dinner at prof's

Both studio crits, all students, several partners.

much much food.

I made my usual fruit salad and the usual thing happened: to start everyone spooned out their bits and pieces and then by the end of the night everyone was just taking pieces out with their fingers. I think that's a huge compliment that people keep picking away at the fruit, but it also says something really lovely about the comfort levels between people - high.

Also afterwards unrelated party at an amazing apartment - E: like yours at Anamoe, but super huger.

priority list: super secret project, then tech portfolio and hopefully something for world pinhole photography day.

peace.

another day without sunshine

10:30 pm coffee break:

guy in elevator: how's your project going?

Lori: awesomely?

gie: ha ha - (mixed horror and shocked laugh)

L: I just realized that I went another full day without seeing the sun. I think I'm getting scurvy or whatever lack of sun causes.

gie: what does cause scurvy? (obviously delirious)

later, in my brain: no I'm thinking of vampirism. I'm definitely getting that.

peace

CANcon

I was thinking last night about something I started a few years ago and haven't really continued. Several years I decided to eliminate all popular culture from my life. I decided to start with radio/music, then move to tv, then who knows... I don't think it ever occurred to me to eliminate films. I'm such a huge film junkie. I love seeing films!!!

I decided last night that I should continue what I started - keeping in mind I've only 99% scaled back on tv, but I still consider that a success. I'm giving up films. No, that's way too intense. I'll give up Hollywood films.

Canadian films only.

Should I include docs? Should I allow myself a periodic Hollywood film? Foreign language and zero budget films?

Canadian films and docs. I can do that. Paul Gross' Gunless is coming out in the next few weeks and so is the new April Mullen/Tim Doiron adventure called 'Gravytrain.' Bruce MacDonald is working on something. I saw the new Adam Egoyan and it was great. I've been watching a lot of RPS lately too.

I'll keep you posted on how this goes and in the meantime go see some can/con. There are lots of great homegrown films out there!

peace.

nothing to report

The other night someone systematically went through the 3rd floor of my building at school and stole cameras, compys, etc... everything that can be stolen for cash including one woman's compy, back up drive and her other backup drive that backs up the first drive. I totally get why she needs two backup drives, but why was she keeping them in the same place at the same time? Locks were cut off and drawers pried open. Moral: don't leave stuff at school, not even locked.

I'm on the 4th floor and none of stuff was taken or is missing. Good for me, but boo-urns for the others. It's a shitty thing to do and a shitty time to do it since we're at the end of the school year and now is when we all need our data hordes the most. The weird thing is that I was at school until 2am and the first person at school to notice the problem was there at 6am, so when did this happen? I'm surprised that there was enough time with literally no one on that floor to even pull this off.

Yes, school is a 24hr job in my building.

peace.

I went to LA

my poor, neglected blog-ity boo.

So I went to LA for a class field trip - I know... field trips in grown up school? Architecture!!!

8 students, 2 profs, 2 other stragglers.

The primary goal was to visit our studio site - www.mjt.org . The Museum of Jurassic Technology which is neither related to the Jurassic or technology. Our project is to design an Aviary on the roof for a future possible addition to the museum. As usual mine involves a lot of ramps.

Also, and possibly more importantly, or as equally important, we visited many places in LA. Architectural places - LA modern living at its finest. Eames' house, Schindler house, Hollyhock house by Frank Lloyd Wright, a sneak visit to La Miniatura, Neautra VDL house, Salk Institute - wowsers.... It was a very life changing experience.

Possibly the most meaningful moment was a visit out to the skate park at Venice Beach - I've never seen full-on skate boarders just doing their thing before. The anthropologist in me was on fire what with the intermingling of yuppie beach culture and poor beach culture and skate culture and surfer culture all together. There was a huge drum circle on the beach when I was walking home on my last night there.

It was a hard sell to get me back on the plane to come home, but I had a sliver of time to share with my family in the Edmonton airport on the way to Winnipeg.

It's such a precious thing: I was given a copy of Fordlandia for xmas from a good friend and I cherish reading it so much - when I have the chance to for-fun read. Yes it's partly the decadence of fondling a hardcover edition, but more it's the lifelong memories that tend to develop from being given a surprise gift that really speaks to my core as a human being. I'm learning a lot from this book and I feel like it's the starting point of further research.

Mid point in semester. My interim review was last week and I feel very positive from it. I got some great feedback and I really feel like I'm on my way toward something presentable for end of term.

Pottery today - I started working on what I hope becomes a light chimney for my project at school - what's a light chimney? Stay tuned kids, same bat channel, same bat time.

peace.

there's a lot more math...

I'm being taught Structural Concepts by an engineer - of course there'll be math!

I feel at a bit rusty at all the sin/cos/tan type equations.  In my head I was thinking, "it's so much easier to solve these in autocad," and then the prof said, "if you have autocad this is a lot easier to do."

The good news is that I brought my HP 48 with me to the peg, the bad news is I had to recover my memory when I turned it on.  I hope I didn't lose my games, but judging by the fact that my 'var' menu is empty, I won't get my hopes up.

Everyday I think I'm on the verge of getting a new phone number.  I just have to make it happen.  Stay tuned.

peace.

The knee bone's connected to the ...

Day one:

Today was a half day.  Myself and the 3 other students in my program met for our first lecture/discussion for a few hours.  The topic was structural concepts and instead of just chatting at us, the prof took us on a mini tour of the campus to a few buildings that offered exemplary views of specific important structural details.

We discussed the basics of what keeps a building off the ground.  It's all about support.  The roof is connected to or supported by purlins which bear the load of the roof and run perpendicular to the roof spans and the beams underneath.  It's like chain links - they are all interconnected.  The purlins sit on beams, and the beams in turn are supported by columns which make up the vertical support of a building.  All of this sits on piles. 

Piles can be poured in place or prefabbed and driven into the ground. The same is true of concrete floors.  They can be poured in placed or prefabbed.  The thickness of the concrete floors and the thickness of the beams is determined by how load is expected to be resting on either.  

Fun stuff.  It may not make for an interesting blog update, but it was a good day nonetheless.

It was only a half day today because my prof had to meet with the program people to discuss some changes to the course.  I think they were supposed to meet last week, but you know how that goes.

I took some photos of my apartment and a few around the neighbourhood.  I should have mentioned that I moved out here over the weekend with the help of my dad.  Everything went really well with regards to the move, but I brought way too much stuff and had to send some of it back to Alberta.  Thats ok.  I did pretty well going from having a whole house to myself to just having a bedroom and the lower shelf in the kitchen pantry.

peace.