A Package on A Bike

It is pitch dark, 85F, and here I was with the ponderous task of pushing back a luggage-sized shipment on my bike. My entire right arm was balancing the box on the seat, my left figher tips extended just enough to guide the handlebars, and my right hips balanced the overall leaning of the bicycle. I was wobbling along the street with just a small blinker.


Yawn, it had been a long Monday. It was 2 am when I realized that I had a Mom package to pick up at work. It was ostentatiously about food, but it was more an assemblege of thick socks and old sweaters. I even anticipated a large package by bringing a duffle bag for the bicycle. Riding a bicycle is about balance and control. With a bit of practice, one can ride simply by adjusting one's hips. A bit trickier is one-handed walking the bike.

My handling skills are impeccable. I flew through the half mile to work in less than 2 minutes, arms thrown into thw welcoming breeze. I jumped off, and ran in to grab the package. In and out, that was the plan.

What I found instead was a 2'x3'x4' behemoth (over 40lbs). Enormous and unwieldly, it required my back support to lift and carry. Beads of sweat began to form on my forehead as I began carrying it to my bike. What was I thinking? There was no hope of riding with the box. My only option was to load it onto the bike.


Thwap, twap, thinp, thwap - the metal rings clinked on the dufflebag against the bike. Lefty left, righty right - blinked my front flashlight. Finally, after half a dozen scares and 5 mins of going nowhere, our gaits matched and we were slowly on our way. The night was warm, the moon was hidden, and everyone was asleep. I was still awake, stumbling through the night. None that mattered though, I had a big and beautiful package to take home.

Dreaming at Night

Last Evening @ Bundy

For the month of September I shared a 2-bed bachelor pad with Mike. I was extremely glad to have found a great place and great housemate on Craigslist, and really enjoyed the 1/2 mi bike ride to and from work each day.


We've had many enjoyable conversations and even an attempt at DDO, but alas, all good things have an end. So I succumb to nostalgia

Spain's Moment 116

It was an exhilarating goal that Spain scored in second overtime. 1-0. The score should have been much higher had there been better finishing (also the strict refereeing killed the game pacing). Overall the game was decent, atmosphere was great, and met a bunch of fun guys.

Smart Cplanes from Objects

This is another one of those free-yourself-from-repetitive-tasks scripts.

Customizable Cplanes allow for complex forms and creations in Rhino. Imagine a series of gateways arrayed along a serpentine perimeter. While the concept may be parametric, the process for each gate is often individual and incremental. By giving up grasshopper, I am forced to painstakingly create a Cplane for each gateway alternate between them via NamedCplanes. There's got to be a better way!

Actually, rhino has the ability to create a cplane from a single crv/srf. But what about an object? a bunch of objects? or just about anything?

Well, here is the script. Just save it as an .rvb file, and create an alias/macro for it. (macro <_Cplane _world _top> will reset the cplane)

Extracting 3d models from Google Earth

*updated October 2013.

The following tutorial does not seem to work for everyone, so
Try requesting a 3d capture here.

Tic Toc and the Beach

Six O'Clock

Walking about Los Angeles

I toured a bit of LA with the couple days off from work.

Hardly Working

It doesn't seem so bad in perspective

repost:
I will try a more disciplined approach towards work next week.

Actually, there is no work left. It is time for me to take a break and start making plans for the return trip.

May 22th

A walk downtown

May 16th: Reckless Meandering

A nice, 50mi bike ride.

View May 16th Bike Ride in a larger map

visiting LACMA

I spent half a day touring LACMA (LA county museum of arts) for the architecture and art. The campus by Renzo Piano employs an orange-red color as a motif, highlighting delicate columns, beams, and circulation corridors, and suggesting an overall lightness to the architecture.

I enjoyed the cracked glass egg on the main display, Serra's works downstairs, and a few paintings. I able to see some original works by the Bauhaus founders. Alas, most of the cool stuff I couldn't photograph:(

Serra had two large pieces on display - the first is insulation batt swatch, 

and this one is the canyon/infinity loop

diary of a fly - Maholy Nagy

 proun 3A - El Lissitzky

Japanese Pavilion with the 36 views of Edo

There was also a beautiful headdress piece in the Southeast Asian level (very nearly missed it). I couldn't resist photographing it for a synth:

Biking to the Staples Center

A bike ride on May 3rd (18+mi)

Weekend work

I've been working as a jack-rabbit this weekend, all day and all night. For that matter, last week has been super busy as well. All this have negatively impacted my sleeping schedule and mental health. Here's my way of venting - by diagramming my declining sanity throughout the weekend:

(the upticks are usually lunch, dinner, and sleep)

For some reason, the making of this diagram has helped to calm me down. It becomes easy to see that I need take care of myself better. (and that too much work makes jimmy a craazy boy!)

4th Week in LA

My camera validates what I see. Here are some from my first week.

While waiting for laundry at night, I played around with the camera's time exposure settings. I love the ability to create overlapping images.

Perfect beach weather.

Sunday night, leeching internet outside.

Lasso Objects for rhino

Rhino has many selection options. For the adventurous/ graphically minded, there is the lasso tool that emulates the photoshop lasso selection. Alas, it only works on points in rhino. Thus, I have expanded on it to provide selection for all types of objects.

link to script

1. hide as much as you can

2. run script, it will create points for you to lasso

3. lasso them as you would in photoshop