midwest - transplant

2006-11-05T01:57:00.000-05:00

2006-04-23T16:38:00.000-04:00

Our dear Mr. Robot has told me he thinks Lincoln might be nice this time of year...

2006-04-12T20:59:00.000-04:00

I have a confession to make. I love haiku. Most (if not, all) of you who are reading this probably know already; you were all around during my college years when I was doing those silly postcard haiku clubs. I was so excited to buy my first Richard Wright haiku book so many years ago, This Other World, and it still excites me to read.

But what you probably don't know is that I wrote haiku obsessively during my third and fourth years of school. I wrote it while walking home late at night and while in the car on my way for groceries. I saved what I thought were my best ones in a little notebook I bought in Italy. And, for better or worse, I'm going to air them out here. Here are my first two from way back when, from the drivers' seat of a car. Enjoy.

In concrete we write
our names, scribbling in long loops
across the country.

He stuck his head out
and yelled straight at the girl
standing on the street.

2006-04-12T14:17:00.000-04:00

Sarah, you need to drop everything and make one of these. Right now.

via Whip Up.

signs of spring

2006-04-10T22:13:00.000-04:00

#1, a new Easter plant. Since I managed to overwater (well, somehow kill) the bulb from last year's Sun Star, I decided I deserved another shot at it. This time, the plants sold at the store look burlier: the stems are thicker, the buds are larger, the blossoms are hardier. It seems like it has a better shot at life. I guess I only have myself to blame if it doesn't survive...

#2, a shirt and tie for Ben, who presents his doctoral defense in a week and a half. I've been saying that this is ben's first suit, but that's not exactly true. Ben's first suit was in high school. But it's his first in that it's his first legit suit - his first "I chose this myself" suit. He and I shopped for the shirt and tie on Saturday; here's the finished combo.

#3, Tanqueray and tonic. The inaugural drink came last weekend. I don't know about anyone else out there, but I think there's nothing like gin and tonic in the summertime. There are still a few months before summer begins to peek through, but the first tank and tonic of the year still tastes sooooo sweet.

#4, blossoms in the backyard. For some reason, I've never noticed this bush. Maybe it's because it's hidden between the evergreens, in that narrow walk between the driveway and the back door. Maybe it's because I've been looking forward to this spring breaking more than most. Maybe it's because this time of year there's usually still a little snow on the ground, so going into the backyard doesn't seem so fun. In any case, it was a happy surprise to rediscover this bush on the way to the grill this weekend.

#5, this post. I started this blog about a year ago. Over the last six months, things have been busy and stressful; as you can see, I've hardly posted. Maybe no one's reading anymore, and maybe that's a good thing. That means even less obligation to perceived readers to some particular kind of content. Spring is about new beginnings, and this is one for me. I look forward to a fruitful, interesting summer, and (hopefully) new destinations and new projects. Stay tuned.

xo,
martha

2006-02-17T21:01:00.000-05:00

Props to my peep at RPI for completing room temperature tabletop fusion.

2006-02-16T14:06:00.000-05:00

Graffiti + Gangsta rap + Knitting = Knitta, Please! , a collective dedicating to tag the world with fiber, not paint. Hilarious.

2006-02-11T13:00:00.000-05:00

The Olympics have begun! Already I have a hot cocktail-hour date with Ben to watch the CDN vs ITL women's hockey game this afternoon. Congrats to Chad Hedrick for grabbing the USA's first gold in speed skating.

2006-01-13T17:26:00.000-05:00

So here's my belated holiday recap: I had a great time back at home (there are tons of new photos on my flickr page), and then hit the ground running when I returned to the D. A couple of projects at work are in full I-want-this-done-yesterday mode, and someone exploded a bomb full of clothes in the house while we were gone, so I've had to put life on hold to allow the disaster management crews to do their work.

And by the way, one of my new year's resolutions was to stop using the camera while driving. Oops, already violated that one:

2005-12-20T11:39:00.000-05:00

I hope I haven't alienated all of my (few) readers by letting my posts lag. You know how life gets sometimes: things seem alternately too boring or too hectic to share thoughts or photos online. Things are picking up (or slowing down, depending on your perspective), so I'm sure I'll have plenty to post about soon.

Here's a photo of the christmas tree Ben and I "grew," complete with Lego presents. Cheers!

2005-11-12T16:43:00.000-05:00

Here are some random pictures from this week. It's felt a little like April lately - sunny and warmish by the afternoons, but in that nervous, transitional way that happens in spring and fall - so I've been trying to capture some of that.

