Tag Archive for 'personal'

1 Year in New York City

Brooklyn Bridge 5

Lisa and I on the Brook­lyn Bridge, taken some time in 2004. (I real­ize that it was not taken in the past year, but it’s a great photo!)

I can’t let this pass with­out a men­tion – last Fri­day was the 1-year anniver­sary of our move from Cam­bridge to Brook­lyn. Since then, we’ve started new jobs, recon­nected with old friends and made new ones, and had an all-around great time.

I miss Boston from time to time, but couldn’t be hap­pier liv­ing and work­ing in New York City. Why would any­body live any­where else?

August 20, 2008 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Lunch with The Destroyer

In the paper

This morn­ing, Lisa and I had lunch with her Grandma and Grandpa, who vis­it­ing this week­end from Buf­falo. Grandpa Dick is a retired pro­fes­sional wrestler, who used to be quite big in Japan. In addi­tion to win­ning numer­ous wrestling titles, the masked “Destroyer” was a star on the most watched com­edy show in Japan’s tele­vi­sion his­tory, along with Wada Akiko. But he also was famous in the West – Deb­bie Harry of Blondie sported some camel-toe in a t-shirt from Dick’s bad guy alter-ego, Dr. X… Hott.

So, we ate a ton of Japan­ese food while Dick enter­tained the chefs and wait­staff with his antics and Japan­ese lin­guis­tic skills. The shot above is of a Japan­ese newspaper.

More pho­tos, and a video of The Destroyer wrestling a bear, after the fold.

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January 27, 2008 » Tags: , , , , , , . » 0 Comments

On Video

I didn’t make any excit­ing res­o­lu­tions this New Year, except to get back to my fight­ing weight, and land a more per­ma­nent design job. Look­ing back on 2007, one thing that stands out is that my Flickr pho­to­stream finally became a more real-time photo reflec­tion of my life, with the con­ve­nience of my iPhone and its unlim­ited data plan. Sure, the qual­ity of my pho­tog­ra­phy might have dete­ri­o­rated, but I’ve always pre­ferred to shoot from the hip any­way. The iPhone suits what I want to do with Flickr.

But for 2008, I’d like to make one small res­o­lu­tion: do more with video. I bought a new point-and-shoot cam­era that does OK VGA video, (Canon Dig­i­tal Elph SD750), so I want to put it to use. It’s out­put is a lit­tle grainy, espe­cially in low light, but I think it suits what I want to do with it.

Here is a lit­tle idea that I got while walk­ing around the Meat­pack­ing dis­trict this past week­end: the The­ory store on Gan­sevoort street has these amaz­ing pul­sat­ing col­ored lights in the win­dow – so I shot them, and then looped them in iMovie, set to The Knife’s live arrange­ment of “Heartbeats”:

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January 7, 2008 » Tags: , , , , , , , , . » 0 Comments

Roast & Toast NYE

We spent New Year’s Eve this year co-hosting a potluck din­ner at Jason and Liz’s place in Park Slope. Here is a lit­tle video that I put together:

We served roast beef to twenty peo­ple, drank cham­pale, and made some res­o­lu­tions that we prob­a­bly won’t keep. More below the fold, includ­ing some of my and Lisa’s photos.

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January 2, 2008 » Tags: , , , , , . » 0 Comments

On Turning 30


Happy Birth­day, John! from Pirata718 on Vimeo.

Decem­ber 22 came and went, and now I’m 30 years old. I can’t even com­pre­hend that sta­tis­tic. Grow­ing up, I fig­ured that I would have accom­plished so much by that age – it seemed so far away. Today, 40 seems ridicu­lously far away. There is prob­a­bly some kind of les­son in that.

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December 24, 2007 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Google Maps: Boston Street View

It was announced yes­ter­day that Google Maps’ Street View comes to more cities, includ­ing Boston. So nat­u­rally, I looked up our pre­vi­ous apart­ment in Cam­bridge, MA. The weird thing is that myself, and our friends/upstairs neigh­bors Tyler and Sarah are pictured!

