Thu, 31 Dec 2009
Like last year, here is the list of cities I visited during 2009, in chronological order.
- New York, NY*
- North Kingstown, RI*
- Oakland, CA*
- Mountain View, CA*
- Niagara Falls, ON
- Pacific Grove, CA*
- Fresno, CA
- Yosemite National Park, CA
- Santa Monica, CA
- Whittier, CA
- Blackrock State Campground, CT
- Cocoa Beach, FL
One or more nights were spent at each. Cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.
posted at: 13:22 | category: travel | permanent link to this entry
Sat, 21 Nov 2009
Yahoo Pipes is a really awesome product that a lot of people don't know about, and I feel like Yahoo hasn't really done a lot with. It's basically a node-based data editor, but it can fetch source data from places on the Internet, which means you can have pipes with dynamic output. And then, you can subscribe to the results of those pipes or request them via JSON, which gives you a huge amount of flexibility.
I was spurred to write this because Jason Kottke was recently upset that the New York Times had put Errol Morris' blog items, which used to be on their own, into a new thing called Opinionator. This is a great simple use-case for Pipes, since you can fetch data from an RSS feed. Here's the final result:
Pipes looks at the RSS feed and sees that there's a dc:creator tag in it, so we can use that to filter with. It knows the input is RSS items, so you can filter those on an item-by-item basis and it will retain just the items that match. It's really easy to understand exactly what it's doing and build your own pipes. The only problem is sometimes finding the operations you're looking for, since there are a lot of them.
Go ahead and check it out in action. The New York Times Opinionator feed only has 10 items in it, and there are several authors, so this might not have any results at any given time if you go to look at it, but you can clone it and play with the source yourself. I've also noticed that Pipes has been a little flaky when playing with it this morning, so apologies if it doesn't work.
posted at: 09:07 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Sat, 5 Sep 2009
Last week Monday, in the earliest hours of the morning, my girlfriend and I touched down in Orlando, Florida. We immediately picked up the rental car and drove out to Cocoa Beach, situated along the Atlantic coast, where we were planning on staying for the week. Then we slept. We were in Florida to see the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-128, which we expected would be pretty cool.
Discovery was supposed to launch at 1:36 AM Tuesday morning. We spent most of Tuesday gathering supplies, looking at exhibits at Kennedy Space Center, and waiting around in lines to get on buses. Despite an 80% favorable outlook, though, bad weather scrubbed the launch about 10 minutes before liftoff. Apparently the Shuttle doesn't respond well to lightning. As an aside, though, we learned that Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice shortly after liftoff, but the systems in those days were sufficiently simple that it didn't cause major problems.
The next night, we made the same preparations and set out. When we arrived at Kennedy, we learned that the launch had been scrubbed due to a valve problem. The 8-inch liquid hydrogen fill and drain valve hadn't registered as closed when they tried to close it, which obviously was a huge problem. The absolute earliest they could attempt to launch again was 48 hours from then, but they weren't even making any suggestions about scheduling another attempt until they got a chance to look closely at the valve and its associated sensor (which they suspected of being the real source of the problem). They wanted to get it resolved quickly, though: their last chance to launch was Sunday night. If they were still on the ground at that point, the launch window closed and the next opportunity was more than a month later in October.
Disappointed, we headed back to the hotel. Our flight home was Thursday morning, and the next possible launch attempt was just after midnight on Friday morning. What were we going to do, we asked ourselves. Do we eat the cost of the flight and stick around until who knows when? Or head home and risk missing the single event we came to see? We decided to wait and see what they said on Wednesday about the valve. After all, the airline said we could cancel our flight up until an hour before it left, and the valve problem might have been bad enough that they had to delay until October, when we could return.
We went back to Kennedy on Wednesday and took the bus out to the Apollo/Saturn V Center and International Space Station Center, all the while keeping an eye on the Kennedy Space Center Twitter feed. In the early afternoon, they announced that they would indeed make another attempt early Friday morning, so we decided to cancel our tickets and stay. After all, there were four launch opportunities that weekend, so the odds seemed pretty good.
Thursday we spent doing very little, but it didn't pass entirely uneventfully. The mission managers decided they wanted more time to come up with contingency plans in case the valve acted up again, so they pushed the next attempt back another 24 hours to just before midnight on Friday. Just three launch attempts left before the August opportunity was gone.
Friday we decided to do something fun, so we rode out to Orlando to see Epcot at Walt Disney World. We had a great time, and my girlfriend was quite surprised as how much entertainment there is for adults as well as kids. We got a late start leaving Cocoa Beach, though, so all too soon it was time to get back in the car and make yet another trip to Kennedy.
Getting out of the park, back to the car, and out of the parking lot took longer than we anticipated, though. We were a little worried about getting to Kennedy on time, as they block off the roadways several hours before launch attempts to keep people from driving in to see the launch and putting themselves in harm's way. We had a vehicle placard that was supposed to get us past the roadblocks, but we hadn't ever tested it, and it was up to the security guys whether they wanted to honor it anyway. If we were sufficiently late, we'd be out of luck.
Of course, as we got on the freeway, we noticed that we were down to about a quarter of a tank of gas. My memory was that we were at a little under half a tank when we left Cocoa Beach, though, so it didn't seem like it would be a problem. We'd have to get gas shortly before or after the launch, but no big deal. About halfway between Orlando and Kennedy, though, the gas light goes on. In most of the US, that wouldn't be that big a deal, but the stretch of road between Orlando and the coast is basically all fields and wilderness. My girlfriend got rather worried. I told her it'd be fine, and hoped it would be. It wasn't like we could do anything about it, so we had to just keep on driving.
It was at this point that my iPhone saved the day. By finding a gas station? Not really. We did use it to find one, but the closest gas station turned out to be along the road we had to take anyway, so we would have stopped there regardless. No, what it did was give us peace of mind that we weren't going to run out of gas and miss the launch. And boy was that nice at that particular time. Late to where you're going and low on gas, just the knowledge that it's only 3 miles until one of your problems is solved is quite relaxing.
Flush with gas, we breeze onto Kennedy without a barricade in sight and find ourselves at the Visitor Center for the fourth time in five days. As before, we wait around in lines for a while and then board the buses. The crowd had really thinned out from Monday night's attempt, we presumed because they couldn't cancel flights and add vacation days quite as freely as we fortunately could. The weather forecast was only 60% favorable, but the attempt would go forward.
The buses for a launch take you out to the viewing area several hours early. On both the previous attempt and this one, we had gotten on the second or third bus to leave, so we got a prime spot right on the front edge of the seating area. Once you're there, though, there's basically nothing to do. There's a PA system that broadcasts NASA's coverage of the launch attempt, including some snippets from the radio traffic, but the launch timeline has large portions of built-in buffer space in case anything goes wrong, so when nothing has gone wrong there's a lot of just sitting. We got periodic updates on the weather, which were promising, but otherwise you're left to whatever distraction you brought with you. (Professor Layton, in my case.)
