UCSD Craft Center

The UCSD Craft Center (some pictures) sounds awesome. I just picked up their catalog from outside the Grove Cafe, since hyperionab mentioned that they have a neon sign course. Sure enough, they do ("This course will introduce neon design and fabrication. Instruction will cover tube bending, pattern making, history, tube processing and installation. Students will learn all the necessary skills to complete a project in neon. Class will meet once a week for lecture and demonstration and students will sign up in class for an additional tutorial session."). It sounds incredibly awesome. But I'm leaving UCSD before the class ends. Maybe I'll take it anyway. There are lots of other cool things at the Craft Center: stained glass, glass blowing, weaving, photography, lampwork class studio, steel fabrication ("This course will cover basic techniques for cutting, welding, forging, and cold fastening steel"), mosaics, and small scale bronze and aluminum casting. Whoah! The ASUC Art Studio at Berkeley has a very nice photographic studio (even with a color processor) and ceramics studio.. but no steelworking or glassblowing or neon sign making. UCSD wins points here. I understand CalPoly SLO also has a pretty amazing craft center.

The Grove Cafe has rapidly become my favorite campus eatery, just because it doesn't exude the rampant commercialism of the other places. It's a student-run cafe with associated co-op charm and the atmosphere is made quite pleasant with an abundance of plants and the availability of yummy cheese danishes. Also, I think the employees are cute. I think Berkeley needs some student run fooderies on campus -- like the UC Davis "CoHo" or the UCSD "food co-op" and Grove Cafe. I propose that we storm the FSM cafe and take it in the name of the People. That would be fitting, wouldn't it? Amina Sutherland's column "The Gloves Are Off" describes my sentiments pretty much exactly.

UCSD stories

I bought a refillable UCSD coffee mug today. What a dangerous item! I'm all hopped up on caffeine now. I was hopped up on caffeine already when the cafe closed and the guy offered free refils to anyone from the coffee that was left over. Who could resist an offer like that? So far I've had "Chocolate Raspberry" (yum!), "Best of Africa," and "Moto Brew." (jitter jitter!)

Sitting at Grove Caffe. Writing column for Forefront. Thinking about going to the beach.

John ran a marathon this last weekend... I wished him luck on Friday.. when I came back on Monday, he answered the door in crutches. "Oh, I see." "Yeah, I twisted my ankle [or something] at mile 16!" "Oh my." "And then I ran 10 more miles!" So, congrats to John. I couldn't have done it.

Check out the plea I posted on the ucsd community.

P.S. The wireless internet access on this campus is awesome. Walking to campus this morning a lady at a bus stop asked me if I knew when the bus was coming and if it would take her to wher she wanted to go. Well, she was visiting from Australia and I am a complete San Diego neophyte, so we were both clueless. No matter -- whipped out the laptop computer and we were close enough to campus to get access and check the bus schedules and all that.

Next stop: UCSD tunnels?

Some interesting email:

• I just received some spam with the title "so strong so big eigenvector compagnie". Is this what they call math porn?

• I also received my livejournal MindMap. I don't know how it's computed, but it's still kind of interesting.

• I also just received a little update from Google saying that I was added to the SDSC staff listing. Add a ego-search to Google's webalerts and you'll be notified every time Google discovers a new reference to you (or whatever search phrase interests you).

Okay, now to the beach.