Creepier!

We’re hav­ing our mov­ing sale, and that’s my Saab in the fore­ground. I can prob­a­bly peg the date taken to August 11th or 12th, 2007 – the week­end before we moved.

Click the photo to see notes, look at it big, or check it out on Google Maps your­self. I am a lit­tle creeped out.

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December 12, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , . » 0 Comments

Thanksgiving 2007

This is why I love thanks­giv­ing – invite some fam­ily and friends over, cook a ridicu­lous amount of food, crack open 7–8 bot­tles of wine, and go to town. Lisa has the right idea here:
Drumstick

For our first Brook­lyn Thanks­giv­ing, we invited Lisa’s sis­ter Kelly, Rohit, Shane, and Megan, and it was amaz­ingly fun. I am thank­ful that every­one could join us in our new home. I’m also thank­ful that Lisa is such a good cook, because it was so tasty.

More pho­tos below the fold. [from iPhone]

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November 24, 2007 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Village Academies/Esquire Event

We attended a fundraiser for Lisa’s work last night, hon­or­ing Bill Cosby and oth­ers. It was held in Esquire’s swank Esquire North pent­house on Cen­tral Park North, and the mag­a­zine is also fea­tur­ing Vil­lage Acad­e­mies founder Deb­o­rah Kenny in this month’s issue:

In six years, Kenny’s vision has grown into a trio of char­ter schools under the rubric of Vil­lage Acad­e­mies, located in New York precincts where a mus­cu­lar poverty has thrived for gen­er­a­tions. The num­bers alone tell a com­pelling story. Locally, pass­ing rates for seventh-grade math hover around 30 per­cent. At HVA, the rate is a stun­ning 96 percent.

Cast mem­bers from Gos­sip Girl showed up, and Tyler Hilton played a few songs, (who played Elvis in Walk the Line Johnny Cash movie).

midtown office + loved ones

At least the ladies look good – Matt and I have taken bet­ter pictures.

More pho­tos below the fold.

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November 20, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , , , , . » 0 Comments

Brooklyn Neighborhood Poster, by Ork Posters

Brooklyn Neighborhood Poster, by Ork PostersI love this typo­graph­i­cal poster of Brook­lyn neigh­bor­hoods, by Ork Posters of Chicago.

It won’t help me fig­ure out the “offi­cial” bound­aries of Car­roll Gar­dens, but it sure is pretty.

[via swiss­miss]

November 20, 2007 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Apple Picking

Stickball

We went Apple Pick­ing upstate, in War­wick, NY. Jason and I dis­cov­ered some­thing more chal­leng­ing than chuck­ing apples at each other – spear­ing them with a stick, and then attempt­ing to fling them at each other. The one pic­tured above is bounc­ing vio­lently towards me.

It’s been 3 years since we last went apple picking.

More below the fold. [from iPhone]

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October 21, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , , . » 0 Comments

Alma Mater

Lisa and I still keep in touch with a lot of friends from high school, some of which we’ve known since grade school. We were all try­ing to remem­ber today if there was an alma mater anthem for our High School. As none of us were par­tic­u­larly rah-rah back then, we couldn’t remember.

Three of us, how­ever, could remem­ber the words to our grade school anthem – which is a bit shock­ing, con­sid­er­ing the last time I heard it was some­time in 1988, in the fifth grade. I think they forced us to sing this thing dur­ing assem­blies, through­out the school years:

Coun­try Park­way is our school,
where we learn to obey the rules.
We do our best and take great pride,
with our Country’s flag fly­ing high.

Here we work and here we play
Learn­ing new things every­day.
From north to south and east to west,
Our Coun­try Park­way is the best.

Creepy, in its empha­sis on con­for­mity – espe­cially for a fairly pro­gres­sive pub­lic school district.

