Essays on robotics, startups, artwork.
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DJ Excel
Sosena and I went for our last shoot in the sneaker culture series and captured DJ Excel at his house in North Philly two weeks ago. Since I just bought two speedlite flashes I was eager to experiment with my new equipment. I have long been a fan of David Hobby, whose philosophy is to…
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Pulling an office prank with CKbot
While working at Willow Garage, Matt and I and some others pulled a prank on our good friend Sachin using Robopong (a machine that shoots ping pong balls) and our CKbot modules. In a nutshell, we created a hatch in the ceiling we could open and close remotely. Through this hatch we could fire ping…
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Sole: the underground world of sneaker culture
I’ve been helping my friend Sosena with her documentary on underground sneaker culture in Philadelphia by doing the photography for her. You can find more about her work here. I haven’t gotten to see the whole movie yet but I heard it’s awesome. See trailer on the right. My photos here. She’s had a couple…
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CKbot fetches Odwalla
Willow Garage provides us with free Odwalla juice. The drinks are all different flavors of fruits and vegetables. I like the carrot juice one but most people in the company find that one ‘nasty’. Actually, I think I like all the nasty ones. Anyways, we got CKbot to succesfully fetch us some Odwalla juice from…
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Rat Accident
So I was biking in San Fran the other night and realized I didn’t have a blinky light on me. The *ahem* responsible biker that I am I decided to ride on the sidewalk. Out of nowhere two rats ran right in front of me. I desperately tried to swerve but just couldn’t react fast…
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Hollywood’s Golden Age
Palo Alto is a cute little town with little shops and restaurants. There’s one place in particular that caught my eye: Stanford theater. First opened in 1925, they only shows classic movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age (think Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Marlon Brando, etc.). It’s quite popular with the senior citizens and I see a line…
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Tartine
Tartine is small bakery located in the Mission District neighborhood of San Francisco that is so popular it always has a line. They have the most delicious almond croissants, croq monsieurs, quiche, morning buns, lemon tart, bread pudding, and my favorite gougere with gruyere cheese and fresh herbs. I can vouch for this since I…
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PR-2
So I’m interning at this robot start up company called Willow Garage. They are in the process of building a 200 lb. lifesize humanoid robot to do the dishes, cook and clean, etc. In other words, a robotic maid (think Rosie from the Jetsons). I suppose it wasn’t designed for Roshambo.
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Secret Beer Garden
My friend Sue told me about this secret beer garden out on Mount Tamalpais. To keep this place unspoiled by tourists they don’t advertise, they make it hard to find and worse, you can’t call ahead or look up whether it is open or not. You just kinda have to go there and find out.…
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Kal-‘ee-for-nyah
I’ve been working as an intern (company bitch) this summer at Willow Garage based in Palo Alto, California. Palo Alto is a cute little town but honestly it can be seen in about a half a day. So I’ve been exploring San Francisco in the weekends whenever I can. I have to say I’m in…