WhatISee

It's almost two months away, but two weeks ago I saw this in a store window. Crazy

This is from almost two months ago, but since I didn't get outside to take a picture today, I'll point you at two of the best ads in a long while. Bravia and Guinness

A new view from the renovated glassware floor at Tiffany's

We stopped by the Red Cat tonight for tea and dessert (Thanks Amy). I can't even begin to tell you how tasty the ginger snap cookies were. And the risotto fritters.

I've never been behind this building before and I thought the view was interesting.

On 18th and 5th, one of the old school Barnes and Noble stores is still open for business. It's mainly for textbooks and it shows. Long aisles of 9 shelf units with books stacked up on the corners. Little attention paid to decorations or people comfort. No cafe.

Sometime last year, I caught an episode of the third season of The Wire, by accident. After about 10 minutes I was hooked for the rest of the season. So when I saw Season One sitting on my local video store's shelves, I plowed through them as well. I probably should *not* have tried to do these at the same time as the story lines got a little confusing and overlapping.

Recently the second season came out on DVD and as I had caught some virus, I stayed home and watched a 12 hour movie. A very good 12 hour movie.

Why would you like it? It depends on what you're looking for. Great characters, making tough choices in a wavering moral environment. Good people doing bad things and bad people showing small moments of kindness. Mostly I like it for the large and the small reasons. The large in that the entire season is a story arc. Sex and the City had 4-5 character arcs but mostly each episode stood on it's own. And the small touches such as when they used the entire minute "intro" to one of the episodes as a practical joke gag. I don't want to ruin it for you, but I doubt I'll every see a series willing to spend a minute of airtime doing that. Probably because with HBO, they get 55 minutes per episode, rather than the 38 a West Wing gets.

And I like the way they show you something in episode 2 and all of a sudden in episode 8, they re-introduce it without explaining what it is. If you've been following the story, you know everything about it. If not, then it hides quietly in the background.

Anyway, well worth spending the time watching it. I can't quite believe I've put 30 some odd hours into watching this show. And I'm still waiting for the early part of Season 3 to come out on DVD. And I'm suspecting I'll need to watch the whole thing over from start to finish, just to catch the scene with them all drunkenly singing to "Body of an American"

Oh, by the way, you won't find tickets available, but there's a Unraveling the Wire talk tomorrow at the Museum of Film and Televison in NY.

In case you were wondering why so many people had dirty foreheads

On the way home from a doctors appt, I stopped in the park to check out the raising of the Gates. On the east side, I found this team. Below, you can see the row they built. Tomorrow, I'll go into more detail of how they did this with their amazing efficiency.

I made it a point to try to get to The Wire seminar tonight even though the main room was sold out and I was booked into the "overflow" room. I asked if joining the museum would help get me into the room, which earned a laugh and a suggestion to "come early, like around 5:30". It turned out to be EXCELLENT advice if you're planning on attending one of the seminars at the Museum of Television and Radio.

After the Jump: Will the series be renewed? Who loves Idris Elba? How can you get front row seats for $5?

The spice art auction was an interesting event with cool people. I could only stay for a few minutes, but I'm glad I stopped by. Thanks to Youngna for pointing it out

Kegger!

I wonder what they said to get this look.

It appeared most of NY wandered through Central Park today. I took two hundred odd photos which I'm still working through.

As a side note, I upgraded to iLife05 today, mainly to get the improved iPhoto. It can handle RAW files directly which is a cool thing. Unfortunately, it's just pointed out I need more memory to get out of Swapville. The best of the photos should be online tomorrow.

First batch of photos from Saturday's jaunt through Central Park. Of course lots of other people were out and about as well: Gothamist, Tien, Callalillie, Satans Laundromat, Bluejake, Lex, and Rion. More to come over the next few days.

Alan's Mojave Airport photo blog is chock full of great photos of interesting planes. Via Boing Boing a while back. They get an unusual number of odd airplanes at this airport., including the winner of the X prize last year.

Last week, I had a chance to watch a team put up about 10 of the gates. I always love watching a team of people in the groove, doing something well. This team of eight people (one of them stepped away before this photo) included an architect, an artist, a singer, and I believe a student. Oh, and the former governor of Texas, Ann Richards.

I really appreciated how well planned the exercise was and how well trained the team was. First they laid out the posts and crossbeams along the path, so that each set was exactly where it needed to be, but still out of the way of pedestrians.

They attached the crosspiece, using the buckets (with foam padding in just the right place) to keep it off the ground.

Ready to lift, they use the shiny steel device as a butt plate. It's what they pivot the structure on as they raise it. When the posts are vertical, the gate sits squarely on the device.

They then slowly slide it onto the mounting plate (darker with bolts coming up) which had been carefully levelled earlier.

And while part of the team applies loctite and fastens the bolts, the rest of the team takes the buttplate and starts setting up the next gate for raising. Each person knew what they needed to do, and did it without any one person being in charge, or at least not apparently. This particular team was very cheerful, eager to explain what they were doing, and conscientous about other park visitors.

I really enjoyed talking with them and hope they like the pictures I took of them. When I said one more angle would be good, Ann Richards good naturedly said "quick is good, we have more gates to put up.".

When they finished this row, they looked around, picked another section still to be raised and got to work.

Carefully levelling the mounting plate while others fetched more parts.

Breaking open the packing crates

Fully loaded up, pushing the cart back to the rest of the team

Aside: A workers take on his five days of gate raising

When friends were in town from Denmark, we took them to the Kitchen Club. These were suprisingly tasty fruit, as well as being decorative.

The owners bulldog stopped by to say hi.

Dessert with umbrella's.

Photo Friday: Ghostly a subway icicle with ghostly people

A nice reminder of Summer

Thanks to a pair of good friends for letting us borrow their window. On the last full day of the Gates, we wanted to get a slightly different view. I like the gates a LOT more with the snow. The contrast is more interesting.

Reversing the view

I had heard a few scattered reports of vandalism at the gates. However, we chanced on a repair, on the last day of the gates.