January 2010
2 posts
Goodbye!
Well, guys, I had some plans to write more about classes, the end of the semester and classes, my trip to Germany with my parents after leaving Spain. However, these things never happened and now, I’m afraid, they probably never well. I hoped you enjoyed reading my blog, it’ll still be here if you ever venture to Spain and want to know about some of the things I did there. And if you...
Pictures from Germany →
December 2009
6 posts
Photos from David's Surprise Visit in Madrid →
David's Visit in Spain
Monday, November 23rd to Sunday the 29th
Sunday we went to Amistad Cristiana, the church I’ve been going to during the semester. I was still really tired and sick, and did not feel like myself all day. After church we went to the Retiro park and ate lunch. We tried to just relax in the park but it was cold and I wasn’t feeling any better, so we ended up going back to my house.
David...
Photos from Santiago de Compostela →
Santiago de Compostela
Friday, November 20th 2009
Everyone thought Lisa and I were crazy for going to Santiago de Compostela for just one day, but since we took the night train there and the night train back it was a full and worthwile day. The night train wasn’t so bad, it was long (nine hours) but supposedly being asleep makes it seem shorter (though I didn’t sleep much on the way there).
Santiago de...
November 2009
3 posts
Photos from my Parent's Visit →
Finde con mis padres
Wednesday, October 21st - Monday, October 26th
We were a bit worried that not everyone would get on the flight, but both my parents, Emily (my sister-in-law) and her mom all got here without a hitch. They arrived Wednesday and were tired, so we just had dinner. It was miserable and rainy but fortunately we had great weather for the rest of the time.
Thursday they picked me up from campus (they...
Retiro de Amistad Cristiana (Church Retreat)
Friday, October 16th - Sunday the 18th
Pictures (along with some others of the sunset over Templo de Debod)
Before I came a friend who studied abroad last year told me about a church and Eric and I decided to check it out. From the first time we went I really liked it. The people are more friendly and welcoming than any church I have been to in the US, to be completely honest. They’re not...
October 2009
6 posts
Sounds of Plaza Elíptica
So without fail,...
Comida (food)
The food in Spain isn’t anything too strange or different from what we eat. (Unlike France, for example. Eating in France was an adventure I don’t think I would want to have all semester). Here they eat a good mix of meat, vegetables, fruit and bread. Spanish food is in some ways richer than ours but simpler at the same time. They cook all of their food with a good helping of olive...
Photos from Barcelona →
I tried to cut down the number of pictures.. I really did.
Barcelona
Friday - Sunday October 2nd - 4th
We flew on Ryanair, which was only 60 euros round trip. Gotta love cheap European flights! We stayed in a youth hostel called Barcelona Mar, which was even nicer than I expected. It was very clean, not loud, centrally located and had free breakfast and wifi.
Barcelona is an incredibly modern and unique city. Gaudí was a huge influence and designed just about...
September 2009
13 posts
Photos from Ávila →
Ávila
Friday, September 25th
Getting to Avila (a small walled city nothwest of Madrid) was almost a disaster, but we had a fun time once we got there. If you don’t want to read my detailed account of getting to Avila, feel free to skip down to the part labeled ¡Ávila! We planned to take the 11:30 train and met at 11:10. However by the time we found each other and the ticket office it was after...
Granada Photos →
Granada
Saturday - Sunday September 19th-20th
Our second group trip was an overnight to Granada. It was amazing! I had such a great time; Granada is a fascinating city.
We took a bus and got there early in the afternoon. After lunch we headed off the the Alhambra (the reason everyone goes to Granada). It was built during the occupation of the Moors as a residency for the Sultan and many others. The...
The Second Weekend
Friday, September 11th – Retiro
Pictures are at the end of the album Mas de Madrid
Friday afternoon we went back to El Parque Retiro to hang out and relax. We went back to the rose garden and I took even more pictures of roses! After that we got ice cream and found a nice place to sit down. We were just sitting in the grass under a tree for almost two hours, chatting and playing with a small...
