ラーメン翳

Back in Sane

2008-07-21T21:34:00.003-04:00

Okay, so I haven't updated in a while. I'm not gonna try to cover everything in between, but if you're confused ask questions. I do like the commentses. I'm gonna make this a regular thing again going forward.

It's summer. I've moved into the second largest room on hall and will probably stay here for the remainder of my sentence-- er, purgatory-- that is, undergraduate education. My camera's battery is dead or I'd show you a picture. Maybe next time. It's a nice room, and I have it set up pretty well, tho I may want to rotate it about π/2 given that Friday's cast party had people sitting in more of an oval than a circle. Also, I need to build a better bar... the short bookcase is not quite cutting it. But the plan is to make my room and Anthony's adjacent one the ideal Beast Party Sweet (sic), what with his big shiny Barco and my spacious seating and alcove+bar.

I work at the Media Lab now. It's a really cool place to work, what with all the really interesting projects going on everywhere. Emily is working on the third floor on a new kind of motion capture, putting the cameras on the people and the markers around the room instead of the other way around... very cool stuff. I'm working one floor up. More on that in another post.

I just finished the first weekend of Dirty Hands, which went well aside from some video hiccups. For the last few weeks I've been working 9-5 and rehearsing from 6pm until past midnight. But I actually have some time off on several days this week! Then next Saturday is going to be rough, with a matinee followed by an evening performance followed by strike. We're also going to have to take part of the set out following brush-up on Wednesday for another event using the theater Thursday, and put it back in before we open again Friday evening. X-)

Oh, right, and I'm also taking a class. I have to say, as fun as this show has been, it will be a relief to only have a full time job and a class to worry about. Plus I'll get to spend more time with Emily, which is always time best spent. ^_^ Life is good.

Love to all. That's right, even you, you random stranger reading my blog. Sayonara!

Cristen says this post has to be longer than one sentence.

2008-04-15T21:33:00.001-04:00

Does the title count? Well, anyway, that was easy.

Last.fm

2008-04-09T19:15:00.002-04:00

is really creepy.

Also, I apparently still exist.

This has been tested before, but

2007-07-12T02:02:00.001-04:00

it's the short posts that get all the comments, isn't it?

I wonder if DK is tracking my blag...

2007-07-04T14:43:00.000-04:00

No. How sad. I suppose The Beast shall never know of my adventures.

Anyways, I suppose I should actually write something of a real post. I've been silent for a while, I know, and it's not been due to lack of excitement. In fact, life has been so exciting and so busy that I just couldn't find time to keep up with this. But now I'm back, and I'll try to make more regular updates.

My first year at MIT has been done for a little over a month now. I'm still slowly getting used to the idea of no problem sets keeping me up all night. What, Yoni's actually getting sleep? Of course not. He's keeping himself busy, as usual. Well, let's see what he's been up to, shall we?

Job. I'm pursuing a UROP over at CSAIL, which is a convenient short walk from EC. Yeah, that's right, even in the summer I'm going to confuse you with acronyms. In short, I'm working on increasing the knowledge base for a natural language question answering system called START. You should go ask START a question.

Show. I've landed the lead role of Henry II in the Shakespeare Ensemble's summer production of Lion in Winter! They also talked me into technical directing. It's going to be one crazy summer. If you can, come see my show! With me building the sets and playing the lead, you've got no excuse not to.

In other news, it's the Fourth of the Seventh of the Seventh of the Millennium. I'll be more impressed when it's the Seventh, but you should go eat sausages wrapped in bread and watch explosives in the sky instead of reading this blog. Why aren't you gone yet?

Something.

2007-03-25T17:20:00.000-04:00

Yeah, that's it. What were you expecting?

Children of Eden

2006-12-04T21:43:00.000-05:00

What can I say? Opening weekend was simply amazing. Three shows with great energy, played to large, responsive audiences. They laughed, they cried, they gave us a standing ovation every night. What more can we ask for?

Another weekend just like it.

Come see the MIT Musical Theatre Guild production of Children of Eden at one of our final three performances! Reserve tickets now online, or stop by our booth in Lobby 10. You don't want to miss this show.

