Want to be in photos like these or buy prints? Send me an email. I’m no longer on Instagram, so if you message me there, I won’t see it. You can also drop me a line on Signal, Mastodon, or Bluesky.
This past Saturday, I once again joined some friends to go see the Cherry Blossom Festival at Branch Brook Park in Newark, NJ.
After a long, cold, snowy winter, this spring has been extremely welcome. I’ve finally been biking again, getting back in shape and making up for lost time from when the roads were covered in the most slippery sludge imaginable. It’s also been incredible to see some local flowering trees around Brooklyn.
But nothing compares to Branch Brook Park, home to the largest field of cherry blossoms in the entire country. “Wait, in Newark?” I can hear you saying in a derisive tone. Yeah, that’s right. The deepest part of the armpit of America has the best trees. And honestly? Newark is kinda nice in some parts, like the Ironbound, a thriving Portuguese community.
Want to be in photos like these or buy prints? Send me an email. I’m no longer on Instagram, so if you message me there, I won’t see it. You can also drop me a line on Signal, Mastodon, or Bluesky.
DISCLAIMER: This post discusses finances and money, but is not financial advice, which I am not qualified to give.
On Sunday, I joined some friends at the No Kings rally in Midtown. I got there as the march was starting to progress south.
I was remarking to a friend how all the billboards in Times Square would be AI, crypto, and gambling, a sign of how much the country had devolved, how much our economy was based on vapid scams. But this time, no such luck. I only remember seeing a single AI billboard.
There was at least one extremely large electronic billboard showing not ads, but landscapes intersticed with a strangely overproduced animation of the billboard company’s logo. A few analog ones were just completely blank. I saw an ad for Wikipedia. I didn’t even know they had an …
Want to be in photos like these or buy prints? Send me an email. I’m no longer on Instagram, so if you message me there, I won’t see it. You can also drop me a line on Signal, Mastodon, or Bluesky.
This morning, you and I woke to the news that the US and Israel had attacked Iran. The US had been building up its military presence in the region for weeks, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise. But it was still extremely upsetting news. This is a war that only a small minority wanted that has had and will have devastating consequences for the entire region.
Ayatollah Khameini is dead. As I’m writing this, Iran is bombing Israel, as well as US bases in neighboring countries. Israel has taken the opportunity to resume the siege on Gaza while they think nobody’s looking.
The self-declared president of peace Donald Trump and his cabinet of fools are responsible for this escalation and its blowback. I’m not surprised at that. What I am suprised at is that I’m not even angry anymore. I’m just …
Now available: a mailing list for my photography. [Used car salesperson voice] Subscribe to get my photo posts delivered straight to your inbox. And who knows, maybe I’ll announce other photo-related projects here as well.
Everything I post to the Photography section of this site from here on out will show up on the mailing list. You won’t miss a thing. It’ll most likely contain links to posts, so I don’t flood your inbox with photos directly, but I might experiment a bit.
I decided to spin this up separately from the Inkjetski mailing list, which is a mirror of the Music section. But I do sometimes post show recaps there with plenty of photos, so be sure to check those out, too.
This joins the RSS feed, where the same posts will show up. Every section of this site has an RSS feed, and the main feed aggregates them all. But so far I’ve only spun up mailing lists for Music and Photography, where I’m most actively posting these days.
Want to be in photos like these or buy prints? Send me an email. I’m no longer on Instagram, so if you message me there, I won’t see it. You can also drop me a line on Signal, Mastodon, or Bluesky.
Earlier today, Border Patrol agents brutally murdered Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse for the VA hospital in Minneapolis, for the apparent crime of observing and protesting the immigration enforcement activities of Operation Metro Surge. For the deed of tending to a woman the agents had pushed just moments before, they pinned him down and shot him ten times. DHS head Kristi Noem spouted excuses like a brain with a severed corpus callosum trying to explain the other half’s actions.
