In case there was any question, Leah is VERY awesome.

I am having a hard time getting away from the computer to read things that don’t have a battery life or an internet connection. In this sort of world, disconnecting from the cloud and the methods of transition from being wired to the world to isolation from society is my sort of… futurist niche fetish. I love using google gears to take my gmail and gcalendar offline. I find my focus is distorted by wires holding down the 21st century book (my eeepc) in a form resembling addiction to data. I like the feeling that “I know I can stop if I want to” because even if I am an addict of content, I’d at least like the chance to use other forms…. books! Yes, in a silly round-about way of saying it, I just want to read more books….

Here’s the problem. I go to many sites to get my content fix but the two that I’m most religious about are Reddit and Google Reader. Reddit is easier to quit (I’ve done it thousands of times) because if I miss day, I don’t really know. I just load up the page a few days later and it still looks like reddit with stories and whatever. Google reader, on the other hand, doesn’t delete a thing. My unread count is around 8-900 so think of what it would be like if I didn’t clear them all out everyday like I attempt to do! Screw that. I don’t want to log back in two weeks from now to see the dreaded 1000+ UNREAD count only to find out it’s more like 8000+ UNREAD (it stops counting after 1000)…. so how to combine the ease of quitting reddit with the difficulty of unread items piling up higher than patience…

it’s so simple…

The “Mark all items as read newer than…” button. I log back into reader a few weeks later, click the button, put in the date I left, and all items from that day on (or to another specified day) are marked as read items.

or

A “Go on vacation” button. Google reader will not retrieve anything published from your feeds until you click the “come back from vacation” button. Maybe you could control this feature from google calendar as well so that you can schedule a break from google reader in advance.

Hilarious….

If you just want to know how I’m doing, skip to the sub heading “catching up…”. Or you can read this boring intro part…. there’s pictures at the end.

So, I’m copying 43.33GB of music from my external hard drive to my mac RIGHT NOW. I’m going to be spending the next few days to myself and I made a short list with extensions of things I’m going to be doing while I probably ignore your calls or have my phone turned off for a few days straight, ignore emails and other e-correspondence, or decline to hang out with you… well no I’ll probably hang out with you. Seriously, call me I’m lonely. Oh, right, I’m ignoring your phone calls… well you know where I live, right? You can always mail me a letter too!

If you really really really have to get a hold of me or it’s an emergency then send email to renesphone(at)gmail.com. I will not respond to anything else. Not even text messages. I’ll be checking this email ONCE a day. This is starting the moment I post this entry. Sorry, so sudden. 

Here’s my short list in order of category then priority

• zen meditation. seriously. get it now? I need ultra space right now.
• going through literally thousands of missed google reader entries
• sifting through my digital music (lots of doubles)
• cleaning out other crap on my hard drive known also as making room
• making sure all my cd’s are backed up digitally
• figuring out an efficient way to send all this data to a secure server
• tune the kawai or some grand at school
• hang out with who ever is in the auditorium at school

extentions 

• expedition to find boxes to send remnants of my old life back to San Antonio
• fix the broken chair I own and/or keep an eye out for new ones
• do other boring stuff that you don’t even care about

Oh, wonderful life I have. In the middle of this blog entry I accidentally nudged the usb cable enough that it interrupted my transfer and I get the privilege of starting it over. Oh, very cool. Now my mac just crashed. Seriously, with a computer who’s mic input is broken, cd drive doesn’t work, ethernet doesn’t work, VERY slow processor that’s incompatible with nearly everything (PPC), a beat up case, and an newer operating system coming out that won’t even run on this old mac… was it worth it to get it repaired? I have made some large stupid errors this year and I’m sick of doing it. Of course, I’ve also made some pretty good choices this year… anyway…

Catching up…

So, do you wonder what I’m up to? After graduation (what graduation? catch up here), I still had lots of stuff to do. I still do. But I had family for a few days and sabrebutt (he goes by his internet handle on the internet) flew in for ten days. Leah left June 3rd but sabrebutt, Leah, and I got a chance to go out to Harvard to meet up with Andy (friend, classmate, colleague, and “The Man”) who generously gave us some of his books he wanted to get rid of. It was a beautiful trip and sabrebutt even found an old typewriter which he generously gave to Leah. Sabrebutt and I did a bunch of hanging out and now I have a few days before I’m off to my next adventure…

