Grant Hutchins

I’m going to make a new blog soon. Keep watching in the next few days for the link.

For now, check out nertzy.com which is a placeholder.

We’re about to leave for New Mexico on a family cartrip. We’ll be going by the Los Alamos National Laboratory pretty much 60 years to the day Hiroshima was bombed, purely coincidentally. I wonder if we’ll see anything going on there. Protests? Solemn reminders? Nothing?

Anyway I’ll be back in five days and I’ll update you guys on how I’m doing, since I have so lazily neglected doing so for several months now.

Update: so yeah I haven’t posted again, as has been pointed out. Maybe once I’m more settled in back here at Olin.

Today I happened upon the Paseo Arts Festival.


That picture doesn’t really do it justice.  Anyway, I sneaked around as it was closing and as the band played “Inagaddadavida”.  The Paseo is a small street off the beaten path in Oklahoma City where a ton of artists live and have studios.  I saw a scultpor’s studio, photographer’s studios, and a lot of closed Indian Taco stands.

Lately I haven’t been up to too much.  The friends and I have resolved to watch all of the Star Wars movies in order.  I’m not the hugest fan but it’s a good source of trivia for who knows when.  (Jeopardy!, here I come)

I hope that my other blog doesn’t wither and die.  I’m not entirely convinced that I will have enough sources of logical fallacies in news articles to make it interesting.  I will keep looking though.  Feel free to contact me if you find some.  I’m trying to stick to reputable sources.

My new phone has better text messaging and photo mail abilities, so I’ve been sending dog pictures out to Carrie and posting cameraphones pictures on my Flickr site.  They are decidedly low quality but fun nonetheless.  One of these days I’ll get my actual camera fixed.

Meredith’s father brews beer (and wine, actually) at home.  He keeps track of every batch in a notebook.  Right now he’s working on his 57th batch.  Seeing all of the handwriting made me wish I had something to keep track of longterm like that.

For those of you who don’t know, I am obsessed with typography these days.  This isn’t just a passing thing, like my cryptography phase or my oscillating interest with Thomas Pynchon.  I’m downright obsessed.  My two favorite fonts of the moment are Incognito and Dolly, both available from Veer, the design company famous (in my eyes) for employing Grant Hutchinson.

Dolly is “a book typeface with fluorishes”.  I love book typefaces, and every time I read a book I spend about as much time admiring the letterforms as I do reading the actual content.

Incognito is based on the fancy writing of old maps.  When I was a child I would peer into maps endlessly.  The best part about this font is that each capital has a swash variant that goes in one of four different directions, named after the Latin for North, East, South, and West.  Very elegant, albeit a bit overused in their type specimens.

I realize what I’ve been missing from Oklahoma.

The smell of the air at night after a hot day.  I can’t describe it, but it’s so crisp and rich and at the same time not at all thick.

And I also miss being able to see at night because the businesses keep their lights on in the parking lots.  The light pollution in Oklahoma City is incredible.  When you drive towards Oklahoma City at night, you can see the entire horizon lit up from tens of miles away.

We watched Loser at Meredith’s house.  The movie is cute and well-made.  It reminded me of summer in New York last year.

My girlfriend is really wonderful.  She came over to Olin while I was packing and kept me company even when it was about the most boring thing ever.  Never once complained even if I had to run off for an hour or two to go put stuff in storage while she waited and napped on a bed without sheets on it in the bright light while Dan also packed.

Time for a couple of updates from the Grant Hutchins camp.

First off, I’ve started a new blog, Grant’s Take, where I will post my skeptical analysis of articles that I read.  I have no agenda other than the new blog’s motto, “Question everything you read."

Second off, I just put the finishing touches on the three latest games on my Grant Bowls! page.  I have a new personal best!

Last, but not least, I randomly searched my name using Google Suggest today.  It turns out that as you type Grant Hutchins, the form autocompletes with “grant hutchins millionaire”.  I guess enough people have searched me looking perhaps for the video.  E-mail me if you want the link.

The second hit I got was my recent mention in Prism, the American Society for Engineering Education’s monthly journal.  I highly doubt that being on a has-been television show is some of the biggest engineering education news for April (especially considering the show aired the beginnning of February) but who’s counting?