In response to all this, Hands Off organized an anti-ICE protest in Union Square called “Stop ICE Terror.” Perhaps the title was imprecise, given Border Patrol agents perpetrated this act, but the sentiment was on point all the same. The mistake is understandable, because what the hell are Border Patrol agents doing …
Want to be in photos like these or buy prints? Send me an email. I’m no longer on Instagram, so if you message me there, I won’t see it. You can also drop me a line on Signal, Mastodon, or Bluesky.
On Sunday, I went to 50501’s ICE Out for Good demonstration, so named for Renee Good, the woman who was murdered by an ICE agent on January 7. It was a massive turnout.
Everyone was in good spirits and showing solidarity—except perhaps one dingbat waving a large flag with Trump slogans stapled on. Aside from that, there were signs protesting everything from ICE to the invasion of Venezuela to climate change. There was chanting, music, dancing, costumes. Quakers, Extinction Rebellion, Hands Off, and the like were out with flags, signs, and banners. I even saw a guy wearing a USS Liberty hat waving a Palestine flag. It’s a big tent.
We started at Grand Army Plaza at Central Park and marked down Fifth Ave. A poignant moment came when we passed by Trump Tower, and everyone started flipping …
Want to be in photos like these or buy prints? Send me an email. I’m no longer on Instagram, so if you message me there, I won’t see it. You can also drop me a line on Signal, Mastodon, or Bluesky.
On a bitterly cold, bright New Year’s Day, my friend Ricky and I went to the mayoral inauguration block party near City Hall, where the actual inauguration took place. I was running a bit late, several blocks were closed, and I surfaced from the subway station on the wrong side of things, so I went on a wild goose chase around FiDi trying to find the entrance. Finally, after looping around the neighborhood and winding my way through a packed crowd, I found Ricky, and we headed in.
The streets were packed. I’ve never been to an inauguration before, but I can only assume that Eric Adams’ wasn’t nearly as well-attended. I was grateful for the crowd, as we all huddled together against the cold. Whose idea was it to have inaugurations in the dead of winter, anyway? …
Want to be in photos like these or buy prints? Send me an email. I’m no longer on Instagram, so if you message me there, I won’t see it. You can also drop me a line on Signal, Mastodon, or Bluesky.
Earlier this month, I joined my friends Jacob, Steve, and Yefim on a photo walk from Jackson Heights to Sunnyside in Queens. It’d been probably a decade since I’d last been to Jackson Heights. My loss, since it’s got some of the best South Asian food in the city, owing to its incredibly diverse population. Our first stop was Angel (which recently moved to a new location at 75-18 37th Ave, contrary to what the website says at the time of writing). It was some of the best Indian food I’ve had anywhere. We ordered and ate so much food that I didn’t even have dinner.
From there, we started off on our walk to Sunnyside. We wandered up to the 34th Ave open street and meandered around the neighborhood for a bit. Then, we headed on to Woodside, sometimes walking under the elevated …
Want to be in photos like these or buy prints? Send me an email. I’m no longer on Instagram, so if you message me there, I won’t see it. You can also drop me a line on Signal, Mastodon, or Bluesky.
Today, my friend Jacob and I took a walk to Prospect Park to peep some snow from yesterday’s snowstorm. I brought the new Sony A7 V with the trusty Voigtländer 35mm f/1.2 Nokton SE Aspherical, and he brought his Mamiya RB67, loaded up with some Lomo Grey Lady 400. It’s still early days for the A7 V, but luckily Lightroom has supported its lossless compressed RAW files from day one.
We met up at a local Hungry Ghost and headed down Vanderbilt Ave. The streets and sidewalks were mostly cleared already, but there were huge slush puddles at every crosswalk. At the park, there were lots of sleds, snowboards, skis, and snowmen. We even spotted a few very good dogs. Winner, the cafe in the Picnic House, was open and serving hot beverages. On the way out of the park, we saw a group of teens …
Want to be in photos like these or buy prints? Send me an email. I’m no longer on Instagram, so if you message me there, I won’t see it. You can also drop me a line on Signal, Mastodon, or Bluesky.
Yesterday, I went to the No Kings protest that kicked off from Times Square. It was a beautiful autumn day. Perfect for marching and taking some photos. The vibe on the ground was good, and the crowd was enormous (100,000 people). In both directions, the streets were filled as far as I could see, even standing on a bollard. There wasn’t any trouble except navigating around the various obstacles and distractions in Times Square.