2005-11-10T15:00:00.000-05:00

Hot.

2005-11-07T17:53:00.000-05:00

An article was published in last month's Prospect magazine against Richard Florida's "cool cities" thesis. Too bad it wasn't quick enough to wake the Michigan government up to reality...

2005-11-07T11:33:00.000-05:00

Awesome painted signage. Just like Detroit.

2005-11-05T20:28:00.000-05:00

I'm 26 today!

2005-11-01T20:34:00.000-05:00

Ben and I took a long walk on Saturday.

2005-11-01T20:31:00.000-05:00

Meat! (xo, Jen!)

2005-10-31T13:57:00.000-05:00

I don't normally go in for Maureen Dowd (I couldn't if I wanted to, since the Times started requiring fees to read its op-ed pieces online), but her piece in Sunday's Times was really interesting.

I think most women can agree that there has been a sort of feminist crisis brewing: the twenty-somethings are by and large distancing themselves from (capital-F) Feminist imagery and ideology, and the fifty-something trailblazers are aghast. Many claim - and I think rightly so - that feminism is dead. (Whether it lives on in ways that are less superficial is another matter altogether, though.)

In her article, Dowd, at times, mistakes her own feelings of inadequacy for the failure of feminism, blaming not only men ("He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties.") but women too ("Many women now do not think of domestic life as a 'comfortable concentration camp,' as Betty Friedan wrote in The Feminine Mystique, where they are losing their identities and turning into 'anonymous biological robots in a docile mass.' Now they want to be Mrs. Anonymous Biological Robot in a Docile Mass"). Still, she makes some accurate observations about young women trying to recapture a false, imprisoning ideal of femininity and domesticity.

Here's an excerpt:

It was naïve and misguided for the early feminists to tendentiously demonize Barbie and Cosmo girl, to disdain such female proclivities as shopping, applying makeup and hunting for sexy shoes and cute boyfriends and to prognosticate a world where men and women dressed alike and worked alike in navy suits and were equal in every way.

But it is equally naïve and misguided for young women now to fritter away all their time shopping for boudoirish clothes and text-messaging about guys while they disdainfully ignore gender politics and the seismic shifts on the Supreme Court that will affect women's rights for a generation.

What I didn't like at the start of the feminist movement was that young women were dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. They were supposed to be liberated, but it just seemed like stifling conformity.

What I don't like now is that the young women rejecting the feminist movement are dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. The plumage is more colorful, the shapes are more curvy, the look is more plastic, the message is diametrically opposite - before it was don't be a sex object; now it's be a sex object - but the conformity is just as stifling.

2005-10-26T18:08:00.000-04:00

I keep forgetting to post about this. A physicist friend (and Ben's "competition," sort of...) told me about Cosmic Variance, a really interesting, readable physics blog. Although certainly written by and for professional physicists, it tries to focus on ways contemporary physics fits into the bigger picture. If you can read the New York Times science section, you can read this.

For me, the most successful posts are the amusing "reality check" posts (On Parents and Physicists / a cute encounter during a commute / and this funny one), as well as the ones that soul-search about the politics and meaning of scientific research (here and here. Granted, there is a lot of space given up to talk about pure, unadulterated partisan politics, but that's what the scroll bar is for.

2005-10-26T17:44:00.000-04:00

It's been grey and cloudy here for about a week; it's been perfect for moody black-and-white photos. I took these in an alley downtown where I parked for a meeting (a half-block away from Oslo!), and in the industrial complex where I work. I parked right in front of the aging Jewish Synagogue; I would love to see that place lit up at night.

Strangely, the clouds have broken just before sunset each day, so the scenery during the commutes home has been particularly enjoyable. Hopefully, I'll be able to snap a few highway sunset photos before the time and the weather change.

2005-10-19T21:27:00.000-04:00

TROGDOR the BURNINATOR!!!!

2005-10-19T14:09:00.000-04:00

Okay, sweet p. is right. I've been away and offline quite a bit. Now that I'm the only person who spends 8+ hours a day in the office, my responsibilities have increased somewhat, and there seems to be less and less down time at home. To make up for that a bit, here are some photos of our weekend in Detroit.

