thank you NASA – awesome photo of Snowmageddon surrounding NYC

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Great photo from yesterday’s Snowmageddon moving up the eastern seaboard and surrounding my home, NYC. the near-solid white line on the southern edge of the storm is particularly impressive. You can visit the MODIS web to see a larger version.

how they make Buildings these days

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

On May 31st I took the above shot of some prefab “brick” walls sitting in some yard. I stumbled upon the lot during a walking tour of Long Island City south of the Plaza. Next door to the prefab pieces was the beginnings of some steel-structured building that I either didn’t get a photo of or didn’t upload to my Flickr. Regardless, during another walking tour today I stumbled upon the result:

the panels are seamless because they’re mounted from the inside, probably via some bolt and nut or rivet-esque system. Who the fuck knows. It’s ugly as hell and probably not even real clay to begin with. The glass top is nice and those two corner windows are kind of interesting, but the gridded smaller windows are too prison-y for my tastes, and again those faux brick panels are a complete put-off, and that’s coming from a guy who has a bricks tag in his cloud.

These images and more from my ongoing views around LIC/Astoria set

WordCamp NYC 2009 – day 1 ( #wordcamp #nyc #wordpress )

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Yesterday was day 1 (of 2) for WordCamp NYC 2009. Wow. What a brilliant and wonderful event!

I missed the opening remarks and first few series of workshops, which I ultimately regret but had no control over given my recent workload and absolutely need the night before to get at least 5.5 hours of sleep (yes, when I need sleep I sleep more than 4… I wound up waking at the 5 hour mark but staying in bed until the 6 hour mark – but I digress!).

I wound up arriving at around 11:48am, and as soon as I registered and received my kick-ass tee-shirt and badge, I was standing in the middle of the room glancing over the post-lunch programme when I turned around and suddenly there were over 500 hungry participants standing behind me! FTW! I was the first in line for the vegetarian sandwiches – sweet!

I had a great conversation with Jim of zemanta.com, and met a couple other really wonderful people before the afternoon sessions even began. Which is one thing I’ve always really liked about geek and tech meet-ups and gatherings like this, is generally people are very approachable and friendly. Not to say people in the art world aren’t, but it’s a completely different set of standards, and, well actually people in the art world aren’t as approachable! There, I said it. Yes it is difficult to explain how as an artist I work with WordPress – usually the response is, “so you’re a Designer?” , “no, I make installations” (like holoscape, which is built on WP) – or how I work with NYC-area non-profits and always recommend WordPress as a tool for their projects and missions. But whereas in the art world people usually just don’t care about “code” (or the political ramifications of blog culture and terms or language like Creative Commons, GPL, XML, etc.), at least at these events people are always willing to listen to what you do, or in this case why you do it with WordPress!

I first went to the WP in Education round table. I forget all of the presenters’ names, but that’s Matt Mullenweg on the far left, and two of the other blokes (middle and far right) were from Virginia of all states, which was interesting – and they both had very strong ideas and opinions about how WordPress has pro-actively been used to advance pedagogy and educational enlightenment! A wonderful topic indeed! It’s a shame there was just not enough time for Qs & As because this one in particular could have gone on for another hour.

While I noticed as the day went on that most people went to one room and stayed there all day, I bounced around, probably walking a whole mile inside the building from class to class.

I nipped over to the WordPress for Non-Profits seminar:

This lady Amanda was a hoot, and she had one really great message in particular:

(I only wish I could convince more non-profits of the why!)

Don’t be fooled by this image! The WordCamp was packed, over 700 people were in attendance! These big rooms were definitely a bit intimidating, but I guess better this than a room for 30 and have 80 people show up!

A random encounter in the hallways – Matt Mullenweg must get stopped all the time to be asked a simple question, and the question turns into an informal discussion and seminar! He’s so pleasant and positive about people, and code, and discussing real issues, in this case the topic was canonical plugins and language localizations.

Are they sharing notes? LOL!

My laptop went kaputz less than 48 hours before WordCamp (anybody want to donate to help me get a netbook?), else I totally would be one of these people, and probably would have been drafting this post then.

One of the most interesting seminars I went to, because it’s a hot topic I’m developing for my own intents and purposes right now for another project, this notion of “hyperlocal” and community building with WordPress. This speaker was talking on behalf of InJersey.com which runs on WPMU and BP.

All in all a wonderful day! I wish there were more events like this, which is why I’ll have to follow through on my plans for some hyperlocal-wordpress-for-artists-meet-up-tech-exchange-and-talk thing to do on my own soon!

what’s not to like about Gotham? ( #gotham #nyc #gif )

Saturday, November 14th, 2009

No matter how crazy this city gets, it’s never worth leaving else you’ll miss scenes like this! I didn’t notice until I dumped these photos onto my computer that the two sets of window lights went on in the second frame while they were off in the first (I normally take at least two or three shots of the same photo to get one that is most-steady and framed the way I like, but in this case they make a wonderful GIF) – which also makes one realize that behind each of those windows, in every building, someone lives or works there.

Gotham is FULL of lives.

Recession Proof – because you asked for it, more evidence this Economy is Awesome!

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

While I squabble over whether to pay a $10 movie ticket tonight or not, this little gem of an apartment can be yours for the mere chump change of $25 million, or around 550 lbs. in $100 bills, whichever is easiest for your mind to comprehend (and don’t ask me how I’d know the weight of a suitcase full of $100 bills). Yes, it’s Awesome. And yes, it’s in Brooklyn.

I originally caught word of this via a Russian blog, but here’s a NYTimes article, and an Apartment Therapy link, among others

some more reasons to love NY

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

if you needed reminding, a few more reasons why paying the astronomical rent price is totally worth living here:

I sware man, only in this city.

Update: yes, views like this are commonplace in this city: