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I'm in week 2 of the Linguistic Institute at UC Berkeley. This has been inspiring, intimidating, and ultimately, nerd heaven. Linguists don't shut up. Competition is high. Everybody is doing amazing research.

I've had some serious highs and lows. I've learned tons. I should probably be reading right now, but I can't do this 100% of the time. Even this, right now, is linguistics-related. At least I'm thinking of it that way. I can't help myself.

I'm living at my friend's house in Berkeley during the week. It's very weird to be back at Cal. It's like I get a big, fat do-over of my undergrad experience. Oh the things I would have done differently.

I made a friend who is a PhD candidate over at Stanford. She's amazing. And she just turned 23 last weekend. That was 8 years ago for me. I didn't even know what linguistics was back then. Unbelievable.

The competition around here is ridiculous. Not unlike surfing, where people start with "Where do you go?" and "What kind of board do you ride?" the general M.O. is "Where do you study?" and "What have you done?" I feel below the radar on this one, and therefore unaffected by it. Sadly, SF State doesn't have the cachet of these other places...it's almost like linguistics has a caste system, and I'm so low that I'm not even in it. The only narrative option here is a 'rags to riches' one. I fully embrace it. I'm fully determined to make the most out of my experiences, regardless of whatever happens with my school (outlook not so good). We'll see. I'm making connections and pitching my research ideas. It's unbelievable how accessible everybody is! These are heavies in the field. These are my celebrities. And I can just walk right into their backstage dressing room and have myself a little chat.

Speaking of celebrity worship, I need to go finish reading the book "You know my steez: An ethnographic and sociolinguistic study of styleshifting in a black American speech community"...the author is coming to visit and lecture on Thursday!

So many other things to say...must stop now...can't. stop. gah!

I should have posted this a while ago, but its somewhat timely again now, so here goes. Google Squared is part of Google Labs, where they work out new stuff, ready for us to play with. It's pretty cool to check out their list of apps, and opt-in on whatever suits your fancy. I find the Gmail email 'unsend'* feature to be a neat offering, although I hope to never need it.

Anyways, Google Squared: takes a category and creates a starter 'square' of information, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the web. Here's what it had to say about Sarah Palin:


*For the 'unsend' feature, and other opt-in fun stuff, find the 'Labs' tab in your Gmail Settings window.

Avocados
Originally uploaded by thegirlinthecurl

Even on a Monday.

Organic Dirt
Originally uploaded by thegirlinthecurl

There is something inherently funny about this. And really sad that its a very hard thing to find. Anywhere.

As you can see, I've been changing it up around here. Learning CSS on your own, on the fly, is a little tricky. I haven't found a good editor, and so I've been painstakingly making changes from within Blogger's 'Edit HTML' and 'Preview' windows. There are better ways I'm sure.

There are a couple things that aren't working out as planned, no matter how hard I try. If you know CSS and feel like helping a girl out, please send me an email at iamkimiam at gmail dot com. Thanks!

I thought summer would allow me freedom to clear my mind, to experience a slow, calming, emptiness of thought. Ha!

Apparently, I just spend free time creating new stuff to take on.

I've got several work projects going, which is a little bit stressful since I am trying to leave town for 5 days. Also, when I get back I have a job interview for a part-time work study position on campus, starting in the fall.

School is keeping me busy too...even though I'm not going, and I haven't started the summer Linguistics Institute yet, there's still lots to do: writing my abstract and submitting it for the LSA conference in Baltimore (Jan. 2010), revising/rewriting the corresponding paper, keeping the student organization blog alive with at least the bare minimum of content, reorganizing the entire semester's formatted and scanned History of English files so I can pass that off and be done with it, writing a letter to the Student Grievance Officer (SF State doesn't have an Ombudsman, wth?!) about our erroneously canceled field research, and researching the GRE and PhD programs.

And while we're still on school stuff, here are the books I'm currently reading (yes, I'm reading all of them):
Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice Among Latina Youth Gangs (Mendoza-Denton)
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Diamond)
You Know My Steez: An Ethnographic and Sociolinguistic Study of Styleshifting in a Black American Speech Community (Alim)
Style: Language Variation and Identity (Coupland)
Complete Idiot's Guide to Unix
Statistics for Dummies
From Molecule to Metaphor (Feldman)
Harry Potter y la cámara secreta

I know, right?

I've also been trying to keep up on socializing. Some of my friendships were pretty neglected during this last semester, so I'm making the rounds and trying to catch up. The no-school, anti-Twitter, un-MeFi, and offline folk are the hardest to keep up with. Technology really does make my life easier in some ways, and I really miss out in others. Y'all shall be hearing, seeing, or receiving written word from me soon.

And speaking of technology, I must admit that a(n) (un)fair amount of time gets devoted to it. There's an endless world out there, full of interesting links, videos, games, and other stuff to keep the brain exercised. I. Can't. Stop. Myself. A few of my recent favorites, for your enjoyment:

• Monsieur Cok: A delightfully dystopian French animation short. Also of similar genre, an animation noir flashgame with catchy music and stunning visuals: Little Wheel.
• Fantastic post on Metafilter about the Iranian election. Full of insightful commentary and hundreds of links to leapfrog about the internet.
• Hilarious just desserts in joholland's comment: a response to Tanya Gold's condescending rant about weddings and dinner parties.
• The computer upstairs is running the 'motion' library for linux. As soon as it detects something moving on camera, it starts recording frames. While it is saving frames, it also initiates another Perl script I wrote that sends an X10 command to turn on the blender and strobe, wait 3 seconds, then turn them off. After the script is done detecting motion, it then splices all the JPG frames together using ffmpeg and saves the resulting movie as a SWF file, which you can see above. Finally, after it saves the movie, I have it set up to email me a link to the movie so I can see the results from where ever I'm at (remotely by using my phone). Or, How to keep the cat off the counter.
• From NPR: Dear Pixar, please make a movie about a girl who is not a princess. 500 comments and counting on MeFi.

Hmm. That's probably enough for now. If you want more, you can hop around my delicious links here.

Well, I should get to bed. I've got to get up early, finish some work, go to a dermatology appt., buy a wedding card and present, buy 2 graduation gifts, call my grandma, meet with the catsitter, pick up steroids for my cat (her asthma) and pack for a roadtrip.