I’m going to Vermont in a few days for a piano tech internship I snagged. I’ll be there for ten days. Around this time is when I plan to begin making better contact with everyone again. That’s mid to late June, everyone. After this I come home to Boston for a week and a half when I will be doing something else strange. Since I have the time, I will be going to sleep at 4-6 pm and waking up at 2amish to begin adjusting my biological clock to…

Moscow, Russia for a week. Moscow is 8 hours ahead of Boston time. I’m a bit scared about Russia… After that, I’ll be flying to Copenhagen, Denmark to visit Leah. We’ll take the train back to her hometown and hopefully at some point, take the ferry to Norway. On the way home I’m spending a night in London. Anyone want anything from these countries? Uncle Jorge asked for a patch from Norway. Excellent choice.

Here’s what I’m NOT taking requests for

• Matryoshka Dolls for anyone. Sorry, but that’s silly.
• Vodka. I may bring back tiny bottles but don’t count on it.
• Legos. They’re from Denmark but seriously, go to Target or something.
• Ikea (Scandinavia). That’s stupid. Why would you want me to bring you back a particle board sofa bed frame? 
• Viking warriors. Too difficult to stuff in a bag. Not sure how to declare them at customs. They smell. 

But please, do ask me for something. I’m more than willing ;-)

And after all this it will only be  early August. I’m probably taking a trip to Miami to get my knees looked at. This past winter really opened my eyes to this whole “getting old” thing and I got to take care of myself better. School starts in early September. I graduate from this program June 4th, 2010 so mark your calendars because I want to see you there. We’ll all go out for lunch afterwards and I promise we won’t walk to Charlestown.

It’s been a crazy life so far and I’ve got so much planned for the coming 12 months (literally). Who knows what I’ll have planned after that! Move to Europe? uh oh. I hear my mother disapproving already. cheers to you, reader, and I hope we can catch up when I’m done with my “retreat from mutual communication”. 

Here are some recent pictures and a few older ones. You can tell because we’re wearing warm clothing.

-René

I’m kind of lonely right now. Good thing I can pay $8 to eat all the ice cream I want. The Scooper Bowl is going on right now and I found a list of flavors that I’m going attempt to try all of and report back. I’m planning to go Thursday.

The tentative flavors are as follows:

Baskin-Robbins

* Cotton Candy
* Rock ‘n Pop Swirl
* York Peppermint Pattie
* Premium Churned Light Raspberry Chip

Ben & Jerry’s

* Orange & Cream
* Oatmeal Cookie Chunk
* Chocolate Macadamia
* Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road

Breyers

* Vanilla
* Coffee
* Cherry Vanilla
* Cookies & Cream

Brigham’s Ice Cream

* Vanilla
* Chocolate
* Confetti & Cream
* Black Raspberry Frozen Yogurt

Edy’s

* Coffee
* Take the Cake
* Mint Chocolate Chip
* Low Fat Caramel Praline Crunch Frozen Yogurt

Garelick Farms/Gifford’s

* Chocolate
* Old Fashioned Vanilla
* Mint Chocolate Chip Yogurt
* Maine Lobster Tracks

Häagen-Dazs

* Zesty Lemon Sorbet
* Chocolate
* Bailey’s Irish Cream
* Vanilla Honey Bee

HP Hood

* New England Lighthouse Coffee
* Cookie Dough Delight
* Fenway Fudge
* Maine Blueberry & Sweet Cream Frozen Yogurt

Spasso

* Amaretto gelato
* Dulce de Leche gelato
* Chocolate gelato
* Chocolate Chip gelato
* Crema Cafe gelato
* Lemon sorbet
* Coconut sorbet
* Mango gelato
* Raspberry gelato
* Zabaglione gelato

I spent the past year in Boston studying at the  North Bennet Street School’s Piano Technology program. I graduated at the end of May though I’m just getting around to announcing this now. 

