As an immigrant myself, it was touching and poignant to visit Ellis Island and I'm glad that I did. What a place!
I was captivated by the reception hall on the second floor. This is what it looked like 100 years ago:
and this is what it looked like when I was there:
More photos on Flickr as ever.
Going to Tiffany wasn't on my mom's list but we did it anyway. She wasn't wearing Tiffany Blue on purpose.
The walk from SoHo to Wall Street was part of a longer walk from SoHo to Battery Park, with the intention of hopping on a ferry to Ellis Island. At 3.30pm or so, though, the line for ferry tickets was about 45 minutes with an additional 60 to board a boat after that. We figured we'd skip it and come back first thing the next day.
Instead we dropped in on the hotel, picked up our books and headed to Central Park. While we hung out I got some great shots in the late afternoon autumn sunshine, like this one:
We left the Empire State Building and headed in a cab to SoHo. From there we took a walk to Wall Street and I took photos along the way:
It's been a long time since I've been down the southern tip of Manhattan. A lot has changed since 1999.
Sunday in New York I woke up early and started my research on the Empire State Building. Did you know it was built in just 410 days? Or that in 1945 a B-52 bomber crashed into it and precipitated the longest survived elevator fall recorded (75 floors). Or that because it opened during the Great Depression they had such problems finding tenants that in the first year they took in more money from tickets to the observation deck than from commercial rent?
I also learned, crucially as it turned out, that you can buy Express Tickets online. From the site:
The lines at the Empire State Building Observatory are as legendary as the building itself. The line actually consists of 3 different lines. The first one is the security line that everyone must go through. Next comes the ticket line. Visitors with pre-purchased tickets can skip this line which can save a considerable amount of time during our busiest times. The 3rd and last line is for the elevators that take you to the Observatory.and it's true. There are lines to get in, to get authorized, to get screened, to get up, to get down, and to get through. Pay the little extra for express tickets and it's like these lines don't exist. Empire State visitor pro-tip. Save two hours.
While we have been told that anything this good is worth the wait, we have also heard laments that some people missed out on being able to visit the Empire State Building Observatory because they just didn’t have enough time to see and do everything while in NYC. Now you can. By purchasing an Express Pass you will automatically be moved to the front of each and every line.
It was a wonderful clear day and I took a bunch of photos. You can find a selection in the usual spot on Flickr. An example:
I went to New York for the weekend to meet my mom, who was also there for the weekend. She rightly had the list which every NY first-timer develops before their trip, and the first day there found us in Grand Central Station.
Completely fabulous place! We checked out the Campbell Apartment but it was too busy so we ended up drinking in Cirpriani's. The whole experience was utterly photogenic:
See the whole monochromatic set on Flickr.
I notice that Switchy McSwitchenstein just posted for the first time in a long time. Interesting topic.
My problem is OSTs rather than PSTs. If anyone knows how to deal with those suckers when no longer on the corporate domain, let me know.
I just completed my annual resume update. Within hours I'd had a hit on it as a result of this search. Astonishing!
A couple of people asked after my last post, Truisms.
I was watching the movie Helvetica (a great movie, by the way). About 50 minutes in begins a segment with this guy Stefan Sagmeister, who says
I myself got fairly disappointed with modernism in general. It simply became boring. If I see a brochure now with lots of whitespace, that has six lines of Helvetica up on the top, and a little abstract logo on the bottom, and a picture of a businessman walking somewhere—the overall communcation says to me "do not read me because I will bore the shit out of you"
Stefan himself was not the most engaging individual ever, but behind him was a poster series of Jenny Holzer's Truisms. See here in a frame from the film:
I looked them up, and there they were.
My favorites, you ask? Here:
A SENSE OF TIMING IS THE MARK OF GENIUSI don't necessarily agree with every one (although it's fair to say that I do with most) but each one is worthy of serious thought.