Although I'm here in the city every day, I don't often get a chance to explore and act like a resident. A handful of other shots are on my flickr site. One of the things both Ben and I agreed on was that so many of downtown's public amenities (Hart Plaza, the RenCen, Campus Martius) would be incredible places if they were located in a vibrant, pedestrian-oriented city -- a New York or a London. We were practically the only people out on the street on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Not surprisingly, Detroit is such an auto-centric community (bus services barely exist, no commuter trains run) that most parks and plazas are forgotten beside the multi-lane roads.

2005-10-03T14:43:00.000-04:00

Stephen Wolfram, author of the software Mathematica, has just started a new service, WolframTones, which employs fractals to "randomly" create semi-structured midi ringtones. The image above is how WT represents the constituent sounds of the tone I "made." Generally, the results sound like Steve Reich or John Cage knockoffs. But for $2, that's good enough for my cell phone. Be sure to play with the 'piano,' 'signalling,' and 'experimental' music genres.

2005-09-27T17:39:00.000-04:00

Nature rocks. I went to a meeting in the 'burbs last night, and got some cool pics. Bonus: an awesome cabbage fractal. (Man, I'm totally beginning to sound like Jen with this science/nature stuff.)

2005-09-23T11:14:00.000-04:00

Google Earth + National Geographic = Freaking awesome.

2005-09-22T20:25:00.000-04:00

Okay, okay. I've been a slacker lately. I'm even slacking right now - I'm on my computer when I should be reading my book that's just about due at the library. Anyway, here's something new and exciting: I love Tim Biskup and his wild, cacophonous work.

Back from summer vacation.

2005-09-07T14:32:00.000-04:00

I finally have my laptop back - oh, how I missed it! - and I'm officially back online. I know I've been unable to stop thinking about Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi since Katrina ripped up the Gulf coast; so many lives have been deeply affected by it. Here's an interesting wiki google map of damage done and slow-going repairs, along with an extensive collection of NOAA aerial photographs of affected land.

2005-08-20T11:36:00.000-04:00

2005-08-17T18:54:00.000-04:00

2005-08-17T18:51:00.000-04:00

2005-08-05T14:16:00.000-04:00

Sorry readers - I've been offline lately because my laptop is in the shop. Last Thursday morning, my laptop screen bit the big one. My machine had a few other (minor) issues as well, so a visit to the doctor was past due. Unfortunately, Ben's machine is also in the shop and work on mine is stalled due to a backordered part, so I'm not sure when I'll be properly wired again. Lemme tell ya - it's frustrating that I can't hop online for some quick information or directions. Anyway, I'll try to post a little more often than I have been so you don't get too bored. xoxo

2005-07-29T14:34:00.000-04:00

Friday fun: someone let loose 10,000 bouncy-balls all at once on the streets of SanFran, allegedly for a commercial. Wow. Via BoingBoing.

2005-07-25T14:41:00.000-04:00

This one is for Kelly and my sister. I had to drop off a package just a little while ago, and right across from the DHL drop box is City Knits. It's a good thing they're closed on Mondays during the summer, otherwise I would never have made it back to work. I don't really knit, but it's hard not to drool over all the luscious yarns they offer, and the buy some thinking I'll magically learn. Anyway, I'm sure there are tons of these pages around, but I found a handful of really adorable, free patterns via the City Knits site. The best one was this great bag. Also, I found an annual crochet magazine that I definitely want to check out - it looks like it has some great projects. I guess I know what I'll be doing once the cool weather hits...

2005-07-22T18:02:00.000-04:00

Cell phone cameras are the new toy cameras. I knew I had to have one after I heard about Sent, an travelling exhibition of photographs taken (by both professionals and amateurs) with their cell phones. I revisited their site today and was reminded how nice (and how awful) toy camera photos can be.

2005-07-21T10:40:00.000-04:00

Philip Stewart, an ecologist at Oxford, has developed a new representation for the periodic table (top image). Go here for a more detailed view. I want a copy of the Edgar Longman version it was based on (lower image) to hang on my wall. Via Slate.

2005-07-19T14:29:00.000-04:00

For anyone who is interested, this is why I want go back to school:

More map mashups.

2005-07-19T14:12:00.000-04:00

Google is offering free downloads of a fairly robust world-mapping software, Google Earth. This software, although fairly new, has already been hacked (by the appropriately named Google Earth Hacks) in ways similar to the mashups that I mentioned two weeks ago, making for more fun and really interesting mappings. Now if only Google would hurry up and come out with the Mac version of this software.

2005-07-18T14:40:00.000-04:00

After a week of trying to turn the conversation away from tech-talk at the Strings 2005 conference in Toronto, I'm back. Still, I can't seem to shake studies of motion and nature. I saw this really awesome video about "Chungian motion" last night - see a short excerpt here.

2005-07-13T09:57:00.000-04:00

I've posted too many photos to my old flickr site, so I've had to make a new one to prevent too many old photos from being deleted. So go here instead to view more travel photos.

2005-07-12T10:14:00.000-04:00

Saucier + Perotte, who designed the Perimeter Institute building (above), has a great portfolio. It's worth checking out.

2005-07-12T09:42:00.000-04:00

Daniel Libeskind (who won the post-9/11 WTC competition) is designing the new Royal Ontario Museum annex. It's under construction right now, they've put up only the steel skeleton. The skeleton itself is impressive: it juts way out into the street. I hope to stop by there again today and take some photos, but in the meantime (and in the future), check the construction webcam the ROM has set up on the hotel across the street.

Happy Birthday Penguin!

2005-07-11T10:27:00.000-04:00

I went to a bookstore in Waterloo on Saturday to pick up a Toronto guidebook. While at the bookstore, I saw these amazing Penguin books. As usual, they were wafer-thin and cheap, but Penguin has reinvented themselves for a 70th birthday series and have great authors and great graphic design. I was compelled to buy two from the birthday series (a tiny Jamie Oliver book of recipies and a couple of Zadie Smith short stories), a copy of from their new Great Ideas series of sumptuous letterpressed-cover books (a selection of these below), and their bookcover-design retrospective. Let's see if I can resist going back for more.

2005-07-07T21:52:00.000-04:00

This has been the summer to catch up on my vintage movie screenings. Instead of being a good girl and packing for tomorrow's trip to Toronto, I'm watching Bullitt on TCM. I'm always up for a good Steve McQueen movie. Bullitt's title sequence is really stellar, and it turns out it's by Pablo Ferro, who also did the only other title sequences I have ever bothered to remember: The Thomas Crown Affair (another Steve McQueen, the first series of stills above), Dr. Strangelove, The Russians Are Coming (above). Be sure to catch the short Bullitt movie on Ferro's site.

Internet Map Mashups

2005-07-07T18:15:00.000-04:00

There's a lot of hacking going on today. Google Maps and Yahoo are both now offering programming tools that enable their mapping services to get "hacked," i.e. programmed not only to display streets and highways but, for instance, to show craigslist apartment listings, or locations of crimes and police beats, or local traffic conditions. Awesome.

Via WiredNews.

Cell phone recycling.

2005-07-07T18:02:00.000-04:00

Ben and I both still our old cell phones hanging around, but it won't be for much longer. All of these places will give you cash and/or affiliate store credit for your old cell phones. They'll even pay for postage. The constituent parts from most phones can still be used, refurbished, or at least recycled, which all three businesses do. Via NYT.
RipMobile
Old Cell Phone.com
Cell For Cash.com
There is even one offered for groups who are fundraising.

Also, if you're feeling altruistic and willing to spend a little time researching, you can donate your phones to not-for-profit agencies. Google "cell phone donation" and your favorite cause, and I guarantee you'll come up with at least a handful of sites that will get you started.

2005-07-07T14:53:00.000-04:00

Okay, I know this reeks of the kind of self-esteem-powerhousing, managerial, self-help genre epitomized by my high-school health teacher's favorite book, 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, but some of the ideas presented at 43Folders, although obsessive, are actually worthwhile. Actually, one of 43Folders' founders coined a term and spawned a whole movement of on- and offline efficiency geekdom: Life Hacker, which is a somewhat more palatable concept for freewheeling types like me to digest. My favorite lifehack? The bookmarklet.

2005-07-07T14:51:00.000-04:00

To those who are wondering where I found the wishlist and flickr buttons, I made them. Sort of.

2005-07-05T21:36:00.000-04:00

I just returned from my first 3D movie; of course 3D glasses were required. It was totally awesome.

2005-07-05T14:44:00.000-04:00

You know, when I first heard about Make magazine, I wanted to hate it because I thought it was a better-publicized version of Readymade. But it's not, and I love it. It's published by O'Reilly - whose books I see on the bookshelf of every computer geek I know (including, recently, my own bookshelf) - and it's all about how to repurpose technologies and hack-your-own-version of a bunch of useful stuff. I just subscribed to Make's podcast, since it's less commitment than a regular subscription, and therefore just learned how to hack the firmware of an $11 disposable digital camera (whose pictures the retailer is supposed to extract and save for you - for a fee) so you can download the pictures yourself. Next up on my podcast playlist: all about biodiesel.

2005-07-05T14:39:00.000-04:00

An interesting interview with soldiers about their time in Iraq aired last night on the Newshour.

In Canada on the 4th.

2005-07-04T13:23:00.000-04:00

Ben breezed through town on Saturday/Sunday, and rather than dropping him off to catch the train in Windsor as I had originally planned, I decided to drive him all the way up to Waterloo and stay overnight. On the way up, we stopped at a McDonald's, obviously operated by hockey fans, and met with a sunny border-crossing. Once there, on our way around campus, we saw a dude covered in tattoos, then ate at a tiny Japanese-Korean place, and stopped at a convenience store run by a middle-eastern man who had never heard the word "utensil" until Ben used it and was so excited he wrote it down to use again.

Tigers 10, Yankees 2

2005-07-03T07:25:00.000-04:00

Mom, Dad and I saw the Tigers clobber the Yanks on Friday night; we left during the 7th inning stretch because my parents couldn't take the pain of the loss anymore. Needless to say, I was cheering on my boy Nook and the rest of the Detroit boys - they deserve to win once in a while.

A taste of summer

2005-07-03T07:16:00.000-04:00

The first round of blackberries are ripening in the backyard. Time to start planning when to make that blackberry pie...

2005-07-02T19:15:00.000-04:00

When I took Dad to the Chinese grocery, I saw these great cans.

How 2.0

2005-07-02T13:12:00.000-04:00

It turns out that sometimes my dad is way hipper than I am. Maybe it's because he still reads Popular Science (I know - didn't that mag die sometime after the tech boom?) and its new column, How2.0. The column is like a marriage of Readymade and Slashdot, or maybe a small-scale spinoff of Make magazine. It just gets the geek in me all excited. Here's some of the fun stuff listed:

For anyone who don't yet have a Gmail account (or those who have them and don't know what to do with all your extra invites), there are a bunch of websites that give away donated Gmail accounts. Here's one.

Convert your old game consoles into portable versions.

Send your camera (with some minor mods) up on a kite to take aerial photos.

RFID is sometimes really cool,

2005-07-01T23:20:00.000-04:00

especially when the responders are embedded in casino chips. And now Walmart is getting into the act, too.

Go tigers

2005-07-01T18:06:00.000-04:00

I'm @ tiger stadium watching tino hit practice homers.

Unexpected

2005-07-01T15:45:00.000-04:00

Found a great sign in the parking garage downtown; we also saw two really unusual felt banners by Roy Lichtenstein, Thunderbolt and Pistol; the detailing on the banners was really amazing.

I stumbled upon

2005-07-01T14:43:00.000-04:00

these odd leaded-glass windows when the 'rents and I were trying to kill a little time before the art museum opened this morning. We wandered around in the law quad for a while, happened to gain access to one of the halls and found these windows, each one describing some small-time vice. Along with them, each set of windows has a latin inscription about the basis of law. See more on my flickr site. They remind me so much of something Edward Gorey would do. If you're in Ann Arbor, they're not to be missed.

2005-06-30T14:34:00.000-04:00

Last night, Christian had a fireworks party over at his 16th floor, corner apartment in Lafeyette Towers (read: breathtaking view of the Detroit River, Windsor and downtown Detroit). Detroit doesn't have the resources to pay for its own fireworks, so Marshall Fields sponsored them until the Target Corporation sold Marshall Fields over the winter. So this year was the first year Target has sponsored the fireworks under their name. As some weird publicity stunt (I assume that's what it was, anyway) all the fireworks shot off during the entire 30-minute program were - you guessed it! - red.

MoPo

2005-06-29T14:15:00.000-04:00

This morning, the Beeb had a really interesting report about Japanese who write and read literature, especially poetry, via their mobile phones. The most popular is tanka, a slightly longer ancestor of haiku. Chie Kato, who is 21, has already published three books of her mobile tanka. A Japanese network has even begun a show where viewers text-in poems to be broadcast and discussed. Not surprisingly, literary critics are skeptical (from an article profiling mobile tanka):

“Compared with traditional tanka, these are not literary pieces,” Mr Inose says. “It’s like the difference between a beautifully composed photograph of a landscape, and the kind of snapshot which young people take with a mobile phone camera.”