The final major decision point in a launch seems to be at about eleven minutes before liftoff, when they decide whether or not to restart the countdown, which has been holding at T-9:00 for about an hour. All the major groups on the launch team have to give a go/no-go signal when polled. When this time came around, a hush came over the crowd as everyone listened for the signals, especially trying to catch when weather went by. All "go". When they finished the poll, all the spectators started cheering.
The final minutes of the countdown flew by, with the NASA commentators describing all the steps the launch controllers and computers were taking as they happened. Final checks of computers and flight control systems, pressurization of suits. And at 11:59:37 PM, the countdown reached zero.
I was born after the advent of the Shuttle program, almost a decade after the last moon landing. I was three years old at the time of the Challenger disaster. Human spaceflight has just been a fact of life for me, along with air travel, radio, television, electricity, and all manner of other technological achievements.
Spending a week immersed in the process of spaceflight, culminating in the launch of one of the most powerful rockets ever built, gives you a new perspective on matters. Spaceflight is neither easy nor routine; it's actually incredibly complicated. Human beings strap themselves onto a rocket that releases more power than a nuclear weapon and then spend days, weeks, or even months at a time in an environment that is completely unlivable for all life as we know it.
Watching the incredible blast from the rocket engines light up the launch area like daylight, with a plume that was painful to look at, I couldn't help but think to myself how amazing it was that I was watching a man-made vehicle rocketing seven people into space. Literally into outer space, hundreds of miles above the surface of the Earth, where there's no water and basically no air and alternately intense solar radiation and freezing night. A place where you see fifteen sunrises a day. Where you can look down and see entire continents laid out before you, not on a map, but really there, with your naked eye.
It's amazing the kinds of things that the human race has managed to achieve, and maybe even more amazing to think that we do it often enough that it doesn't even make the news most of the time. Ho hum. Another group of people just went to space.
posted at: 14:21 | category: travel | permanent link to this entry
Tue, 18 Aug 2009
Building Fences and Doing Things
A week ago last Saturday, I helped my family build a fence.
The design is a fairly straightforward one, with the nice feature of giving each property an equal share of the nice side of the fence. I think it turned out pretty well, due in no small part to my dad's do-it-yourself skill. I didn't come here to write about the fence, though.
What I really noticed while helping out with the fence was that I was seriously enjoying myself. The simple act of measuring, cutting, and assembling a bunch of wood was easily one of the best parts of my trip. And I think that that's all due to the pleasure that comes from achieving something meaningful.
One of the facts about my life, and the lives of many people in the industrialized world, is that I probably won't ever go hungry or homeless. In my current job, I'm sufficiently well-situated that I probably wouldn't get fired even if I put in half the effort that I currently do — I wouldn't get promoted, but I wouldn't be out of a job, and I could easily survive for the rest of my life on my current pay. In basically all ways, I could achieve very little of importance and still manage to live a long and healthy life. What this all amounts to is that there aren't any external pressures on me to go out and do anything.
When I'm at home, I usually spend most of my time either chatting with my roommates, playing videogames, or reading things on the Internet. All of these things are enjoyable in the short term, but none of them are really doing something. At the end of the day, I've got just as much under my belt as I did when I woke up in the morning.
So, I plan to start really doing things in my free time, though I haven't decided just what yet. I'm considering learning the drums. I could brush up on my German or Japanese. But whatever I end up doing, I want to be able to look back at my day, my week, or my year, and be proud of what I've achieved.
posted at: 23:23 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 3 Aug 2009
Prompted by Andy Ihnatko's glowing review of Posterous, particularly where he mentioned that being able to post by e-mail made him far more likely to actually make posts, I figured I'd give that a shot. After all, my blog is just a collection of text files, so it's trivial to turn e-mails into blog posts. We'll see if it actually encourages me to write more, hopefully it will.
posted at: 08:27 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Tue, 17 Feb 2009
Mark Dominus posted an article today about states' second-largest cities and their relationship to the largest city. For cities he used Metropolitan Statistical Areas, though, which I felt made the results a little weird. In particular, many MSAs, especially those for large cities in the small eastern states, cross state lines, and it seemed weird to me to count those as belonging to a single state.
Because of that, I re-ran the analysis using the Census Bureau data for incorporated places instead. The table of results is below; I've left in the Census markers for what kind of entity is being considered. In particular, "balance" means that the named entity includes some smaller incorporated places inside it and those are being excluded from the population (ie, the population listed is the larger entity minus the smaller entities).
Under this definition, New York does in fact have the largest ratio between the largest and second-largest cities. Illinois, which previously occupied that spot, has dropped to second place; its previously-second-largest city of Peoria has been replaced with Aurora, which is near Chicago and thus was counted as part of it in the original analysis. Rhode Island, rather than having one city and thus no quotient, now has multiple cities and gets to have a quotient fairly close to the middle of 2.03. Hawaii, however, does not have any incorporated cities, and the only place included in the list is the City and County of Honolulu (as a Census-designated Place), so there is still an item with no quotient. As Mark did, I've placed it at the top and bottom of the list.
I haven't really looked at much of the rest of the list, but it shuffled quite a bit. Pennsylvania, for instance, is now close to the top instead of being buried in the middle; it appears that about a quarter of Philidelphia's MSA population is within Philly, whereas only 13% of Pittsburgh's is in the city proper.
