Category: NYC

SharePoint and more

Just a quick follow-up on Saturday’s adventures with SharePoint: On Sunday morning, after letting my VM chug through 100+ Windows updates, and increasing the amount of RAM allocated to it from 1 GB to 2 GB, I eventually found myself with a barely-operational SharePoint install.

But I decided I didn’t want to spend the whole day staring at my laptop, alone in my apartment, so I turned it off and hopped on the train into New York, and spent some time at the Metropolitan Museum. Overall, I think that was a better use of my time than banging away at my SharePoint VM all day.

I spent some time this morning reading various blog posts about SharePoint development environments, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll never be able to get a useful one up and running on my current hardware. With only 4 GB of RAM on my ThinkPad, there’s no way I can allocate enough to the VM. Most of the advice I’ve seen recommends 8 GB minimum for the VM, so I’d really need a laptop with at least 12 GB of actual RAM. (And some blogs indicate that 24 GB is really the reasonable minimum for SharePoint development.)

I’ve also looked at a few options for running a VM in the cloud. The one no-cost option is to sign up for a free Azure trial, and set up a VM in Azure. That might be interesting, but I don’t think the trial would be long enough to be really useful.

So I think I’m going to have to give up on the idea of setting up a SharePoint environment on my own, and wait for my new project at work to firm up a bit more. At that point, I’ll know enough about exactly what I need to do that I can make specific requests related to a specific project, and hopefully get the software/hardware I need to get up and running. Until then, I’m just going to have to settle for reading books and using my imagination!

Art Museum Web Sites

The New York Times ran an article recently on art museum web sites. There are, indeed, some really good ones out there. The Met and MoMA both have really good sites.

I’ve occasionally tried to find work in the IT department of an art museum, or at a company that did contract work on a museum web site or mobile app. It’s the kind of thing I think I would really enjoy working on. Alas, I’ve never gotten a response to any of the resumes I’ve sent out. I did get a callback about a volunteer opportunity at a museum once, but they only wanted people available on weekdays, during normal business hours. And I once knew a guy who was responsible for servicing the phone system at the Museum of Natural History, but I don’t think that’s going to help me.

Thanksgiving weekend

I spent Thanksgiving day with a friend’s family. It was a good day, but pretty loud and chaotic, which is to be expected when you put sixteen people (including three small children) together in a house on Thanksgiving.

I spent Black Friday home alone, working on some personal organization. I almost managed to update the map on my TomTom GPS, but hit a snag when the new map was too large to copy to the device. That led me on a wild goose chase that ended when I found a notice on the TomTom site that said they were aware of the problem and working on a solution. But it was a fair amount of wasted time. (I’d thought, at one point, that maybe they’d purposely made the new map file just a little too large, to force people with older devices to upgrade to newer ones, but apparently it was an honest mistake.)

I also continued my work on getting stuff out of Backpack and into Evernote. I’m almost done there, and I should be able to close down the Backpack account soon. I’m getting enough stuff into Evernote now that I’m starting to think about how I’m organizing things, and what kind of adjustments I should make. I read the book Evernote Essentials yesterday, and also listened to a podcast with a lot of Evernote tips, so I could hopefully stimulate my brain a bit and come up with some good ideas on how to best use Evernote. I found both the book and the podcast helpful, though there weren’t any earth-shattering revelations in either of them.

I had a page in Backpack titled “GTD”, and I was using it to keep, basically, GTD-related lists, like a “someday/maybe” list, a “waiting for” list, project lists, and stuff like that. But I stopped doing anything resembling a weekly review quite some time ago, and I haven’t really been keeping up the lists. So, for instance, one list item was to use a $10 Best Buy Reward Zone certificate before it expired… in 2011. So I’m not entirely sure how best to clean up and re-structure those lists in such a way that I’ll be more likely to use them.

I really like the general idea of consolidating as much stuff as I can in Evernote, and cutting down on complexity a lot, eliminating OneNote, Backpack,  DevonThink, and whatever else I can. But I also noticed that Things for iPhone and iPad is free this weekend, and the Mac version is 30% off. So maybe keeping my GTD stuff in Things would be a good idea, while using Evernote for reference material and archives. But Things doesn’t have a PC version, or a web version, so I’d only be able to access it on the Mac and iOS. Which probably isn’t really a problem, given the way I’m using my computers these days. (Also, “Things” is a horrible product name, and tends to produce a lot of irrelevant (but amusing) results when Googled.) I’ve already downloaded the iPhone and iPad versions, and have played around a bit, and like what I see. I’m planning on downloading the trial version of the Mac software today, so I can see if it’s going to work for me or not.

