Archive for the 'default' Category

July Trip to New Orleans

We had a chance to visit New Orleans for the first time in July, and had a great deal of fun (despite the nearly 37 C temperatures!). We particularly enjoyed the food, the history, and the alligators. Here is a link to the photo gallery of our pictures for the trip.

And here are some videos that we took during our outing to the Honey Island Swamp with Cajun Encounters:

• Feeding Alligators in the Swamp
• Swamp Pigs!
• Baby Alligators in an Aquarium
• Zooming by the Swamp in a boat

And here is a video we took of an industrious diving beetle at the Insectarium (a great bug-focused museum!):

• A diving beetle at the Insectarium

Below are some various panoramas/photospheres that we took on our trip as well (click to view):

First Article authored by my undergraduate researchers

I just had to immortalize the moment: the first research article authored by my undergraduate student researchers at MSU Denver has been published:
“Conformational design optimization of transcription factor beacon DNA biosensors” in Sensing and Bio-Sensing Research. So proud of their hard work to make this happen.

San Francisco trip 2014

Andrew and I recently spent a 3-day weekend in San Fran because it’s an awesome city and it’d been too long since we’d visited it for fun. Read on for pictures/narrative on our time at the Exploratorium, Japantown, Chinatown, the California Academy of Sciences, Fisherman’s Wharf, and a tour of Instructables! (Or, click here to just see all of the pictures from the trip.)
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Caribou Ghost Town

Just sharing a little panoramic photo that Teisha took of the Caribou ghost town we visited this weekend:

Japan Trip – May 2014 – Mega-Summary Post!

Teisha and I are always so lucky to get to go on such amazing vacations, and our latest trip to Japan– with Bob and Meg, Teisha’s parents, continued our trend of fun times and great exploration. We had a chance to revisit some of our favorite places (like the New Izu Hotel in Tokyo, the Tsukiji fish market, and the Okonoin cememtary), as well as see a few new ones (like the amazing Toyota museum in Nagoya). Here, we’ve compiled our travelogue and photos into one mega-post!
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Final Days in Tokyo – May 2014 Trip

Read on for our finals day in Tokyo, and our Japan 2014 trip overall!
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Kyoto and Koya-san – May 2014 Japan Trip

After our stop in Nagoya, we spent several nights in Kyoto and one night in Koya-san. We’d seen the sights before, but it was still a fun adventure with my parents.
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One night in Nagoya, Heading to Kyoto – May 2014 Japan Trip

After our first few days in Tokyo, we started heading down to Kyoto, with a one-night stay in Nagoya to check our two science/engineering museums there.
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First Days in Tokyo – May 2014 Trip

Five years ago we went to Japan for our honeymoon, and we’ve been wanting to go back ever since. So that’s why we (Teisha and Andrew) went back this May, and dragged Teisha’s parents along too! (They’d never been before.) As of writing this, the trip is over, but I still wanted to get a travelogue up because it’s fun to share with others and look back at years from now. So, here’s the beginning of the travelogue!
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Minecrafting

So, I’ve been having a great deal of fun playing Minecraft with my friends lately. I’m hosting a server on the Ubuntu 12.04 box in my basement that doubles as my media center, and it works pretty well supporting 6 or 7 simultaneous players.

One of my favorite things about minecraft is the high detail that the log files contain: when players join, when they leave, number and causes of player deaths. Being the data-driven type that I am, I’ve been writing some quick python scripts to combine the log files and strip out extraneous information (MC_LogParse.py), make a nice csv file of the deaths of each player (MC_DeathLog.py), and add up total time played for each player (MC_Playtime.py). I thought I’d share them below, for anyone interested– all should be compatible with stock Minecraft 1.7.4. They work on Ubuntu and OSX, at least. I also included the list of terms I strip out of log files (log_terms.txt).
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