I have never seen so many normal people at a protest like this. People who Trump probably imagines to be on his side. People from the city and the suburbs. People for whom the American flag still means a lot. People who are upset to see a whiny little crybaby wannabe dictator throw tantrums every day and tear down a country that, sure, has plenty of flaws, but has …
A short while ago, I posted that the Fricatives (Carli and I) played House of Abundance’s 10th Anniversary open mic, but I didn’t include video or photos, since none had surfaced. Since then, they have. While this isn’t Kervin’s video—keep an eye out for that in another post—I figured I’d share these sooner.
Want to be in photos like these or buy prints? Send me an email. I’m no longer on Instagram, so if you message me there, I won’t see it. You can also drop me a line on Signal, Mastodon, or Bluesky.
Back in April, House of Abundance had its 10th anniversary open mic. I can’t believe it’s been that long already. Where does the time go? This one was a little bit different from the usual. There was an interview, a last-minute change of venue, and a surprise reverse special guest. Read on to find out what happened.
The Interview
A few hours before the open mic, I joined hosts Claws and Tina, as well as longtime regulars Ayana, Jacques, Gabe, and Daad to be interviewed on camera for the 10th anniversary of House of Abundance. While we each waited our turn, I took some photos. Kervin Morales conducted the interview and the filming. Keep an eye out for the interview’s release. I’ll post it here once it’s out. I promise the sweat pouring from my face was only partly flop in nature. It was …
Unfortunately, due to an illness, the Fricatives will not be performing tonight (3/27) before A Side of Murder. That show is still happening, so go see it!
So far, we’re still on for House of Abundance on Saturday, 4/18. See this post for more details on that show.
Spring is in the air. Unfortunately, it’s the Spring of Deception. But soon we’ll get through Third Winter and the Pollening and get on to Actual Spring. And that brings us to some upcoming shows. The Fricatives are back, and we’re playing some sets. That’s Carli Van Voorhis on vocals and yours truly on guitar. First: opening for a murder mystery dinner. Second: House of Abundance.
A Side of Murder: Johnson's Manor (an improvised murder mystery dinner)
Put on your detective hat and leave your alibi at the door…this isn’t your average whodunit. In this fully improvised murder mystery, you run the case! Pick the victim, inspire the suspects, and follow the clues to uncover the culprit. It’s part mystery, part …
Back in February, I played two sets in one night at Gonzo’s, a combination music rehearsal and performance space on St. Mark’s Pl. in the East Village. The first was the debut of the collaboration between Carli Van Voorhis and me, The Fricatives. Later in the night, I joined Adam LaGreca and band for a few tunes. Opening for us were our friends Sunbeam Colleen, Anjoli Simone, and Cancion Franklin. Naturally, I took photos of everyone while I wasn’t playing. Others took photos and videos of us playing. It was a real special night.
Clips
Apologies for the low quality here, these are phone videos sent through text.
We’ve got something special for ya. Back in mid September, we got together with our friend Andrew in his studio, Conveyor, in Bushwick. We recorded some tunes, and the result is below. Be sure to scroll down to see some photos of the session. In a shocking move, we’re calling this one “Live at Conveyor.” You should’ve been there.
For the first, on October 23, we’ll be schlepping it out to People’s Pub in Bayport on Long Island, like we did last year. This time, we’ll be joined by our friends Leah Tash and Canción Franklin. No advance tickets, just $10 at the door.
Spring is in the air, and we’re getting back out there. I’ll be joining Adam LaGreca and the band for another show, headlining at Sleepwalk on Friday, May 23. As usual, it’ll be Adam on rhythm guitar and vocals, Mike on bass, Claws on backup vocals, David on drums, and me on lead guitar. We’ve got some new songs and some old songs for ya.
Also joining us are our friends Stathi and Mikee Strongmen. Stathi’s been a regular in this scene since before I got here, and his music is quite gentle and beautiful. We met Mikee on tour back in October during the Buffalo leg, and he can play 3 instruments at the same time while excoriating the likes of Donald Trump with fiery lines. Don’t miss it!
