GlitchNYC.com

Getting it Out There

I've been listening to C.C. Chapman's Accident Hash, a new indie music Podcast, for a few months now. He describes his show as "the best mix in podsafe music" and boy is he right. My musical tastes are fairly varied, but I certainly found myself liking his "mellow" themed shows a bit more than his normal all over the map mix.

So when C.C. launched U-Turn cafe, a podcast with nothing but chilled, mellow music, I was psyched. Listening to the first few shows, I heard his call for artists to sit down with a guitar and a mic and just record something raw and fresh, and well, I went and got myself inspired.

Saturday night, I fired up my iRiver 899 and sang + played my heart out. The result is undoubtedly the most professional recording I've ever managed. This is slightly ironic because it was done in 1 shot with a small mic and a little device, rather than the hundreds of dollars of recording equipment I have ready for the task, and the hours I usually spend futilely trying to get a good mix.

I've also gotten in touch with some of my favorite indie artists to encourage them to join the podsafe music network and get their music out there for anyone to play. Edie Carey has taken me up on my suggestion, and her amazing music is now available there. Anyone can go take a listen, and podcasters can download her tracks to play on their show!

I sent C.C. my song with a quick message attached, and pointed him to Edie's music, wasn't sure if I'd get a reply. After all, C.C. is a very busy guy. Was I ever ecstatic when I read his email:

Ok dude, there is WAY to much goodness in this one single e-mail.

Thank you for it all. Everything is perfect.

I checked out Edie's music last night. I was editing together all sorts of music segments that will be played on IT Conversations stream of the Pop!Tech conference so I made sure to get her in there so that she'd have her first play and thus start showing up in the Featured Artist rotation on the site. Damn is she talented.

Now I need to find some time to do another u-Turn. I'm getting such great music!

I LOVE what you did with your whole intro and then the song. I need more people to do that.

PERFECT! Thank you!

-C.C.

That email made my morning.

Now, I realize, I have to get things ready around here - I don't even have a proper music page to point people to!

3:51 pm | permalink | /life/music | 0 writebacks |

Rochester Fun

We spent this past weekend in Rochester with Kate and Doug and it was amazing as always. We had a great time playing all manner of games, seeing Batman Begins at "the buck" movie theater, and eating some fantastic meals. The first morning we work up there, we were roused by the strangest music you could imagine. An eerily happy and jazzy voice sang "naaaaa na na na na" and was backed by a full orchestra, then followed by some crazy boppy j-pop (Japanese pop music).

After doing some of the morning ritual (my bag was still being "located" by the airline, so I basically just rolled out of bed and put on my pants), we joined Kate and Doug downstairs where they were already preparing us a great breakfast. The music, Kate explained, was the soundtrack from perhaps the greatest game to ever come out for the Playstation 2, Katamari Damacy. I finally got a chance to play the crazy game at the Museum of the Moving Image for a few minutes a month or so ago. The basic premise is that you start out with a little, sticky ball that can pick up things like paperclips and coins. As you roll them up, you get bigger, and move on to bigger objects (like tape dispensers, then toys, then you know, children, pandas, elephants, buildings, and mountains.)

We went out and bought the game later that day, and it's as addictive as it sounds. We beat the game over the course of the weekend, but the great thing is that they challenge you to do each level better, so there's still tons of playability left, and Sara is actually playing it right now.

Between rounds of Katamari Damacy, we played a little Halo 2, some Apples to Apples, a little Clone Wars Risk, Compatibility, and even snuck out to Vertex, the local Goth club for happy hour. It was great to see them, get to know their new dog, Benny, and say hello to their cats, Vega and Io (I have no idea how to spell this, it's pronounced Eye-oh, and he's the most affectionate cat in history. I was trying to write this post our last night there, and he was so intent on getting petted that he wouldn't stand for my hands being on the keyboard of the laptop).

