Thursday, July 28, 2011

The Firebird Suite

Hey guys! One of the coolest things about the houses is that anyone can make the changes they want to see if they put the effort into it. A couple years ago, this is what our lower common area (affectionately called Lower Crotch) looked like:

One fine looking lloydie, who wished to remain anonymous, posing with former LC.

That wood paneling was very old though, so last year Housing finally decided to remove it and blessed us with fresh, blindingly white walls. Like, sterile white. This has unfortunately caused more than just a few lloydies to walk into LC and instantly become dazed and confused, suddenly unsure where they were or what they were doing. Clearly, this needed to be fixed.

I've been wanting to paint a mural in Lloyd since I was a tiny frosh, and while originally I planned to just paint a smaller mural in one of the upstairs alleys, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to leave permanently finger painted narwhals all over the walls bless Lloyd house with my artistic finesse. So, last summer with the approval of excomm, I painted a mural inspired by Fantasia 2000's Firebird Suite. (If you haven't seen Fantasia 2000 or the original before, I highly recommend it!) While the walls were still newly painted, some lloydies thought of the idea of painting LC as an extension of the already existing mural of autumn trees on the connecting stairwell, and I figured that Firebird Suite fit the concept perfectly. Anyway enough of my inane background info- here's some pretty pictures! (: 
 
Uber white walls! ): So sad and barren. 
Giving me the power to do whatever I wanted with the wall was a terrible idea really.. NARWHALS EVERYWHEREEEE!!! >:D

Finished wall! With special help from Laura Conwill! Isn't it beautifullll? (just kiddinggggg.)
I only had about 3 weeks to paint all of LC before going home for the summer, which was kind of stressful. Under normal circumstances it wouldn't be too big of a deal, since you'd think I could just finish up when the school year rolls by, but since I was leaving to study abroad first term, an unfinished mural by the end of summer meant leaving it undone for ... an entire term. I would've rather died than let that happen. Really. Luckily, I had help, not only from Laura but also from our other resident super awesome painter, Jess (she painted a bad ass dragon in Fingal's her frosh year too)!
Jess's side of the mural. So freaking awesome. It's cool because you can also see how differently each of us paint.
 
Without her help, there's no way I could've finished before leaving for Scotland. I owe her so much. *___* 

Anyway, here's the full finished mural, in all its panoramic glory! It looks much better in person though, so you should really swing by and check it out~.
 

Also, 

Fun Fact: There are over 20 easter eggs hidden throughout the mural. Some are obvious and some are a little harder to find. There's one that's absolutely impossible to find, so I challenge you to look for it. You can ask me if you think you've found it, but I really don't think you will. :P Sorry I can't give a more exact number on the easter eggs. To be honest every time I've tried to count them, I lose track. Ahaha... welp. 

Fun Fact #2: There are 3 narwhals total, not including the fingerpainted one. Bahahaha.  >:D 

Anyway, for any art lovers / painters / artists out there, if you want to leave your mark while you're at Tech, there's still plenty of wall space around the house! And please come talk to me during rotation!! It's always really fun getting to meet techers who are enthusiastic about art too (: 

<3,
Stephany

Monday, July 18, 2011

Art, Chemistry, and Metal

Future and Present Lloydies,
This summer so far has been kick ass. To start it off, I began a 12 week internship at the Getty Conservation Institute (the science and conservation section of the Getty Center art museum in Los Angeles). While most people I've talked to assume that I am a tour guide, I actually have a much more exciting work description: conservation chemist! I work in the Organic Material Analysis laboratory researching and studying paintings. Currently I am assigned to several projects dealing with modern and contemporary paintings. One such project is investigating binders and adhesives used to attach colorants to canvas. In particular, I have been creating a library of synthetic polymer's IR spectra using standards. This way conservation chemists can compare binders used in paintings to specific polymers and have a better idea of how to conserve such paintings. I have also been analyzing colored swatches from a paint company to investigate the composition of these paints (which were heavily used in many modern paintings). Overall the work here has been amazing. The research group here is very chill; moreover, everyone here has been really nice. It has been a really interesting experience that I would recommend to any chemist who wants to apply there skills to projects that aren't purely research oriented.