Get your tickets on Dice and RSVP on Partiful. Hope to see you there.
Thought last time was short notice? Think again. This Saturday, I’ll return to where it all began: the open mic at House of Abundance, with Claws Solange and Tina Kachoo hosting once more. House of Abundance is a spiritually nourishing and renewing collective of poets and musicians. I’ll be bringing out some solo Inkjetski tunes that some of you haven’t heard in a while.
If you’d like to go, RSVP on Partiful, and please consider donating. It’s in Bed-Stuy, but the exact location will be revealed when you RSVP. Hope to see you there.
Ever wish you could keep up with what’s going on in the world without getting mired in reading news all day? Turns out, Wikipedia publishes a current events portal, which gets updated daily. If you’re a freak like me, you probably want it served to you in an RSS feed. So do I, which is why I was using one. Unfortunately, it keeps going down, so I made my own. Check it out: Wikipedia Current Events Portal RSS.
Another version of this post first appeared on the Sotheby’s engineering blog when I worked there as a staff infrastructure engineer.
When I joined the Thundercats team, which serves various Platform Engineering and SRE responsibilities at Sotheby’s, one of the first projects I worked on was rewriting an old Python cron job in Go. This job, iam-credential-reaper, notifies people in Slack when their AWS access keys and passwords should be rotated, and it expires access keys that need to be replaced. In the process of rewriting the job, we refactored our way from spaghetti code with low test coverage to a well-factored struct with complete test coverage, fixing some bugs along the way. We used functional patterns with the help of lo, a library of higher order functions, and mo, a library of monads, both of which are possible because Go 1.18+ now supports generics.
What follows is a story of how we got from the original spaghetti code to a much cleaner approach using functional …
For a pretty cool project I’m working on, I need to connect to an array of GoPro cameras. A GoPro, if you don’t know, is a powerful but tiny camera that can record in very high resolutions as well as withstand extreme conditions, which makes it super useful for sports recording.
Unfortunately, it’s a pain in the ass to use at every turn. Its only Wi-Fi access is ad-hoc, which means you need to connect to it directly instead of connecting it to a Wi-Fi network of your own. That means the computer you’re using can’t have Internet access while connected to the GoPro. Which, conveniently, means you can’t look anything up while you’re trying to reverse-engineer the GoPro’s API. It also means that you can only connect to one GoPro at a time, which is problematic for this project.
Fortunately, we got some Raspberry Pis to play with where I work. I used one to bridge a connection between the GoPro’s limited ad-hoc Wi-Fi network and an ordinary Wi-Fi network, which not only gave me access to …
If you want to make use of an ultrasonic rangefinder, such as the MB1010 form MaxBotix, the default pulseIn() function gets you pretty far. However, if you want to do anything else in your program with any reasonable speed, you’re out of luck, as pulseIn() is a blocking method, which means it’ll freeze your program until it’s done getting a pulse. I’m building a lighthouse, which does several other things on the main loop thread that are dependent on execution speed, so this is unacceptable.
Luckily, there’s NewPing, a third-party library that operates with a bunch of ultrasonic rangefinders. To use it, you must install it. Even though it doesn’t say it supports the MB1010, it totally does, using the single pin method on the MB1010’s PW pin. I’ve taken the code in my lighthouse related to sounding the piezo based on the distance of things from the MB1010, and here’s a working example, written for and tested on the Arduino Uno SMD Edition.
eyebrows rise
when i lay down the line
behind the violator
of my space, my peace,
my sense of enough
of having enough
of doing enough
of being enough
of enough already
already across a line
i didn’t even know i had.
how did you get here so fast?
before i even had a chance to notice
your casual expectation, unstated,
silently violent.
but every law has a precedent.
some days i think moving the line
could be good for me
could make me sharper
but who could i ever need to cut?