• Katamari Damacy at Amazon
• Apples to Apples,is an easy pick up game that can go as long as you want. Each player gets seven cards with words or names on them. Each round, the "moderator" reads an adjective, and the other players throw in a card they think will match well with it. Whichever one the moderator picks gets a points. Very good for a quick friendly game, and tons of people can play at once
• Compatibilty a great team game where you pick what you think your partner will pick from a stack of cards, based on a different "topic" each turn. Great fun for up to 8 people in sets of two.
• Clone Wars Risk is a twist on the original Risk, with extra rules that would, in theory, make the game quite different. Not wanting to spend 30 minutes re-learning risk, we simply played with the original rules, and it was as fun as ever.
• View the photos - Ooh, it's album 100, neat.

8:58 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Three Droplets

Watering my plants at work left three perfect droplets on the waxy leaf of this baby cherry tree. I was insanely busy, but sometimes you just have to stop, take a moment, and appreciate the beauty around you.

This little trio sat atop the leaf until they evaporated, being perfect photography subjects as I snapped away. I was even able to get the Empire State building in the background of the last shot.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

11:10 pm | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Moonlit Clouds

Our first night in North Carolina was amazingly beautiful. The harvest moon was bright in the sky, illuminating everything in the eerie white glow that defines edges but fails to give you details or any depth to the world around you. The effect was much like looking at a frozen daytime, and I couldn't resist snapping some shots.

The way the clouds are rimmed with light here, masking the full moon, makes me think of classic old werewolf movies. I threw a lot of shots away, but these really captured the amazing brilliance of the moon that night. It was like a sun on a black sky.

There's lots more photos from North Carolina in the album

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

11:04 pm | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Sweet Fashions

Dylan's Candy Bar is a crazy candy store on 60th and 3rd in New York City. The store is as much about the experience of shopping and the childlike wonder of being surrounded by more candy than you could ever eat than the actual treats themselves. The posh location and expansive corner windows allow them to do a booming business and have inspired impressive works of sweet window art.

Since the "Dylan" of Dylan's Candy Bar is Dylan Lauren, Ralph Lauren's Daughter, it was only fitting that Fashion Week in NYC would bring some candied costumes, and sure enough, we caught the artist at work this past weekend.

The creations were amazing, covering a wide range of Haute Couture looks and even incorporating an actual Ralph Lauren design among them. Take a closer look at the pictures here. Everything, and I mean everything down to the hair on the mannequins heads, is made from candy.

Sweet.

• View the pictures
• Read about the project at The Costume Cultural Society, which strangely makes no mention of the artist, James, pictured above. The designs will be up through October 31.

11:10 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Coloring in the Lines

A few years ago I roughly followed one of merekat's tutorials and learned how to add some pretty good looking colorization to existing line-art.

I came up with this little gem, and it was (and is) the most popular thing I ever posted on deviantart.

Recently I've been reading and extremely impressed with Colleen's friend Kilo's 10,000 Drawings project, and decided to get my old skills out of tool-shed and see if they'd gone rusty. She's re-teaching herself how to draw by doing 10,000 drawings (as a series of slice-of-life and fantasy comics) and she's not even 1/20th of the way through and they're already amazing.

After finishing up the color-job on one of her recent comics, I'm really really happy with the result, especially the clouds and ocean in the "reveal" shot of the second to last pane.

I also got a lot more familiar with the free and open source Gimp working on this project, and I feel like I can do just about anything I do with Paint Shop Pro with it, although I'm still looking for the "lighten" and "darken" brush.

• Read Kilo's 10,000 Drawing project
• Check out Colleen's webcomic, Fluff In Brooklyn. Her photoshoot at Coney Island is featured in this comic.
• Merekat's photoshop tutorials will make you an excellent color artist in a few insomniatic nights.

12:02 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Weekend fun at the Bronx Zoo

We made our (almost) yearly trip to the Bronx Zoo yesterday, and it was amazing as always. I'm a sucker for Zoo photography, and I always take too many photos, but this time I had good reason. My awesome camera (it's a Canon PowerShot A75 if you're curious) has a great zoom lens, takes wonderful pictures, and gives me lots and lots of control. I'm spending most of my time in manual mode now forcing longer exposures than the camera would choose itself and then taking 5 or 6 shots until I get one in perfect focus without any motion blur. It really makes the colors pop and gives me lots of detail when I get it right.

The camera also allows me to switch to manual focus, and I've been bringing it right down to 5cm and taking some amazing macro shots (as you might have noticed).

I'm going to queue up a few of the best ones here in the blog, but I've thinned the herd a bit already and posted the better ones here

• See the photos

1:22 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Remembering New Orleans

One year ago this weekend Sara and I were finishing up our honeymoon, escaping New Orleans just before a storm hit.

We'd learned a lot over the course of our stay there and had seen how the city had been built to withstand (and rebuild after) storm after storm.

Exactly one year later, New Orleans is getting slammed with a category 5 hurricane, possibly the most destructive in US history. I was absolutely unaware until Wil sent his mojo their way tonight. Good luck New Orleans. Here's hoping everyone and all the wonderful history are still there in the aftermath.

"This is going to quickly go from a weather story to one of the biggest news stories in the world, certainly the biggest either of us has ever covered... Everyone's saying "I hope I'm wrong" when talking about this storm. The truth is that we've dodged this bullet so many times before, this is going to be the one." -WWL TV, streaming live here

...conditions are already deteriorating along portions of the central and northeastern Gulf Coast and will continue to worsen through the night. Maximum sustained winds are near 160 mph with higher gusts. Katrina is a category five hurricane.

Wikipedia's quickly evolving entry on Hurricane Katrina

12:59 am | permalink | /life/travel | 0 writebacks |

Spiderman, Spiderman, Radioactive Spiderman

Lots and lots and lots of spidermen, in the "crane game" at Coney Island. I think this one would make a really fun desktop background. The top left is even kind of dark and our of focus - good for placing icons!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

4:12 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Shattered Glass

Shattered glass on the F train. The spider-web pattern just looked kind of cool to me.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

4:07 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Photo Fun at Coney Island

Last weekend, a bunch of us went to Colleen's and then to Coney Island for some Fluff in Brooklyn fun.

I was hoping to catch Ravi the contortionist at the freakshow and see how he's doing but I guess that he's thought better of a career in the sideshow industry. According to the barker there, his wife talked him out of it. Hopefully he's pursuing college like he planned. I interviewed and photographed Ravi last summer after meeting him twice in a week by pure coincidence. He's a really nice kid.

This weekend, I took quite a few pictures, and continued on my macro photography and long exposure kick. You can check out my photos here and then see what Colleen did with her set in today's comic here.

Speaking of comics, I hear-tell that our friend Chris Moreno's real ink+paper comic #2 is hitting stores right about now. King Arthur Vs. Dracula sounds silly, but honestly, it's the first comic I've enjoyed reading in ages.

Well, 15 straight hours of coding an IT Help Desk system in PHP/MySQL later, I'm finally getting tired, so I'll close this up before I fall asleep at the keyboard like I did last night.

Before I go, I figure I ought to mention the amazingness that is the picture at on the right here. I didn't intend to do a patriotic photo shoot, I just happened to be in the right spot at the right time, and although I think the picture's ridiculous, it's just funny enough to be my new favorite. That, and I'm really still quite enamored of my tattoo. I guess that's a good thing seeing as I've had it almost 2 years now. I figure if I can make it to 30 without regretting it, I'll have done better than your average tattoo-getter.

"I do not regret the things I've done, but those I did not do." - Lucas, Empire Records.

4:01 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Seashell Cluster

Did I mention I was on a macro photography kick? I'm obsessed with the detail in this one. You can see every single grain of sand, down to its translucency and the little glint of light shining off it. This one will definitely also have a round as my desktop wallpaper.

Anyone know what once lived in these little shells? they were about 2 cm long each.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

11:45 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Vista

Before I even got 3 feet on my photo hunt, I was struck by the vivid contrast of the blues and greens in this shot. The sky was almost unnaturally clear and the grass was thriving in the sea-spray and the hot sun of the dunes.

I'll probably set this to my desktop wallpaper on my linux machine at home just so I can say I had a Vista on my Desktop long before Microsoft trademarked the word.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

10:45 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Beach Plum Blossoms

I was all set to do some snorkeling in the ocean Sunday, but it turned out to be super windy and the surf was up, meaning I couldn't see more than 6 inches in front of me. No go.

