Caleb's Column

My first Weather channel report from a drive between New York City and Marlboro VT during a big wet storm.

http://uservideo.weather.com/video/Noreaster-hits-North-East-We-dr

2010, the sci-fi year, came in quietly. A nice dinner with my now fiancee, Laura, and some friends, followed by a gathering of six at some other friend’s home. We watched the ball drop, then the Dick Clark show after, mostly full of strange pop stars we didn’t know anything about! The Black Eyed Peas being the exception. Today, sledding.

My resolutions?

1. To continue to evolve my relationship with Laura positively, with love, and kindness to each other and ourselves.
2. To simplify and stabilize my personal finances
3. To dispense, with extreme prejudice, goals that seem only to serve as a vehicle fore which to give myself shit. Case in point, the goal of weighing 165lbs. I’ve hung it around my psychic neck for a decade or so. My resolution is that by the end of 2010, I reach it, change it, or kill it. The wisdom of this can be seen in reader now doubt now asking themselves “he must have a weight problem,” when in fact I really don’t, other then the extra 5 pounds lots of us feel we carry.

Free toilet

Ah, yes, the old dirty free toilet on the dirty porch scene. So often observed, so rarely captured.  The house and toilet looked to be equally functional and equally dirty.  The toilet was gone in a few days, where it went, nobody knows.

Ok, I just watched an hour demo on Google’s “Wave” which is like Gmail conversation thread with the addition of chat/photos/blogs/wikis/learning management systems/project management/ and so much more…

But within Wave are two extensions for spell checking and linking in context sensitive ways. This is the next wave of spell checkers that address the “quiet” vs “quite” issue that spell checkers routinely miss.

Speakers on…deep breath, 2 minutes: Watch video

I’m in New York City for the week. I’ve not lived here for a little more then a year. I’ll be tracking my seven levels of re-acclimation here…

In progress…

Generally my days will look like this: Arriving Yom Kippur weekend. Sun, walking, temple, walking, sun, food, fasting. Then meeting friends for breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks while I work online in between. This coming weekend, a big 30th aniversary set of events for ITP at NYU. I’ll be staying with friends at either a 15th floor upper west side apartment looking at the Hudson, or in Brooklyn’s Park Slope.

1. Arrival. Wow. This is really an amazing city like I remember. Everyone is so friendly! Thrift stores in Manhattan still have $8 dress shirts that are perfect with helpful staff! You can find food and coffee that is the same price as Vermont. I should live here again!!!
2. First few days. How does one live here? Oh…my…god, that apartment costs that much!!! Oh, you’re in finance…right…
3. Next few days…we’ll see. Perhaps…”there sure is a lot of sitting, walking, talking, eating, watching, repeating, going on here socially. What about exploring peopless woods alone? Or yard work? Gardens? …
4. Is that a Tesla electric sports car? It is! Is that rumor true that Comcast is buying NBC that I just heard at a Video 2.0 Meetup? What a nice job on the new HiLine. Only in NYC!
5. Ouch, out too late, 3:30am. Almost missed stop on subway dozing. Next day is foggy.
6. Recovered. Great food. Hydrated. Amazing ITP 30th Gala. Negoponte flew in from Geneva. Home before 1am sober. Feels good. In Brooklyn. Yes, I could live in NYC if it was in a place like Park Slope. Quieter…but the housing costs! OMG…
7. Made the train on time, getting the subways down again. Got a nice salad for the ride. Survived. What a city!

Artists Way Cover from off of Amazon.com

It soothes my irritating blocked artist rash, aka, “I could have done that!”

The book The Artist’s Way, By Julia Cameron, book is seriously, but in a calm and mellow way, rocking my world for the better. Interestingly, I’ve noticed the positive effects not so much in art production, but in my personal relationships. It helps me get from myself what I tend to want from others inappropriately sometimes. There’s a lot of use of “God” in it, but she puts it out as anything that means to you.

My summary of the book’s main lessons:

1. 12 weeks
2. Write, long hand!, on paper! (The physical kind) Every morning first thing. I’m relearning to write again, which is cool. This writing is like some forms of mediating. It is not judged, compassion is high, you aren’t doing anything with the writing, you are not saving it, it’s not a journal, it’s not shown to anyone. It is simply good and anything it simply is.
3. Little exercises, quotes and writings to get one past the reason for not doing things, the “I could have done that!” reactions to other’s art, the wrong people who sap your energy and enable you to continue to block.

After 9 years publishing this blog using blogger.com, I’ve just installed WordPress. Bye Blogger. Nothing personal, just time to learn a new skill and have more control and flexibility. Here we go!

I look forward to a rich week of late nights theme shopping. What? Content is king? I’ll get to the content soon – just got to find that perfect theme…

Just installed Snow Leopard. Feels a little faster overall, freed up a few gigs, took about 1.5 hours. Biggest revelation is that QuickTime Pro is now free and called “Quicktime X” and includes uploads to YouTube, etc. and clip trimming like it always did. Smart…the $30 “Pro” upgrade was a big much to ask for considering iMovie, MovieMaker, MPEGStreamclip, etc. being free. Overall, worth the upgrade for me.

Here’s a great post on Gizmodo that covers Quicktime X and the other little enhancements and dealywops in Snow Leopard: “15 Snow Leopard Tricks You Have To Try” By Adrian Covert on September 2, 2009

I just got a tiny Canon Powershot SD780IS. I’ve had several Canon SD models, all were stellar performers. They are truly pocket sized so I carry it everywhere and use it for documentation and video blogging. The photos are great, with only very occasional bluing in some pixels. The 780IS records 1280 pixel-wide video at 30fps, 16×9, which is totally cool for a backup video blogging camera. The small microphone is located on the front of the camera so you can get solid sound for interviews within 4 ft.

• Here’s 5 seconds of video on Blip.tv in Flash
• To see 1280 video uncompressed from the camera (47mb, 5 sec), let the video download at this link in blip.tv, then in the bottom right of the player, the black triangle, click “Save as source” to your desktop. 1280 video uncompressed from camera on blip.tv

It’s smaller then the charger!