maybe you
from my life
out of the blue
the deep blue river
or was it sky
a leaf, crisp and bright
flows down a current
its edges fraying, toasted
the color of topaz
where is my sweet summer squall
the release of tension
the return to harmony
it is november already
underdressed
—compared to some—
supremely relaxed
in public, even
in the back row
facing so much self-referential
anxiety which doesn’t affect me
underslept
unfeeling
craving pfressure
more pressure
cannot get enough prussure
3, 6, 89
but PUSH
2, 4, 8mm
goto place
the pressure of bed against body
and body against
body For
body Towards
body AROUND
smash of
swish of
squish of
kept me up
overdressed
—for this heat—
have not depilated
in WEEKS
covering the exhaust pipes
no escape
and craving
never asking
feeling
pressing lightly
lady fat on bone_
inversion of
digging tunneling circling
the drain
would someone else like to
here uh
yeah—yyeah
TAKE it—
After our last fight,
which had to happen,
which should have happened ages ago,
I didn’t see you for two weeks,
except that time you dropped in unannounced
during a jam session
to drop some clothes off—I wasn’t annoyed, just confused.
Today we finally had the talk
we both knew we needed to have.
We met in Fort Greene Park under a cloudless sky,
clearly still full of love towards one another.
Perhaps surprisingly so.
But we both knew it needed to end.
And so we ended it.
But today marks the beginning of something new.
A friendship of exes,
a newfound freedom,
The lifting of a burden.
A return to peace,
it feels more like a resolution, a rectification,
than an ending.
The dividing line
between Then and Now
is a striking one,
one which I was reluctant to put down,
but which you wisely established.
There shall be no more touching.
No “I love you,” just “see you later.”
It’s an acknowledgment of a truth
which had developed over months,
which we had gradually allowed ourselves to reveal,
Every time I step outside my apartment,
I have to read fifty people’s minds.
I became practiced in the art
out of necessity, fear of—
Once, I attended a radical self defense training course
at a feminist bookstore in the lower east side.
They pushed all the bookshelves off to the side.
I learned how to break someone’s nose and run away.
These streets are so much safer now,
said the guy at Patsy’s Pizzeria on Dean St
about the effect Barclays Center had had on the neighborhood.
He said, there used to be prostitutes, prostitutes everywhere!
A year later, a friend of mine suffered greatly
at the hands of a random stranger just a block away.
She said, having witnesses is a bluff.
They’ll just pass you by on a misinterpretation of the scene.
See, it takes a lot of mind reading skill
to come to a conclusion like that.
The potion sellers are well versed in it.
We must be, as a means of self-defense.
I myself can never quite tell sometimes
whether some asshole who stares at me on the train
four months depleted
some would say that i am not yet ravaged
and that that’s good enough to continue
but if i did i would break
barely made it home to my couch
where she’ll sleep tonight
where i am lingering, awaiting a feeling
any stimulation or sensation whatsoever
something to jolt me back to life
to give me a glimpse of reality
to reorient my worldview
something for which i am too tired
boredom is a type of suffering, i’ve heard
and to be present in the face of it is hard
still i curse the soul who dared to pop
firecrackers on my street on such a pleasant eve
The stars have thrown me for a loop.
They’ve aligned with a resonance
so slightly dissonant that I’m left wondering for days
whether I ever heard that harm, or was it harmony?
When I ask myself how she makes me feel,
I feel selfish. I feel racked with guilt.
Isn’t that how our parents taught us to love?
When she left I felt lonely, in limbo.
She said she would be delayed and said,
“Get your hair pulled, but don’t fall in love.”
I joked, “I’ve been pulling my own,” neither confirming nor denying
that I had ever had any intention of anything at all.
With a fury and a hunger did I descend
into a spiral of loathing and despair
until I remembered that I was fine.
Everything Is Fine. Breathe.
And so it was with a vagueness that I acted on the intention,
telling myself and another that it was all fine,
but telling mine nothing. It felt so right.
