bobbinm.net

tremulous.net

Hits:

For ease of accessibility, the different facets of my life are separated into easy to view chunks of reading. Feel free to read one, take a break, then continue onto another topic of interest.



General Information
My name is Robin Marshall. I am 22 years old and am attending Cal Poly (California Polytechnic State University) in San Luis Obispo, trying to get my Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering. Other than working on that, I sit at my computer for hours at a time reading, chatting, working on 'art,' and playing computer games. When not at the computer, I enjoy cooking, hiking, backpacking, camping, playing and listening to various types of music, and drawing/sketching.

My mother was born and raised in Japan, while my father's family has lived in and around Vermont for more than a hundred years. I also have a sister who is 5 years older than me. As for myself, I was born in Vermont, but my family quickly moved to California for my father's work. Once my sister had graduated high school, we moved to Oregon while she went to UC Santa Cruz. Once I had finished high school in Oregon, I ended up choosing to come back to California for my higher education.

This summer I will move back home with the parents. I am continuing an internship at 'Maxim Integrated Products' in the fiber optics test engineering group to further my studies into electronics and make some money on the side.

As you can see by my picture, I have a manly goatee. Once I had to shave this off, and despite my equally manly, long, beautiful hair, I felt quite girlish.




Cooking Bobbin

I was never very into cooking until I moved out of the dorms in college and into my own apartment. Although I always knew I would find it enjoyable, I suppose I needed the possibility starvation to give me motivation. That was nearly three years ago, and although I consider myself far from a good chef, I am fairly capable and am always eager to try something new.

With my mother being Japanese, and my father not very capable with anything much more than TV dinners, my main influences in my cooking are Asian, most often the Japanese part of that. I also like to make some Mexican dishes and every once-in-a-while some Italian.

My most common dishes include: Tuna and 'California roll' sushi, Curry rice, Mabo Tofu, Fried rice with various fixings, salads with various concoctions of dressings, salsa, burritos, and fajitas.




Outdoorsy Bobbin

Starting sometime in elementary school, my parents thought it would be good for me to join the Cub Scouts at a local Buddhist church. At the time I thought this a very bad idea and expressed my feelings through a variety of shouting and crying bouts. However, I somehow stayed in there. Eventually, I went into the Boy Scouts, and there I found pleasures of camping. When I moved to Oregon, a new troop I found was quite active in backpacking trips and other fun activities.

This involved things like digging holes in snow and sleeping in them for the night, then escaping with friends when everyone else was asleep to grab pancakes at a restaurant some miles away and hiking up Mt. St. Helens just in time to see sunrise, then jumping down the side and sliding all the away back down on the nice and soft pumice rock. However, my most memorable moments are on the three 50+ mile week long backpacking trips I went on. One of which was at the Philmont 'Scout Ranch' in New Mexico. If you've never done something like this, I highly recommend it. You really don't need to be in good shape at all and it just feels really good. (After the first couple days)

In September 2002, I received my Eagle Scout. Although I really can't say I like a lot of the philosophies in the Boy Scouts, it's not hard to find a troop that really doesn't care, and just wants to have fun.



Musical Bobbin

In addition to the Boy Scouts, my parents also thought it good that I learn to play some type of musical instrument. As with most musicians, I started with piano at around the age of 8. I stuck with that for a couple years, then was inexplicably switched to the cello. Again this lasted a couple of years, but was abandoned for another instrument: the drums. At age 12, I started taking private lessons, first with just the snare drum, then on to the drum set.

When I moved to Oregon, I didn't continue my private lessons. Instead I joined the middle school concert band. This was quite a difference, as made apparent by the fact that when I first showed up I sat in the trumpet section, not knowing the percussionists went in the back. Eventually, I was able to translate to concert percussion. I continued on into high school, where the conductor was in fact a quite accomplished jazz and concert percussionist. I quickly signed up to get private lessons from him. I started to learn snare drum rudiments, and both jazz and funk style drumming.

Eventually, I also joined the school's jazz band and went on to a number of competitions both solo and group with mixed success.




Arty Bobbin

While I love drawing (sketching really) and doodling on pieces of paper when I should be paying attention to something, I claim myself an artist only in music and computer 3D modeling. Some time ago I both started modeling and joined a small Quake III mod team to help them create some badly needed content. I started off with static weapons, then to fully animated characters, and then off to environments.

If anyone is at all interested in seeing any of my work, I've put a lot of it in a handy-dandy online portfolio. I'm not quite sure why I have an online portfolio, but it does actually make things like this easier to do. Here.

Although with work and school breathing down my neck, I find little time to invest in these endeavors, I am in fact quite interested in the field. After some time contemplating the idea of becoming a professional artist, I decided to let it go in the hopes of the more stable and better paying electronics design. I find that as long as I get to actually make something, I'm pretty happy. Whether to be food, art, music, or an electronic device.