Here's the full set of data:
| State | Largest city and its Population | Second-largest city and its population | Quotient | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hawaii | Honolulu (CDP) | 375,571 | — | |||
| New York | New York (city) | 8,274,527 | Buffalo (city) | 272,632 | 30 | .35 |
| Illinois | Chicago (city) | 2,836,658 | Aurora (city) | 170,855 | 16 | .60 |
| Maryland | Baltimore (city) | 637,455 | Frederick (city) | 59,220 | 10 | .76 |
| Alaska | Anchorage (municipality) | 279,671 | Fairbanks (city) | 34,540 | 8 | .10 |
| New Mexico | Albuquerque (city) | 518,271 | Las Cruces (city) | 89,722 | 5 | .78 |
| Michigan | Detroit (city) | 916,952 | Grand Rapids (city) | 193,627 | 4 | .74 |
| Pennsylvania | Philadelphia (city) | 1,449,634 | Pittsburgh (city) | 311,218 | 4 | .66 |
| Oregon | Portland (city) | 550,396 | Salem (city) | 151,913 | 3 | .62 |
| Massachusetts | Boston (city) | 599,351 | Worcester (city) | 173,966 | 3 | .45 |
| Indiana | Indianapolis (city, balance) | 795,458 | Fort Wayne (city) | 251,247 | 3 | .17 |
| California | Los Angeles (city) | 3,834,340 | San Diego (city) | 1,266,731 | 3 | .03 |
| Washington | Seattle (city) | 594,210 | Spokane (city) | 200,975 | 2 | .96 |
| Arizona | Phoenix (city) | 1,552,259 | Tucson (city) | 525,529 | 2 | .95 |
| Georgia | Atlanta (city) | 519,145 | Augusta-Richmond County (consolidated government, balance) | 192,142 | 2 | .70 |
| Mississippi | Jackson (city) | 175,710 | Gulfport (city) | 66,271 | 2 | .65 |
| Wisconsin | Milwaukee (city) | 602,191 | Madison (city) | 228,775 | 2 | .63 |
| Idaho | Boise City (city) | 202,832 | Nampa (city) | 79,249 | 2 | .56 |
| South Dakota | Sioux Falls (city) | 151,505 | Rapid City (city) | 63,997 | 2 | .37 |
| Nevada | Las Vegas (city) | 558,880 | Henderson (city) | 249,386 | 2 | .24 |
| Arkansas | Little Rock (city) | 187,452 | Fort Smith (city) | 84,375 | 2 | .22 |
| Vermont | Burlington (city) | 38,531 | South Burlington (city) | 17,445 | 2 | .21 |
| Kansas | Wichita (city) | 361,420 | Overland Park (city) | 169,403 | 2 | .13 |
| Delaware | Wilmington (city) | 72,868 | Dover (city) | 35,811 | 2 | .03 |
| Rhode Island | Providence (city) | 172,459 | Warwick (city) | 85,097 | 2 | .03 |
| Kentucky | Louisville/Jefferson County (metro government, balance) | 557,789 | Lexington-Fayette (urban county) | 279,044 | 1 | .00 |
| Florida | Jacksonville (city) | 805,605 | Miami (city) | 409,719 | 1 | .97 |
| Virginia | Virginia Beach (city) | 434,743 | Norfolk (city) | 235,747 | 1 | .84 |
| North Carolina | Charlotte (city) | 671,588 | Raleigh (city) | 375,806 | 1 | .79 |
| Maine | Portland (city) | 62,825 | Lewiston (city) | 35,234 | 1 | .78 |
| Ohio | Columbus (city) | 747,755 | Cleveland (city) | 438,042 | 1 | .71 |
| Nebraska | Omaha (city) | 424,482 | Lincoln (city) | 248,744 | 1 | .71 |
| Texas | Houston (city) | 2,208,180 | San Antonio (city) | 1,328,984 | 1 | .66 |
| Colorado | Denver (city) | 588,349 | Colorado Springs (city) | 376,427 | 1 | .56 |
| Iowa | Des Moines (city) | 196,998 | Cedar Rapids (city) | 126,396 | 1 | .56 |
| North Dakota | Fargo (city) | 92,660 | Bismarck (city) | 59,503 | 1 | .56 |
| Montana | Billings (city) | 101,876 | Missoula (city) | 67,165 | 1 | .52 |
| Utah | Salt Lake City (city) | 180,651 | West Valley City (city) | 122,374 | 1 | .48 |
| Oklahoma | Oklahoma City (city) | 547,274 | Tulsa (city) | 384,037 | 1 | .43 |
| Minnesota | Minneapolis (city) | 377,392 | St. Paul (city) | 277,251 | 1 | .36 |
| Missouri | Kansas City (city) | 450,375 | St. Louis (city) | 350,759 | 1 | .28 |
| New Hampshire | Manchester (city) | 108,874 | Nashua (city) | 86,837 | 1 | .25 |
| New Jersey | Newark (city) | 280,135 | Jersey City (city) | 242,389 | 1 | .16 |
| Tennessee | Memphis (city) | 674,028 | Nashville-Davidson (metropolitan government, balance) | 590,807 | 1 | .14 |
| South Carolina | Columbia (city) | 124,818 | Charleston (city) | 110,015 | 1 | .13 |
| Alabama | Birmingham (city) | 229,800 | Montgomery (city) | 204,086 | 1 | .13 |
| Connecticut | Bridgeport (city) | 136,695 | Hartford (city) | 124,563 | 1 | .10 |
| Louisiana | New Orleans (city) | 239,124 | Baton Rouge (city) | 227,071 | 1 | .05 |
| Wyoming | Cheyenne (city) | 55,641 | Casper (city) | 53,003 | 1 | .05 |
| West Virginia | Charleston (city) | 50,478 | Huntington (city) | 48,982 | 1 | .03 |
| Hawaii | Honolulu (CDP) | 375,571 | — | |||
posted at: 20:33 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Tue, 20 Jan 2009
I thought the inauguration was pretty interesting. I don't think that it'll go down as one of the great speeches of history, but it was good. It started off pretty slow, with a fair amount of rhetoric that didn't seem to tie together very much, but it picked up toward the middle. I was also struck by a few specific moments.
When listing religious affiliations, Obama listed Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus, paused for a moment as if he were done, and then said, "and non-believers". This surprised quite a few people it seemed (and was the only line that triggered a sizeable cheer in my office). Having the President recognize the existence of atheists is almost unheard of, and really gives me confidence that he actually does believe in supporting everyone, despite the fact that inequality towards atheists still seems to be politically acceptable.
Obama also invoked science explicitly, saying that the administration will "restore science to its rightful place", and later counted "curiosity" among the values our nation's success depends on. I can't agree more that the eminence of the United States is due far more to its significant advancements in science and technology than on its particular accidents of religious history (as other administrations have seemed to feel), and that scientific capability is one of the finest products of a free society and one of the first to be diminished when our freedom is curtailed. Restoring the nation's freedom to pursue truth is an investment in our prosperity that will pay off for decades.
And while the speech is unlikely to be invoked during future inaugurations, I think there were two lines that had potency that will last beyond today, both having to do with foreign policy: his admonition to nations that blame their ills on the West that they should "know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy" and his mention to oppressive regimes that "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist". These are the kinds of lines that I love, and can have a lasting effect on the world.
The ending, I thought, was lackluster. Most of Obama's speeches have a strong arc with a flourish at the end, bringing everything together, but this one stayed steady throughout, covering one topic after another. That makes sense, given its purpose, but it made it less of an experience.
Altogether, though, a solid start to what will hopefully be an inspiring administration.
posted at: 14:23 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 29 Dec 2008
Following Jason Kottke's example, here is the list of cities I visited during 2008, in chronological order.
- New York, NY*
- Philadelphia, PA
- Chicago, IL
- London, United Kingdom
- North Kingstown, RI*
- Las Vegas, NV
- Acapulco, Mexico
- Oakland, CA*
- Barkeyville, PA
- St. Louis, MO
One or more nights were spent at each. Cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days.