Meanwhile, I just ordered two 500GB Samsung SSDs, for $189 each, with the general idea of replacing the old-fashioned drives in my MacBook and ThinkPad. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time now, and I kept putting it off. But I keep hearing, over and over, from friends and random internet sources, about how much difference an SSD will make, so I finally had to go ahead and do it. So next weekend’s project will likely be replacing either the MacBook or ThinkPad drive. Or possibly both, if I have enough time.

I’m also thinking about going to NYC to see The Imitation Game, the new movie about Alan Turing. I don’t think I’ll talk myself into doing that today, given how cold it is outside right now. But maybe tomorrow, if it’s a little warmer.

NYC trip today – The Met and MoMA

I took a trip into NYC today to visit the Met and MoMA. It worked out pretty well. I got to the Met right around 10am, just after they opened. It wasn’t crowded at all, so I had a nice time casually strolling around and enjoying a nice quiet Sunday visit. I went to MoMA after lunch, and spent a little time there, but not too long. It was a lot more crowded at MoMA, but still manageable. And I finally managed to visit the Monet water lily room, which I blogged about back in June. I got caught up in some Brazilian street festival while walking back to the train station, but managed to extricate myself and get to my train in one piece. So, all in all, a good Sunday in NYC.

New York Comic Con

I had pretty much decided not to go to NYCC this year. I wasn’t really that enthusiastic about it earlier this year, so I didn’t get around to checking on tickets until after they’d sold out on every day except Thursday. So I said “oh well” and forgot about it. But then a friend at work mentioned recently that he might be able to get me a free ticket, so that got me interested again. Well, that didn’t work out either, but I noticed that tickets would be going on sale at some comic books stores today, so I thought I’d give that a try.

I headed over to The Fallout Shelter in Highland Park today at lunch time to see if I could get tickets. They open at noon, and I got there just after noon, maybe 12:02. There was a long line out the door and down the street. Apparently, a number of people got there early and lined up! I didn’t really want to get in line, so I decided to wander around a bit, then come back. Highland Park had a farmers market going on, so I stopped by there and got some fresh peaches and bread, then went back to the comic shop. I got back there at 12:10. The line was gone, but they’d just sold out on tickets! So I picked up Sandman Overture #1-3 and headed back to work.

So I’m still not going to NYCC, and I probably missed my last chance to get tickets, but I’ve got a few good comics, and a handful of fresh peaches and fresh bread, so it wasn’t a wasted trip!

WordCamp NYC notes

I just got back home, after attending WordCamp NYC this weekend. Overall, it was pretty good. The presentations were mixed, with a couple of really good ones, and a few that weren’t really useful to me (but might have been to others). I’m kind of surprised at how much they were able to do for only a $40 registration fee. Free t-shirt, and free breakfast and lunch on Saturday. And all in a nice hotel. (I guess a lot of the cost is borne by the corporate sponsors?)

I was going to write up a long post with links to some of the more interesting topics that came up, but I think I’m too tired to do that now. I’ll just link to two things that I’d like to look into a bit further: Piklist and WP-CLI. Maybe I’ll post more detail later, if I can find the energy.

 

Monet’s Water Lilies at MoMA

I don’t watch NYC-ARTS on channel 13 regularly, but I catch a bit of it here and there. There was a short segment on tonight’s episode about the Monet Water Lilies triptych that is on display at MoMA. I’ve been to MoMA a few times this year, but I don’t remember seeing this, and I really love Monet. (I’ve mostly been heading straight for whatever special exhibits pique my interest, and maybe stopping to look at Starry Night or some Jackson Pollock.)

I have actually been seeking out the Monet stuff at the Met, the last couple of times I’ve been there, so I don’t know why it hasn’t occured to me to seek him out at MoMA. I need to make a point of looking for Monet the next time I go! (Which might be this weekend or next.)

Vacation

I took this week off from work, as a little summer vacation. I didn’t manage to get a ticket for Comic-Con this year, and there wasn’t really anything else going on over the summer that I was too enthusiastic about, so I just picked a week that nobody else was taking off. Of course, this wound up being a very hot week here in the NJ/NY area, so now I’m regretting not having made plans to get out of the area to someplace cooler.