Nevertheless, to anyone who text-messages me with a haiku or tanka poem: I promise I'll publish it here.

Rhizome 101

2005-06-28T14:43:00.000-04:00

Rhizome, a purveyor of "new media" and internet art and artists, is celebrating their tenth birthday by picking thier favorite 40 projects (10 categories, four projects each) stored in their online archive. A couple of winners: someone I knew at RPI, RTMark; and a remarkable hoax played on the city of Vienna.

Unless you decide to support Rhizome with a $25 donation, you won't be able to use the links provided on the page. Instead, googling the artists and project names will get you there, as almost all projects are available to view via other sites.

Disco Fever in Hyderabad

2005-06-27T20:47:00.000-04:00

ABC

2005-06-26T23:00:00.000-04:00

2005-06-26T22:57:00.000-04:00

Cheap thrills.

2005-06-26T13:30:00.000-04:00

I just bought the cutest book for myself - a how-to book about drawing trucks and trains from Ed Emberley.

Random Saturday fun.

2005-06-25T13:53:00.000-04:00

Mr. Jago makes comic-book and hip-hop influenced "street" art, i.e. he started out doing graffiti, then moved his work from the alleys and subway stops and onto the canvas. I sometimes wish I grew up in some big metropolis, so I could have cultivated this sort of drawing style for myself.

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A sorta cool (almost music) video from Richard Fenwick

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Queen Bee makes great vinyl bags + wallets - I would buy one except that I know deep down that if put myself up to it and was willing to fail a couple of times trying, I could make one myself.

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And last but not least, it's time you started recycling your inkjet cartridges. Someone always puts these dispensers in the USPS offices here around town, so the postage-paid recycling envelopes are always available at home, but I'm going to try to convince the boys at the office call in for the free large-size envelope kit.

Eberwhite and Zion

2005-06-25T11:18:00.000-04:00

I took another turn through Eberwhite Woods today, and saw the Zion community garden, one of a network of gardens around town. A few gardeners plant flowers; most plant vegetables. I took these one fall, when only the very hardiest plants were left in the plots.

Friday candy

2005-06-24T08:01:00.000-04:00

A couple of happy, summery illustrators: Naho Ogawa (bottom) has an adorable, carefree site (yes, I want to learn more languages, too!); Stina Persson (top), who loves Mexican cut paper and watercolors, has a more jet-set but no less sunny portfolio.

Props.

2005-06-23T20:35:00.000-04:00

One of my photos of the fire's remains has been listed on Loquor.

Rome / Detroit (Part II)

2005-06-23T19:00:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, Jen and I drove down to the site of Sunday's five-alarm fire. It was incredible - huge. I wish I had access to the adjacent warehouses so I could look down on the site; streetside, the piles of debris alone were at least 10' tall. The smell was as potent as the scene: a combination of stale campfire and rotting vegetation. I could still smell it on myself an hour after I returned to the office. Here are a handful of pictures.

! ! - Kawaii - ! !

2005-06-23T18:19:00.000-04:00

I hadn't been to this site in years. It was cute back then, and it's even cuter now. Don't miss the postcard office.

Warm-up.

2005-06-22T18:11:00.000-04:00

This year's edition of the PS1 Warmup pavilion, Sur, by Hernan Diaz Alonso's Xefirotarch, continues the PS1's tradition of sponsoring technically and formally complex design. Installed in the gallery's front courtyard, the Warmup pavilion provides shade during the day and a venue for their Saturday evening electronic music concerts. Above is a construction photo; the pavilion opens to the public this Sunday, June 26. [A self-congratulating aside: I worked on a competition entry for the 2001 PS1 Warmup installation, which made it to the final round of votes.]

Athens, Rome, Ephesus, Detroit.

2005-06-22T14:43:00.000-04:00

On Sunday night, a five-alarm fire began in a former Studebaker plant just up the street from where I work. As I write - almost three days later - fire crews are still hosing the place down. When the fire began, the five-story warehouse (as it is used now) was more than half empty, typical of most large buildings in Detroit (including the 2,000,000 [yes, million] square-foot complex I work in). Detroit is a void of a city - the city proper is populated densely by abandoned turn-of-the-century buildings. For those who haven't seen it for themselves, go here. And then take out the book Stalking Detroit.

...and Pond-sick.

