tom

tom
Originally uploaded by wck

playing at home

Dust

I have finally- thanks to a 5 year old who was too inquisitive with my point and shoot digital camera and the rising costs of film development- broken down and gotten a DSLR. Yes, I'm the last photo nerd on the planet to get one, I know. I still adore film, but Kate's doing in of the lens on my little digital elph pushed me to just get a DSLR.

My new camera has one of the built in dust sensors, so over lunch today with another former art major (like me now slumming as a software person) we discussed how you used to deal with dust with film developing and printing. If you had a speck of dust on a print that you just couldn't get rid of, you had to manually paint it out. With a real paintbrush and ink. I'm serious! I spent so many hours hunched over my black and white prints before a show, with a teensy paintbrush, making tiny dots with a bit of ink to simulate film grain over dust spots. My eyes ache just thinking about it. And really... talk about an arcane skill! This is one of those spots where I guess digital technology really has a massive advantage over film.

macarons

Until the trip to Seattle this summer, I had been perfectly content to think of pistachio macaroons as a Paris thing. However, when I was out poking around Pike Place Market, I discovered that Le Panier now carries macarons. Hmmm... and they're delicious.

I just stumbled over a blog post on macaron reviews in NYC: In Search of the French Macaron in NYC…. Now I forsee a side trip to Rockefeller Center at some point.

food and security

Via emergent chaos, a blog post on foodies and security nerds.

I find it interesting that security people and foodies are strongly correlated. Or at least are strongly correlated among the ones I know.

Too funny. So here's my list. Bold is food that you have eaten.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat's milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S'mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frog's Legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

-the HTML is via a handy form that will generate the html for you. http://reddywhip.org/lj/foods/

Soho to Penn Station

Viviane suggested that I blog this information, so here goes. She wanted to know how to get from our office at Broadway and Houston to Penn Station, buy a NJT ticket, and get on her train. I've optimized this route to pieces, so here it is.

1. enter the Broadway Lafayette station at Broadway and Houston
2. Go all the way down the first set of stairs past the turnstile to the BDFV Uptown platform. wait just behind the stairs
3. Get on the first train that comes and go 1 stop to West 4th
   
4. When you exit at West 4th, the escalator that skips the mezzanine is right there. Get on it and go to the ACE Uptown platform
5. walk down to the other end of the platform. take a C or E train.
6. exit at 34th Street/Penn. you will be very close to the turnstiles, go out them and down the half flight of stairs
7. you're now on the lower level of NYP Station. Walk straight ahead, and take the first corridor that goes off to the right. That corridor starts off with LIRR tracks, and the NJT tracks are at the far end
8. Near track 6ish or 4ish, there's a set of ticket machines that will rarely have a line. Buy your ticket there.
9. There are NJT monitors nearby- watch them for your train. You will see the track announced 10 minutes before it will leave NYP

glasses

ana & me
Originally uploaded by wck

Nerd glasses on me and nerd glasses on my niece! I did always say when she was little that I knew she was going to be a programmer when she grew up.

trains, ferries and buses

Riding on the amtrak cascades train to PDX. It occurs to me that this trip isn't even half over, and I've racked up a pretty good set of transportation methods.



* Commuter rail: to NYC last Wednesday, to EWR
* subway: within NYC
* monorail: EWR airport train station to terminal
* airplane: to Seattle
* taxi: to downtown
* bus rapid transit: downtown Seattle transportation
* bus: out to Greenlake
* car: driving out to anacortes ferry
* ferry: to and from the islands
* train: to and from PDX
* streetcar: MAX service in PDX

Not bad, 11 modes of transportation, but I'm missing bikes. Last night I could have borrowed my friend's bike, but I chose to walk around the neighborhood with Bandon instead.

summer weddings

When I graduated college and started working at amazon, my very first office was a big room I shared with the rest of the production QA team. There were 5 of us there. Geoffrey, who was already married. And David, Jason, Russell, and me. 9 years later, and I've been to each of their weddings. (Well, except Geoffrey, who had beaten everyone to the punch!) It kind of made me pause and think about how blessed I've been to have such great friends.

David - Aix-en-Provence, June 2002



Jason - Seattle, August 2005



Russell - Orcas Island, July 2008

san juans

view from mt constitution
Originally uploaded by wck

This is the view from the highest point on orcas island, looking eastward at the rest of Washington State. Insanely beautiful. I love the PNW.

Happy 4th

sunset
Originally uploaded by wck

So it's the 6th already... Happy 4th a few days late! I went to Norfolk to see my sailor. This picture is the Elizabeth River at sunset, taken from the ferry just after dinner. The river is so beautiful in the evening, I'm always tempted to stay on the ferry to do a few more round trips.

peonies

peonies2
Originally uploaded by wck

Gorgeous, no? I actually sold two prints on etsy! Amazing. One of them is this print. I had them printed up at Duggal on W23rd, which was kind of fun. They take a lot of care with your prints, so it was fun to go get the print color corrected and printed up nicely on some matte paper. Ooooh... I need to get a photo of the print, as it's just too nice.

Dipping my toes into ecommerce!

Well. 9 years after getting a photography degree, I'm giving the "selling my art" thing a twirl on Etsy. I've loved Etsy since I first heard about, so it seemed like a good place to list a few prints.

Etsy's "Pounce" is endlessly addictive, I can spend hours poking around in the Storque, and it's an all around fantastic website full of amazing things. So, we'll see how this goes. It's really cheap to just list a few things so I'm putting up a couple of my photographs that have been popular on flickr, and we'll see.

Here's my spiffy etsy badge!

Tripit

this is tripit: www.tripit.com.

I love it to pieces. I travel way too much (how this happens even with Sailor and the nieces and nephews on the same coast as me is beyond me) and I'm a secret information organization nerd. AND, they have very sweet customer service. I sent them a feature request and got a nice little note back from them. Awwwww. Anyway, if you fly too much too, try it out. Quite handy.

I still keep all my travel itinerary stuff in my little blue notebook, but now I just print off the agenda the night before and slap it on in, rather than writing out everything by hand.

Why women quit technology careers

Boing Boing Gadgets blog on a non-gadget topic, Why women quit technology careers.

There are two things I can think of in response to this specific article. The first is just "Duh." Really, we need studies to tell us this? Why? (I am old and cynical now I suppose. Different from young and cynical.)

And second, remember how USCG culture is different from dotcom culture? I flat out don't want to say that women in the military never face this stuff, because I know that they do. However, it always appears to me that the institutional culture of the military allows technical women so much more growth, more role models, more respect. I would never, in a million years, swap the dotcom culture I've always worked in, but I will admit to some wistful wishing that we would up and learn a few things sometimes.

But still, my final reaction to that article remains the same as that first response.

success!

My very first rose bush ever has BUDS on it. With pink peeking out! Wow.