Instead I went on a photo-safari, and got some amazing shots of the different flora in the area, the dunes, and the amazingly rich colors of that sunny day. Check this one out in full res, it's all about the macro focus. I've always loved photos with a tight depth-of-field, bringing just your subject into sharp resolution, but hinting at what's nearby with fuzzy images and vibrant colors, and I spend a lot of time playing with it that day.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

9:45 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

The Sunset Panorama

This sunset in Cape Cod was unbelievable. Over the course of an hour, the sky turned every possible color,and some I didn't know it can do. In this picture alone, there's yellows, greens, blues, purples, pinks, and reds. It was even more stunning in person.

If you click the picture, you can see it in all its super-high-res glory. This was 6 pictures stitched together, and will be hanging on a wall here in the apartment sometime soon.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

2:18 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

The Photostream

I've been taking a lot of photos lately, and I'm really happy with how some of them have turned out. Since I've got my own webserver, I don't need to host photos at Flickr, but lately I've been jealous of the cool tagging, sorting, and photo-stream functions there. For example, check out the "cute" clusters to get a feel for how it works. Neato.

If you want to see the whole bunch, you can check out the Cape Cod photos here, but I'm going to be featuring some of the best of them right here in my blog over the next few days, as my own sort of tagging and photofeed, letting google do the sorting for me. If you check back later, you'll probably see a bunch of photos here, but those "reading the feed" (I recommend Mozilla Thunderbird or Feedreader if you don't have an RSS reader already) will get to play along as I pick my favs and fill in some details.

Enjoy!

2:17 am | permalink | /life/art | 0 writebacks |

Hello Dollar!

Well, things are a little quieter around here for the moment, but rest assured that I've got some stuff brewing behind the scenes that should set up the next few months rather nicely. I'm not one to hype things too early here, but the words Podcast and Invention have something to do with it, although the two aren't related.

In the meantime, I've been spending my self-allotted web-browsing-minutes nightly flipping through the Oishii feed, checking out what other people find cool enough to bookmark. HelloDollar.com is tonight's stand out for its level-headed advice on building wealth. Anyone starting to save (or struggling to do so) should take a look at this blog. In daily doses, advice like "Brown-Bag It to Half a Million" is actually quite palatable, and I like the Author's measured approach to building wealth.

10:34 pm | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

Dispelling Kitchen Myths

Okay, two quick posts in one.

First, del.icio.us has been around for a while, but I never really found a need for bookmarking things on a website rather than in my browser. I didn't really "get" it. The appearance of Oishii, which gives you an instant snapshot of what other people are bookmarking right now and how popular they are, made it all sink in for me. Just watching the oishii stream for a few minutes can blow your mind, as cool stuff comes across here just about once every second. There's even an RSS feed for your favorite feed reader.

Watching the stream, I came across "Kitchen Myths". I often find myself combating kitchen "laws" which seem dubious at best, and debunking a few of those was right up my alley. Definitely worth a look, whether you're new to the kitchen or know a few of these "laws" yourself.

12:08 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |

No Subway Searches

I've ranted nonstop to anyone who will listen about the inherent stupidity of random searches on the subway. I've gone on about the fact that it violates the very freedoms on which this country was founded, all for naught. It will not increase security, only create the barest illusion of it at best.

Luckily, I'm not the only one who feels this way. NoSubwaySearches.org sums up rants into concise arguments and distills speeches and diatribes into handy flyers.

Good work guys.

NoSubwaySearches.org

11:43 pm | permalink | /life/nyc | 0 writebacks |

The Final Table

Jon was still in the tournament (you may want to stop here and read part one if you haven't already, otherwise this might be a bit confusing), and the final table was all starting to sit in their positions.

The blinds had gone up all through the last round, and they traded up the chips, leaving the players with smaller stacks of big chips. The purple chips were worth 2000 (it cost $20 to get 2000 in chips at the beginning of the game) and they were spread across the table pretty evenly, save for the two giant stacks that came over from table 1. Jon had a purple, 4 greens (500s) and some ones. He wasn't the shortest stack at the table, but he was close.

He played it tight, as usual, and the blinds nipped at his stack, pushing him to action. He had 4 9, not a great hand by any stretch, but he was going to be all in here just on the blinds soon anyway. He flopped a match for the 4, and then hit the 9 on the turn. If it didn't move now, he'd be out of it.