A SINCERE EFFORT IS ALL YOU CAN ASK
A STRONG SENSE OF DUTY IMPRISONS YOU
ABSOLUTE SUBMISSION CAN BE A FORM OF FREEDOM
ANY SURPLUS IS IMMORAL
ANYTHING IS A LEGITIMATE AREA OF INVESTIGATION
AT TIMES INACTIVITY IS PREFERABLE TO MINDLESS FUNCTIONING
BEING HAPPY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING ELSE
CALM IS MORE CONDUCTIVE TO CREATIVITY THAN IS ANXIETY
DEVIANTS ARE SACRIFICED TO INCREASE GROUP SOLIDARITY
DYING AND COMING BACK GIVES YOU CONSIDERABLE PERSPECTIVE
ENJOY YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU CAN'T CHANGE ANYTHING ANYWAY
FAKE OR REAL INDIFFERENCE IS A POWERFUL PERSONAL WEAPON
GOVERNMENT IS A BURDEN ON THE PEOPLE
GRASS ROOTS AGITATION IS THE ONLY HOPE
HABITUAL CONTEMPT DOESN'T REFLECT A FINER SENSIBILITY
HIDING YOUR MOTIVES IS DESPICABLE
IF YOU LIVE SIMPLY THERE IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT
IGNORING ENEMIES IS THE BEST WAY TO FIGHT
IN SOME INSTANCES IT'S BETTER TO DIE THAN TO CONTINUE
IT'S GOOD TO GIVE EXTRA MONEY TO CHARITY
IT'S IMPORTANT TO STAY CLEAN ON ALL LEVELS
IT'S NOT GOOD TO OPERATE ON CREDIT
IT'S VITAL TO LIVE IN HARMONY WITH NATURE
MOSTLY YOU SHOULD MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS
OFTEN YOU SHOULD ACT LIKE YOU ARE SEXLESS
PEOPLE ARE NUTS IF THEY THINK THEY ARE IMPORTANT
POLITICS IS USED FOR PERSONAL GAIN
SELF-AWARENESS CAN BE CRIPPLING
SOLITUDE IS ENRICHING
THE SUM OF YOUR ACTIONS DETERMINES WHAT YOU ARE
THERE'S NOTHING EXCEPT WHAT YOU SENSE
TORTURE IS BARBARIC
WORDS TEND TO BE INADEQUATE
YOU CAN'T EXPECT PEOPLE TO BE SOMETHING THEY'RE NOT
I saw a poster of these truisms by Jenny Holzer. Some of them I liked very much but I think it would be unfair to editorialize and post only a selection... so here's the full set:
[Full set used to be here but why not just click through to http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/StuartCollection/HolzerTruism.htm]
Very few of my childhood friends am I still in touch with. Fewer still do I have any meaningful relationship with, but one of those with whom I do happens to be both a smashing stand up guy and a super-successful real-life medical doctor.
This friend of mine works in anesthetics (anaesthetics in the UK), so I figured I'd ask him about the Michael Jackson case. What's the deal with Propofol? Pretty illuminating what he said:
Yes. I use it a lot. Almost every day when I'm doing anaesthetics. It's my bread and butter, my pharmacological hammer of choice, my 'go-to' anaesthetic.
Basically it's most commonly used as an Induction agent, ie. it'll put your patient to sleep (AND STOP HIM BREATHING—crucial detail—remember for the test later) in 10 seconds, but in the next five minutes you'll need something else or he'll be getting a little frisky. The 'something else' can either be a vapour added to your oxygen line (the commonest and cheapest way of keeping someone asleep) or if you prefer, more Propofol. If it's going to be used to keep you asleep it'll be delivered by an electronically controlled pump which is designed to keep the concentration of the drug in the brain at a certain level.
Now. I didn't know it was a drug of abuse. For the following reasons:
Oh yeah. See? I was right.
- it'll kill you in the wrong hands.
So it shouldn't be used by anyone who's not an anaesthetist. This whole 'toxic level' stuff is bollocks. It was doing what it's supposed to do. When it's given in hospitals, the patient stops breathing, and would die if the anaesthetist weren't there, but that's the point. That's what it does, and that's why we're there.
I can imagine that they were trying to use it at very low doses (at which concentration it's more of a sedative than an anaesthetic) but that's really playing with fire, because individual responses are difficult to predict and it's easy to get it wrong if you're not experienced. Every anaesthetist has given a little too much or too little when we were less experienced—but it's forgiving in the right environment, ie. with all our tubes and machines that go 'beep'. Without them? Disaster is inevitable.
The short verson: anyone giving, administering or supplying MJ with Propofol should fry. There's no medical use for it outside a critical care medical environment.
I love it that I know such smart people.
Lots of people have been asking how the light painting photos were done. There's been speculation about multiple exposures, unseen spotlights, dark cloth, and even Photoshop (I don't use Photoshop). It's actually much much simpler than that.
The painting itself can take a few forms:
Here's a video showing the process in action. There's not a whole lot to see but it gives you a good idea of how it's all done.
Yes, it's pretty dark! Matt begins by painting the wings, then paints the ground around our subject April (it's this which gave some the impression of a spotlight from above). At 36 seconds in, one wipe of the flashlight over April is enough to paint her into the photo. After that Matt picks up a blue glowstick and paints an aura. The finished result:There are lots more of the pictures on Flickr. Diabolical Alexia is one of my favorites; Horse is another.
Here are some of the questions I got asked a lot:
How come the painter isn't visible in the photo?
Mainly because as the painter you're careful not to shine light on yourself. You also have to keep moving as you paint; if you stay in one place for too long then ambient light will indeed put you in the photo as a ghostly blur.
How did you get some of the drawings looking so good?
Matt is excellent at drawing. That's all there is to it.
What's special about the flashlight?
Nothing. It's a regular Maglite (three D-cells). We've also used a mini Maglite (2 AA-cells) and colored glowsticks for different effects.
Got any tips for light painters?
Yes, we learned as we went:
- keep moving. If you stop for too long the ambient light will illuminate you and put you in the picture;
- don't accidentally shine the light on yourself. A few promising pictures were spoiled from leaked light;
- light human subjects quickly, and only once. Most people can't keep perfectly still enough to make any other approach practical;
- turn off lights not in use. Covering a flashlight with your hand while you move will leave a red trail in the picture. If you're carrying glowsticks, keep them deeply buried in a pocket;
- when drawing shapes, point the flashlight at the camera even when reaching up or down. It's natural when painting something above head-level to point the flashlight up into the air. If you do that much of the line will be lost;
- the speed at which you move the flashlight will determine how much light gets painted. Move it quickly for less light and slowly to create very bright patches.
- manually focus the camera on your subject. Leave that focus setting and put a marker in the ground so subsequent subjects can stand at the marker to be in focus
Enjoy!
We interrupt your regular broken wrist programming to bring you news of my weekend in Costanoa. Wendy and I went down there with Matt and Mary on Friday night and stayed for a couple of days; kind of a reconnaissance mission for an upcoming departmental offsite and kind of just a weekend getaway with old friends.
On the web site it says
Costanoa is an eco adventure resort designed to encourage our guests to explore the stunning beauty of our protected California coastline and Discover the Pace of Natureto which I say
Costanoa is an unusual campsite in a lovely part of California—by the sea, and in a relatively remote area of the peninsula
What makes it an unusual campsite? Mainly that it has pre-built super-comfortable tents for the lazy. Again from the web site:
Bungalows are a wood or metal frame with waterproof canvas tent walls. They have electricity, sliding windows, a locking door and heated mattress pads. These accommodations combine the best part of camping with creature comforts you will appreciate.So they're more huts than tents. And perfectly nice huts at that, with beds and nightstands and an electric blanket and bedside lights. They have comfy wooden chairs outside, for hanging out in the sunset, and each has a lockable door. No suburbanite camping concerns of theft et cetera:
Somehow I had visions of actual real fancy upscale camping, though, and on that front Costanoa was a bit of a disappointment (especially considering the rate of $130/night). One has to imagine that there is indeed a market for luxury camping, where the pre-built tents have housekeeping and turndown service daily, a concierge, room service and a white-gloved bellboy to light your camp fire.
But it's not like that at Costanoa. It's just camping in a hut with a bed. Insects: yes. Cold: yes. Dial 7 for reception: no. "Skeevy" (to use Wendy's word): perhaps a little. Bathroom a fair walk away: yes. Skunk hanging out under the hut: yes. Towel service: no. Chocolate on the pillow: no. Communal showers: yes. Complimentary long-stemmed roses and champagne on ice: no. And no cell service, no power outlets; Wi-Fi doesn't reach the huts. You make your own fun, as they say, and boy did we ever:
And so forth and so on.
A wonderful area of California, though. Even after four years here I'd never been on Highway 1 between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz, but it's a lovely scenic stretch of road strewn with farms and beaches and super views. On Saturday we all went down to Capitola; Matt, Mary and Wendy took surfing lessons while I hung out with—ahem—a broken wrist.
Brunch in Santa Cruz on Sunday: also nice.
Things I'm looking forward to when I get this cast off and my wrist back:
5. cleaning my teeth with the toothbrush in my right hand
4. being able to wear shirts with sleeves
3. taking a shower without a plastic bag on my arm
2. being able to type properly
1. riding my bike
Sigh.
Here's one from a while back, outside the taqueria round the corner:
The cast was getting really annoying. I've not been able to drive, ride my bike or even put my hand in my pocket. Typing is slow and awkward, sleeping is uncomfortable, and the occasional waves of claustrophobia are really unpleasant. It's been weeks since I've had a shower without wearing a plastic bag.
So a huge relief, then, when I went back to the orthopedic surgeon this morning and they took the thing off. A HUGE relief. I'd been fantasizing about the moment for oh-so-long, and even dreamed about it just the other night.
Somewhat less of a relief, though, was finding my wrist still swollen when the cast came off. Still painful, too, and still with a pretty limited range of movement. X-rays followed, and within 20 minutes I had a cast again:
MRIs will follow, and after that who knows. I'm trying not to pay too much attention to what I read on the internet about scaphoid fractures although inevitably I've found the page which seems to cover the worst-case end result: "complete wrist fusion". I love the euphemism "non-union" meaning "broken", too. Reminds me of a place I worked a few jobs ago where HR used the term "deselection" to mean laying people off.