I regret nothing. It felt so right.
you
and those who identify as you
swirl around you
chanting affirmations
dredging up and airing your dirty laundry
you are one of many / you are one and many
your trauma is the same as that of those who identify as you
a spiritual gathering of all
of your false selves
with sprinklings of truth, enough to keep you in
a calm environment of subtle
deaths in the throbbing heart of the chaotic city
squeezed through arteries, routing around clots
into the atrium of subjugation
if the nuke hits, this is where it’ll be
instant obliteration of top talent
extending into the weekend, no less.
more immediate is the threat of microaggressions
death by a thousand papercuts
dealt by you and those who identify as you
in the line for a suboptimal but free lunch
If you know me even a little, it’ll come as no surprise that I hate Meta. Hate? That’s a strong word. Yes. I hate Meta with every fiber of my being. In 2017, on the heels of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, I deleted my Facebook account, never to return. As Meta’s role in the Myanmar coup and genocide and its knowledge of the harmful effects of its platforms came to light, I felt even better about that decision. In 2023, shortly after the fall of Twitter, I lost all interest in corporate social media. I stopped posting on Instagram, except to link back to this blog. Now, in light of Meta’s recent moves against content moderation, fact-checking and DEI programs, I’m finally leaving Instagram. It is no longer even pretending to be a safe place for me and people like me.
Over the years since I left Facebook, look at what it’s become: the boomer zone, the AI slop machine, the primary vector for disinformation campaigns. In the couple of years since I left Twitter (leaving a dormant …
It’s my pleasure to introduce you to the new Process Things. I’ve been working on replatforming it for far too long, but now it’s finally here. Make yourself at home!
What is Process Things?
Process Things is a good old fashioned website. It’s a place for me to post about my music, photography, poetry, code, and beyond. For more about Process Things (and me), head on over to the about page.
The homepage is a two-dimensional grid of posts segmented into rows by category. Each category is horizontally scrollable, showing the first few posts in each category. Each of those has an RSS feed with a little RSS icon to get you there. (For more information on RSS, check out this post.) For instance, if you only want to see my photography, you can subscribe to the photography feed. If you want to subscribe to everything on the site, there’s a feed icon at the top of the page. There’s also a mailing list for my music shows and releases, linked next to the RSS icon in the Music category. Try it …
Recently, in the wake of Elon Musk’s spectacularly disastrous acquisition of Twitter, people have been pining for a return to simpler times on the web. The centralization of power towards big tech companies like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Apple, and Google has undoubtedly been detrimental to the health of the web.
But contrary to what the scam artists behind blockchain, NFTs, and web3 would have you believe, the web is already decentralized. You can already follow websites without going through a powerful centralized middleman. In the mid-2000s, this was the norm. But how? And what happened to that dream?
Since social media has broken the old habits of the blogosphere for many and outright precluded them for most, I thought it might be a good idea to give a little introduction to RSS, especially since I’ll be fotoblogging on this website instead of Instagram from now on.
What is RSS?
On social media, you can follow accounts, ranging from NPR to the rando you met at the bar last …
In 2013, I got fed up with struggling to hear the underpowered Jambox in my car, and I sprung for a UE Boom in blue, white, and yellow.
The original UE Boom.
This thing was great. I did a little research online, as well as some in-person tests at the local big box store. The Boom was the only compact Bluetooth speaker that could compete with the cacophony of other shoppers …
This is part 2 of a series on the evolution of my home audio setup. Read part 1.
In 2012, after lugging the PHC-Z10 around to multiple off-campus houses in college, my minimalist tendencies won out, and I sprung for a Jawbone Jambox with a blue wave grille, my first entry into the Bluetooth audio realm.
The Jawbone Jambox
This thing was great. Since, by now, my only audio sources were digital ones from my very first MacBook Pro and my very second iPhone, both of which had Bluetooth, it was …
Starting today, I’m doing a series on the evolution of my home audio systems over the last decade and change. This has been in the works since 2020, and it started out as a very long post, but I’ve decided to split it into multiple posts to save you the headache of reading one long piece about a bunch of nerd shit you don’t care about. Instead, you can endure the headache of several shorter ones.
I won’t dive into sources of music in this series. Perhaps another time, I can dive into MP3-CD players, Cowon iAudio X5 with Rockbox installed, iPod Classic, and the like. But for now, let’s talk about speaker systems.
