji

My friend Benji drove up to SF for a concert and stopped by Stanford for lunch. I had to post a video of his custom-made bobble head perched on a peanut butter lid complete with laptop clutched under his arm.

One Quarter Down

I finished my first quarter at Stanford last week. It’s taken me a couple of days just to settle down and unwind.

I’m now in Hawaii, my 50th state of the year. I just found out that the BMW GS I had lined up here on Oahu broke down yesterday, so I’m going to try something else.

Museums, et cetera

My sister, Lindsay, came to visit this weekend. I was really impressed that she decided to leave her cell phone at home so we could have quality time together. We took a quick trip to San Francisco to check out the de Young and SF MoMA museums.

At the de Young, designed by Herzog and de Meuron (two of my favorite architects), we spent a while in the sun at the outdoor cafe under a beautiful clear cool sky. There were no empty tables when we got outside, so I asked if we could share with this girl who was sitting by herself looking at a San Francisco guide. It turned out she was from Paris and in SF on vacation as part of a work trip to Seattle. We ended up chatting in French for about half an hour, which was good practice for my quickly rusting French.

When I realized that SF MoMA closing was rapidly approaching, we jumped in the car and headed across town to take a quick peek at the Olafur Eliasson. This exhibit will be here in SF for a while and is touring afterwards, if you get a chance to catch it it’s totally worth it. Imagine a science museum for adults. This exhibit asks you to re-experience a number of novel and everyday experiences. Getting off the elevator into the mono-frequency light filled room immediately warns you that you’re about to experience something strange. The single frequency of light creates essentially a tonal black and white world. I don’t ever remember seeing a live black and white well light image. The image with this post is taken from the ground level looking up at the 5th floor walkway which Elaisson covered with small triangles of chromatic glass. Walking through it was another great part of the whole experience. I was also really struck by the arrays of images from Iceland, highlighting different features like waterfalls, rocks, and glaciers.

Skeletor

Skeletor
Originally uploaded by Straight Chirp’n

Here’s a picture from a drive down CA84 over the weekend.

Skype – from today to tomorrow

Last night for me and this morning for Matt we had a video chat using the free service Skype and the cameras built into our Macs. It was pretty much the coolest thing ever. I don’t have much experience with video conferencing or video chat, so I’m still amazed to be able to see and talk to someone an ocean away.

Here’s another view from along Highway 50. There were several sections completely lined with sunflowers like these.

US 50, Lonliest Highway

To get from Florida to California my dad and I had to cross several mountain ranges, the great plains, and a very big desert. The part I looked forward to and enjoyed the most was Highway 50 across Nevada. After hearing about it for a long time, it was great to finally pass through. A magazine, I think it was Life, ran a story about this road a long time ago calling it the “Lonliest Highway”. Since then, it’s gotten a little more popular, but not much. We had several long stretches with along no cares. This pictures shows how long and straight some sections are. The great distances between exits, at one point more than 50 miles, makes for an interesting road.

Tent farm @ Coachella

Tent farm

Matt and I each had a 7′x7′ square for our tents. After a fun weekend sleeping in the desert, I was certainly glad to return to civilization. My tent turned into an oven as soon as the sun came up.

This picture shows only a part of the giant field that was set up for campers. The white tent in the left background is in the middle of the field, so this image shows less than a quarter of the tents. Amazingly it was very civil and quiet (at least where we were, we slept through the helicopter and riot police visit).

The journey continues

stat.stanford.edu

This is how I feel: