Tuesday, November 18, 2008Hiking through GarrisonA couple of weeks ago, I decided to visit my friends Phil and Karen at their house by the river near the Bear Mountain Bridge. I had already missed the morning train to Manitou, where they live, so I decided to take the train to Garrison and hike back to their house. It's only four miles, and I was able to make the hike in under 90 minutes.View Larger Map It was a beautiful day; the leaves have just started to fall off the trees, and the last of the fall foliage was visible. The hike was very relaxing, even if most of it was along Route 9D. It's a bit difficult hiking along a highway because the road is sloped and there are no pedestrian trails.   After around three miles along Route 9D, I headed down a twisty road towards the Outward Bound headquarters. The headquarters is a large 10 bedroom building on 18 acres; it's for sale for $9MM. Taxes are around $51K per year. You cross over a bridge over the MTA tracks to get to Mystery Point.  After walking by the Outward Bound headquarters, I walked down Mystery Point Road towards my friends' house.       I hung out at Phil and Karen's house for a few hours before catching the 5 pm train back to New York City.   I also took a stop-motion video of the hike down Mystery Point Road; unfortunately, it didn't compress well. Empire State Building Empire State Building from 43rd Street and 6th Avenue on November 6th Labels: New York Life photo archive now availableGoogle recently announced that Life had published their photo collection on their system. It's a project Life was working on while I was still at Time Inc, and it's beautiful collection of photography. Most of the Life photos have been buried in the basement of Time Inc. for years; limited digital versions were only available internally to Time Inc. on clunky systems. It's great that the images are now available to everyone in the world. I'm curious about some aspects of the Life collection. The collection includes a large number of images from the Apollo missions with a copyright attributed to Time Inc. From visiting the NASA web sites, I've always thought that the NASA images were either in the public domain, copyright NASA (and by extension the people of the United States), or copyright another space agency. It was a bit surprising to see images like the classic image of Buzz Aldrin next to the American flag with a Life watermark and Time Inc. copyright, especially when the original image is available at the Great Images in NASA web site. (High resolution images are also available.) I've dropped a note to the NASA public affairs office at NASA for some clarification; it's entirely possible that NASA and Time Inc. signed an agreement regarding the copyright years ago. One of the wins of having the Life collection available is that there are images now published that were not previously available on NASA's website. For example, I was unable to find this specific image of Earth from Apollo 10 on the NASA site, even though there are other images from around the same time at the Kennedy Space Center site.  Overall, having the Life collection online is a good thing for professional photographers, researchers, and the public at large. The photography of Life would not be possible without the fundamental freedoms and innovation of the United States, and it's great that they are able to share their fruits of their labor. Labels: photographers, technology Monday, November 17, 2008Fun sending lettersI sent my friends Sharon and Mark some letters of reference last week. It was interesting seeing the packages snake through the world to China. I sent two letters; one to Shanghai and one to Guangzhou. I'm a bit amazed that I can send a letter around the world in less than a week and trace its progress. (Even though I shouldn't be surprised at all.)