In 2010, my home audio was that of someone who lived with her parents, and that’s because I did. After all, I was in college. I had one of those bookshelf stereos, which, presumably because of the nature of the then-dying music industry, had all the overblown bombast of a Transformer. It was the one, the only, Sony PHC-Z10.
One of many many things that stood out to me was the conjecture that the opposite of self-hate is not self-love, but self-indifference. It resonated with something very similar I’d heard elsewhere, which is that the opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference, which to me seems much more scathing. But it also got me thinking about what self-indifference really looks like. Is it a mere lack of self-care™, especially of the Bad Boss Bitch variety? Is it simply not giving a shit about yourself, your health, your life, your trajectory, your journey, your potential? Is it letting it all go to waste? Or is it altruism, otherwise known as selflessness? Is that better than self-love, or is it, too, something more devastating?
What would self-care look like all by itself? Consider a goodness you did yourself recently. Whether it’s working out, meditating, taking a …
Love yourself. Breathe in. Breathe out. Love yourself. You are awesome.
There’s a lot to love about you. Sometimes you hate yourself, and that’s fine. Come back to the truth: you are awesome. Despite all your failures, all your anxieties, all your traumas, you’re gonna make it. In fact, all of those things make you stronger, and that’s just another reason to love yourself. You are so strong. Think of all you’ve been through! And you’re still here.
Don’t worry about messing up. You were taught that failure was a sign of deep flaws, that perfection was the only way. You were taught that confidence came from being perfect. You were taught wrong. It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known better. The truth is that you’re awesome, and mistakes are the most effective way to learn. Don’t worry about failing; embrace it. To worry is to miss an enormous opportunity to experience a wonderful mistake. You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you react to it. React with …
In New York, there was a large, looming, far-off floor of sound that kept everything at a baseline of noise. It was like a digital sort of quietude, in that a 0 is not the absence of electricity, but just less electricity than 1. “Off” in New York was never just completely off. You could never hear the tinnitus in your ears. You could just hear a low and steady rumble, perforated by car horns and people shouting at each other.
So instead of listening to this silence from my apartment, I decided to go down for a walk, make a contribution to the noise. I didn’t really have a goal in mind. It was the first time I had gotten the idea to aimlessly wander by myself since I had moved here just over a month ago. Once I got outside, though, an objective fit itself into place: make eye contact with as many beautiful people as possible. Make their eyes smile with your smiling eyes. Simple enough. I had already pretty much done that as a close secondary goal to whatever else I was doing, which …
This weekend, I went to HackRU for the first time, and it was pretty awesome. Devon Peticolas, president of USACS at Rutgers and my friend since first grade, and Karina Ruzinov, treasurer of USACS, did an amazing job organizing it. They managed a huge spike in registrations–from about 20 to about 150 on the Eventbrite–with aplomb. Assuming all goes well, I’ll be involved in planning TCNJ’s first hackathon, THNJ (yes this) in the spring, and I’ll be looking to these two for a lot of help.
The hackathon ran with nary a hitch. There was a snag with some of the food, but they handled it skillfully by ordering some emergency pizzas. There was plenty of space in Trayes Hall on Douglass campus, including hacking space and napping space. They hosted the API demos in the same room as the hacking, which was cool because I didn’t even have to leave my computer in order to attend, even though Devon called me out by name in front of a crowd of about 200 people to come up to the front and pay …
Noodles: In a large pot, boil water and add salt to prevent noodle clumping. Follow directions on noodle packaging. Do this in parallel with the rest.
Preheat: In a saucepan or wok, add olive oil and preheat on low heat.
Prepare vegetables cold: Mince garlic. Cube pepper and onion. Half and thinly slice mushrooms. Cube tofu. Chop scallions. Microplane ginger.
Glaze: Whisk shoyu, vinegar, and corn starch together in a bowl with a fork until the corn starch is dissolved.[2]
Stir fry: Turn the heat to medium-high, and push it a little. Add all vegetables/herbs/spices and tofu quickly. Rewhisking any settled corn starch, pour glaze over everything. Stir regularly to spread the glaze …