The vast majority of my traveling was done early in the year and in spurts; the trips to Chicago, London, and Rhode Island had no weekend at home in between, as did the trips to Acapulco and Oakland.
posted at: 17:04 | category: travel | permanent link to this entry
Thu, 11 Dec 2008
The introduction of the R160s is finally making its presence felt in my commute. While none of the lines I regularly ride are getting any of the new cars, the C used to run entirely R38s, which are being retired. So, starting this week, I've been riding entirely on R40Ms and R42s (I can't tell them apart), presumably relocated from the N, Q, W, and other lines that are getting the new 160s.
Interestingly, it seems like they haven't quite gotten all their ducks in a row yet. The C has historically always run 8-car trains, but this week I've definitely run on at least one 10-car train and one 6-car train. I expect it will return to 8-car trains eventually, though (the C is a bit crowded at rush hour, but not painfully so).
posted at: 23:43 | category: transit | permanent link to this entry
Sun, 7 Dec 2008
I've worked on Constrictor enough that I feel confident in allowing other people to be exposed to it. Some of the details might not yet be in their final form, but I think it's in pretty good shape right now. You can check out the Constrictor area of my site to get documentation, which still a bit sparse, or a pointer to the code.
If anyone starts using Constrictor, I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences or any suggestions you have.
posted at: 14:18 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Tue, 28 Oct 2008
This site used to be hosted with Drupal, which is a very capable and high-powered content management system. However, I had always felt that it was a bit more complicated than I needed; I didn't actually know how large portions of it worked, and it had lots of features I had no interest in using but added to the complexity even if turned off.
So, after hearing about it from Mark Dominus' blog, I decided to look at blosxom. It turns out that it's pretty much exactly what I want: a blogging tool that's dead simple but very capable and extensible by plugins (I love plugins). However, it's written in Perl, which I didn't want to have to deal with. There was a port of it to Python, which would be my language of choice, but looking at the documentation, it's a lot more complicated than the original (the distribution has 72 files!).
So, long story short, I wrote my own direct port of blosxom to Python. I'm calling it constrictor, since the whole purpose is to constrict the feature set. I've always been a fan of simple, sharp tools, and having worked with this intimately for a couple weeks this fits the bill pretty well. The plugin architecture is largely the same as blosxom's as well, and as a result I've already got three constrictor plugins going: one for allowing raw python in the interpolation, one to disable posts in a particular directory from being displayed in the date-based listings, and one to massage my posts to add paragraph tags and such. Porting blosxom plugins is pretty direct as well, so I expect to have more shortly.
I'll be futzing with the layout and things for a while, but overall I think things are good to go.
posted at: 00:27 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Tue, 5 Feb 2008
I forgot to mention that on Sunday afternoon I also headed over to Buckingham Palace while I was waiting for a room to be made available at my hotel. Perhaps 100 yards away from the palace is the Canadian War Memorial.
In my view, the Canadian War Memorial is right beside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as the most potent war memorial I've ever seen. But where the Vietnam Memorial provides an overall impression of solemness, and possibly sadness or regret, the Canadian War Memorial evokes a profound sense of gratitude. It's a water cascade over a granite diamond that has images of maple leaves embedded into it, and the memorial is surrounded by maple trees. In autumn, the leaves from the trees fall onto the memorial and mix with the carvings. It's just stunning.
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If you're ever in London, do yourself a favor and pop over to Green Park, right by Buckingham Palace. The palace is rather nice to look at as well.
posted at: 06:39 | category: travel | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 4 Feb 2008
I have arrived in London, where I'll be working for two weeks. So far, everything is going well.
Immigration was ridiculously fast. I mean, literally, I walked into the room and up to an available desk. The immigration officer did the usual routine of complete non-interest except when I mentioned I worked for Google, to which I got a "Oh, mhmm."
The hotel I'm staying in is really nice. Probably nicer than I deserve. The mirror in the bathroom has a section of fogproof glass. I can see the top of Big Ben's tower and the parliament building from the window.
It's also creepy. The minibar is computer controlled. If you remove anything from its spot, it bills your room. When I arrived, I opened up the minibar hoping that it had space to be used as a fridge (it doesn't). About 15 minutes later, a room service guy arrived with a can of Red Bull and put it in the minibar, and he implied that they had noticed that I had opened the minibar but hadn't taken anything out, so they wanted to restock the can in case I wanted it.
I spent last night wandering about the Square Mile, which is also creepy after dark (5:30) on a weekend. Nothing is open, including museums and things, and you can walk for blocks without seeing anyone. I originally went out to go see The Monument, but it's closed for renovations for 18 months, so I decided to just wander about. Guildhall is really impressive, though, even at night when you can't go inside. In fact, the whole city has this really cool feel from being a mixture of old medieval architecture and beautiful modern stuff. Walking along a long slim overstreet walkway and looking over to see a ruined section of the London Wall is awesome. I unfortunately don't have any pictures, as it was dark and my only photographic device is my phone, but trust me, it's great.
Also, 140 London Wall is perhaps the greatest address ever.
Cars driving on the opposite side of the road are kind of unsettling, too. I didn't realize to what extent I have subconscious feelings about what direction I have to watch out for cars, but when you're walking along the left side of the road and a car whips by from behind you, it's quite surprising.
The London office is quite a lot like New York. My major impression is that it's smaller and has better junk food.
So, it appears that my impression of London so far this time is impressive, yet creepy. More tales as the trip progresses.
posted at: 14:43 | category: travel | permanent link to this entry
Sun, 30 Dec 2007
As I sit here in my parents' house on the last night before I fly back to New York, gazing into the thick fog that's settled over the neighborhood, I feel compelled to take stock of my life. The last week has been a really great time, and it's going to be tough to leave, though I know I have to. Knowing how hard it is on my mom doesn't help either.
Overall, I feel like my life in New York is pretty good. Looking at it from the outside, it certainly looks awesome: I live in a great place, I work at one of the most desired places to work, and so forth. But for the most part, I feel unfulfilled, and I can't quantify exactly why. Part of it is that work isn't that interesting to me; I work on interesting projects, but the complete disconnect from the customer dampens my enthusiasm dramatically. I don't feel like that's it, though. Hopefully I can find what I need to change to feel better.
In other news, there are some exciting developments on this side of the country.
My parents have a new cat, and she's absolutely adorable. Her name is Gina, and she's quite small, roughly 2/3 the size of what I think of as a normal cat. She's got plenty of spunk, though, as she'll happily climb up onto my (six foot high) bed or chase a wine bottle cork around the house.
There's a new Catholic cathedral going up in Oakland right on Lake Merritt, and it's pretty impressive. It looks to be about eight stories tall, judging by the neighboring buildings, and is faced with glass panels in a elegant curve shape with a angled indent. Andrew Sherman has been keeping a log of its construction with a large helping of pictures.