The Getty Center has one of the most beautiful campuses I've ever seen. Every day after lunch I talk a walk in the Getty garden, walking along the man made river that flows into the garden's lake. The Center also has one of the best views of Los Angeles; I can see miles and miles out into the endless sea of buildings, including LA's downtown and Santa Monica's beaches. That's not all; the Getty has one of the most impressive art collections as well. Occasionally I walk through the museum and look over all the galleries. I particularly like viewing the impressionist art collection here. It rivals my two favorite museums' collections: the Chicago Art Institute and the Norton Simon in Pasadena. If you are ever bored and have several hours on your hands, I recommend taking a drive and touring the Museum. If any people are reading this while I still work here, and would like to see the inner workings of the restoration areas, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Perhaps the most exciting individual event of my summer thus far was attending Mayhem Festival 2011 with a few lloydies (and a flem)... The lineup was impressive. Several of my top 20 bands were playing. Though I had seen some live before, most of the bands I had never seen at all. It was hot (100 degrees F), that didn't stop me from going in my full metalhead attire: jacket, boots, and all. Some of my friends thought I was crazy with all that clothing. I replied that at least I didn't get a sunburn because I was fully covered. Anyway, the show was great. I was particularly impressed with all the bands that played (excluding a few of the lesser or bad bands... *cough* Godsmack *cough*): All Shall Perish, Unearth, Trivium, Testament, Machine Head, Disturbed, Kingdom of Sorrow, and of course Dethklok. I even got a signed copy of All Shall Perish's new album (along with a signed poster, shirt, and a crazy photo with them). It was a great concert, though my ears and back were destroyed by the end of the day.

Well, I guess that's all I've got for now. Hope that's enough to show all you Prefrosh out there that there is plenty of good shit to do out in LA, and more importantly that Techers aren't just a-social nerds.

Peace,
Ben "Slayer" Suslick

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Omnomnom


Hi. I’m Yifei. I’m going to be a Junior next year in Mechanical Engineering. This summer, I’m doing a SURF on the beautiful Caltech campus, but in these three weeks of summer, it seems like I have only accomplished one task: EAT.


Recognize this? Last weekend, a few Lloydies and I went to a Dim Sum restaurant for lunch. At Dim Sum restaurants, waiters walk around with little carts filled with little trays of food, and you just point to what you want and they put it on your table. The portions are small, so the point is that you try almost everything! For somebody like me whose mouth starts watering at the first smell of deliciousness, Dim Sum is perfect because you don’t have to order and wait for food. This is Kristen relishing her pork bun:

Dim Sum was amazing, but my favorite type of food is easily dessert. The weekend before Dim Sum, I went down to San Diego and met up with Lloydies that live there. I had never been to BJ’s so I was completely blown away by their Pizookie. Ernest and I were super excited about our Pizookie:

Pizookie (peh-zoo-key) noun. A “pizza cookie.” Fresh from the oven cookie topped with two scoops of ice cream.

As if that wasn’t enough, I also went to this place called Extraordinary Desserts. Mouthwatering desserts EVERYWHERE!

Not only do Lloydies like to eat desserts, we like to take matters into our own hands and make them too. The first week of summer, we made a two layer chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream to celebrate the end of the school year. Making cake with cake mix is usually very simple, but somehow, ours turned out a bit… lopsided. Nevertheless, it still tasted amazing!

Matt frosting the chocolate cake.
Why is one side higher than the other?! D:
Steven cutting the cake.

We also made chocolate covered strawberries last week. In my opinion, these are the desserts with the highest deliciousness-to-effort ratio. Just follow these simple steps. Demonstrative pictures courtesy of Lloydies:

First, melt semi-sweet chocolate chips in a glass bowl above a pot of boiling water.
When the chocolate melts completely, dip dried strawberries in chocolate and put them on wax paper.

Put the strawberries into the fridge and wait for two hours. Take them out… and Voila! Done! (Warning: Chocolate covered strawberries are so good that they may make your friends act like monkeys :P).

Mmm. Writing about food is making me hungry. Time for a snack! Ice cream or brownies? Welp. The Nomnomnom song might as well be my summer theme song.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Lloyd House Blog

Hiya everybody!

Welcome to the Lloyd House Summer Blog! A lot of Lloydies are doing a lot of awesome stuff this summer. The purpose of this blog is to feature all of these cool things, so we will have a rotating cast of Lloydies writing about either something fun that they have done or something that they just find really awesome. The idea is to help you get to know Lloyd by actually seeing what we're up to and what we like to do. Good times will be had by all.

More to come soon!
Riley Patterson
Lloyd House President