EDIT: Production photos have been posted on the website! Also, check out The Tech's glowing review (page 5).

Wii launch!

2006-11-19T22:49:00.000-05:00

James, Felisia, and I arrived at Best Buy at 6:00 am on Saturday morning. We were the first ones there. It was cold. We tried to sleep for a few hours, but it didn't work. We were just too excited.

The sun eventually came out. James was wearing a Link costume that Felisia made for him. We decided he deserved the first spot in line for that. That made me second in line. Felisia was just keeping us company, which was awesome of her.

It was still cold. My comforter was warm and comfy. Felisia bought herself an extra-fuzzy blanket when the Sears next door opened. As the day progressed, we talked, tooled, and played DS. I managed to nap for a while. We were interviewed while I was sleeping.

Around dusk, a guy named Ben showed up, and became third in line. People from my hall showed up and ate Cinnabon across the street from us. Felisia left with them. More people gradually appeared and joined the line.

At midnight, EB Games had their preorder-only release. Link made a quick appearance.

The line eventually numbered over 100. At the front, you can see our lawn chair, and James standing outside our tent. We had taken shifts sleeping/watching, and each managed to get 4.5 hours of sleep.

Around 7:30, Best Buy employees started handing out tickets! The first ticket is drawn from the pack...

...and handed it to James! Here, from right to left, are the first six people with the first six tickets. James, me, Ben, awesome-guy-who's-name-I-sadly-have-forgotten, Nat, and Nat's mother.

At 9:00 am on Sunday morning, after 27 hours of waiting in line, we finally got our Wiis! I also bought Zelda, and Monkey Ball. I was too excited/busy buying stuff to take pictures inside the store.

Nat's mother was kind enough to give us a ride back to Killian court, where I took the most awesome picture in the history of awesome pictures. Yep, that's a Triforce on the dome. For real. It's not photoshopped.

We then returned triumphantly to Beast, where I promptly set up my Wii on Godless (our giant projector). What can I say? The console and controller are sexy. Zelda is the most beautiful game I have ever seen. Monkey ball and Wii sports are great multiplayer fun. James beat Capen in boxing.

Halloween is Long Gone

2006-11-08T02:07:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know I promised a post a week ago. I was too hosed. I'm sorry.

So... what interesting things have happened? Well first of all, there was my birthday! It was amazing! A big thank you to everyone who made it awesome. You know who you are. And to top off an awesome day, at 11:59 that night was the Annual Green Building Pumpkin Drop. Picture pumpkins falling from the roof of the tallest building in Cambridge and smashing on the ground 21 stories below. Yeah, it was awesome.

Following my birthday was, of course, All Hallow's Eve. I didn't see as many costumes as I expected in class that day. I was a Shinigami all day, but to my knowledge nobody took any pictures. However, there was one particularly awesome costume that I did snap a pic of. He was sitting in the back of the lecture hall when I walked into 18.01:

That's right folks, a bona fide Black Mage! I guess calculus is useful for determining the sum of mana necessary to cast a series of spells. Or something like that...

Let's see, what else did I promise pictures of? Trees and something random, eh? Well, trees are easy. They happen to be growing in the East Campus courtyard, and also happen to be somewhat colorful at the moment:

Now for something extremely random, but excellent nonetheless. My parents sent me three trays of bagels on my birthday! ^_^ I love my folks! Here's a picture of happy hallmates enjoying a birthday bagel breakfast:

That's all for now. Have a happy Wednesday!

It's Getting Colder

2006-10-26T00:32:00.000-04:00

I love this time of year! The refreshingly cool air, the colorful trees, the leaves that crunch when you walk on them. Autumn is a magical season. I walk outside, and everything just seems so perfect...

Then I walk back inside and continue working on my problem sets. *sigh* Homework has been piling up lately. I'm staying farther on top of it this week than last, though. Improving, if you will. ^_^; Problem sets aren't actually so bad so bad if I start them before Due-date Eve.

Which brings me back to autumn. All Hallow's Eve is coming up soon! And you know what that means... My birthday is even sooner! Yay! Did I mention how much I love fall? Here's an assignment for y'all. Just step outside, take a deep breath, and really appreciate nature. It's pretty awesome.

Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned for my post-Hallow post, chock full o' pictures of trees, costumes, and... something random.

~ Noodle

Ps. I decided to stay on Blogger, because it allows more people to comment. If that means more people will comment, we have yet to see. (Hint hint.)

The Good Old Days

2006-10-19T14:50:00.000-04:00

Wow... Suddenly I'm feeling Xanga nastolgia. I just went back and read my first few posts. *sigh* Midsummer was such a great show. The Half-Blood Prince was such a great book. And Xanga was such a great blogging service. Now they're over, old, and worse (respectively).

Agh! I don't know what to do! Where do I post my next entry?! Do I go back to Xanga because all of my friends are there? Or do I stay on Blogger because my ideals point here? *Tears hair*

Deep Fried Goodness

2006-10-18T02:44:00.001-04:00

I'm back on Blogger! I've recently gotten very tired of Xanga trying to imitate MySpace, and in my absence Blogger seems to have remained - in fact, improved as - simply a blogging service. I'm not quite sure anymore why I switched in the first place... But I digress; on to the post!

Sunday night was the Nth Annual East Campus Apple Bakeoff. This is just what it sounds like: Students on each hall create various apple-ine concoctions and enter them in a contest for fame and glory.

My hall happens to own a big apple peeler/corer/slicer contraption that creates apple rings and removes the peel in a single long strand. A few of my hallmates were using this device, and the peel strands began to pile up in a corner of the counter, unused.

So what do you do with long strands of food? You make funnel cake! I came up with the brilliantly odd idea of battering and deep-frying the peel strands along with some actual apple rings, and applying generous amounts of powdered sugar and chocolate syrup, to create this:

I entered it in the prize divisions "Most Likely to be Made on Iron Chef" and "Most Likely to Make the Doctor Stay," as well as "Best Overall." It didn't win, but it sure tasted good. ^_^ And deep frying was a lot of fun. Cleaning up the kitchen afterwards, though, was another story.

Ps. Anyone who cares can still find all of my old Xanga posts here.

Typing in Japanese

2004-09-28T17:13:00.000-04:00

Yay! Now I can type in Japanese (as my updated titlebar shows).

I just found out that Windows XP has built-in functionality for typing in Japanese using a standard American keyboard. You type in Rōmaji, and it converts it to the user's choice of Hiragana, Katakana, or Kanji.

To enable this feature:

Open Control Panel, and double-click Regional and Language Options. Click the Languages tab.
Select "Install files for East Asian languages." Click Apply.
Click Details.
Click Add.
Select Japanese as the Input language and Japanese Input System (MS-IME2002) as the Keyboard layout/IME. Click OK.
Click "Language Bar." Select "Show the language bar on the desktop" and "Show additional Language bar icons in the taskbar." Click OK.
Click the Advanced tab.
Select "Extend support of advanced text services to all programs." Click OK.
Restart Windows.

The Language bar should appear either on the desktop or the taskbar, with a button marked "EN." Click this and select "JP" to type in Japanese. Make sure to switch the Input Mode to the alphabet you want your typing to be converted to.

さよなら (Sayonara)

らめんかげ (Ramenkage)

I got a Gmail account!

2004-09-24T15:30:00.000-04:00

A guy named Jon happened to read my previous post and decided to take pity on me and offer me an invite. Jon, you are the awesomest person in the world! Thank you so much!

Gmail is just amazing. The label feature is so much better than folders, and I have a whopping gigabyte of storage! And it even lets me view entire threads of emails, as if my inbox was a message board. It's just so easy to use.

Well, I'm off to see if I can break Gmail... I love beta testing!

See you next post,
Ramenkage

First Post

2004-09-22T17:43:00.000-04:00

I set up this blog because I recieved information that Blogger was giving its members invitations to Gmail beta. I found this to be incorrect. Perhaps it was correct at some point, but no longer. *Sigh*

Anyway, now that I have this account, I may as well blog. What shall I blog about? Who knows? I certainly don't. I guess I'll just have to wait and see along with the rest of you. ;)

That's about it for now. If you or someone you know has an extra Gmail subscription, I'll gladly take it off your hands for you.

Until next time,
Ramenkage