Alpine Lake Wilderness Backpacking Trip

I joined Ian's yearly backpacking trip this year at the Alpine Lake Wilderness near Seattle. He has a great write up with pictures here. My pictures can be found here. I flew up to Seattle from San Jose and met up with Todd, Andy, and Kevin, who graciously drove and picked us up.

I just wanted to add that my left knee started hurting part way through the first day. I think I was not used to changing elevation, especially while carrying a 40 lb pack. :p Managed to go through the rest of the trip w/o too much problems. Really appreciate Ian loaning me some trekking poles. Definitely picking up a set before the next trip.

The tent Ian got for me in OR, to avoid the sales tax, also worked out well. :)

AC/DC Rocks!!

Went to see AC/DC concert this Wednesday. It was great!! The crowd was very energetic and the band was basically going all out non-stop for 2 hours. Angus Young was very impressive.

Unfortunately I had gotten tickets on the side of the stage. This was one show that should definitely be viewed front and center. They had a lot of props and theatrics that are best viewed from the front, including a train, the Rosie blow-up doll, cannons for "For Those About to Rock", a bell for "Hell's Bell", and more. In the first picture you can see the circular platform at the end of the catwalk where Angus performed part of his solo and the bell in the second picture. If they're ever in town again, I would be tempted to see them again.

ため。ちょっと分かるかな。

今週の金曜日の稽古でいい攻めて面を打っていました。左右田先生も思いました。しかし、一回、二回だけ打っていました。：P　まだまだ勉強しなければなりません。

上個星期五的劍道練習的時候我有打了不錯的面。連左右田老師也同意。可惜只有打出一兩次而已。:P 還得在更加磨練。

At the kendo practice last Friday I was able to hit a good seme men. Even Souda sensei stopped me to comment on it. Unfortunately I only did it once or twice. :p Need to keep practicing. The footwork actually felt awkward... >_>

SIGGRAPH at New Orleans

I went to my first SIGGRAPH at New Orleans last week. It was an interesting experience. Much different from the other conferences I've been to due to its size. Unfortunately, according to my coworkers and others, it was much smaller than previous SIGGRAPHs. The economy has hurt a lot. Still, it was very impressive to me given that there was a huge party at the beginning at a club, a parade to the reception at the end of the week, and attended by several thousand people.

Much of the technical graphics talks were above me. But there was such a huge range of topics that I did find some that I could relate to, such as OpenCL, animation talks for fun, and physics simulation in games. Will Wright's keynote was interesting and inspirational, even if it was so fast I don't remember most of it. He went through ~240 slides in 2 hours. @_@

I also did some limited touring of New Orleans, and ate a LOT of good food. I was not expecting to see so many strip clubs on Bourbon St. O_o Most of the bars did have decent live bands though. We ended up just walking around and talking on the street. I visited Emeril's Restaurant, where I had an excellent pork chop. The sauce had an interesting contrast between the mango mole and tamarind. Most of us were sick of Creole and Cajun after a couple days because there was just too much fried foods and too oily. Another treat we found was Cafe Adalaide, which had 25 cent martinis at lunch. I had a terrific shrimp salad, to try to clear my blood vessels a bit. :) Rio Mar was an excellent Spanish restaurant, and then lunch at Cochon blew me away. The oysters were fantastic and the meat plate was very interesting. I loved the bacon. ^_^

First real VFF run

Wednesday last week I actually tried a real run w/ my VFF. I aimed for about 3 miles, w/ a stretch along the railroad tracks because I wanted to see if I could actually handle trails w/ them.

It was a mistake. :P A minor one, thankfully.

I could run in the dirt along the railroad tracks fine. The small jagged rocks right by the tracks don't work though. Walking in them is barely tolerable and the footing is too loose to run in.

The real mistake was trying to run 3 miles off the bat. My calves were tired after about 1 mile, and threatened to cramp up towards the end whenever I stopped at a light. I think I'm not running toe-first correctly yet. I suspect I wasn't landing on my heels at all for the first 1/2 to 1 mile, which stressed out my calves. I also probably ran too fast at the beginning. The pacing and timing are different. It also took quite a bit of concentration to keep the form.

Next time, shorter distance w/ the VFF. ^_^