Labels: China Last Day at PhotoShelterToday is my last day at PhotoShelter. I learned a lot at PhotoShelter and had a great time, but for a variety of reasons I decided to move on. I'll be starting at Google on December 8th.Labels: work Friday, November 07, 2008I had this!Two of my friends have also had this stomach flu; it's probably what I had when I went on a cruise around Manhattan: another bout of stomach flu.Labels: New York Tuesday, November 04, 2008Sunday, November 02, 2008A more civil campaign?A few years ago, I wrote about the difference between the Kerry and Bush 2004 campaign websites. I noted that the Bush site had a significant amount of negative campaigning compared to a lack of any negative advertisements on the Kerry web site.Last week, I went to the websites of the Obama and McCain websites to compare the two candidates' sites again. The first significant difference between the two sites was the use of an interstitial page prior to the main web site. The Obama web site had a large plea for money, while the McCain web site had a continuous stream of videos from his campaign. I found the Obama plea for money to be fairly obnoxious. However, it was probably successful based on the amount of money he has raised from small Internet donations. The advertisements on the McCain interstitial were positive and focused on McCain's prior service.   I was pleasantly surprised after the interstitial: both campaign web sites contained a significant lack of negative advertising. The Obama web site seemed more focused on general feelings and optimism, while the McCain site seemed more focused on contrasting the two candidates. However, there was none of the invective found four years ago on the Bush web site.   Both sites this year were focused much more on individual participation than the previous election. Major elements of the McCain and Obama web sites are focused on volunteering and grass-root efforts. As vicious as this year's campaign with racism, sexism, ageism, and bigotry, I believe incidents like the swift-boating of Kerry or the Killian document controversy regarding Bush were a low point in American politics. In particular, the swift-boating of Kerry was a disgusting and heavily financed effort to impugn his military career that was made with the full support of the Republican establishment. For the record, I believe Barack Obama is the best person to lead the country, and I recommend that everyone go out and vote for him. Labels: politics Go Emily!My friend Emily ran the New York City Marathon today. As far as I know, she is my first friend to run a marathon. It was my first time watching any marathon in person; I went up to Sarah and Jeremy's new apartment in Park Slope to watch her go by. It was a ton of fun, and something I want to repeat next year.Emily wrote about her training for the marathon and also raised over $1,400 dollars to fight cancer. This was her first marathon, and she completed it in under five hours. She looked great when she passed Jeremy, Sarah, and I at 4th Avenue and 1st Street--not only was she right on pace, but she looked fantastic. She called out to us as she ran by. (Jeremy made a large cardboard "Emily" sign that Sarah was holding.) Congratulations Emily!  I also took some poorly composed video of the marathon before Emily came by. Friday, October 31, 2008Other magazine notes...Today it was announced that Condé Nast would be cutting 5% of it's staff and 5% of it's budget. I personally know one person who has lost their job; I hope I do not find out about others. American Express also announced layoffs of 7,000 jobs worldwide, and American Express publishing has announced a layoff of 22 positions, or 10% of its staff. Cutbacks by Gannet and the Tribune Company have also been reported.Both of the publishing cuts come on the heels of the Time Inc. announcement. These cuts will certainly have a large impact in New York City in combination with the financial industry meltdown. Tuesday, October 28, 2008A mango ate my grapefruit!This morning I received a delivery from FreshDirect, a grocery delivery service. I ordered some red grapefruit. As you can see, there may be a small problem with how FreshDirect selects their fruit. So much for their improvements of "Better Produce-get what's great right now." To their credit, FreshDirect refunded the amount of the grapefruit to my credit card and issued me a coupon for $5. But it's a pretty silly screwup. And it's not the first time I've gotten the wrong produce from FreshDirect. Labels: food Stunning Time Inc. newsThere have been a lot of rumors swirling about the last few weeks about my old employer, Time Inc. Folks I talked with has said that approximately between 200 and 300 people would be laid off: it seems that the number is much higher. The New York Times reports Time Inc. Plans About 600 Layoffs.One of the changes described by the article is that the publishing division of the "lifestyle" magazines will directly control the editorial content. Time Inc. had always had a principle of "Church and State" where the editorial and publishing divisions had strictly separated reporting lines. And while the editorial side lost some control of the company during the formation of Time Warner, the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Brothers, there was always a culture of editorial independence. In addition, it's notable that "the news and entertainment units will continue to report to John Huey." At first glance, this appears that Huey's responsibilities are continuing as usual, but as I just noted, the article states that the "lifestyle" magazines will not report to Huey. From the outside, these might not seem like significant changes, but they may be the most significant change in Time Inc. since the creation of Time Warner. I'm hoping my friends at Time Inc. are doing okay. The Times also reported on another significant media event today: Christian Science Paper Ends Daily Print Edition. This is one of the first national newspapers to switch to an all online format; I certainly don't believe it will be the last. And in other media news, less significant to the general populace, but more significant for my company: Digital Railroad Shuts Down and Confusion as Digital Railroad Shuts Down Labels: media 
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