City

“As long as you’re going to make a sculpture,why not make one that competes with a 747, orthe Empire State Building, or the Golden Gate Bridge.” – Michael Heizer

“City, Michael Heizer’s life-long project, is quite possibly the largest piece of contemporary art ever attempted. Because the artist is a very private individual, little is known about City, except that he has been working on it since 1972 (he claims 1970). Located in the remote desert of Nevada, City comprises five phases, each consisting of a number of structures referred to as complexes.”

http://doublenegative.tarasen.net/city.html

Mount Washington

“Absolutely incredible. The 24 hour snowfall record for October, which stood for 36 years, shattered a mere 8 days ago, was broken again this morning. The summit picked up 27.5 inches of snow again with this latest storm, 25.7 of it in 24 hours, breaking the old record of 25.5 inches set on October 17th. We’ve had 72 inches of snow now in the last 12 days, nearly 25 % of a normal year’s total!!!”

Mount Washington Observatory

Stereo going to MTV

Jason Lee is creating a show for MTV – should be great as Stereo has always had original ideas and great design sense.

“Lee and his production partners at Niva Films, Scott Martin (“Vanilla Sky”) and actress Beth Riesgraf, already have shot a series pilot for a retro-style variety show for MTV that he will co-host and executive produce. “The Stereo Sound Agency” is expected to air late next year.

“Agency” is an extension of Lee’s former career as a skateboarding champion. The variety show will be based on his skateboarding company, Stereo Skateboards, which he co-owns with Chris Pastras, who serves as his co-host.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051025/tv_nm/lee_dc_1

200

Well, seems this is the 200th post on this site since I’ve put wordpress to use.

Amazing at what started as a simple test of WP for work ended up becoming an almost daily routine which has been quite fun – some of the highlights and my thoughts,

  • Traffic … some days there’s a 100 visitors …. other days many more – seems to come in waves
  • WordPress/blogging … interesting in that the fact that it feels like your filling out a form . very little “randomness/scratchiness/texture” to the process .. but the rigidity of the structure also makes getting something published easier as you have fewer “decisions” to make. I almost wish it had a “doodles side component”. a helpful way to describe my feeling overall is the observation that my handwriting changes day-to-day based on speed/mood/energy level .. this change happens in very small degrees – but is none-the-less very noticable – i wish that would be easily transferable. buy a scanner ? ;)
  • Some posts are personal …. most are to share what I see each day as I use the internet
  • Having a simple draft mechanism is immensely useful
  • Overall I wish the whole system was “smarter” or more contextual
  • I refer back to my own posts often
  • It’s more fun that I thought it would be…

gDisk

Have a Mac and + gmail account?

“gDisk is a software that turns your GMail account into a portable hard drive so you can always have your important files accessible accross the Internet.”

The app could use some UI refinements [drag and drop ? transfer que has huge icons ? etc] but overall it’s pretty fun. Hopefully it will also become more stable with a few more releases.

gDisk

Edward Burtynsky

Some absolutely stunning images by a Toronto born photographer,

Manufactured Landscapes: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky
Through January 15, 2006 — Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 5th Floor

The first major retrospective of the internationally renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky will bring together more than 60 works by the Toronto-born artist from both public and private collections.

Burtynsky, a modern-day counterpart to nineteenth-century landscape photographers, examines the intersection between land and technology, creating images of unorthodox beauty. His subjects include locations that have been changed by modern industrial activity such as mining, quarrying, rail cutting, recycling, and oil refining.”

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/#burtynsky | google image search

Who invented the wetsuit

Who created the neoprene wetsuit? That’s long been a sore point among the two entrepreneurs and a professor who each claim to be the inventor.

AT 77, Bob Meistrell leads deep-sea diving expeditions to Catalina Island and remains at the helm of Body Glove International, the multimillion-dollar Redondo Beach surf company he co-founded with his twin brother Bill half a century ago.

Jack O’Neill, 82, is a bit landlocked these days after turns as a wartime pilot, surfing legend and driving force behind Santa Cruz-based O’Neill Inc., one of the surf industry’s most recognized brands.

Age forced Hugh Bradner, an 89-year-old UC Berkeley physics professor and Manhattan Project scientist, to mothball his scuba tanks a few years ago and downshift to a quiet and modest life in La Jolla.

These three Californians share more than Social Security checks. Each claims to be the father of the neoprene wetsuit, an invention that debuted in the early 1950s and revolutionized surfing and deep-sea diving.

full story | printable version

Ben Gibbard Interview

“It’s been eight years since Ben Gibbard recorded Death Cab For Cutie’s debut cassette, You Can Play These Songs With Chords, during which time the solo project has turned into a full-fledged band, recorded several slabs of beautiful, earnest indie rock, and steadily built up a devoted fan base (which includes The OC’s Seth Cohen). And now, with the release of Plans, the Bellingham, Washington-born, Seattle-based quartet has gone pro.

The move to Atlantic Records has meant a lot to some (mostly longtime fans who, like the band, are old enough to remember the hipster-sellout police of the ’90s), but almost nothing to a majority of the people who take Death Cab so personally. Predominantly recorded at Longview Farms in central Massachusetts and mixed at Butch Vig’s Smart Studio in Madison, Wisconsin, by guitarist-producer Chris Walla, Plans is the sound of a band settling comfortably into the more subdued space it occupied on 2003’s Transatlanticism. Some things about the recording differed from past experiences—it’s the first to feature the same full-time drummer on consecutive records, and there’s the major-label budget—but in the end, it sounds like a natural progression, so much so that it’s probably exactly what the band would have turned in to Barsuk if it hadn’t jumped ship. (The Seattle indie is still in charge of Plans’ vinyl edition, a two-LP set that includes the bonus track “Talking Like Turnstiles.”) The A.V. Club recently spoke separately with Gibbard and with Walla, who announced that he’s moving himself and his currently defunct studio The Hall Of Justice to Portland early next year.”

http://avclub.com/content/node/41269/print/