October 8, 2007 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

First Week in Carroll Gardens

We arrived last Wednes­day, and unpack­ing is an ongo­ing project. We sold, gave away, or threw out most of our “big stuff”, so this move is not only about a new space, but also a lot of new pur­chases. A lot of the stuff we got rid of was from our col­lege days, and had also already made it through our fire.

Room & Board sofaI’m most excited about our new sofa, which Lisa bought from Room & Board in SoHo. Thanks to Jason and Liz for tip­ping us off to this place – we loved every­thing we saw there. Their fur­ni­ture man­ages to be very mod­ern with­out look­ing uncom­fort­able or annoy­ing. (Of course, we real­ized later that we chose the same sofa as the Yovanoff-De Mase home… but hey, good taste is good taste, right?

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August 21, 2007 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Good Deed of the Day

I’m doing some cod­ing (and drink­ing iced cof­fee) today at Darwin’s, near Har­vard Square – and I did the unthink­able. I found a Nikon D80 (with a nice lens) left behind by another cus­tomer, and I turned it in to the staff.

Yea, I sur­prise myself sometimes.

July 30, 2007 » Tags: . » 0 Comments

(Un)Happy Planet Index

The (Un)Happy Planet Index is a fas­ci­nat­ing exam­i­na­tion of coun­tries’ eco­nomic and eco­log­i­cal foot­prints. Like much of social sci­ence, I’m not con­vinced that it shows any­thing con­cretely use­ful at all, but it does sati­ate my need for rank-order and self-examination. Here is how they designed the study:

The Index doesn’t reveal the “hap­pi­est” coun­try in the world. It shows the rel­a­tive effi­ciency with which nations con­vert the planet’s nat­ural resources into long and happy lives for their cit­i­zens. The nations that top the Index aren’t the hap­pi­est places in the world, but the nations that score well show that achiev­ing, long, happy lives with­out over-stretching the planet’s resources is possible.

And of course, I decided to take their sur­vey and deter­mine my own HPI score (PDF):

Your per­sonal Happy Planet Index (HPI) is 26, which is sim­i­lar to that of Zam­bia, Cen­tral African Repub­lic or Belarus. Sorry to say that this is below the world aver­age of 46.

Christ. Appar­ently my eco­log­i­cal foot­print wrecks my score, but then again that was the point of the study – the Amer­i­can lifestyle is f*cking up the world.

[via]

July 21, 2006 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Time

From Tabea:

Today at two min­utes and three sec­onds after 1:00, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.

For Euro­peans, it will hap­pen on the 4th of May…

You’ll have to wait another 100 years to see that again. Watch the clock.

April 5, 2006 » Tags: . » 0 Comments

Jenna’s Visit

We hate each other

God, it’s good when Jenna vis­its… Flickr Set »
February 2, 2006 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

9 years

cardThe years are just fly­ing by, I can’t believe it… on mon­day, the girl and I cel­e­brated 9 years together, in the best way we know how: shar­ing a tasty meal.

And what bet­ter place to have a nice din­ner, than a 4-star restau­rant in a con­verted Burger King? Seri­ously.

Ren­dezvous just opened up in Cen­tral Square, in the old Burger King, and it is really really good. The Phoenix loves it. So does the Globe. And we do, too.

January 25, 2006 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Saabs Don’t Age Well

One of the smartest things I’ve ever done, was to pay a lit­tle extra for Cer­ti­fied Pre-Owned sta­tus on my used 9–3, which more or less just extends the war­ranty. For an extra $1500 or so, I’ve received more than dou­ble that amount in parts and labor over the past 2 years.

So, on thurs­day, I dropped the 9–3 off in Fram­ing­ham so they could replace the Water Pump, which was going bad. Look at the piece of crap they gave me as a loaner:

chevy aveo

Later that after­noon, I received a call from the ser­vice depart­ment, say­ing that I also had a blown head gas­ket… great. That’s not good. So, they keep it overnight, and I don’t hear any­thing all day fri­day… so, I call them up, and they ask to keep it until mon­day, because they hadn’t fin­ished up the job. All the while, I’m rid­ing around in a tin-can amer­i­can car, with no power-windows, no Fast-Lane, and it’s bright-cherry-fucking-red.

