Category: NYC

Museum visits

I got on a bit of a museum kick last August, and I seem to be doing the same thing this August. I went to the Met last weekend. I was going to go to the Frick and Whitney today, but my nearly deaf cab driver misunderstood my destination, and dropped me off much closer to the Met than the Frick, so I decided to just go with it, and visited the Met again. This is fine, as there is so much stuff in the Met that you can go twice in two weeks and see completely different stuff.  This time around, I stumbled into the Degas section, and spent some time browsing around in that neighborhood.

Last weekend, I took a cab to and from the museum. This weekend, I took a cab up, but walked back to Penn Station, which is a nice long walk. My ankles and knees hurt a little now, but I made the walk without any grief, so that makes me feel a little better about my current fitness level.

Walking

It was a great weekend, weather-wise, so I did a couple of nice long walks yesterday and today. I’ve been using the Runkeeper iPhone app to track my walks. It’s kind of cool to see them on a map. Yesterday, I stayed local. Today, I took the train into NYC, then a cab up to the Met.  I wandered around the museum for awhile, then walked back down from there to Penn Station.

iOS programming

I’m more than half-way through my iOS programming class at NYU. I’ve missed one class due to a flat tire, and I’ve been a bit under the weather during a couple of classes, but I’m definitely getting something out of the class.
I’ve made a Hypotrochoid generator the basis for my previous two homework assignments, so that’s been kind of fun. I didn’t figure out the code for this myself. Rather, I took the C# code found here, and converted it to Objective-C / Cocoa.
All of my homework code is up on my Github page, if anyone wants to look at it for some reason.
And here’s a quick screencast of my app. Not that exciting really, but fun to write.

off to NYCC 2011

I’m heading out to NYCC tomorrow. I’m pretty sure that the last con I went to was NYCC 2009, which was back in February 2009, before they moved the con to the fall. I had plans to go to NYAF in 2009 also, which would have been in September, but my Dad was in the hospital at that time, so I skipped it. So I haven’t been to a con in a while.

I was also thinking that I haven’t really taken a vacation (other than a long weekend) in a while either. I guess that NYCC in Feb 2009 was the last time, though I think I only took Friday off for that, so that would also have just been a long weekend. This time, I’m taking Thursday, Friday, and Monday off, but I’ve got class at NYU on Thursday night, and a doctor’s appointment back in NJ on Monday, so I don’t know if this really counts as more than a long weekend.

The last San Diego show I went to was 2008. For SDCC, I would have flown out on Wednesday, come back on Monday, and I probably took Tuesday off to do laundry and relax, so that’s a solid seven days away from work. So July 2008 was likely the last serious vacation I had, which involved leaving the NY/NJ area, and staying away for more than a few days. And I can’t remember the last time I took a whole work week, Monday to Friday, off and had a good full nine days away from work. Technically, I wasn’t working at all during April 2010, in between leaving NMS/Spar and starting at Electric Vine, but there was enough going on then that it sure didn’t feel like a vacation.

So this long blog post that was going to be about NYCC 2011 has turned into a rumination on my lack of time off over the last few years. I’m going to have to come up with a plan to remedy that, though I’m really not that enthusiastic about any particular vacation idea right now. I’d like to get back to SDCC and/or WonderCon next year, so maybe I should look at that as my goal.

Buster Keaton

I went into NYC today and saw The General at Film Forum, as part of their all-day Buster Keaton marathon. I would have liked to have seen one or two more films while I was there, but I didn’t want to stay in the city all day. I first became a fan of Buster Keaton when I was in college, a long time ago. I haven’t managed to see more than two or three of his films though.  I really need to rectify that. I think I should try to find time to watch Sherlock Jr. soon.

Saturday

I went into New York yesterday, and did a few semi-interesting things. First, I went to the building where my NYU iOS dev class will (likely) be held. I wanted to do a dry run before the class actually starts, so I’d know where it was and how long it would take to get there. While i was in the neighborhood, I stopped at Strand Books and Forbidden Planet. I picked up one book at Strand, but managed to somehow leave Forbidden Planet without spending any money. Then, I took the subway from Union Square to Grand Central, and wandered around there for a while. I stopped at the Lexington Ave Midtown Comics location. This time, I did not succeed in leaving without spending any money, though I only bought a few new comics.

After that, I walked to MoMA and hung out there for a while. I would have stayed longer, but a pigeon used me for target practice while I was in the sculpture garden. (I just got a bit on my shirt sleeve, which I managed to wash off in the bathroom, so it wasn’t really that bad.) There’s a joke in here somewhere, involving this Jackson Pollock painting, but it’s too obvious.

I held up pretty well through a day that involved a lot of walking around in hot weather, but I started feeling it on the way home.  I had some back pain last night and didn’t sleep well.  But I’m feeling better this morning and will likely try to do a bit of walking around today too.

American Museum of Natural History

I went to the Met last Sunday. Today, I decided to go to the Museum of Natural History. I didn’t have any particular plan for my visit, so I just wandered around randomly. That doesn’t work as well at this museum as it does at the Met, but I still enjoyed myself. If I’d planned things out more, I would probably have bought a ticket to see the World’s Largest Dinosaurs exhibit. I also downloaded their Explorer app to my iPhone near the end of my visit. It would have been a good idea to have that when I first entered the museum. It’s a real help in finding your way around the museum.

I think I kind of like this idea of going into a random museum in NYC on rainy Sunday afternoons. Maybe MoMA next Sunday, if we get another rainy weekend.

Sept 11

I fully intended on ignoring the fact that today is Sept 11. I had a few things lined up to do in the morning, then I was planning on watching some college football in the afternoon. I went out for a haircut this morning, though, and walked past the Sept 11 memorial here in Somerville. There were a bunch of people gathered around it, in silence. I think I walked by after all the official speeches were done. There was something about just seeing the people there, no one really talking, or doing anything, just being there.

When I got to the barber, he had the TV on, set to channel 7, where they were showing the reading of the names at the WTC site. I had about an hour wait before my haircut, so I got to listen to quite a few names being read. Very moving. So my plan to ignore Sept 11 has failed, and I am spending a good bit of time thinking about it now.

Two good articles to read: first, this classic Onion piece: God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule. The Onion did a great job in the days after 9/11 figuring out how a satirical newspaper / web site could possibly approach such a topic.

Second, this John Hodgman piece at McSweeney’s.

Big Bambu


Big Bambu
Originally uploaded by andyhuey

I went into NYC yesterday, and spent some time at the Met. I went up to the roof to check out Big Bambu. It’s pretty cool.

I did not realize at the time, though, that Big Bambu is also the name of a Cheech and Chong album. This is funny, because, as I was looking at this installation, I thought to myself, “I wonder if this thing was all planned out in a CAD system, or if these guys just smoked a lot of weed and lashed a bunch of bamboo together at random?” So, the name would indicate the latter. But I think they did plan it out, at least to some extent, and were probably not high while climbing around in the bamboo, and lashing it all together.