Speaking of Lake Merritt, they're finally doing planning and construction for the southern end improvements, most notably: redesigning 12th Street and Lakeshore, adding more park space, and removing the horrible tunnels that go under the expressway. The design looks really good, though there are concerns about the number of trees being removed (both there and elsewhere), and I'm not convinced that the new restaurant that's being put where the boathouse used to be will be worth anything. There've previously been restaurants on the Lake and all of them have gone out of business. I wouldn't mind living in a high-rise apartment overlooking the lake someday, though.
Also, SCO was delisted in the last couple days, though not as a result of low share price (which it was already under advisement from NASDAQ about), but due to filing for bankruptcy.
posted at: 04:43 | category: travel | permanent link to this entry
Wed, 14 Nov 2007
New York City has had direct current electrical service since 1882, but that ended today with the disconnecting of 10 E. 40th Street, the last DC customer in the city. Plenty of systems still use DC, most notably the subway, but ConEd has gradually moved the responsibility for AC/DC conversion to the customers, allowing ConEd to stop delivering DC power off the grid.
posted at: 16:04 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Wed, 29 Aug 2007
posted at: 17:41 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 13 Aug 2007
New Haven consists largely of parking lots and medical emergencies.
posted at: 09:31 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Sun, 5 Aug 2007
The God Plays Dice blog that I've been reading recently had an interesting entry on trying to derive the importance of intersections from a map of a city. The core observation is that a good first approximation of importance of an intersection is the number of roads leading into and out of it.
Manhattan has some qualities that make this interesting to ponder. Primarily, the city was allowed to evolve naturally until 1811, when the Commissioner's Plan set forth the layout from 14th Street to the north side of Harlem, and the most important locations in Manhattan (depending on your point of view) are split between the Financial District, which is unplanned, and Midtown, which is planned.
In the planned section, the given approximation works out well. The plan included one major irregularity: Broadway, which cuts across diagonally from about 77th Street to 10th Street. As a result, the grid section includes 6 intersections that have 6 roads leading into and out of them instead of four:
- 72nd and Amsterdam Avenue (10th Avenue in Midtown): a central location on the Upper West Side
- 66th and Columbus Avenue (9th Avenue in Midtown): a corner of Lincoln Center
- 59th and 8th Avenue: Columbus Circle and a corner of Central Park
- 42nd and 7th Avenue: Times Square
- 34th and 6th Avenue: Herald Square and a corner of Macy's
- 23rd and 5th Avenue: Madison Square Park, home (sort of) of the Met Life Tower and Flatiron Building
- 14th and Park Avenue: Union Square
All of these are major intersections, and certainly rank highly among the most important intersections in the City.
Below 14th Street, though, the theory breaks down heavily. The West Village in particular has streets going all different directions and includes many intersections of 6 roads, some of as many as 8. However, none of those intersections are particularly important to the city as a whole (though some have local importance). Partly this is because Greenwich Village is built on land that is unsuitable for large buildings and partly it is because of the history of the area (which was once a literal village for people who didn't want to live in the bustling metropolis that was lower Manhattan).
Perhaps the core of the matter, though, is that the importance of an intersection is proportionate to the importance of the streets that intersect there. Intersections with more streets thus stand a better chance of being important simply because there are more streets that might contribute some importance. In that manner, we could find important intersections by trying to find the important streets. Ideas for what features one might look for to determine that could include unusual streets (such as Broadway), streets which are further apart from similar streets (such as the Avenues), streets that carry two-way traffic (as these tend to be larger than one-way streets), and streets on the edges of major parks.
Isabel also includes a side note about subways and why she feels that Boston has a thorough subway system while Philadelphia doesn't. She compares Manhattan to Philadelphia in that the system is a grid, so there aren't "obvious" places to put subway stops, but that isn't actually true for Manhattan. The Commissioner's Plan designated fifteen Streets (14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, etc) to be wider than normal, and many carry two-way traffic nowadays (which is very unusual in Manhattan, even the Avenues are largely one-way). Because they're regularly placed and main thoroughfares, these became the obvious places for subway stops when the system came along. That's why there are 4 separate stops on 125th Street, but no stops on any of 117th-124th or 126th-134th.
posted at: 02:02 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Wed, 18 Jul 2007
The New York Times posted an article about the recent release of our product to hundreds of thousands of additional advertisers. Pretty exciting stuff.
posted at: 18:54 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Sun, 15 Jul 2007
Despite football (soccer) being the national sport of Greenland, they are not a member of FIFA. Why, you ask? Because it's impossible to grow grass in Greenland that meets FIFA's standards.
posted at: 12:30 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 19 Mar 2007
I Didn't Really Want It Anyway
I've never been so pleased to be denied a service in my life.
Thank you for your interest in Chase Identity Protection
What Happened:
We are sorry to inform you that we are unable to fulfill your request to participate in this program. The benefits of our product are based on the information and activity that takes place in your credit file. At this time, there is not enough information in your credit file so we cannot provide you with this service and you will not be charged.
So, basically, the bank says that they don't know enough about me to have any idea what would be normal or abnormal financial activity. That sounds like good news to me!
posted at: 11:38 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Sat, 10 Mar 2007
Oh noes, the end is nigh!
Yes, the British launched the first of the Skynet 5 family of satellites. It's rather amusing that a modern high technology product shares its name with the computer from the Terminator movies.
It's less amusing that people persist in accusing the UK of being arrogant or dumb, considering the first Skynet satellite was launched in 1969. Come on, there're plenty of things to make fun of the UK for, pick one that's actually true :)
posted at: 10:00 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 5 Mar 2007
"He's trying to phonetically spell words he can't pronounce."
- Me
posted at: 13:44 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Wed, 7 Feb 2007
Goodbye Evil Dead: The Musical
Unfortunately, Evil Dead: The Musical is closing. I will be sad to see it go, but hopefully it will find a home elsewhere.
posted at: 12:23 | category: theater | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 8 Jan 2007
My secret project is finally ready to be revealed! Behold, this xkcd comic translated into a Google Maps map! When I first read that comic and the the associated blag post, I knew the idea had a lot of potential for additional geekiness. Oliver had been messing with the Google Maps API the previous few days for an unrelated project, so this immediately sprung to mind.
The details of exactly what the map is representing are explained in the blag post, but the short version is that this is a map of the IPv4 address space. Each IP address is treated as an integer from 0 to 4,294,967,295 mapped into a 16th order Hilbert curve. The advantage of using Hilbert curves is that any aligned block of 4^n addresses maps to a square and any aligned block of 2^n addresses maps to a rectangle.
To build the maps, I wrote a Python program that reads an input file that represents everything that should show up on the map and then builds the images. Each record in the file contains a name, importance, a range of zoom levels to appear at, a background color, and one or more address blocks in CIDR notation. So, for instance, a record might look like "HP,2,2,,company,,15.0.0.0/8,16.0.0.0/8" or "Multicast,-1,-1,,metaspace,,224.0.0.0/4". The file can also include color aliases, so that I can write "registrar" instead of "#f5eecc".