I spent the earlier part of the week in NYC, mostly visiting museums. I was successful in getting to all the museums I wanted to visit, plus a couple more. I actually visited six museums over three days, which isn’t half bad, considering the difficulty of getting around in the heat. I’m going to list out all my museum visits below. I’m not sure I’ll have much that’s terribly insightful or useful to say, but I’d like to list everything out, for my own future reference, if nothing else.

Sunday
I started out on Sunday with a visit to the Guggenheim. I’d never been to the Guggenheim, but of course I’m familiar with the iconic architecture. The main exhibit running right now is a “re-imagining” of the main space in the museum by James Turrell. It’s interesting, but I wish I could have seen the main space in it’s usual configuration; maybe I’ll go back in the fall, after the Turrell thing is gone. There wasn’t much else going on that was interesting to me, though the Kandinsky exhibit was nice.

I also visited the Whitney on Sunday, another museum I’ve never been to. I actually really liked the Whitney. The Edward Hopper exhibit was really cool. I’ve always liked “Nighthawks”, in particular, and they had some of the preliminary drawings for that on display. The Whitney is scheduled to move to a new building in 2015, so I don’t know if I’ll likely get back to the old one again before they close it. But, I’m going to keep an eye on their site, and if they have any more exhibits that sound interesting, maybe I’ll go back.

And I also made a brief stop at the Met on Sunday. I’m a member there, so it doesn’t cost me anything to get in. The Sunday visit was brief. I went back Monday and Tuesday, so I’ll post more about those visits below.

Monday
On Monday, I returned to the Met, and spent a bit more time there. The Met used to be closed on Mondays, and I suspect that many people still don’t know that they’re open on Mondays now. I got to the museum just after 10, and had no problem walking right in. Many of the areas I visited were empty (or nearly empty) of other visitors. It was nice to be able to stroll through certain sections and enjoy them quietly, without anyone else there to distract me. I checked out the Punk exhibit, which really didn’t do anything for me. I understand why they do these kinds of exhibits, and I guess some people find them interesting, but I’m just not one of them.

Later in the day, I went to MoMA, which was a lot more crowded than the Met was. I avoided the rain room, which is apparently crazy hard to get in to see, though it sounds like it would be fun. (I should also mention that I did not buy a cronut while I was in NYC, or attempt to bring one into the rain room…) Oh, and to illustrate a bit of the difference between the Met and MoMA that day, I had no trouble standing in front of the Met’s big Jackson Pollock painting for a minute or two, alone, in quiet contemplation, but MoMA’s big Pollock had attracted a crowd, including one guy who was posing for a photo in front of it. There was quite a bit of photo-taking going on at MoMA, actually. The crowd in front of Starry Night was impressive, many of whom were taking photos, to the point that you really couldn’t just get in there are get a good look at the painting. I don’t see much of a point in taking photos of a painting like that, given how easy it is to find good images of it on the net.

Tuesday
On Tuesday, I hit a couple of smaller and less well-known museums. I first went to the Frick. I’d been wanting to go there for a while now. As a comic book nerd, I was curious to see the building that was used as the model for Avengers Mansion. And as an art nerd, I was interested in seeing their collection of paintings, including a Monet, Manet, Renoir, and a few Rembrandts. The building itself is quite nice, and though their collection isn’t huge, they do have some very nice paintings. And their exhibit of clocks was pretty cool too. (It would have been nice to see the bowling alley too, but alas that’s closed to the public…)

After that, I went to the Morgan. The original building, including the impressive library room, is quite a thing to see. I honestly didn’t get much out of the current exhibitions though. Maybe I was just suffering from museum overload at that point, but I’m really not keen to go back there again.

And finally, I went back for one more visit to the Met. The Met really is a big enough museum that you can make three visits there over three days, and see different stuff each day. On this last visit, I took in the “Birds in the Art of Japan” exhibit, which I’d managed to miss on the first two days.

So, overall, I managed to stay (mostly) out of the heat for a few days, and visited a few museums I’d never had the chance to visit before. I do wish I could have had some nicer weather for my vacation, as I would have liked to have done a lot more walking around this week. But, as it was, I did a good job of getting around via subway, bus, and taxi, with a fairly minimal amount of time spent outside in the sun.