I folded the pancake taco style and sunk my teeth into the soft gooey dough. It was beyond delicious. The sugar in the syrup and the slightly salty taste of the pancake complemented each other perfectly. The texture was amazing, warm and fluffy with just the right amount of moisture. My eyes rolled upward and I quickly scarfed the rest.

I had been walking down Theme Row when I heard it: “Would you like a free pancake? It’s waiting for you.” My ears pricked and I veered to towards the call. Who can say no to a free pancake? We’re college students; we practically live for free food, let alone free sugar.

There’s a house on Theme Row, the UPS Pancake House, that caters to just that need. It’s open from ten o’clock to twelve o’clock on Saturdays. They make the pancakes inside and there’s a table out front where they give them out. On occasion they add toppings, when they feel like “generous gods.” They mostly sit there yelling things like: “Free pancakes! We even have napkins if you’re feeling fancy.”

When I asked them how the process works they said: “We do a lot of shouting.” I can tell they’re glad to be there and enthusiastic about what they do. They are even making “Pancake propaganda posters.” If nothing else it’s a good alliteration. They told me that the the best part about it was: “People being happy that they’re getting free pancakes.”

So if you’re getting tired of the SUB or running low on meal points come on down there for some complementary sugar. It’s one of the tastier parts of the campus community, like they said: “We are a school of rhetoric and part of that rhetoric is that you get free pancakes.”

This afternoon I hopped across the parking lot to the tune of “Eye of the Tiger.” I had one foot pointed forward, one foot pointed sideways, and my right hand out in front of me like I was holding an imaginary sword. This was not part of a strange cult ritual or mental breakdown. It was a fencing club exercise to help us work on our form. By the end of it my legs were burning, my hair was sweaty, and it felt amazing.

Fencing club is an on campus organization where people attack each other with swords, in a friendly way of course. We get some exercise and channel our inner medievalist. There are three types of swords in fencing, foil, saber, and epee. Everyone starts with foil, and if they like they can go on to saber (we don’t have anyone who knows epee right now). We do some drills then free fence.

Today there was a wedding in Killworth Chapel where we usually practice, so we went out into the parking lot. It was a sunny day, probably one of our last, and it felt good to get out enjoy it. We had considered fencing through the wedding reception, to give the newlyweds a show, but decided against it. Here’s how that conversation went:

“We should go fence through the wedding.”

“Yeah that would be cool. No wait. That would actually be horrible.”

“Yeah it kind of would.”

So we went outside instead. If you want to join us sometime, we practice Thursdays seven to nine in the dance studio. Hack hack, chop chop.

While all of you Northern Hemispheric folks are starting to enjoy summer, some of you starting out a few months of vacation, down here we are hard at work with final projects, papers, tests, sailing, camping, swimming, playing, watching the World Cup, and trying to squeeze every last drop out of this precious time.

Last Friday was my third time sailing here, through my university.  Because there are many people who have dropped out, I officially have a place in the class/team, and they opened it up for other folks to sign up.  So I not only got to practice managing a boat that I’m still fairly new to, but also had the fun and funny experience of teaching brand new sailors, who had never set foot on a boat, how to sail.  In Spanish.  Some of the words are anglicisms, like outhaul and cunningham, while others are terms that I never fully learned in English either.  We got to go a bit away from the harbor, surfing the large swells and enjoying the brisk breeze.

When I left and got back to my house, Chile’s first game had just begun and my living room was awash in red.  Beer and orange soda were mixed in glasses (fanschop, it’s called, meaning fanta-beer), eyes scarcely strayed from the screen to greet me, and a few people were munching choripan (chorizo-pan, or sausage and bread, because Chilean world cup fare is all about the portmanteau).  I felt sticky from spending my afternoon in a wetsuit, so I went to take a quick little shower.  Just as I was toweling off, I heard the unmistakeable ruckus of the first goal, erupting from the television, from the people downstairs, soon followed by car horns honking and yells from nearby houses.  I wasn’t quite downstairs when a second goal followed on the heels of the first.  As soon as I sat down, my presence near the TV seemed to turn the tide and although they continued to overwhelmingly possess the ball, the Chileans were having trouble scoring, and Australia got a few breakaways, and then a goal.

Normally, gatherings with family and friends here seem pretty relaxed, with a free flow of food and drink, but on this occasion I saw the obsessive soccer fanaticism that caused delayed and refills, grabbing chips, or even just taking a sip of beer until the ball was out-of-bounds.  Wouldn’t want to lose concentration for a second, after all.  At one point, I think I went too far into this concentration and came out on the other side, wondering which of these little moving dots of light I was supposed to be focused on, but the yells of my companions brought me back to reality.  We were reduced to a simple worldview pitting Us against Them.  I thought about how in Ultimate, the onus of being a good sportsperson is placed on each player, and the integrity of the game is only held up through self-refereeing.  By contrast, soccer players will frequently argue with a ref’s call, seeming to want the advantage for their team at any cost.  However, you also see them helping players of the opposite team to get up, shaking hands after a contentious moment, and kicking the ball out of bounds when someone on the other team is injured.  These moments remind us that even in an atmosphere of the fiercest competition, there always remains that human element, where brief shows of compassion are expected and as much as shows of great athleticism.

Chile’s Jean Beausejour scored the team’s third goal just before the game ended, and I was there to see it, and to be part of the room of fans, jumping up and down with a pride as if each one of them had personally participated in making the goal happen.

This is a great place to be for the World Cup.  I watched the US-Ghana match as well, this time at a bar with a huge group of Americans, and I have to say we did our country proud with face paint and noise, chanting extra loudly to make up for the fact that there were no car horns outside accompanying our yells. To both of my red, white and blue teams: I couldn’t be prouder, vamos Chile y vamos USA!

The Puget Sound computer science capstone class is a relatively recent addition to Puget Sound’s curriculum. The capstone class involves completing a semester-long development or research project. I just finished taking the class, and my group released an app for iPhone and Android called, “Imbue,” available here:

Working on this project was hands down the best development experience I’ve had to date. I’ve developed my own software before and released a few apps, but working with this group was inspiring. It led to numerous new ideas, and working in a group made development extremely fast.

The basic premise of our app is that integrates Augmented Reality technology into existing mapping tools, like Google Maps and social media. Augmented reality basically involves augmenting one’s view of the world with additional data and information. It often takes the form of overlaying information on top of a camera’s view of the surroundings, like this:

We initially set out to design a similar app that would help facilitate campus tours for the University of Puget Sound. We provided these overlays for all the buildings, designed an interactive map to visualize campus, and also integrated the app with Facebook to find events happening on campus for visitors.

We realized a couple of months into the project that, in doing this, we had also built the framework for a much larger app. By simply adding data from points of interest databases and fine-tuning our Facebook integration, we were able to very quickly provide augmented reality views for any building or event in the world.

We also added features for identifying your current location on a map to Facebook friends. While testing the app, I was able to find out where a couple of my group members were working and go join them to work on the app.

Shortly after, a couple of our features got nabbed. Facebook rolled out the “nearby friends” feature, while Google released a similar interactive map view. But the core functionality – displaying augmented reality views of buildings and events anywhere in the world – remains unique to this app.

Plus, we designed our own lightweight augmented reality system in one semester that runs quickly and works anywhere. As far as I know, there are very few similar augmented reality systems available for smartphones.

So thank you to a great group – it was a pleasure to spend so many late nights working away in the computer lab. I was extremely lucky to work on a senior capstone project in my junior year. More than anything, this project’s rekindled my inspiration for development and software entrepreneurship.

So thanks, team Imbue!