I still don’t have a job but I’m trying several different ways to get the attention of employers.  I haven’t been outright rejected yet, but I’ve only received one actual offer, not really for a job but instead for volunteer work to do a new PBS show’s website.  I’m not really sure if doing that would be a horrible waste of my time or a great resume builder.

Here’s my profile on LinkedIn.  Please add me as a contact if you know me or have worked with me in the past.

Ten years ago on this day I sat working on an assignment for my math class.  I had tested out of a chapter of work and was working by myself on a project to present to the class.

Sitting in the independent project classroom, we felt the building shake.  At first the teacher told us it was probably a sonic boom.  She used to live near an air force base, and recently on the news people had talked about the possibility of stationing B2 stealth bombers at Tinker Air Force Base.  I thought it could have been an earthquake.

We looked out the window and saw a plume of smoke, like a brush fire, about 10 miles away.

Around 9:00 am on April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh drove a Ryder truck full of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and nitromethane racing fuel in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City.  At 9:02 am the truck detonated, ultimately killing 168 people, from ATF agents to children in a daycare center.  At the time it was by far the largest terrorist attack on American soil, and to this day it remains the largest domestic terrorist attack.  The death toll came out to approximately 13 times that of Columbine, the school shooting that would take place exactly four years and one day later.

Reports came back to school slowly.  We didn’t really know what was going on, but over time it became clear that it wasn’t normal.  Some students were told that their parents were OK.  Something had happened downtown, and everyone was waiting on more information.

My mom ran outside, thinking that a plane had exploded in the air.  She had her window open and could hear the blast from 15 miles away.  She later went to the local Wal-Mart and saw a photographer run in to get pictures developed.  They need to get developed now!  They need to get to the media…

That day was the first day my aunt was to do court reporting for a federal trial, instead of the local and state trials she had been doing before.  She sat in court in the Federal Courthouse, immediately behind the Murrah building, certainly on the side one would rather be on.  Her cassette tape recording of the trial caught the blare of an enormous explosion, following by frantic voices and the judge ordering everyone to immediately leave the building because a bomb had gone off.

When I got home CNN was showing the same thing as the local news, and every other channel for that matter.  Bulletins were put out for “middle eastern terrorists” that never panned out.  A white supremacist Gulf War veteran named Timothy McVeigh was arrested for excessive speeding going north on I-35, away from the blast.

Once everyone figured out that it was a truck bomb, and the dust settled, people began the rescue effort.  From all over the country, and indeed the world, firefighters, police, medical personnel, and volunteers poured in to help.  Some of these officials would later die in the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center.  Robots were used to dig through the rubble in the hopes of finding survivors.  After a few days, these hopes were dashed and families had to admit defeat.

On Thursday, my parents took me and my brothers downtown to catch a glimpse.  We weren’t going to get close, just get within eyeshot.  It was a media circus.  It seemed like every local news station in America had a van parked there.  Police lines were everywhere, blocking square miles of downtown.  Some extra line was hanging off of a tree and I cut off a piece of it, which I have to this day.  You could see the damage clearly from a mile away.  The mood was somber and quiet and people were moving about matter-of-factly.

A week later, once all hope was lost, and to further protect the immediate area by preventing an imminent collapse, the Murrah buidling was imploded and cleared away.

April 19.  The date doesn’t mean much outside of Oklahoma, but there it automatically means the bombing.  A nameless federal building housing seemingly unrelated federal offices that I had never heard of was attacked by a man who wanted to avenge the botched siege by federal agents of the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, TX, two years earlier.

No one really knew why Oklahoma City should be a target.  Everyone in the nation started talking about the “heartland”.  It was “terror in the heartland”.  Where you’d least expect it.  The governor of Oklahoma was on national television constantly, and each day the police would report to the public the updated tally of those who had died.  It ended at 168.

Months later, the State of Ohio donated some trees to plant at the State Capitol, one each for the people who died.  I was a Boy Scout, in Troop 78, and I volunteered that day.  I was up on stage during the dedication holding the Oklahoma flag up so that it wouldn’t fall over in the wind.  That was the first and only time that I heard the names of those killed read aloud.  It took about 45 minutes.  Many if not most of the survivors were there, as well as families, planting trees for the people they knew and loved.

