This is an image for Photos.

You don’t want to know how long it took to pack.

The wood (3/4” MDF) stacked nearest the back of the car is for a set of speakers I designed, to take with me to Stanford in the fall (I used most of my winter earnings purchasing materials). Loudspeaker building (and DIY audio in general) is probably my keenest hobby right now. A similarly inclined electrical engineering professor of mine at Union College, also an avid musician and the director of their new acoustically isolated audio/music/microscopy facility, offered (indirectly) the first explanation of this fascination that I’ve really felt was accurate. After an audio engineering convention in NYC last fall, she remarked that it was one of the few places where she’d found people who shared both of her greatest passions: music and technology. The science and engineering behind audio and acoustics combines two things she loves, and before she started attending such events most of her friends and colleagues shared only one of them. Sound in general is a very vivid part of my creative thinking, and for me the engineering behind sound reproduction (and the sheer sensory fulfillment good equipment can bring) is a source of continual fascination and enjoyment.

By the way, Stanford University has something called the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. It occupies a castle-like building on a hill overlooking the campus, and I saw a group of affiliated students perform in a “laptop orchestra” with omnidirectional speaker modules they built themselves.

…I love where I’m going to school.