Category: Adventure

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Adventure

World Maker Faire: New York

Maker FaireDecided to finally attend the Maker Faire, which I’ve kinda wanted to do for a couple of years. It just looked really cool to me and making stuff is always good.  I asked NGM if he wanted to check it out too, and we made the adventure to experience it in person.

First I woke up pretty early so that I could drive to NGM’s home. I remembered how to get there and everything, and didn’t take a single wrong turn. This is a big achievement for myself.

We then departed from his home and went to Trenton (I think that’s where we were) to board a train to NYC. The train ride was pretty exciting, I really don’t get out much. However, what would make this trip forever standout were the completely drunk/high couple seated behind us.

They were truly amazing and I doubt my words could truly do them the justice they deserve. They were completely shot and I have not idea how they even walked onto the train (without tickets of course). The whole ride up they didn’t shut up once and constantly talked about some amazing nonsense.

Here are some excerpts that stood out to me:

  • wow (said like a million times)
  • asked if they had disabled tickets
  • the need of rain jackets
  • a tall building that is exactly 1776 feet high
  • trading in their Sebring for an Altima
  • crosswords make your brain smarter
  • how do you spell 2?

They appeared to be getting on NGM’s nerve, as well as the rest of the train’s as well. I didn’t mind and just took in the entire treasure for what it would be. It was truly amazing.

Once the train arrived in NYC, we boarded the subway to the New York Hall of Science inQueens where the Maker Faire was held. It took a little while to get out there, but the journey while interesting, wasn’t as eventful as the train ride for me. Sure there were some very weird people on the subway, but not as amazing as the train couple.

When we arrived to the Maker Faire, I was pretty overwhelmed. There was just so much going on, it took a while to figure out where to go and what to see. Once we walked around for a bit, and settled in we started to check out the various exhibits.

There was some really interesting stuff and it’s always impressive to me to see people actually making stuff and not just relying on a big company to make something that they have to then go out a buy at a Wal-Mart. I have a whole lot of respect for that crowd, that’s not an easy thing to do.

I mostly wanted to check out the electronics stuff, mostly the Arduino tents. I’ve been meaning to make something cool using that. There were some pretty amazing robots and other little contraptions that were very impressive too.

Though one of the coolest things I saw, and the only thing I bought a kit for were the Wool Buddies. Apparently you can make simple little stuff using wool and poking it with a needle. Some of the little critters offered were really cool looking to me and I would up buying a blue whale one that I’m hoping to complete soon.

We did check out an impressive Mentos and Diet Coke show. It was pretty amazing what those 2 guys were able to pull of with a simple combination. Also of note was the human mouse trap. Just like the board game, but much, much bigger. They put on an entertaining show.

The food there was a bit strange. I got a weird grilled cheese, tator tots for lunch. Eh, not so good but not bad. Then we got fancy ice cream sandwiches. I got fried chicken and waffles flavored ice cream on mine. I thought I’d be a bit adventurous, and it turned out to be not so bad.

After the faire, we stopped in Manhattan to get something to eat. The place we went to was some diner employing some Broadway people. I kinda hate Broadway, so having all the staff constantly singing way over the top renditions of songs was quite annoying. The food also was sub average, so I gotta say I was a bit disappointed with dinner. Oh well, I won’t forgot how annoying the staff was to me though.

Subway and train ride how were pretty smooth. No insane couples seated behind us, but we couldn’t stop quoting them the entire ride home.

Good stuff and a pretty awesome event. Even if you’re not into all that building stuff, it’s still pretty amazing to check out.

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Adventure

Honey Badger Scavenger Hunt

Last night was our first every Honey Badgers Scavenger Hunt! We had a pretty great turnout, with current and past teammates as well as family members and friends too. I was very happy with the interest in the event and was glad to see it turned out well.

I decided to have the teams look for things on the OC boardwalk and beach, and take photos that they would have to share in person. I thought this would be easy, and also require some element of speed to cover as much ground as possible.

I also wanted to include some type of puzzles or riddles too. I was torn between a physical type of challenge or a mental one. I went the mental route with some riddles, a geometric puzzle and some trivia. I think it went over very well, and it was vey entertaining to watch the teams struggle with some of the questions. The triangle puzzle turned out to be the most challenging for most.

Then they had more things to find and take photos of for the last leg. I kinda wanted to mix up a scavenger hunt with the Amazing Race, and I do think it worked out well. Most teams seemed to finish up in an hour and a half or so.

The Meghan team were the victors in the end, narrowly edging out Jared and John B and Ginny, Dustin and Sean. It was very close, and I was very anxious to see just who would finish first!

Some stand out moments for me was watching the various teams try not to tip off the other teams. The frog with a crown and spinning wedding bears were both very funny for me to watch. Some teams just boldly took a photo, while others were a bit more convert and sneaking a photo in. Very funny to watch!