2005-06-22T08:09:00.000-04:00

Between watching the Thai music video show What's Up Thailand, (where I saw a song from Penguin Villa that reminded me of the old Pond-ster) and getting an email this morning from Jeremi with a link to all his photos of his trip through BKK, made me all nostalgic for my man Pond.

Homesick

2005-06-21T09:31:00.000-04:00

I had the pleasure of jogging on the trails in Eberwhite Woods this morning, and made me wish I was home in amongst the Catskills.

I'm going for a movie a night.

2005-06-20T21:30:00.000-04:00

Tonight, another interesting piece via azntv: Platform, directed by Jia Zhang-ke, a spare, quiet movie about the incremental but radical changes happening in the Shangxi province of 1980s China. The digital filming and remarkably long span between cuts enhances its beautiful, gritty scenery.

2005-06-19T22:40:00.000-04:00

Looks like Teddy's peeps over at E-Ink have been busy playing around with watches, clocks, and "electronic paper" displays.

The freaking awesomest

2005-06-19T17:47:00.000-04:00

big-budget movie of the year is Batman Begins. It's the least campy action flick I've seen in ages - I thought it was even better than Spiderman. But to make up for all that lack of camp, I came out with a crush on Christian Bale. That said, I couldn't stop thinking that they made up Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) to look exactly like Ned Flanders.

Hipster origami

2005-06-19T08:36:00.000-04:00

I've always thought something like this aught to be out there. Someone has even set up a companion case generator: you input the tracklisting of your CD and it writes a pdf for you to print, complete with the origami fold marks. For Mac users, there's even a script for iTunes that auto-fills the tracklisting form with your playlist information. Why am I not surprised the pdf generator people are at U of M?

After lunch

2005-06-18T14:51:00.000-04:00

2005-06-18T10:05:00.000-04:00

This is what happens when Josh forgets that chairs have legs for a reason.

...After catching up with the 60+ taps at Ashley's.

Residues

2005-06-12T20:02:00.000-04:00

I tried to hit a ball around in the raquetball courts earlier this week, but realized it was neither fun nor safe for me to play with fast-moving objects before 9am. When I got frustrated, I snapped some photos of the walls tatooed from previous games.

In the park...

2005-06-12T19:58:00.000-04:00

I tried to get a tan on Saturday, but a sudden downpour and thunderstorm required a change of plans.

Killing Some Time at Tsai Grocery

2005-06-12T19:50:00.000-04:00

Wordhunting

2005-06-11T21:49:00.000-04:00

The BBC is teaming up with the OED to uncover the origin of some modern words (a sampling of those with mysterious origins: mullet, tikka masala, ditsy, nerd). Anyone have any early William Gibson manuscripts lying around to confirm the origin of "cyberspace"?

This just in from Ben @ TASI

2005-06-09T17:48:00.000-04:00

"Yesterday we had quite a shock here. A herd of around 600-800
12-18 year old girls showed up for cheerleading camp. So, not only is
there the usual clamor associated with large groups of closely
acquainted teenage girls, there are also pre-arranged shouts and
chants that they are continuously practicing. Needless to say, the
atmosphere has changed. Although it can be annoying, it's
lightened everyone's mood. It's like a big running joke that no one
has to tell. At least they aren't anywhere in the building where
we're staying, but they're housed only about 40 yards away,
and insist on continuing chants as they go."

More statistics.

2005-06-09T14:44:00.000-04:00

This is a followup to gianni's post from Monday regarding the costs of war. Every two weeks or so an email is sent to my old Wayne State account from the WSU Facilities Manager announcing Governor Granholm's ordering a flag lowered for a fallen Michigan soldier. I've recieved 20 or so in the last 8 months. I suppose that's a pretty good average - just over 2 fallen soldiers a month - but multiply that for every state, and you get 1000 deaths over the last 8 months. Wow. Now multiply that by 44.

Just heard the most amazing statistic:

2005-06-09T14:28:00.000-04:00

$1400 of every GM vehicle pays for company health care costs. Via the Detroit News and Diane Rehm.

For Ben,

2005-06-07T21:03:00.000-04:00

Who missed his fave horror man, who I just learned was born in a 'burb of Detroit, doing a weird appearance on cable tonight.

I promise...