"Once again, I'm going to go on record as saying I think this is a bad idea" He said, laughing, and was called by two of the players with big stacks.

The super-stacked bald man from table one was one of the callers, and was holding pocket 8s, and one of the regulars at the club was holding A 9.

Jon just needed to keep either of them from making another match on the river.

It came up Queen, and we both smiled. I think silently, inside we both went "YES!"

Jon did a little better than tripling his stack, and was now sitting even with just about half the table at 7200.

Play went around a while, and Jon finally hit again with "Miss Slick," K Q suited.

He called for about 4000, and it was again him and the big player to his right.

The flop came out 4 7 K rainbow, and Jon had paired his Kings. Not bad with a Queen to back it up.

The turn was a 3, and Jon checked. So did his opponent.

The river was a 9, and they both showed their hands.

They both had K Q.

"Are you kidding me!?" Jon exclaimed. He sat back in his chair, and turned to the player at his right. "I'm sorry, it's not at you," he said, starting to smile a bit "but that's just ridiculous, that's the second time that's happened to me tonight on that hand!"

He took half the pot, which was about 1600 more than he'd put in with the blinds and some early bets added in.

His cards got tough for a while, and the table got exciting. The stacks were trading back and forth, and several of the players made amazing comebacks from stacks less than the big blind. They played for almost an hour without losing a player. At blinds this high, that was amazing.

The even-keeled play gave Jon a chance to bide his time and wait for the right cards, and pocket Kings rolled up his driveway and honked.

He was all in after drawing another player in, and was heads up against Jack Ten.

There was junk on the board, and by the river, Jon's opponent was drawing dead. A 3 on the river made a pair on the board. Kings and threes to his opponents nothin'. He doubled his stack again.

The blinds climbed upwards every 15 minutes, and by now they were playing with almost exclusively purple chips.

Jon was practically forced to play pocket twos on the big blind, and turned up against A 8. We all waited as the flop came out 4 k k. Jon had 2 pair, Kings and Twos, but an ace or and 8 could put him out of it. The turn was a 7 and a Queen came down the river.

Jon had doubled up again, and the table was starting to thin out.

The blinds marched ever upwards, and ate away at Jon's considerable stack. By the time the big blind came around he was in for 8000, almost half of what he held, and he hadn't even seen his cards yet.

With J 7, he was drawn in for another 8000, and then finally the rest of his 2500. He was all in against the player to his right, who was on the small blind, once more.

The beauty was, the other player had junk too, in the form of 4 6. Jon had read him well, and gone in knowing it would probably be a fair match. The flop missed them both, then the turn came out garbage. All Jon had to do was survive the river, and he'd be sitting pretty to make some money (he was one of 6, and 4th or better split the nights winnings, up to a 1st place of $720)

The river came over in slow motion, and a 6 hit the table.

The other player had paired up. Jon was out.

Jon stood up and we chatted for a few and decided to watch the rest of the game play out. It was very back and forth now, and they dropped like flies after Jon went out.

It only took another 15 minutes for the game to wrap up, and Jon and I said our goodbyes. There was a secondary cash table going, but neither of us wanted to drop tons of money here tonight, and we'd had a great time.

We rode down in the elevator with two of the others from the final table, and all talked about how solid each of the players was and what a great group of people it seemed to be.

He and I were buzzing from the experience out on the street, and as we walked from 57th down to the 40's to get some food, we couldn't stop talking about how great it had been.

Over a late deli sandwich and a panini, we relived the week, and marveled at how filled and great it had been. From the amazing Aquabats concert when Jon arrived to the fireworks to his trip to Yankee stadium, to the RC planes, to karaoke and the diner, and now to poker, we'd filled just about ever moment with good stuff.

I crashed pretty soon after we got home, and we both slept in Sunday. Hurricane Dennis threatened to cancel his flight, and Jon prayed for it to happen so he could stay an extra day, but his flight was re-routed north for plane maintenance anyway, and he was off.

Now Sara and I just have to figure out how we're going to get out to California for our turn visiting.

1:18 am | permalink | /life | 0 writebacks |