The loot

I ordered a bunch of artsy stuff from Amazon and here they are! And I am as excited as a kid with new books at the beginning of a school year.

My new art materials!

On the very left are my Faber Castell graphite pencils which come in a range of 2H to 6B. In the middle are my three zentangling pens (Sakura Pigma Micron 0.25mm, 0.35mm, 0.45mm). On the right are my Derwent Inktense watersoluble ink pencils. Right at the bottom is my water brush (Pentel Aquash). I also got a couple of sketchbooks from Michaels.

My sketchbooks

Quite a few new things to try. I have never tried zentangling, nor have I tried watercolour pencils, or a waterbrush. I am pretty excited about the watercolour pencils, they seem to be much easier than watercolour cakes/tubes and provide more control. And the water brush is awesome, especially to go with the pencils. No more messy water jars getting toppled all over the desk (ask PD, I am clumsy :P)

My colour palette 

There is more stuff I want to buy - woodless graphite pencils, an electric eraser, glass paints, oil paints and canvasses.. phew. But PD wanted a "proof of concept" first i.e. evidence that I will indeed use these materials and not leave them orphaned somewhere :P So thats what I am gonna do now. And hopefully, the result will be good enough for me to put up on the blog. Yay, here's to lots of sketching and painting!

My first hike

So PD and I decided it was time to lose all the wedding fat (oh yes, we gave up all semblance of self-control and totally indulged ourselves post-wedding. I was afraid it would be a long time before I got to eat some of my favorite foods again - gol gappas, bajjis, punukulu, bobbatlu, kaju chikki... you get the picture. So, I was making up in advance. And PD got tempted by all the stuff I was eating :P)

PD loves to hike, and I always wanted to try. So we went on a beginner level (to match my stamina) hike to the Wunderlich park. Hiking is a much more enjoyable fitness activity compared to any others I have tried before. Walking (and running/biking if you have the stamina) on trails, with lots of trees around is such an awesome thing to do.

Lets go hiking!

Winding trails

I believe the park is a redwood forest (so the brochure says, I am no botanist). Apparently, John Steinback said about the trees "The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe." Well, I know what he was talking about. The trees are HUGE, and thats an understatement. They grow so tall, I actually felt intimidated by their height, pretty much like the Lilliputians felt when they first saw Gulliver. No kidding, its a little scary to be left alone in the redwoods.

Intimidatingly huge redwood trees

Once in a while you can also see wild animals on hiking trails (deer, rabbits, foxes, and even rattle snakes, going by the stories PD has told me) scampering away as you come closer (some of them would make me scamper, I guess). On this hike, I managed to see some squirrels with nice long bushy tails. They are quite nimble, I didnt get a single pic to show :| Talking of animals, Wunderlich is also home to the Folger stable, so we got to see some horses and jockeys too.

So much love between the horse and his caretaker. We saw this guy get a shave :P

This guy felt neglected, so I thought I would show some love by clicking a pic

We also visited the Folger's museum which showed the history of horse riding and of the Folger's estate - interesting tidbits about how and when horse shoes came into picture, the evolution of horse carriages, the story of how the 942 acre park was donated by Martin Wunderlich to the San Mateo county, etc. Quite interesting!

Overall, it was an awesome hike we had. We hiked about 4 miles in all, covering an elevation of about 1250 feet (the park is much bigger, we restricted our hike to 4 miles to suit my beginner hiker levels). Phew, for me - a first time hiker - that was some achievement. Oh boy, I feel so proud of myself :) 

Learning resources

Now that I have some spare time on my hands, I have been exploring online resources to satiate my thirst for learning. I know that sounds dramatic, but I just love to dabble in and learn new stuff. Especially stuff that I was always interested in but couldn't pursue as a part of my formal education. Over the past few weeks I have come across a number of free online learning resources which are incredible. The content is excellent and has good breadth, its freely available, and the best part - you can set your own pace for learning. You can also use these resources to gain brief exposure to a wide variety of fields, while you decide which fields you want to focus on. I have explored some of these, and am yet to get started on others. A few resources which interested me:

- Duolingo: Duolingo is a language learning website offering Spanish, English, French, German, Portugese and Italian. PD and I got started with Spanish a while back. Duolingo has "gamified" the learning process with points, loss of "lives" on making mistakes etc. Their mobile app (I have tried the one for iPhone) is awesome - it doesnt feel like work or learning and is pretty much fun! And its so much more exciting if you pair up with someone else who also wants to learn the language.

- Coursera and edX: Both of these are "Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)" platforms (I had to google that up :P) Each of them has tied up with a wide range of well known universities as partners. Courses are typically held through video lectures and quizes. Courses offered cover a wide range of fields such as humanities, computer science, statistics, sociology, etc. Excellent platforms to make such disciplines more accessible!

- Codeacademy: Codeacademy offers free classes in coding. I havent tried this yet, but PD has and he enjoyed it. The site currently offers  JavaScript, HTML/CSS, PHP, Python and Ruby. The site has a number of success stories of people with no coding experience who have learnt to code on codeacademy and went on to build successful mobile phone apps, programs for specifics projects/tasks, etc. Quite interesting really, and I hope to try sometime.

- Podcasts: Podcasts are quite an interesting way to learn while on the go - whether you are in the car or out walking/jogging or even while cooking. The iTunes store has a lot of interesting podcasts and a lot of these are free. A number of leading universities such as MIT, Princeton, etc. offer podcasts too. RadioLab is another good place to look for interesting podcasts. Podcasts are everywhere. These are just some that I have come across so far, but with a little bit of googling, you can find podcasts from a variety of sources on a wide range of topics.

And of course, there is the quintessential youtube.com where a number of channels focus on tutorials on a wide range of subjects - from photography to arts to science projects.

On the whole, I am quite excited about my discovery of these resources and hopefully will put them to good use.