Check out all my pictures from the first week in... →
el dia primero de clases
Today was the first day of classes. Even though we don’t have to officially chose our classes until the end of the week, I already know what I want so I’m not really going to try out any others.
I’m taking Politica y Sociedad, Cuento (stories, from both Spain and other countries), Coloquial Spanish and a required grammer class. I’m excited I only have to take four classes;...
Sunday, September 6th
Last night before...
August 2009
11 posts
1 tag
Hola de mi nueva ciudad
Hola de mi nueva ciudad
So I will probably make my titles in spanish, but I promise to try my hardest not to write in Spanish and will make sure I only ramble on in English. Yes, your welcome. My flight was Saturday (arriving Sunday). I was hoping I would sleep more on the plane, but I really only slept two and a half hours or so. Eric and I were picked up together and taken to our houses, where...
back home
Since David was leaving friday morning, we went downtown for dinner and hung out for a while. Friday came and we got up and went out to breakfast with a few others before David left for the airport. Then around 10:00 they drove off, leaving me to entertain myself until my saturday flight. I went into the lab for a short time to finish my final report and say goodbye and spent the evening hanging...
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Final Week of Research
Last weekend I worked on finishing up my games. Midweek I asked Dr. Rosen (my advisor) if he could take a look and give me some feedback while I still had time to make changes. Last Friday he came in and went through all the games and gave me mostly minor suggestions and changes. There was only one game I had to do a lot of work on.
When we had finished he inquired about my plans after...
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IBM/Apple
And so the day after going to A Midsummer Night’s Dream we had a field trip to IBM Almaden, their research facility in Silicon Valley. I really enjoyed it, we got to see a lot of cool stuff and see what they’re working on.
They gave us the “Hi we’re IBM” spiel, just an overview of what they’re doing and why they’re so great. The first place we went was...
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The program paid for us all to go see a production by the Shakespeare Santa Cruz group. Lucky for me, we saw my favorite Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’d never actually seen it performed before and had always wanted to, but I’ve read it a couple of times and own a copy of it.
I thought it was really well done. It was performed in the perfect setting, an outdoor amphitheater...
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it's coming along
So I spent the last few days developing a GUI (in this case a “form” window with buttons and information and text boxes). When the program loads you’re given a set of games to choose from and once a game is selected the window presents the appropriate options and begins running the game. It’s not all that attractive at the present time but it would be easy enough for someone else to improve if...
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the people of santa cruz
Santa Cruz is one of the best places for people watching. I wish I could take pictures of the interesting people I see, it would be an interesting collection. But I feel kind of rude doing that… so you get descriptions.
Probably the most interesting I’ve seen yet was a hippy van carrying what appeared to be a family. At least, there was a child and two adults. The van itself was...
July 2009
12 posts
2 tags
1 tag
half way
Wednesday marked the halfway point of the internship program. It’s all gone by so fast and I fear the second half will be equally quick. :( This week was sort of up and down as far as productivity. Monday I was hoping to work with the robot and show Levi what I had been working on. But all day there were people in and out of the lab (I listened to a rather extensive conversation about creating a...
sushi!
I’ve been wanting to get sushi ever since I’ve been here. So after church David and I went to one I had heard was good. It was closed, so we searched the iPhone until we found one downtown that was open. We ordered two different rolls (spicy tuna and one with salmon) and udon noodles with vegetable tempura. David had never had sushi, udon or tempura so he was excited about trying it...
Playing games
Pate playing the game shown in the last game.
Note that I am much to short to use the robotic arm properly… My shoulder is about 5 inches below where it should be, so I can only use it by putting my lower arm into the appropriate spot, but I must lift up my arm first in a rather unnatrual way. I need a stool or something…
development finally begins
Today I finally got to the point that I can begin to develop code for the exoskeleton. Since I started the project I’ve been trying to migrate old code into the newly released environment. When I finally got it working on one computer, I put it back on the computer it needs to run on and it didn’t work. We thought maybe it was conflicting with the old version so I took that off and nothing...