The program uses the Python Imaging Library to do the drawing. For each zoom level, it begins with a 16k x 16k image and draws all the blocks on that, then resizes it to the proper resolution and tiles it into 256 x 256 images for use by Google Maps. I originally wanted to use a 65k x 65k original image, because then each address maps to a unique pixel, but in 24-bit color that comes out to 12 GB of raw image data. Not entirely surprisingly, trying to allocate that much memory on a 32-bit system causes Python to crash. On the machine I run it on, it takes about half an hour to render all five zoom levels, with about 90% of that time spent downsizing the most zoomed-in level.
The data is obtained through a combination of DNS and the various whois databases, the same as the original. In looking up the address information for the organizations I put on the map, I discovered a lot of interesting bits of trivia. For instance, neither Google nor Yahoo! is assigned a block that's /16 or larger. On the other hand, despite being assigned a /8 block, IBM has many other sizable address blocks scattered all over the IPv4 address space.
Suggestions for other landmarks to include or other improvements are welcome.
posted at: 00:38 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Wed, 20 Dec 2006
Oliver (12:39:43 PM): I love jared code. Oliver (12:40:03 PM): if (someterriblyobscurecondition) then do some retarded shit else do something bewildering . Oliver (12:40:09 PM): (that's pseudo-code)
posted at: 12:45 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Tue, 19 Dec 2006
Last night I saw Evil Dead: The Musical at the New World Stages. In short, it was amazingly ridiculous. The entire show takes "not taking itself too seriously" to a new level. The story follows the plot of Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2, with some of the most popular lines from Army of Darkness thrown in to please the crowd. Though the fourth wall isn't ever directly broken, the musical is filled to the brim with references to the essence of the whole thing (such as characters acting confused about the choreography they're performing). And everything is simply done completely over the top, from the incredibly campy lines to the coreography to the immense amount of fake blood and gore.
The writing in particular is just ludicrous. For instance, one of the songs starts with "God damn you bitch / You fucking stabbed me!", sung in full-on musical style. Everything is like that, taking every cheap laugh and stupid idea to its most extreme extent, which turns out absolutely hilarious if you're into that kind of thing.
In particular, the guy doing Ash is the spitting image of Bruce Campbell in almost every way. The only qualm I had was that he really can't deliver Campbell's lines the way Campbell does, but he tries to do so, which leads to a few lines (such as "Lady, I'm going to have to ask you to leave the store") that sort of fall flat. But otherwise, he's just awesome.
Overall, it's highly recommended.
posted at: 19:03 | category: theater | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 18 Dec 2006
Wow, it has been a long while since I posted. Here's a quick recap of what's been going on in my busy busy life. I officially received an offer from Google and accepted it, and will be beginning work on March 26th. That should be awesome. To answer the question I receive most: I don't know what project I'll be working on; after I go through training and orientation and such things, I'll be assigned to a project that they and I think I'm suited for.
On Wednesday the 6th and Friday the 8th I went to see New Model Army in Brooklyn and Hoboken, respectively, which was absolutely fantastic. I hadn't heard of them until Kat asked if I wanted to go, but I'm a big fan now. Their studio versions of songs have a different feel than the live ones, which I also enjoy but in a different way.
I'm basically done with school now, only one assignment to go and that's due tomorrow. Assuming I pass all my classes (which I can't imagine I won't), that'll be the end of schooling for me for the next while. I'm very much looking forward to it, homework is just incredibly annoying at this point.
I've been working on a super secret coding project that will be unveiled in the coming days or weeks, depending on how much time I get to work on it. It is far more geeky than probably most people will be interested in.
And tonight, I saw Evil Dead: The Musical. More on that in a follow-up post.
posted at: 23:08 | category: | permanent link to this entry
People + Stuff = Fun
posted at: 11:54 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Tue, 12 Dec 2006
"That joke had perfect forward comedy."
- Justin
posted at: 09:26 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Sun, 26 Nov 2006
I have the best family sometimes.
On Thursday, my sister needed some rum for her apple pie, and mentioned that she'd never tried straight rum before, so we gave her a little bit of rum to try, which was very entertaining to watch.
Last night, I'm not entirely sure how it started since I wasn't in the room, but for some reason my dad brought out a green drink that's basically Armenian moonshine and had us try it. That started a whole sequence where we poked through the liquor cabinet and pulled out everything we wanted to try and sampled it.
We ended up pouring samples of fifteen different liquors.
- Armenian moonshine
- Armenian brandy - The label on this was in Cyrillic, so I don't know what brand it was.
- Courvoisier VS cognac
- Hennessey cognac
- Napa valley cognac-like brandy - Since it's not made in France, it's not truly a cognac, but it's made in the same way as a cognac would be.
- Maker's Mark bourbon
- Calvados bourbon
- Peruvian pisco - Don't know the brand
- McCormick bourbon
- Early Times bourbon
- Jack Daniel's whiskey
- Canadian Club whiskey
- Seagram's Canadian whiskey
- Seagram's 7 whiskey
- Baileys Irish Cream - We all knew what Baileys tasted like, we just poured some because we wanted it.
After that, we finished off with tumbleweeds, which are ice cream, Kahlua, and white creme de cacao. Very tasty. Overall, my favorites were the Maker's Mark, Hennessey, McCormick, and Seagram's Canadian whiskey, plus of course Baileys. The Pisco and Armenian moonshine were easily the worst; those were incredibly harsh.
All in all, it was probably the most drinking I've ever done in one sitting. Once we were done, I had a good time annoying Coley and Melissa with my drunken ramblings in instant messages, which they seemed entertained by. I mentioned it to Kat and she thinks there should be a term akin to "drunken dialing" but for IMs, which seems reasonable.
I definitely should drink more often. For most folks the exact opposite is probably true, but I found that I don't really mind myself when drunk. I've always had this fear that if I got really drunk I'd become someone that I don't like, since I'm a very controlled person with lots of stuff I don't like that I've decided against being over the years. It turns out, though, I just do the same things I do when I'm tired (which generally means acting silly and childlike), with the added bonus of a slightly fuzzy feeling and a loss of motor control. It's actually pretty nice to know that I'm not some kind of angry or mean drunk.
posted at: 01:56 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Sat, 25 Nov 2006
Thanksgiving with my family is an event with a long tradition behind it, and this year followed in the same basic footprints as the others. Since my parents just had their kitchen redone, this year's Thanksgiving was held at our house. A total of fifteen folks were in attendance: our four family, our family friend Mark, and all the Pete Smyths.