Just over six years later, terrorists attacked four planes, New York City, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania.  Perhaps the worst part about that day was knowing how it would play out, what the aftermath would be.  First off, remember the date, September 11, we’ll be hearing about this for some time, just like April 19.  Second, there will be a relief effort.  People will come from all over to dig through the rubble in order to find survivors.  Third, the time will come where no one could be expected to live under this rubble.  People will still want to search, but they need to stop sometime.  People will fight to keep looking, but realistically it’s already too late.  And there will be a few key images that people remember.

For Oklahoma City, it is usually the firefighter holding the baby, who would die in the next day or so.



Ten years later, things are going a lot better in Oklahoma City.  The other day we were featured on the front page of the B section of the Wall Street Journal in a glowing article talking about the urban development, increased tourism, and how well the city had moved past the stigma of being a victim.

Read more about the bombing:
| Wikipedia | CNN | Oklahoma City National Memorial | Yahoo! |

Hello everyone.

I'm in Oklahoma City, about to head back to Boston.  I didn't get to see too many people this time around, because I was only here for three non-flight days!

American Airlines cancelled my reservation because the lady at Chicago didn't scan my ticket when I got on my flight, so they bumped me to a later one.  What a bunch of hoodlums.

Other than that, I went dogsledding last weekend.

That's me on the right in the ridiculous sunglasses.

We're on a frozen lake in Maine.  We slept outside on the lake itself.

Here's one of the dogs (and Carrie too).  The dogs obsessively pull when you put them on a leash.  They are certainly bred for pulling sleds.

Yesterday I bowled the best game of my life, a 162.  My dad didn't beat it, but his three-game series still won.

Anyway, I'm gonna go back to waiting for my new flight.

My streak ended.  No, not that streak.  Maybe later for that one.

But anyway I forgot to post last night.  Yesterday I went shopping for some major school supplies, on the halfway day of the semester!

I also had my first 8 am class, which was wonderful!  I’m so excited about complex numbers.  I simply adore them.

Anyway, I went to the special collections at the library of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.  Before we got into the library, we saw the best working environment I’ve seen in my life, a giant stairway of desks where people design architecture.  Imagine a grand staircase of open cubicles, with the newbies on the bottom and the PhD’s on top.  After we went into the library we saw a ton of stuff, such as hand-drawn plans for the St. Louis Arch and Gropius’s clipboard.  I held Gropius’s clipboard.  I simply love clipboards!  I bought another one at Staples today so that if I lose my current clippy I don’t have to fall behind in my classes!

And today I went to parties at Wellesley and briefly at Babson.  Had a lot of fun.

Quick post to keep my streak alive…

I have an 8:00 am class today!  It’s 3:52 am so I better run off to sleep.

Yesterday was extremely busy, but worthwhile.

Have a nice day!

Today is my Xanga’s 250th day.  That’s right, it’s the “quarter mille”.

I finally did my laundry today.  I’ve been keeping myself busy enough that I have been way behind.

For my student government position I often administer surveys to various groups of students.  The other day I made three different mockups of a single survey I’m about to give to the entire student body.  I presented these mockups to my Human Factors: Interface Design class to let the students test them out.  I learned quite a lot from the process, and now I think the survey should be quite easy to take (once I implement the best suggestions from the class).

This monday, the Data Destruction Tour is coming to Boston.  The Data Destruction Tour is the only tour I know of that specializes in the tiny little subgenre of music known as lofi or 8bit or chiptunes or gamemusic or about a million other things.  The idea is to use 1980s computer technology or video game systems or similar sounding synthesis techniques to make music.  Hear some at micromusic.net.  I have considered burning a few CDs of a some songs I have written in this style and giving them around to the people involved to sorta jab myself into the scene a bit.

From a micromusic.com email:

Mar 14th 2005 Data Destruction Tour 2005
artists: Nullsleep, Bit Shifter, Covox
venue: The Enormous Room, 567 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, MA, USA
start:  9:00pm
fee: 21+ no cover
more info:  http://www.enormous.tv/