We went hiking in the New Hampshire the weekend before last while staying at the MIT cabin. We hiked to Mt. Moosilauke (4802 ft.) It was great. We started by hiking up a long series of waterfalls then hiked through the mud, followed by snow, then moonscape as we came out of the tree-line for the last .4 mile.

A Quiznos opened up right down the street and we were the first in line on opening day. About half of us had stayed up the whole night doing p-sets it wasn't a problem to be there at 9 in the morning. The first 100 people in got a free sub a month for a year!

For East Campus Rush Nick and I decided to make a Giant Swing:












Here are a couple videos: 1 - 2
Housing and Safety Office Approved!

Other EC Rush projects included a waterslide, hampster wheel, spinning/tumbling ride of death, and a lazy river swamp.

Tim and Radu invited me sailing through the Harbor Islands with Gwyn from Merlin Bikes and Elen, a student from France.

Dad, Robert, Wallace, Scott, Lindsey and I went Rafting on the American from Chili Bar on the South Fork of the American. Wallace took the photos.

So, the biking trip is over now - we made it approx 800 miles from Portland, OR to the Great Divide in Montana. The rest would have been downhill....hardly worth it. Anyway, I'll post the last days on the biking page and a more accurate reason of why we stopped soon, but for the meantime, I posted a photo-album with all of the pictures HERE!

I'm biking accross the country - we are updating this page about our trip as often as we can.

Ya, it snowed last night.

Me, Robert, Wallace, Leeds, Mom and Dad rode in the Sierra century, all but Leeds did the metric century. You can find the pictures Here.

I crashed on my bike but am ok, minus a few scrapes. Going down the hill to the 7/11 a car passed me. Then, by the hair cutters, the car suddenly braked as it thought a construction truck didn't see his car and was going to crash into him. I had to brake quickly and went over the handle bars onto the ground.

Last weekend I went on another cross-country drive down I-90 and accross I-80 from Boston back to California. I stopped at Niagra Falls and some other small tourist destinations. I put up some pictures of the drive here.

My hall got a lot of mention in next month's (June) Discover Magazine. They seemed to have taken a few things people said out of proportion, and got a somewhat biased view of East Campus vs. West. Also, they came with tons of photo equipment and stayed for hours getting each shot, meaning all the photos were staged. I don't like the fake photos, but whatever....

I just made a page briefly describing the construction of the half-pipe during last year's Bad Ideas Competition.

I just made a dedicated page to the 120KVolt power supply we had for a short while. I may have made our exploits sound lighthearted and random, but we really did take great precautions and the things we did were very dangerous.

So, Jesse and I have started to plan the bike trip for this summer. My dad is coming along and we're going to start from Oregon and head east. If the tailwinds are strong, we will finish in Boston. I think the route will take us through Iowa for RAGBRAI then across the great lakes and through part of Canada, New York, then to Boston. It's harder than you might think to find routes, and if anyone has any suggestions, please e-mail me!

Now the Time Traveler's Convention was on NPR
UPDATE: Now on the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/national/06time.html?
UPDATE #2: The Today Show: http://web.mit.edu/ting2/Public/ttc.mpg

Whoa man, the Time Travelers Convention made Slashdot - now we wait for the masses of people to come next Saturday: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/01/2247248&tid=133

I just created the beginnings to an air cannon web page. It has some basic info now, soon to be expanded. The spreadsheet of barrel length optimization is cool though. AHH - I'm don't want to be designing weapons as a Mechanical Engineer, but I already am!

Check out my new 'no-push scooter' page. It is a summary of a project I did at the end of last summer - a scooter that you can propel by jumping up and down...."Last summer I read a description of an old-fashioned bicycle whose main mode of power transmission was not by chain, but by an off center (eccentric) wheel. To make the bicycle go, the user would simply jump up and down powering the bicycle similarly to how a locomotive is powered by pistons which move back and forth."

I just added the Google Adsense thing on the left there and that's kinda fun because it changes with the content of my site, so I'll probably update this page more often at least for a while to see how it changes.

Jesse and I are still planning on biking across the country this summer, but his a bone in his foot seems to be bruised now, so hopefully he recovers in time.

The Tetazoo Spring Camping Trip was this last weekend and it was good times. It rained, but we toughed it out and made it to the shack and lake about the 'Old man in the mountain' of New Hampshire. It was generally cold and very windy on the ridges. We stopped at a fireworks store on the way.

I've been working on getting some of my projects into HTML recently, so that should come soon as well. Speaking of code, I wrote the beginnings of a Matlab audio synth last week - a primer for making an electronic synth on the same principles. I'll post the code when it is complete.

Overall, tons of schoolwork recently - so, much less goofing off than previous terms. What a shame.....

I don't want my car here anymore. They're giving out tickets like crazy now and I am tired of paying them. I can't sell the car bacause it's not registered because I cannot renew the California registration because I cannot get a California smog, I can't register it in Massachusetts because I don't have Massachusetts insurance, I can't get Massachusetts insurance because no national insurace seems to cover Massachusetts people and I don't know what coverage I need. My car radio was stolen and the driver's lock is all screwed up now. I might need an oil change and who knows what other fluids changed - gas is expensive, but I hardly ever drive the car anyway! I just want to sink the car in the river.

I had deep fried cow heart last Friday, and it was surprisingly good. Tasted like tender beef. One kid from Italy says that they have it all the time there, but it took us a few hours of calling delis and butchers to find one here which carried heart. It was cheap too, $.75 a pound.

The Pope and I have had a strong bond this week, as both of us were hospitalized due to the flu. Except, I have the flu and mono. I've had a temperature of over a hundred for over a week now and have been staying at the hospital (MIT Medical) since Friday. The day nurses have forgotten to refill the IV on time or give me my pills on time a few times and that frustrates me, so I keep pushing my little buzzer. The doctor is quite nice and one of the night nurses is great. This episode added with the cold which I had a couple of weeks ago and rounds out a health-tastic January!

MIT MEDICAL IS OFFICIALLY THE WORST RUN ORGANIZATION I HAVE EVER COME IN CONTACT WITH. Not to be confused with the doctors, which are great. The MIT Medical administration Sucks!