04.29.06
Posted in Photos at 12:50 am by Aaron
Back in the Halcyon days, before Laura was too pregnant to go for long walks, we would go uptown to Central Park on the weekends to stroll around and sip on coffee. One of the first times we went, I noticed the incredible elm trees, with their twisted limbs, and I wanted badly to go back an get them on film before they got their leaves back.
The angles they go at are so improbable that you can’t help but become captivated by them, especially with so many this close together.
Central Park was also a wonderful place for us simply because – if we wanted a dose of the outdoors – there was nowhere else to go. I can’t think of many other places in Manhattan where we could see a tree like this…
And finally, what would Central Park be without its statues and the sense of history and pride that permeates the place. I loved the action of this statue, and the amazing shadows that were being cast by that time (late afternoon) in the park.
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Posted in Photos at 12:31 am by Aaron
I love this shot…I couldn’t help but take it when I saw the scene. There was something about the drab repitition of the buildings that made them seem so bleak.
These buildings are just north of the Brooklyn bridge in Manhattan.
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Posted in Photos at 12:12 am by Aaron
At long last I (read: Laura) got my film developed. The shots off of this roll represent some of my first stabs with B/W…and it was a lot of fun. This city seems to lend itself well to the medium.
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04.25.06
Posted in Life at 11:28 pm by Aaron
In my mental list of “wrong turns”, a certain detour in New Orleans sticks out in my mind. Laura and I were driving around in the city, trying to make heads or tails of a map and having a – let’s say – mild disagreement about which way was the right way.
“Just turn here!” Laura snapped at me (lovingly).
I wrenched the wheel and we pulled onto a sidestreet in, it appeared, Mogadishu. Both Laura and I went dead silent, our differences forgotten as we fumbled to lock the car doors as nonchalantly as we could. There was no doubt that we had taken a “wrong turn”. The streets were not just lined with trash, but with rubble, and – I swear – there was a burning oil drum off to one side of the road. The buildings were boarded up and defaced and people were just milling about in the streets, heads turning as our Ontario license plates rolled by.
Lets just say that we didn’t even take the ’stop’ signs under advisement until we were long out of there.
That was in a car.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of repeating that experience right here in New York…only on foot.
Yes, yesterday I was out a-walkin’ with a friend from out of town when we found ourselves at a dead end. Of course I had noticed that the streets had been getting progressively more garbage strewn and that there was less and less wall visible beneath the layers of graffiti (some of it was, admittedly, cool), but it wasn’t until we came out on that particular street corner that I fully realized the extent of our blunder.
To our left was a small group of men just hanging out on the corner, one of them sitting on an overturned plastic bucket and the others just horsing around. The three went quiet when they saw us, and watched us pass in that particular way that tells you you don’t look like you’re “from around” there. I tried not to look around too much, but did notice that across the street, standing around in front of one of the project buildings was the first gang I’ve seen here.
When we were out of earshot of the three guys, I confided to Nico that I wanted to get the hell out of there, and was affirmed yet mildly alarmed to hear that he had come to the same conclusion.
It’s amazing how much difference a block can make. I don’t think I really breathed again until we got onto East Houston again, and within another block, I felt sufficiently safe to take this picture (sorry, no pix of the gang members).
Yeah, this car represents the nice part of this neighbourhood.
So note to self: though graffiti does represent an interesting form of urban artistic expression, one should not become completely oblivious of the other things it can represent when one is appreciating it. In such cases, context is everything.
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04.24.06
Posted in Random at 10:54 am by Aaron
I was talking on the phone, pacing back and forth as I am wont to do, when I heard some sirens blaring outside. That, in itself, is none too unusual. But as I chatted on, I went over to the window to see the day unfolding outside.
And then I saw where the noise was coming from. What I saw was something straight out of the “Blues Brothers”; a comical scene of so many police cars “in pursuit” that they had created a traffic jam.
Very strange. I wonder if they caught the guy. But it leaves me wondering; if a police car, with its lights going, is blocking the way for another police car with its lights going, who pulls over for whom?
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Posted in Life at 9:15 am by Aaron
I got back to NY yesterday and found myself gawking at all the buildings all over again. Laura, Melissa and I went for dinner last night, and the whole way as we walked I kept interrupting to point out some building or another to mention how cool it looked in the gathering mist.
There was a particularly nice sunset, with the sun peeking in and out of the storm clouds that were coming in on the city. I shot this picture out the window just before dinner. I love how the buildings in the background were just silhouettes from the mist that was settling.
It’s good to be back and to see Laura, who’s just a little bit bigger and a little bit slower than she was when I left. This trip marked the last one I’ll be going on until the baby’s born, as I’m not taking any out of town work in May. Now we wait!
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04.18.06
Posted in Life at 8:03 pm by Aaron
There’s really no denying that it’s not long now before we have a little guest come visit…this is Laura as of a couple of days ago.
Pretty exciting!
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04.17.06
Posted in Nerdy at 6:09 pm by Aaron
Nothing says “not enough time to fix my mess” like a template. What scared me about the traffic accident that was my first attempt at messing with Wordpress was that I was starting to get used to it.
I’m heading up to Ottawa this week, which I imagine will be the last time that I’ll leave town before Ethan is born, as Laura is getting into that stage of pregnancy where “the big day” could happen at any time. I took a great picture of Laura yesterday which I’ll put up when I get a second.
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04.10.06
Posted in Nerdy at 4:41 pm by Aaron
Okay, so this is certainly what I would call a halfway job. I admit, the site looks like crap right now, but at this point we’ll just call it a “learning experience”. As I figure out how to play with WordPress, I’d say that I’m not so much designing this site as I am hacking it. I think I’ve figured out enough, though, that I can make a second run at it and get it to come out okay…I’ve been systematically breaking bits of the code to see what happens, and here you can see the result!
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Posted in Nerdy at 10:36 am by Aaron
Today I’m going to take a crack at customizing the look of this blog, which looks like it might not be as difficult as I thought. It seems to involve a lot of css and php…neither of which I know that well, but seeing as some snarky people seem to take issue with the look of the site (I’m looking at you, Brooks), I don’t see that I have any choice [sigh].
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04.09.06
Posted in Life at 11:05 am by Aaron
I came back from Ottawa last night and was able to enjoy the joys of air travel yet again. The guy at immigration decided it was high time I got a lecture on what kind of visa I should have (I had two, which upset him greatly) before tearing up one of them. The trouble is, he didn’t really know what he was talking about, but I thought the timing was bad for me to point that out (I kept the better of the two visas, thankfully).
Thinking that I was through the thick of it after that, I headed for the security checkpoint. Now normally, I’m pretty good at this, and I’ve half stripped myself by the time I walk through the metal detector. Unfortunately for me, I’ve got a nasty head cold, and I wasn’t really thinking very well…leading me to walk through still wearing my watch. Sweet. So then they busted out the detector wand to give me a going over, which seemed to take for ever and involved me having to undo my pants (no probes, luckily!).
“Ready to head to the gates!” thought I, but alas; they had other plans. I reached for my stuff, only to be told that they needed to do a full manual search of me and my bags. Why, you may ask?
They found traces of plastic explosives in my bag.
Ahhh, nuts. After quizzing me about whether or not I was in the military, whether I had been to any industrial or chemical sites or whether I had certain kinds of medication with me, I had to sign some documents I didn’t get the chance to read before they tore up my stuff and patted me down.
I got out eventually, but what made me wonder most was how the hell I had traces of plastic explosives on my stuff. It’s not like that’s exactly common (which was why the security people were so sketched out).
Who knew travelling could be so much fun?
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04.06.06
Posted in Nerdy at 9:30 am by Aaron
Okay, so maybe this is more for my reference than for anyone else’s, but there’s a pretty handy colour wheel page here that lets you play with colours and test if they’re web safe. Very handy.
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04.02.06
Posted in Random at 4:53 pm by Aaron
I just finished working an event last week, and now find myself back in the land of the living. Long days and late nights, for some reason, seem to interfere with my blogging. Go figure.
I’ll be swinging up to Ottawa with work on Wednesday, so I’ll be putting some more goodness up on here before then.
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