So, today (mon­day), I call them up, and they tell me that they can’t get good oil pres­sure. WTF? And they want to replace the engine’s short block… which is a huge job. I can’t fig­ure out what the hell hap­pened, but I’m get­ting to the point where I can’t wait until the day when I don’t have to rely on a car every day of my life.

Mr. Yovanoff sold his 9–3 on eBay this week… but, he now gets to walk to work.

January 9, 2006 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

Resolution

shaken
Mar­tini anyone?

Happy New Year, every­body! I’m back at work today, after a (I think) deserved rest. New Year’s Eve was a bit more restrained than years past, but it was a nice cap to a great year.

My only real res­o­lu­tion is for us to finally cut the cord on Boston, and move to NYC. Pres­ley fin­ishes Grad school in Sep­tem­ber, and I need to think more seri­ously about my career, grad school, and the future in general.

A lot of things could hap­pen, but that remains my #1 goal for 2006. What’s yours?

January 3, 2006 » Tags: . » 0 Comments

On Turning 28

On this day, in 1977, I was born. At 5 lbs. 6 oz., I was six weeks early, and spent my first Christ­mas in hospital.

I used to think that 28 sounded so old – time for mar­ry­ing, house-buying, and think­ing about kid­dos. Now that this day has come, those things seem as far away as they did when I was 20. I’m always amazed that peo­ple I know are doing these things now… my younger cous­ing Mag­gie has 3 kids, and she’s 2 years younger than me. My first real girl­friend from High School is mar­ried. And, it seems like every weblog­ger that I read is either get­ting engaged, mar­ried, or hav­ing a child.

So, I’m 28. I may have been in a hurry to come into this world, but hope­fully I’ve learned to slow down a bit. I’ve got a great girl, good friends, and a lot to be thank­ful for… those other “grown-up” things will fall into place, in time.

December 22, 2005 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments

Happy Holidays

click here to see the full greeting I’ve almost got every­thing bought, but noth­ing is wrapped… For those that I don’t see this hol­i­day sea­son, I hope you have a nice, stress-free hol­i­day with loved-ones.

We’ll be in Buf­falo this week­end, so Macy & Jeremy, you bet­ter be ready to pound some eggnog!

December 21, 2005 » Tags: . » 0 Comments

Thanksgiving

eatWe spent the week­end eat­ing and drink­ing to near excess with Matt & Sharon, who were vis­it­ing from New York.

Pres­ley out­did her­self again with the meal– con­jur­ing a deli­cious turkey, all the fix­ings, and a cou­ple of pies for our enjoyment.

Dom 1995Matt and Sharon even brought along a bot­tle of 1995 vin­tage Dom Perignon cham­paigne. Sharon received it as a gift from her work, but we esti­mated that this vin­tage is worth more than $150 per bot­tle… it was tasty, but we agreed that it didn’t leave any bet­ter impres­sion that a $8 bot­tle of Korbel.

November 27, 2005 » Tags: . » 0 Comments

leak

Our ceil­ing is leak­ing, ever so slowly, above my 20-inch apple cin­ema dis­play… bet­ter double-bag it.

November 10, 2005 » Tags: . » 0 Comments

Sphynx

Unti­tled, by hinagiku.

Our friend Nobuko is cat-sitting in the South End this week—she isn’t sit­ting for nor­mal kit­ties, mind you, but these Mr. Big­glesworth–esque hair­less Sph­ynx cats.

Check out her pho­tos tagged with Sph­ynx, or some inter­est­ing pub­lic photos.

UPDATE: Pres­ley has some Sph­ynx shots from her cameraphone:

New Friend, by Pres­ley
October 27, 2005 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

Presley’s New Specs

New Specs Some­body I know got three pairs of new eye­glasses today…

Not fair.

October 12, 2005 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments