Van Blog

I haven't spoken on this blog for nearly a year... Anyway, it's been spammed a lot since than and I figured I would put one last entry before I shut it down. As an experiment of my blog's frequency of being crawled, I've decided to put my new friend's, Snezana Anicic's name in this entry. So here it is Snezana Anicic... pick it up Google! So I'm working for a start up that will most certainly become more popular than Google... . Seriously go sign up at http://labs.powerset.com it's extremely interesting. I'm working on a new blog of sorts... by working I mean vaugely thinking about it. Until than, pick up Snezana Google, I dare you.

PEace

Since my last post I have been traversing the western half of the US. Seeing old friends and new places. I could have done better with pictures, but what I have will have to do. Let's go on a trip...

The trip home had some nice views

After over 24 hours on the road, the reward made it all worthwile...

Getting to see my happy sister and her baby was priceless

Holding the little guy was amazing... so tiny

There is plenty more trip to be had... read on

This has to be the longest I have ever gone without posting. It's gonna be a good one. I'm writing this as I sit on the couch at a house of some great friends in San Diego. I'm writing this on the eave of my last day in San Diego. For tomorrow I depart on a great adventure. I'm traveling the states to bridge the gaps between geography and lifestyle of a few friends I have missed. The first stop is home. As I am now an uncle! I have to see little Ryan Jr. and spend some time with friends and family in the promised land. It's than off to both coasts and everything in between. But that's the future, and so much has happened.

First off I wanted to make sure I did a few things before I left, and boy did I. I saw the old Padre's play for the first time. My good friend Jeffrey scored some tickets, and it just so happened the lady from Austin mentioned in an earlier post. Anywho, we had great seats and the peanuts were out of this world. Unfortunatly we lost, but fortunatly Ryan and Jody were with us and we were able to ease the sting with some bar hopping and a fantastic ride on the coaster back to north county. I later went to get 6 cavities filled as my insurance was about to terminated, it was great.

Thanks to my ocean savy coworker, I was able to go sailing for the first time. The sea did get to me slightly, but I was able to recover and make the best out of the afternoon. I also went to the Del Mar hourse track for the first time with a pair of the greatest coworkers ever, and lost $9 on Periwinkle Technicolor Chester... good times.

This past Sunday renewed my appreciation for the glory that is live music out doors. The San Diego symphony played a delightful mix of Tchaikovsky at the finale of its summer pops series. Of particular note was an amazing 14 year old pianist named Peng Peng from China. This kid was incredible. Played 20 minutes of extreme piano memorized... fantatstic. The finale was quite the scene as well. They usually have actual marines firing howlitzers, but because of the more pressing issues, we had to settle for pyrotechnic canons. It was still a site to be scene. Nothing like the 1812 overture and explosions.

I soaked up some serious rays on Labor day, and body surfed the crap out the Pacific this afternoon. This place will be sorely missed. I hope to return soon. I'm also thinking of setting up a better way to post ideas and info about my travels, I'll keep you posted.

Today was a fantastic day deserving a post to cement it's existence. Waking this morning to play drums at church, I was hesitant to make the commitment to stay in the nether regions of San Diego county. I was forced to make this decision because a friend (Kristin) had an extra ticket to the Old Globe's Shakespeare Festival performance of Othello. The performance was 40 miles south of my new humble abode I'm now paying 700 a month for a room in a house with the owner, (a 49 year old California surfer dude into eastern philopsophy), and another roommate (Hendra from Indonesia studying Gemology)... Because my church is halfway in-between, I knew I would have to make a day out of it. Fortunately, another friend had a great suggestion for my idle time between church and the show.

Leslie and I took a couple bikes into the city and went for a delightful little stroll. We took the ferry to Coronado and cruised on over to "The Del". Some delicious ice cream, fun in the sun, and great company made for the perfect afternoon. We met up with Kristin for some Sushi before the show and got a glimpse into Shakespeare's masterpiece by a very knowledgeable expert at the park. The show was well played, well played indeed. Experiencing art and history is always refreshing. All said, this was surely one of the nicest Sunday's I've had in a while. Ofcourse, one doesn't need to try too hard out here...

It's really all about the good company. I feel very blessed to have such great friends. They make me want to be a better one. If any a friend of mine is reading this, I value you deeply and hope we can enjoy each others company soon.

