Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Live@NYC: 2 months and a half

Wow, I haven't blogged for a long time (a month since last post) and I'm already counting down my days in NYC... less than a month and a half left here :-( I certainly miss some things from home, such as the nice little (non-fancy) bars, my bike, the gym, a nice house and, of course, friends and family, but I'm not in a real hurry to go back.

So what have been the recent happenings? There are lots of things to tell I guess.

First of all, almost all interns are gone. Of all I knew, probably 15-20, only 2 are left, 3 if you count me. This probably means we'll have to look for new friends to grow our partying group a little bit.

On another topic, I don't have roommates any more. The ones I had moved to a bigger place and I haven't yet found anyone who wants to share this apartment. The major problem is that the room to be rented is, actually, the living room, so it is hard to convince someone to live here. Lack of privacy is an issue for most even if they don't say so right away.

As regards working out, I'm getting way too lazy. It has already been more than a week since I last went running. Will try to force myself to go tomorrow morning again; the food is already starting to accumulate in the wrong places. Somewhat related to this, I've got an iPod Nano 4th generation which, when put together the Nike+ kit, is amazing.

And we have got a "new" addiction at work: Guitar Hero. This game is really nice and we are already playing it on the expert level. However, I wonder if it is any good to spend time learning how to play a fake guitar. I'd rather go and buy a real one, and instead spend my time playing real songs. Let's hope Guitar Rising keeps up with the expectations and is published soon; whenever that happens, I'll definitely get it.

About more recent happenings, I've been in NYCBSDCon 2008 this weekend giving a presentation on ATF. We'll have the video recordings posted out soon, so be sure to check them to learn some interesting new stuff. It was also a good way to meet well-known people in the BSD world such as, for example, Matt Dillon and Dru Lavigne.

As regards work at Google, my project is starting to have decent shape, which means that it actually works! During the next month, I'll have to extend it to some new areas, and that's a bit scary because they'll involve processing vast amounts of data in an efficient manner. (At the moment, the data set is not big enough to really require tuning the code.)

Oh, and one last thing about mini-golf. I have played, I think, 4 times already and lost in all of them. This game sucks. Will keep trying, though.

I'm missing lots of stuff here, but I don't know how to add more random notes and not end with a completely disconnected post. All the paragraphs are already too independent as they are now. So just wait for the next one to know more :P

4 comments:

Ramon Bertran Monfort said...

Ohhh! Estas viu? Be, veig que et va tot be! Per aqui com sempre! anar fent! i tampoc vaig a correr gaire sovint ultimament... avia'm si comenco un altre cop. De moment, aquest divendres farem un soparet... tranquil que et recordarem, algun brindis farem amb nom teu!
Apa , salut!

Carlos said...

I have always been a big fan of minigolf, it's a tough game but you have to get comfortable when losing because you always learn a lesson. Besides playing minigolf helps yourself to move to Pitch&Put or 18 holes. The average games to success are around 15.

Keep me update how you improve in the game, since when you come back we will probably go to play together. And this week I became a usual player as in the past.

Take care!

Lluis said...

Yay! Good to hear^Wread from you!

Regarding Guitar Hero, don't expect it to prepare you for anything similar for a real guitar! It's just a game, a game you can play at home with "Frets on Fire" ;) which makes it even more interesting, as you can download tons of songs from the internet :) You can either play with a Guitar Hero-like guitar or with you keyboard, which makes it even more nerdy :)

And regarding the BSDCON, once i read that you where going to make a presentation i thought "ATF". And you know what? I was right! X_D I should start betting every time I hear the words "Juli" and "presentation" ;P

apa!

Julio M. Merino Vidal said...

Lluis: Huh, I know Guitar Hero is just a game. But the Guitar Rising I mentioned promises to be something completely different! Go and check it out. You'll most likely be able to train playing real guitar with that :)

As regards the NYCBSDCon... well, what'd you expect... I have had virtually no time to work on my own projects for a while (more or less when I started my PFC), so I have to reuse "old" stuff if I want to present something ;)