I'll start off with the food, which our family does quite well. In all, the menu consisted of two turkeys (one barbecued, one roasted), turkey pilaf, stuffing, borags, yams, brussel sprouts, green beans, spinach salad, and Waldorf salad. Plus the usual selection of breads, olives, pickles, cranberry sauce, and the like. For dessert, there was apple pie, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin cheesecake. It was fantastic.
Aside from the food, pretty much we just hung around and talked. After dinner, in order to clear out the house a bit so that people could clean up, all the little kids, their parents, and myself went off to my old elementary school. I love playing with little kids, it's just a joyous time. I'm not entirely sure about having kids of my own, at least for the time being, but enjoying the kids of other people is just fantastic.
Perhaps most interesting to me about these kinds of days, from an intellectual perspective, is to watch how the social dynamics play out. Aside from Mark and the kids, all these people have known each other for somewhere between several years (for the spouses) to several decades (for the blood relatives). In a group like that, it's very interesting to see what the topics of conversation are, who talks to whom, who sits next to whom at the dinner table, and so forth.
Also interesting is the postmortem that always happens at the end of an event like this. Once all the folks go home, when our four family finally gets a chance to relax, we inevitably discuss all the funny stories and awkward moments, as well as the simple truths about everyone who showed up.
Overall, though, a very enjoyable day.
posted at: 04:25 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Sat, 18 Nov 2006
Today on the subway, as I headed home from seeing a show with my sister, a guy on the subway commented on the fact that I was only wearing a short-sleeved shirt and slacks despite the cold. This kind of thing just doesn't really happen to me, and it always seems a little odd when it does. I always feel like the person has some kind of alternate motive for speaking to me. We had a decently pleasant conversation, though, but the whole time I couldn't shake the feeling that he was just talking me up to ask me for money or try to convert me to his religion or something.
I'm not sure why I think that of other people. If I had to guess, it's probably because I've had it happen a number of times before. It just seems like I should give people the benefit of the doubt more.
posted at: 20:52 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Thu, 16 Nov 2006
My sister got tickets.
So. Awesome.
posted at: 23:33 | category: theater | permanent link to this entry
I got a chance to see Spring Awakening last night at an invitation-only dress rehearsal, because my sister is way better connected than I am.
The musical is based on a play written by Frank Wedekind in 1891, and it explores the sexual experiences of a set of teenagers in a German town that's heavily religious. When the play was originally released, it was banned in a number of locations, as it contains scenes that involve masturbation, sex, homosexuality, and suicide.
Considering how long ago the play was written, it's remarkable how well the messages reverberate in the modern day. The musical adaptation is quite faithful to the original; it maintains the original 1892 setting, and while it rearranges when some events occur, the majority of the content exists in the original.
The most striking thing about the musical is the contrast between the setting and the score, which is modern rock. The first time the cast breaks into song, the transition is really startling. The score is excellent, though, and by the middle of the first act the switches are expected and not jarring at all. I actually think the choice of score is a good one, as it helps show how the characters could fit in the modern day despite being set a hundred years in the past.
The cast for the show is great. The major characters are all incredibly good, though there are some weaknesses in the minor characters. In particular, the scene in which Ernst and Hanschen kiss seemed rather weak, but that may have been preview jitters, since this was the first time the cast had played to a full Broadway-sized crowd. The major characters didn't seem to have any trouble, with the climactic scenes being downright heart wrenching.
Technically, there were some minor sound mishaps, such as a buzz in a microphone or volume difficulties, but it was solid overall. The lighting in particular was exceptional. The design uses a number of different effects that are elegant while being striking, such as a set of lights that drop in from above and illicit an image of stars or fireflies. The majority of the show is lit more traditionally, though, so the new effects maintain their sparkle and don't overwhelm the audience with a "look what we can do now that we're on Broadway!" feeling. The set is sparsely decorated, but with a couple tricks I won't reveal that are nice touches.
All that said, I'm not sure how well Spring Awakening will play. It definitely has the potential to follow in the footsteps of a Rent or Avenue Q. On the other hand, it could end up falling by the wayside as another teen angst show. For my money, though, it's an excellent show that's well worth seeing.
posted at: 12:07 | category: theater | permanent link to this entry
Wed, 15 Nov 2006
"So they've got Spreadsheet, they've got Writely, they've got Calendar, they've got e-mail, they've got wiki. What more does Google need?"
"The love of a good woman."
- TWiT #75
posted at: 15:51 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 6 Nov 2006
Old Post: A Tale Of Two Transit Systems
This is an old post I made a bit over a year ago.
I just got back from a two week vacation, one week in New York City (sorry Ratty and crew, was with the family) and one week in London, and being the guy that I am, I spent a lot of time paying attention to the two transit systems we used to get everywhere: the New York City Subway and the London Underground ("the Tube"). I figured I'd throw my thoughts up here in case anyone is interested. I should note that, as we were playing tourist, I only saw a subset of each system, so it's quite possible that my experience isn't representative of each system as a whole. Specifically, I mostly saw Manhattan (most of my time was spent on the A-C-E, 4-5-6, 1-9, and B-D-F-V lines) and Central London (most of my time was spent on the District, Circle, Picadilly, and Central lines). I also am not currently a resident of either city, so I view them as a visitor rather than a local.
History: - The Underground began in 1863, the first underground railway system in the world. It used steam locomotives when it began, but switched to electric at the start of the 1900s. - The Subway began in 1904, using electric trains for its entire history.
Scope and Size: - The Underground has 275 stations and runs from 5:30 to 00:30 Monday to Saturday, 7:30 to 23:30 Sundays. - The Subway has 468 stations (35 less than the number of subway stations in the rest of the US combined) and runs 24 hours a day.
Names: - The lines on the Underground are named actual names (eg, the Picadilly, Jubilee, District, or Metropolitan lines), and the stations are (mostly) named after where they're at. Some are misnomers (eg, Mansion House station is actually further away from Mansion House than Bank station) and some aren't actually meaningful unless you know the station's or area's history (eg, Arsenal station is named after the football team that plays there). This definitely gives them a lot of character, but without looking at a map you can't tell if, for instance, Marble Arch is before, after, or even anywhere near Queensway*. - The lines on the Subway are named by letters or numbers (eg, the A, D, 1, or 6 line), along with having a color, and the stations are named after the street they're located on (if the line runs north-south, it's usually the east-west street, and vice-versa, from what I could tell), with an addition of a notable landmark they're located at (eg, 42nd St/Times Square station). This makes things pretty easy to figure out, as even without a map you know that if you want to go to 8th Avenue and 123th Street then you need to take an A-C train (which runs along 8th Avenue) to 125th Street station and walk 2 blocks south**. When lines of the same color run along the same section of track, they're commonly referred to in combination, as in the A-C-E line. As far as I know, lines never branch***.
Stations: - Underground stations are largely well-built and architecturally interesting, the southern Jubilee line stations especially are quite nice (being very new). Some of them are also ridiculously cavernous. In a couple cases, it takes three giant escalators and a network of winding passages to get down to the lowest platform. - Subway stations are pretty much just concrete. They all have a tile facade on the platforms that shows which station it is and is pretty nice, though.