In other news, Wendy and I had a great time on vacation and I've started to upload some of the photos. Here's one taken on the ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam:
I struggled putting socks on this morning, and buttoning up my jeans. The cast is designed to give me no grip in my right hand, meaning none of my fingers can touch my thumb; perhaps the optimal position for recovery but it sure sucks for doing up your shoelaces. I wore slip-on shoes to work today, but still took so long showering and getting dry (don't ask) that I needed Wendy to give me a ride in the car to the shuttle.
Things started looking up a little bit when I got to the office. I went straight to the hardware depot, and picked up a Goldtouch keyboard. Since my right hand won't twist flat to type on a flat keyboard, this is ideal. I'm still about eight times slower than usual overall but at least with the Goldtouch I'm eight times slower in relative comfort.
But even "relative comfort" is pretty optimistic. In truth, while this beautiful fiberglass cast is a wonder of modern physical chemistry and probably less than half the weight of its plaster equivalent, it's crazily claustrophobic and intensely frustrating to wear.
Vacation, starting this Thursday, is going to be a whole new set of cast-bound adventures.
"Broken wrist" is vague and in this case stands for scaphoid fracture. Forgive the poetic license. It's definitely messed up, though. Just look at all those bones!
It's funny really. Last time we had Sunday Streets here in the Mission it was a very chilled out affair, so much so that I set the video of it to a laid back number from 60 years ago.
This time, by contrast, the soundtrack was upbeat and involved a bunch of people converging for an afternoon of playing on the street outside our house. We had foursquare, Frisbee™, juggling, bikes, scooters, bubbles, water balloons and sidewalk chalk. Someone also brought a "caster board" (caster board is to Ripstick™ as inline skates are to Rollerblades™).
I tried it, I fell off, I broke my wrist.
Now I'm in a cast which—although cool in the sense that it's blue and made of fiberglass
—is uncomfortable and totally inconvenient. Day 1 and I've already discovered the amount of planning and awkwardness it involves even to take a shower.
In other news, I was tickled this week by this image:
I love the climate of the Bay Area and San Francisco in particular. It's easy and moderate but there's rich greenery all year round, often with blooms twelve months of the year.
Many of the plants here are familiar from the UK where I grew up. Like Nasturtia, for instance, which love it here. Roses, poppies, geraniums, they're all here too... and seemingly all year round.
Some plants which are common here are to me other-wordly, though, particularly succulents. Look at this crazy thing:
Wendy and I have been looking at houses to buy out of the corners of our eyes for a year or so. Over the last few months we've started to gently increase the pace of our search, using Redfin. In the last few weeks we've been to a few open houses and started to pay significant attention to "the market" in our target area.
Yesterday we saw this place on the south side of Bernal Hill. We liked it a whole lot and it's the first place we've seen which suddenly put us into "this would be worth trying to find a loan for"-mode. So we're working through a bunch of financial things at the moment.
Putting it on Flickr made me realize how difficult it is to convey the layout of a place using still images, but it gave me a chance to try out Flickr annotations. Check it:
and then documented the dog's adventure until the moment of recapture:
It's over six years since March 2003 when I moved to the States. I still remember that when I first got here there were a number of tangled hurdles to get through, for instance:
Credit is pretty much a whole other thing, though. Here there are no cracks through which to slip, and they tend to make damn sure of that (recent economic events and revelations notwithstanding). I remember asking US Bank for a credit card after I'd banked with them for three months; they offered me one with a $1,000 credit limit, but only if I give them a $1,000 deposit. I think they had a different understanding of the word "credit" from my own.
That same summer I bought my car for cash. I had to! Who's going to lend money to someone with no credit history? It turns out that no credit history is literally worse than a bad credit history. You're basically an apparition. At the age of thirty you've materialized from nowhere amongst people who've been in the system, leaving traces, for a decade or more. Credit is pretty impossible as an immigrant... and don't even get me started on auto insurance.
So against this backdrop you can imagine my pleasure finding that a friend of mine, Switchy McSwitchenstein, who blogs over at http://switchy.net, had no such trouble whatsoever. You might think that Switchy, having no US bank account, no credit history (and not even, between you and me, actually being a real person) might suffer some of the same problems getting credit in the States. You'd be wrong. He's been receiving, completely unsolicited, pre-approved credit card applications in the mail for quite a while now.
When I got here, it took about a year before I got my first pre-approved credit card application from a financial institution I'd actually heard of. I remember feeling at the time that the credit-score apparition which was me must have finally solidified: I'd "made it" as far as the system was concerned.
Switchy was offered pre-approved credit, from Amex no less, within three months of launching his blog. I bow to him!
In other news, Switchy has started blogging again. Check out http://switchy.net.
