Jimmy Sastra

I went to Lisboa last week for a beautiful wedding of my good friends Emilie and Gabriel. The wedding was at Pousada de Palmela, a 14th century convent built inside a castle. Pretty pimp. Since they had a professional photographer taking care of the usual wedding shots I tried to shoot pictures that were different. I didn’t see a point in taking the same photos that their professional photographer was taking so I chose a more journalist style and set out to find those special candid moments.

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So my electricity bill has been much higher ever since my landlord installed central air. I’ve always wondered why this was and wondered why one of my vents wasn’t working. So I unscrewed the delinquent vent one night and noticed there was nothing connected to it! So I went up in my ceiling and crawled around the space above my ceiling only to notice that the hose (that carries the hot air to the vent) was just lying there unattached. Hot air was just flowing out into nothingness. This is why my apartment never gets warm! Half of the air just gets wasted. So I wrote to my landlord:

Hi Dina,

I called about this last week, but I’m not sure if the message was passed on.

I’ve always wondered why our electricity bill has been so high (it’s around $250 each month), so I went up into my ceiling one day and discovered that one of the hoses that carries the hot air is not connected to a vent leading into my room. In fact it’s just open and leaking hot air into the space above my ceiling.

1) Could you have them fix that for me?
2) Can I take $300 out of my next rent check because I believe this has caused my electricity bill to be much higher than it should.

Jimmy

Is my request reasonable? Should I ask more/less? Let’s see what they say.

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My lab was invited to come to India to exhibit our CKBots at IIT Bombay’s Techfest. Below are some snapshots as a teaser to the full photo essay. There’s just too much to write here. Some keywords: pollution, technology, Taj Mahal, robots, lasers, traffic, Lake Powai, Sachin, people, lots of people, globalization. To see all the pictures of my adventures and read some of my thoughts I wanted to share please download the full photo essay.

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The XPLR art jump is set to happen tomorrow!

I’ve found out we’ve been featured on Allison’s art jumping blog as well as on Uwishunu! Sign up here.

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

2PM
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Get your friends together. Find a painting you like. Become so excited by what you see that you have to jump! Take a picture.

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Last night my engineering skills were put to the test as a cap broke off my cold water pipe that leads up to my sink’s faucet. This seemed to happen right when I turned on my dishwasher (WTF!). The hole was so low on the pipe that I could not put a bucket there, just a cup sideways, but that would fill up in about 10 seconds. So I had to macgyver some contraption together with only the stuff available in my house to keep my kitchen floor from flooding which was already happening at an alarming rate. So not having any time to think I poked a hole in a plastic bottle to catch the water (acting as a funnel) which led the water into a garbage bag tied to the opening. The garbage bag had to be drained every once in a while with a small bucket to keep it from overflowing. Finally Joe, the emergency maintenance guy came with a spare cap. Oh, by the way, pictures were taken with my new iPhone. I’ll post my thoughts about iPhone photography later.

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The ODG gallery was packed at the opening of GROUP SHOW. I just wanted to thank all my friends for stopping by. I deeply appreciate you coming out and hope you had fun. If you were unable to stop by, but still would like to check out the art, the show will be up until the end of January Monday through Friday. They will also be having a Sugarcube and Third Street Habit clothing sale in our gallery space in mid January. Join their facebook group for upcoming shows and event. Here are some pictures (most are from their FB page). Also my ugly face is on the front page of 215 magazine‘s webpage today (a sliver of my photograph can be seen in the back!).

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I’m displaying one of my photographs at 222 gallery! Opening reception is tonight at 6PM. I did a quick google search and found the show to be featured in several blog/news outlets such as Philebrity, High Snobiety and Uwishunu. Woohoo!

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This post is long overdue as we did Rooftop Movie Night almost a whole month ago, but nevertheless, here it is finally! Rooftop Movie Night involves taking a video projector and speakers, climbing onto my neighbour’s rooftop and then projecting Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas”  onto my other neighbor’s wall. The white canvas screen we hung was 16ft. wide by 9ft. high. Hopefully we will show more movies in the next year when it gets warm again. What better place to watch a movie then outdoors on a roof, six stories high with the Philadelphia skyline in the background? We picked this movie since it was the weekend before halloween. Feel free to suggest movies for future events. Rooftop Movie Night is a project I did in collaboration with Andreas Lyder.  

The Roof
::Cinema de Lux::
1722 Spruce Street, Studio C3

proudly presents

Tim Burton’s

The Nightmare before Christmas

Fri, Oct. 24.

[Show as slideshow]

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Discover Magazine listed our Self reAssembly after Explosion demo as the 81st of 100 top technology stories of 2008.

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jan/081

We beat bulletproof paper (#83) but lost to self-healing rubber from oil and pee (#80).

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Last Wednesday at 9.30PM terrorists simultaneously strike several luxury hotels and tourist hangouts. They open fire and injure hundreds, then proceed to take scores of hostages. In an editorial in the NYT, Suketa Mehta writes:

The terrorists’ message was clear: Stay away from Mumbai or you will get killed. Cricket matches with visiting English and Australian teams have been shelved. Japanese and Western companies have closed their Mumbai offices and prohibited their employees from visiting the city. Tour groups are canceling long-planned trips.

But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. [...]

So I’m booking flights to Mumbai. I’m going to go get a beer at the Leopold, stroll over to the Taj for samosas at the Sea Lounge, and watch a Bollywood movie at the Metro.

I am scheduled to go to techfest in January which takes place in Mumbai to present my lab’s work and show off our robots with our infamous Self-reAssembly demo. I’m not sure what the techfest status is now but if the powers that be will let me I intend to join Suketu Mehta and have a beer at the Leopold. Those powers being the techfest organizers, my professor, and my mom. I would say the latter will be the hardest to convince as she has been giving me updates hourly with reasons why I should cancel my trip. She also likes to write all her emails in all capital letters as if that’s more convincing.

But in today’s global world do you think you are any safer in New York? Terrorists can strike anywhere. It’s probably safer to be in Mumbai right now than before. The bombing has already happened.

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