The weather today was great (and much warmer than when I came here to interview a year ago), so I went to Central Park and took some photos of the autumn colors. It’s not like we didn’t have deciduous trees in Berkeley, but it was nothing like this. (And this pales in comparison to what you get in the more wooded areas of New England, but those aren’t half a mile from my apartment.)
The first of today’s photos is here, and you can browse them in my New York City set.
There’s a new section of Riverside Park South that officially opened today. It’s on my usual running route, but has been fenced off, so I was pleased to see on Saturday that the fences had been taken down. In fact, it was open to pedestrians over the weekend even though it wasn’t quite finished (they were doing some final landscaping yesterday morning). I was inspired to walk up the Hudson and take a few pictures, finishing up at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument. I didn’t actually take any pictures of the new park section itself, and concentrated more on the river.
(As an aside: I promise this blog will get less NYC-centric in the future! Most of my attention lately has been divided between exploring the city and starting my new job–and I can’t blog about the latter, hence the focus on the city. But as I get more settled in I will have other topics to write about.)
No pictures of New York City this week since I spent the weekend in New Hampshire… but I do have a few pictures of New Hampshire, here.
There’s a public art piece on display here in New York City in which artificial waterfalls have been constructed at four points along the East River, including one on the Brooklyn Bridge. On Sunday I dropped by the area and took some pictures. My favorites are here. (Best views were of the bridge and Pier 35 waterfalls; I didn’t get very close to the other two.)
Also, the sidebar now shows the latest photo in the New York City photoset, rather than the Project 365 photoset. I considered just pointing it to the main photostream but I felt some thematic consistency would be good. I’m hoping to post to this set frequently (ideally once per week) but I won’t be enforcing an update schedule like I did with Project 365.
While waiting for approval of my apartment application on Thursday, I took a walk around Manhattan (mostly downtown) and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge on foot. I’ve posted a few photos on Flickr, in my New York City photoset (which also has some recently-uploaded pictures from a trip I took in August 2006).
My route included the length of Wall Street; as the famous line says, it runs from a graveyard to a river:
|  |
I’m considering starting another photography project after I move, similar to Project 365 but with a lighter update schedule (probably one per week) and with New York City as the subject; that way I can document my exploration of the city. (It also gives me a replacement for the out-of-date Project 365 sidebar section; actually the whole sidebar of this page needs some work.)
I spotted this sign while running in Berkeley this morning, and had to go back for a photo. From the slogan it looks like they’re promoting energy-efficient home design, which is commendable; thus they probably want “quantum” to indicate “technologically advanced”. But of course, “quantum” also brings to mind uncertainty, which maybe isn’t what a contractor wants to associate themselves with. At the very least, I would expect Quantum Construction to be able to give a precise time estimate, or a precise cost estimate, but not both.
However, I assume their creation operators are top-notch.
It’s the autumnal equinox today, so the summer thread is officially outdated. Meanwhile, it is also thesis-writing season, so expect less interesting pictures as I spend much of my time in front of the computer.
I saw The Simpsons Movie today and found it quite enjoyable. Meanwhile, you may have heard that 7-11 had converted 12 of their stores into Kwik-E-Marts to coincide with the movie’s release. One of them is just down the street from my parents’ house in Dallas, and we stopped by on the way to the airport. I’ve posted a few photos here.
I looked up the tower in Wikipedia and found that it’s considered ugly enough to airbrush out of travel brochures. For shame! I like it—it’s like a red claw reaching into the sky. How is that not awesome? Wikipedia goes on to quote Herb Caen on the tower: “I keep waiting for it to stalk down the hill and attack the Golden Gate Bridge.” I guess that’s supposed to be a criticism but I would say that as an endorsement.
Anyway, here’s a new thread for Project 365 comments. Will it presage a return to regular blogging? Only time will tell.
The photos I took at Coachella are now up on Flickr. Here’s the set.