Well, after some serious issues with the Airline industry, I made it to Michigan. American Airlines sucks hardcore. I've never had a problem rescheduling a flight before, just put me on standby or whatever, but there was no reasoning with AA. I ended up getting a flight out to Chicago with United, because I had scheduled my AA departure date a day too late. After getting into the city, I called AA to make sure I still had my flight back. They told me that if I missed my outgoing flight I would not be able to take my return flight. Absolute crap... I paid for the friggin seat, why can't they just pretend I'm on the outgoing flight. If anything, they're gaining money because they have one more seat for standby. The real kicker is if I missed my return flight, they wouldn't have done anything, what could they do... rediculous. Anyway, I ended up spending nearly $500 dollars and over an hour of my life on the phone correcting the problem, but dangit I'm at the race and that's all that matters.

I got a new phone, and the first month gives me unlimited everything. I've been surfing the net with my powerbook and sending pictures to Flickr. I'll be keeping a photolog of this weekends festivities live from MIS. So check out my photostream at flickr for updates!

Well, this morning I took the Birdman to the San Diego airport. He is going to give an exciting new life a try out in New York. I'm sure he'll absolutely love it out there, and I'm happy for him. This put's me back into the old predicament of finding a new place to live, which thus far has been less than successful. On top of it all, I'm heading to Michigan in a couple weeks for the race again. I'm also going to RailsConf right after the race making for a pleasant couple weeks away. At any rate all this stuff just makes for time consuming nonsense, as if I would be doing something better with my time...

Speaking of time, here's a few highlights of the past month or two:

1. Jeffrey and Amy came out for a week and we had the time of our lives, Amy put a nice set of pictures up on Flickr
2. I saw the Calvary Flames play in Anneheim, good stuff
3. A friend from my youth (Mark McHugh) found me via Google and we were able to catch up after almost 8 years of not speaking.
4. I applied for a job in Seattle, couldn't even get as much as a friendly reply
5. I went to the Real World house San Diego on business because of new company we're using for our web design needs, 1011i
6. On that note, the chopping block is wet with the blood of H2H employees being let go. The office feels much different, but it seems the future is bright.
7. Started playing in a Jazz quartet with a couple from Temecula and Timmy boy, fun stuff.
8. Flew out to Michigan to see miss Elizabeth Bramley graduate and to reminisce of the days of old. Took a few pics.
9. Created a new weblog for nerdy web related stuff. blog.vandev.com
10. The bird decides to move to New York. After two weeks of unsuccessful meetings with possible roommates, I'm still F'ed.
11. Went to see Jamie Cullum with Christiane at the HOB. Great food and a fantastic show.
12. My Ipod get's stolen from my car. This makes for the third time my car has been broken into over the last year. It's time to move... I should probably also stop leaving cool S in my car.
13. Watched MI3 with a friend from church. Decent in a silly sort of way.
14. Memorial day was beyond beautiful.
15. Bird leaves me and I finally blog.

Well, there you have it. My incredibly exciting life over the last month or so. Stay tuned, who knows what will happen next.

I just finished watching an interesting documentary on Dr. RP Feynman. Dr. Feynman is a highly respected physicist. The idea of figuring stuff out just to figure it out is one that has always appealed to me. This idea crosses over to art for me as well. It's freeing to create something for creations sake alone, making your interests supreme as opposed to practicality. The fun is in the chase, constantly challenging yourself. I drew some vague parallels to some of the web work I've been doing lately, so I figured I would write them down for posterity.

Dr. Feynman drew an interesting parallel between a chess game and understanding the natural world. He compares his passion to looking at a chessboard, not knowing how the game was played and not seeing the actual movement of the pieces, but only the results of these movements. For instance, one might notice that the color the bishop was on never changed as it moved around the board. One could than deduce that the bishop could only move diagonally. The really interesting problems in science come when suddenly the bishop does change color (this could happen if a pawn made it to the queens end and was exchanged for a bishop). This doesn't happen very often so it would go unnoticed for quite some time until it finally threw a wrench at your theory. It's very cool to think about deducing the laws of a game by watching the results determined by unknown actions. So, now how does this relate to web development...

Dealing with various problems everyday, I'm always looking for the correct way to solve a problem. I want to put the problem into a box. The second I close that box, the pawn makes it to the queens side... Science is a deliberate and pain staking process. Perhaps this approach would be well suited for some of the problems I encounter everyday with the web. Taking the time to step back, seriously analyze what you need your users results to be, and allow the laws of your application to be defined by them. Constantly re-evaluating your "laws". This seems pretty obvious, but the fun comes in making something beautifully simplistic while adhering to these "laws". Just like a flower (see the beginning of the clip).