I’d deem this a very successful event and one that we will have to hold again!

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Adventure Sports

Indoor Climbing

Recently I’ve been really into Ninja Warrior and trying to incorporate some new training techniques into my workouts that I see the contestants doing on TV. Since a ton of the people who advance were climbers, I really wanted to give it a shot.

Did a little bit of and found that there was a pretty cool looking indoor climbing spot in South Jersey, Elite Climbing. This was exactly what I was hoping to find, but didn’t expect to find in the area. They offered a pretty reasonable beginners session, so it seemed ideal for me.

Now I just needed to find someone to climb with. So, I went with Fierce. I figured if she wasn’t up for it, then probably no one else that I knew would be. She confirmed immediately and planning a day to go was the first priority.

Decided to go right from work on a Thursday which happened to be Students/Educators night. So much to our surprise it would only cost us $15 for lessons and a full day pass. Oh and we also got a 50% off for the next visit. Quite the amazing deal!

I have to admit I was a bit nervous during the lessons. I’m notoriously a big cry baby with heights, and I was feeling soooooo tired that day having gotten very little sleep the day before and leaving directly from work. My robot like routine was interrupted and I was feeling it a bit.

Of course, I had to climb first. The first attempt was only half way up the wall, then I had to let go and we lowered down. Letting go of the wall and trusting that you won’t crash to the ground took a little bit of courage. But once you’re dangling there for a bit, you trust the apparatus and your partner for the rest of the night.

My first couple of climbs I did pretty well, making it to the top with not too much effort. We easily did some 5.6, climbs, then moved on to some 5.7’s and I think we even did a few 5.8’s in there too!

But after an hour or so, I just ran out of steam. I was just plain tired and my fatigue had completely caught up with me. It was so apparent that all I could do was laugh at it and take numerous falls about half way up the wall as to when I would run out of my now limited stamina.

We would go on to climb for a little over 2 and a half hours! It was really awesome and I’m so glad that I was able to try it out. It is something that I will surely do again!

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Adventure

Tubing

I’ve been thinking of doing something interesting down the Egg Harbor River since it’s around where I work. So when the invite for some tubing came up, I surely agreed to join in on the fun.

The location of this fine adventure was the Winding River Campground in Mays Landing. It was pretty simple to get to and also very simple to do. Just go inside, pay to rent a tube ($15 plus a $5 deposit that you get back when you return the tube), fill out a form then you wait for a van to come and pick you up. The van kinda reminded me of Tony Mocelli’s van in Who’s the Boss. It was a short ride and he dropped us off at a little park and then the mighty river would take us back to the campground where our car was parked.

The river itself was pretty nice and seemed clean to me. There was an occasional floating plastic bottle, beer can, etc. but not too much stuff. The water temperature wasn’t too bad either. I was expecting colder water, so it was nice to be a bit warmer than expected.

The actual adventure took a couple of hours. I’m not sure exactly when it began, but I’d say it was 2.5 to 3 hours total of tubing fun. I really enjoyed trying to steer around a the river by paddling with my hands against the current at times. It was difficult in spots, but I seemed to get better at it as the day wore one.

I also really liked helping others navigate and get unstuck from branches too. There were some tricky spots, but I was able to steer a defeated tuber to safety during the second half of the adventure.

What really surprised me the most was the level of river people. The majority of them seemed to be very strange and from poor reality TV. Many even sounded to of had accents of sorts I couldn’t determine. I’d say they were river folk.

A gentleman with magic marker on his head was a very close talker to my tube, but I was kind and attempted to educate him of the finer things in life such as the amazing film Milo and Otis. I’m not sure he understood it’s importance to society, but oh well I did try.

There was also a very strange man who helped give me a push off into the right direction. Though he nearly stole one of my fellow river travelers, apparently it was just a joke and she was released to freedom.

All in all it was a pretty powerful experience and one that I would like to try again.

Categories
Adventure Design Development

Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps

I really wanted to take a course on Coursera this summer to learn something new. Learning stuff for the sake of learning is great. So after checking out what was being offered this summer, Creative Programming for Digital Media & Mobile Apps from the University of London International Programmes caught my eye. It sounded like some fun stuff.

The course was pretty nice. No additional materials were required besides downloading some open source software (Processing, Audacity, etc.). With video lectures posted every week and discussion forums to ask and answer questions.

The first week of the course started a bit rough. Setting up a working environment can always be tough, and it seemed that many were having similar issues in the forums. There were some coding errors in a few of the early examples that were giving me issues. Most notably the javascript examples. This was a pain to deal with, especially early on. But luckily, I’m a skilled enough coder already to of figured out and fixed it for myself. If I wasn’t already comfortable coding, I probably would have left the course though.

The remaining weeks the coding issues disappeared and it was much easier to follow along with the lectures. The video lectures were great and of very good quality. The instructors were easy to follow and a bit funny as well.