I can tune your piano, lots of common repairs, and regulation. The price for a tuning can vary from piano to piano but it’s usually around $100. Yes, even for you, supportive parents. 

Here are some graduation photos:

source

Recent Advances in Nanotechnology May Lead to a Massive Increase in Memory Capacity

There are two very exciting recent advances in nanotechnology may soon result in a massive increase in memory capacities of your DVDs and iPods:

• Researchers at the Centre for Micro-Photonics at the Swinburne University of Technology in Victoria, Australia, created a new material that could lead to new discs that can store 10,000 times more data than your average DVDs.The material is made up of layers of gold nanorods suspended in clear plastic spun flat on a glass substrate. Multiple data patterns can be written and read within the same area in the material without interfering with each other. Using three wavelengths and two polarizations of light, the Australian researchers have written six different patterns within the same area. They’ve further increased the storage density to 1.1 terabytes per cubic centimeter by writing data to stacks of as many as 10 nanorod layers. In a paper published online today in the journal Nature, Gu’s group reports recording speeds of about a gigabit per second.

  The picture to the right shows 6 patterns written in the same area of the nanorods using three different color and two different polarization of lasers: Link (Photo credit: Nature Publishing Group)

(Image: Zettl Research Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley)

• Berkeley (yay! My alma mater) researcher Alex Zettl and colleagues created a physical memory cell composed of an iron nanoparticle that can be moved back and forth in a nanotube. The position of the iron particle represents the state of the bit, which leads to very dense and highly stabile memory arrays, resulting in very long lifetime: LinkHow stable is stable? Here’s a chart that shows typical storage lifetimes vs bit density for a variety of storage media. As you can see, his stuff beats rock!

The whole reason for the trip was today. The tour of the Steinway factory was excellent and happened way too fast. We only got three hours of tour before we met for pizza and departed. The rim bending room was exciting to see, of course. The floor where action parts are made was fascinating as the guide pointed out that it was the last piano action parts maker left in the USA. We were given small pieces of expensive veneer. I don’t know what I can do with it but whatever. Next year’s tour is already being anticipated.

After the tour we had a few hours to kill. First order of business was a backpack for Leah. Eastern Mountain Supply had the latest of the best days packs, as expected. Leah found a good deal.

Well we had more time to kill and needed some coffee (decaf, lol). We knew of one place that we liked in all of NYC so far. Back to Greenwich Village. There’s this shop called Murray’s. Cheeses and meats and bread of high quality and mostly reasonable prices. The store had a good vibe too. Journey food was purchased and we hopped our bus back to Boston. A grand trip.

The Grand New York Trip.

Murray's on Bleecker St. (Greenwich Village, NYC)

This morning started with waking up at 8ish but staying in bed for a few hours. Finally we get to H&H Bagel around noon time. I had a sesame bagel with a coffee. We crossed the street and sat on a bench looking at this…

I'm sitting on a bench looking at this while I have my bagel and coffee.

After the Bagel we walk up 11th ave and get to see the Daily Show studio. 

on the corner of the Daily Show studio building is a tile store. Hilarious.

There was a cliff bar stop (I got this and Leah got this) and a starbucks stop on our way to central park. While walking through central park I regret that I didn’t catch a photo of the AIDS walk we came across. People cheering. Delta was there. I hate Delta. I’m cool with AIDS awareness. 

The Strawberry Fields… we were unimpressed. We got distracted by this bird with a great personality… then we decide to go to the Natural History Museum. Stayed until it closed.

we mostly saw human culture exhibits

On our way to Times Square we got a hot dog. We were so hungry and so tired and our metabolism is so high that we walked off the hot dog by the time we reached Columbus Circle… Got a streewise map (awesome maps) and Leah got reading glasses at the Penn Station Border’s bookstore. 

Dinner was in Greenwich Village at the Cornelia cafe. It was a perfect end to a fabulous day. The night was beautiful and inside it was cozy. The food was delicious. Of course, we had to get frozen yogurt after dinner. Pistachio and Vanilla…