2005-06-07T14:15:00.000-04:00

this is the last time I'll talk about the CBC. I just can't get over the fact that you can hear indie stuff on a non-college radio during normal hours. Anyway, they just started a podcast, so you can listen to a weekly selection from the 8-hours or so that they're on air. The good thing is that you don't need an ipod to listen; a simple MP3 jukebox will work. You do need a subscription feeding program, though. Here are the details, courtesy of the Radio 3 playlist:

Here’s how you can check out the new CBC Radio 3 podcast:

1.To begin accessing CBC Radio 3 podcasts, you'll need a computer, internet access, and a media player that supports the mp3 file format; for example, iTunes.
2.Download a podcasting client. There are a number of choices:

http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/index.php
http://ipodderx.com/
http://www.dopplerradio.net/
http://www.nimiq.nl/

3.In your podcasting client, click the option to add a new feed.
4.When it asks for the address of the new feed to be added, paste this Radio 3 URL into the client:

http://www.cbcradio3.com/podcast/

5.In your podcasting client, check for podcast updates and the Radio 3 podcast will soon be on its way to your computer.
6.If you have an MP3 player, connect it to your computer. The new Radio 3 podcast will automatically be transferred to your player.

2005-06-06T21:58:00.000-04:00

Ben left for Boulder on Saturday, and in July we're scheduled to spend a week in Toronto, so I've got travel on the brain. I rediscovered Flight 001 recently and it'll be tough not to spend all my money before I even leave the country.

2005-06-06T21:52:00.000-04:00

In case you couldn't tell, I love photography. Most people who know me understand my obsession with nice graphics; photography is a way to instantly gratify it. However, I rarely take photographs to document some occasion (my wedding photos are stuffed in a drawer somewhere; I barely care that I have them). So, I love the Lomographic Society. They manufacture and promote "toy" cameras, i.e. cheaply made plastic cameras whose poor-quality photographs enhance their graphic nature: the results are oddly exposed or multi-lensed or artificially colored, etc. I own a yellow SuperSampler, which I love. But I've grown used to the cheap, instantaneous, disposable nature of digital photographs (who needs to pay and wait for film and processing when you can pay upfront for a digital memory card? And it doesn't help that there is a cheap, archival-quality processing service available online for digital photos) so it's become harder and harder for me to love traditional film cameras, although I'm entirely in love with the toy camera photographs.

But maybe there's some middle ground. Last week I was admiring the Lomo Fisheye camera, but I gave up on it because I'm not willing to shell out the cash knowing the burden I'd have to bear buying film and wasting some of it on bad photos. I also recently upgraded my digital camera (I love my old digicam, but it has a low megapixel rating, which means the photos I take are necessarily small. It's physically big and bulky, too, so you can't really toss the camera in a pocket and bring it everywhere in the way you can the new elph). And then it dawned on me: my old digicam had a nice enough lens that it might just be interchangable, which means I could use it as a toy camera free from needing film. It turns out that, with a just a lens converter ring, I can attach a cheap fisheye lens and convert my nice digicam to a fisheye. So I guess don't be surprised if you see some fisheyes appearing over the next couple of months... Yippee!

2005-06-06T21:31:00.000-04:00

A Bollywood music video and a surprise day off.

Playoff

2005-06-06T21:30:00.000-04:00

I went to my first sports bar on Saturday and watched Detroit win Game 6.

2005-06-03T17:15:00.000-04:00

It's way too easy to geek out on Google's site. I just spent the last hour getting lost in there. I think I should have been a librarian - I am endlessly fascinated by how large bodies of information are organized and coordinated (yes, I love hanging out in libraries).

My newest discovery is Google Zeitgeist, which tracks the popularity of searched phrases and people. Google's blog is pretty cool, especially if you like geeking out about new internet features.

Michigan

2005-05-31T14:03:00.000-04:00

Here are some more photos from the weekend, including The Man tending his manly grill full of meat worthy of a healthy man.

2005-05-30T18:02:00.000-04:00

This was our happy Sunday dinner, just before it hit the grill and just before the rain hit us.

This one's for sweet p

2005-05-28T21:24:00.000-04:00

On our long walk around town, we stopped by Vintage to Vogue, where there were all these super-cute handbags (so cute that even Ben thought I needed one). Too bad they're so expensive. I guess I'll have to settle for the pretty pics on the site.

2005-05-28T20:39:00.000-04:00

I've been a little preoccupied by trying to set up a podcast, and I've been a little under the gun at work, so I haven't had much time to post. But Ben and I walked all around town today while I reacquainted myself with my camera (which came back from the repair center this week). So enjoy the photos.