The quizzes and assignments were great too. Though I really aimed a bit too low with my first assignment, doing the peer reviews really had me step up what I’d do for my final assignment.

With the suggestion of a friend I decided to re-create Donkey.bas (the original DOS game) using Processing. I found a video of it being played on YouTube and just went from there.

It does have some gaming flaws as speed picks up still, and has been formatted to a mobile devices screen size. But overall I thought it turned out ok, and kept the cheesiness of an early 80’s DOS game.

All in all I was very satisfied with my experience with taking this class. If you’re into learning something new and don’t really care about a degree or grades to prove it (so overrated to me), then I can’t imagine there’s ever been a better time to gain new knowledge. It’s really an amazing time to be around with all the information so readily available.

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Adventure

Birthday Kindness

birthday giftsThis year’s birthday turned out to be a bit different than in past years, but much fun nonetheless. I’ve never really been too big on the whole birthday celebrations, it’s really just another day for me for the most part. But other’s were kind enough to take a moment to celebrate it, which was really great.

To start things off my co-workers decided to surprise me with singing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow at my desk. I almost made an escape as I heard them round the corner, but was too late and they greeted me with song and smiles. It was nice, NGM was kind enough to make me some amazing cupcakes with chocolate frosting. He’s a pretty amazing baker. They also picked out a card with chimpanzees on it, and everyone knows that chimpanzees are awesome. The Moe’s gift card inside was well done as well. I eat lunch there all the time, so eating for free my next couple of visits will be great. Great job guys, nice to know that my co-workers would take the time for such niceness.

The next day which was my actual birthday turned out to be pretty nice too. While the morning was a bit cold, I cannot recall ever having poor weather on my birthday, and was confident that the weather would turn around as the day grew. Luckily I was right and it turned out to be a fine day outside!

I was welcomed to work with more cards and more goodies to eat! Brownies were made for myself and Rich whom shares the same birthday. Though every year when it’s noted to him that we do share the same birthday, he seems surprised by if. Perhaps next year it won’t be a surprise?

In addition to brownies, I also got a bucket of pretzel rods and a bag of peanut chews. All good stuff, but I’m fearing that I will be getting plump or plumper perhaps. I also got a little Mario Kart figure from the Rat, which turned out to be Luigi! I was pretty pumped by this, he was the one I wanted most from that mystery pack!

Though my favorite turned out to be The Pocket Unicorn card from the Rat. It had a detachable unicorn that would utter accurate rainbow unicorn sayings at the press of a button. It was pretty amazing, and I’m kinda shocked that I haven’t killed the batteries on it just yet!

After work my parents made chicken parm, which is a fine birthday dinner (thank god there was no cauliflower or mushrooms to be seen). They were also kind enough to give me a card and some cash in it as well. I know I’m probably the only person in the world who didn’t want cash, but I will make certain to purchase myself a gift with it! They also got me an ice cream cake, but that would have to wait as we had very important kickball game in just a few minutes!

When I got to the kickball field I was greeted with happy birthday wishes from the Commish and Dustin. As other kickballers arrived, many took a moment to share greetings as well. I suppose we can thank Facebook for spreading the word out so far and fast now.

What really turned out to be a most pleasant surprise was that our team really went all out in surprising me with some birthday goodness! Brittany showed up with an embarrassing birthday hat that they would insist I wore at some point. I’m not familiar with the tradition of embarrassing the birthday person by wearing a hat (by the way, I never wear hats so it felt most foreign atop my head), but they meant well so I went along.

Then John B. shows up with a custom made card too! This thing was truly a work of art! It had a hand drawn Raiders logo, kickball on it and some powerful writing inside it. What a great guy to take the time to make that!

Fierce showed up with a tray of brownies for all! Not only brownies, but fancy brownies with icing and blue dust on them too! They were very, very delicious but I saved them for after the game. I didn’t want to be slowed down during the game. Meghan also came bearing a massive bag of assorted candy (I’m still wondering how all this candy will ever be consumed). Good stuff abounded in that glorious bad of sweetness!

After our big victory (which had some unlikely heroes), I got even more birthday stuff from the team!

Sean presented me with a certificate from the team, which was funny since I always give them certificates. And I also got a card with an awesome dog on it signed by the team and Barack Obama as well! So thoughtful!

What an amazing bunch I am fortunate to play with! They really went above and beyond what anyone could ever expect. I genuinely felt like the luckiest guy on that field.

Just when I thought that birthday goodness couldn’t be topped, Fierce gave me a bag of awesomeness! In it contained a Mario Kart building block set with Toad and a TMNT Lego set with Michelangelo and Krang! The evil alien brain Krang is so amazing, I can’t believe she picked out the set he was in! She is awesome!

Again, what a surprising turn of events I had this year for my birthday. I really am lucky to have such thoughtful people in my life. And a couple of them are pretty excellent kickball players as well, which is always a plus.