I figured I hadn't been nerdy enough lately... if I bored anyone, it just means you're stupid. Or perhaps I'm stupid...

Last weekend Caleb, Tim, and I went to Joshua tree. Caleb flew into town for his spring break. It was a great week. At the end of Caleb's excursion we decided to camp at Joshua Tree for a couple days. A bunch of pictures were taken, and a good time was had. Here is a pic of the desert landscape, in pseudo 3D:

That's right, it's vanblog.net's one year anniversary. It was a cool springs eve one year ago today that vanblog.net was started. Hard to believe. One year of life has passed... it continues to cruise right on by.

This is my 44th official blog post, after seeing mild success in 2005, 2006 has brought a landslide of traffic and attention... ok, maybe that's not the case, but that's not what it's about anyway. It's been a great year, I have a half-way decent record of it, and a new year to start blabbing about.

SXSW hasn't gotten any less insane. Saturday night I met a sweet southern belle named Liz. It was a random encounter. She wasn't even here for the conference, she just so happened to live in Austin. Anyway, we met up again last night and she showed me around town, Austin's not too shabby. So, this morning I leave the panel about creating "buzz" (which just so happened to have a porn star as a panelist), and I'm sitting in the corridor checking my email. I look up to see no other than Paul Moore, another friend from Michigan.

Paul and I met each other through the mutual friend of David Bramely when I was in college. We traveled to Juarez Mexico in 2002 for a short promotional film he directed, we have played quite a few games of Settlers of Katan, and we've enjoyed many a Sunday afternoon with his wife Kristen at there house in Grand Rapids. It turns out he's here with Spout, a new company that helps people who love films, love films. It was fantastic to see another familiar face, one I hadn't seen in a long time.

It's been an intense couple of days, two remain. I'm honestly scared to see what's next.

I'm blogging live from South by Southwest. It's a steamy 81 degrees and I just had a mediocre slice of pizza. Last night however, I had the best BBQ I can ever recall having at Stubbs. Anyway, being's this is a convention about all things web with special attention given to blogs, I have a new found zeal for the art... I'm sure it won't last long.

Unbelievably, shortly after I arrived last night I ran into two Hope Alum. I'm walking back to my hotel when I see a familiar face walking down the side walk. It turns out it was this girl I had toured with in Chapel Choir. She was in Austin for a writing conference. The moment I finish the exchange with Chapel Choir girl I turn around to see Dan Morrison, a fellow computer scientist at Hope. It wasn't like there were a bunch of people on the street or that there was any reason that we would be in the same place. It was completely random. I felt like I had won the lottery.

So two weeks ago, Tim and I went to Sequoia National Park, land of the giant redwoods. Amazingly this is the only place that they grow. The picture to the right is of the "General Sherman" the largest living thing in the world. I made a flickr set with some pictures from the park. The trip was definatly filled with a roller coaster of emotions.

It all began on Friday afternoon. We got everything packed up and headed for a friend of Tim's that was going to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena. We left around 5. Moral was up. According to google this trip should have taken us 1 hour and 40 minutes. Because of rain and hellish LA traffic, it took us 3 and a half hours. Moral was down. That night we stayed in Pasadena. Tims friend actually knew some of my college aquintances that were going to Fuller... small world. Anyway, the next day we were off to Sequoia. We decided to stop off at a walmart before we got there to buy a hat, some gloves, and a rain poncho just in case it was going to be cold or wet. It turned out to be a good idea. Neither Tim or I really did our research on Sequoia. Tim has a book about trails in National Parks. The entire trip up we were reading about various trails and getting really siked about hiking. Moral was up. We failed to read the "Only open from May to August" captions...

So last thursday I went to Match 7's speed dating event downtown in the Gaslamp at the Bitter End. It was actually a pretty good time. The format was as follows. You got an instruction sheet telling you what was about to follow. It explained that each girl was given a number as well as each man. When the bell was sounded the women would find the table with there respective number and take a seat. The men would than find the girl with there number and engage in conversation for 7 minutes.

After 7 minutes the instructions explained that If I was at girl #9 I should move to girl #10, and than from girl #10 to girl #11. This is worth noting because the instructions never explained what to do if you were at the last girl, instead they just gave me a brief overview of how to count... There were supposed to be 8 woman, but only 6 showed. The first conversation was a little rough, but it got much better as the night went on. You know you want some details.