Lines and Service: - Underground lines are quite annoying the way they're set up, if you're not a local. Many lines split into several forks, though each branch shares the line's name, with the train announcing where its final destination is. As well, you'll often find trains that only travel partway down a line, stopping a few stations before the actual last station on the line. Combined with the fact that the station names don't follow a logical pattern, you really need to look at the map a whole lot when you're traveling. - Subway lines always go all the way to the end, as far as I know, and none of them have branches. Lines are also classified as express or local, where express lines skip a number of less-important stations. Late nights, some express lines run local (meaning they stop at the stations they'd usually skip), but in practice that's not confusing at all, you just may end up taking longer to get to your destination than you thought.
Schedules: - The Underground appears to have a schedule that they follow. Each station also has an electronic display that scrolls through the next 3 or 4 trains and their ETA (amazingly, some London bus stops have the same thing), and it appears to be based on the train locators rather than the schedule, as it's quite accurate in my experience. Our average wait time for a midday train was probably 2-3 minutes. - The Subway doesn't appear to really have a schedule in the strictest sense of the word. It just basically runs under the situation that trains arrive when they arrive, and you'll darn well wait until they do, and that trains should arrive once every so many minutes at certain times of the day (eg, midday in Midtown, you should see a train every 10 minutes). Our average wait time for a midday train was probably 5-8 minutes, depending on the line. My sister and I once waited half an hour for an uptown C, but then again, it was 2:00 am at the time.
Trains: - The trains on the Underground are rather nice, with very little graffiti or grime. They don't always line up with the platforms properly, though, for whatever reason, leaving a gap. - The trains on the Subway vary from fairly nice to fairly grungy.
Street Musicians: Underground street musicians are a lot higher class than those on the Subway. Over the course of a week, on the Underground, I saw one guitarist, one flutist, two violinists, and one lady playing a french horn. You don't get french horns on the Subway that I saw.
In general, my impression of the Underground was that it was a nice, usable system that was fairly complicated for a non-local to use. My impression of the Subway was that it was a system that sacrificed character for efficiency.
* As an example, the stations on the District line between Earl's Court, where our hotel was, and Tower Hill, where you get off to see the Tower of London, are Gloucester Road, South Kensington, Sloane Square, Victoria, St. James's Park, Westminster, Embankment, Temple, Blackfriars, Mansion House, Cannon Street, and Monument. ** As an example, the stations in between 42 St/Port Authority, where we caught the C to my sister's place, and 168 St/Washington Heights, the station to get to my sister's place, are 50 St, 59 St/Columbus Circle, 72 St, 81 St/Museum of Natural History, 86 St, 96 St, 103 St, 110 St/Cathedral Parkway, 116 St, 125 St, 135 St, 145 St, 155 St, and 163 St/Amsterdam Ave. *** Technically, lines are actually sections of track, and routes are designations of pathways that trains take (and thus, a single line may service several routes and a single route may pass over several lines). In the local lingo, though, routes are usually called lines.
posted at: 15:32 | category: transit | permanent link to this entry
Thu, 2 Nov 2006
"They give you like 10 bucks and a pen." - Justin
posted at: 18:13 | category: | permanent link to this entry
Mon, 30 Oct 2006
One of the best things about being in New York City is the theatre. The sheer volume of it is just astounding. And being both a theatre geek and the brother of a dancer and arts organization employee, I'm fortunate in that I get a chance to see a lot of different stuff.
Today I went to see a reading of A Living History of Revivalism and Socialism Amongst the Harpist Community at Eminence, Indiana. In case you're not familiar with the concept, a reading is just what it sounds like. The actors sit in chairs and read the script, with a narrator reading the scene descriptions and stage directions so that you have an idea of what's going on. Obviously, it's a very different experience than seeing a show. It's much more like having a novel read to you than it is traditional theatre. It's also a much more intimate experience, since there tend not to be many folks there (this one had maybe 30 people in attendance).
I actually very much enjoyed the reading. The play is a small affair; there are only four on-stage characters, plus one more major and a couple minor characters that are only heard over the telephone. There are some sections that didn't work well, but mostly that was because they are clearly built for the stage and didn't come through with the narrating of the stage directions (for instance, when it takes several sentences to describe a movement an actor will take a couple seconds to do, reading the stage directions throws the rhythm off). The actors themselves were quite excellent in their roles, really breathing life into the characters, despite the lack of costume or makeup.
As far as the play itself, it was worthy of the treatment these actors were providing it. I don't want to ruin it, so I won't discuss the plot, but it brings up some very interesting questions regarding faith, the treatment of people as commodities or sources of power, and our view and treatment of history. There are a couple rough spots and areas it could be tightened up a little, but overall it holds together surprisingly well.
I have some doubts as to how well the play will transfer to the actual stage, though. As I said, the general feeling is of a small affair, a close look into the lives of these four characters. However, the book currently calls for fairly expansive sets and set pieces, and I think they'll run into difficulty because of that. If they manage to go all out and do everything, the intimate feeling of being right inside the lives of these characters has a good chance of being lost. On the other hand, there are some images in the play that seem to really require an expansive set dressing in order to achieve their full impact. I'll be interested in seeing what decision they make.
Overall, it was a very pleasant outing, and I look forward to the play developing further and hopefully seeing it again on stage.
posted at: 02:11 | category: theater | permanent link to this entry
Tue, 24 Oct 2006
The Dust Is Beginning To Settle
At this point, I've seen Kat every day since last Thursday, and I'll be seeing her again tonight. I've spent the last two nights at her apartment. When I walked her to the train station this morning, I asked if I was going to see her tonight, and she looked at me with this "Do you really have to ask?" expression on her face. Perhaps the best part is that we're both on the same page about the situation. I like her, and she likes me. She has a boyfriend, and she's going to stay committed to that as long as it's there. For the time being, the boundaries are set, and we're just enjoying ourselves within those limits. I expect we'll continue that for some time, too. It's really quite amazing. It's like the hot-and-heavy part of the start of a relationship, but on a strictly emotional and intellectual level.
It's hard to describe how I'm feeling right now. Obviously, I'm really delighted at how things have progressed, though a bit amazed at how quickly. Spending time with Kat is just plain fulfilling, though. Very surprisingly, I'm also not feeling like I'm missing anything. Certainly, there's a desire there that's unfulfilled, but I don't really mind. I've accepted that that's how it is, and there's nothing else to say.
Considering the level of bond I've got with Kat, I really feel like she's my girlfriend. However, we're very clear that she's not. I feel like I need to come up with some way to refer to her that indicates that properly, though what that would be I have no idea.
posted at: 14:34 | category: | permanent link to this entry