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Apparently it's when the sunset aligns with Manhattan's East-West street grid, and happens twice each year, in May and July.

I'll try for some better photos in July. Meantime, here's a couple from streets 23 and 14 last night.

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I saw a bright emanating from the other end of my street (72nd, if you must know), and realized that I really had no excuse not to join in with the inevitable crowd of freaks mourning John Lennon's death, 30 years later.  I'm not really into deifying people, nor deities, but I do find it inspiring that an individual can have such an impact on people solely through creative expression.

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Times Square, despite being one of the most photographed places in the world, provided some great camera practice, especially with regard to relaxing about sneaking pictures of complete strangers.  Only two people looked at me as if I was a potential axe murderer.

Here are a few samples; more can be found here.

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Also, here are a few video clips from the same camera.  It definitely pales in comparison to my Canon HF S20, which is actually sort of a relief, because it means I'll continue to get plenty of use out of both purchases.

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Low light with the new cam:  Not as trivially easy as daylight.  Still got a few shots after work that I kinda liked.

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Wishing didn't pan out, so yesterday I summoned the power of AMEX and brought home a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1. 

I realize that everybody and their dull hipster brother has an expensive digital camera strapped around their neck, and for a long time I resisted joining the herd.  After all, is there a slice of life in New York City that has yet to be documented with a creatively cockeyed angle, and that dreamy background blur that I refuse to call "bokeh"?

I've slowly begun to realize that I was missing the point.  Sometimes, for whatever primal reasons that caused humans to develop photography in the first place, life begs to be photographed.

For a few years, I've been clumsily snapping photos with my phone, then reviewing them on my computer with a underwhelmed sigh.  Sure, with enough light and a steady grip, the iPhone takes decent pics, but there's nothing spontaneous or elegant about them.  I'm not deft enough to thumb a touchscreen shutter icon with one hand while walking briskly and trying to remain inconspicuous.

I knew I'd never be one of those guys lugging around a ginormous pro camera, but it turns out there's a new(ish) class of camera, called Micro 4/3rds, that offers the portability of a compact camera alongside many of the alluring qualities of a DSLR.  Lenses are interchangeable, and the sensor size allows for better pictures in low light.  And the GF1 performs so well in daylight that I find myself shooting crystal clear-photos one-handed, spontaneously, and sometimes without even checking my shot beforehand.  Once I really develop a sense of where to point the thing, I'll be ready to join the paparazzi.

Shooting is half the fun.  Editing RAW format photos with minimal destruction is also very addicting.

Here are a few shots I took mere moments after purchasing the camera.  This is gonna be fun.

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What, you don't spend your Sunday afternoons trying to turn black and white photos into color?

I want to find a way to monetize this.

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Tonight, walking up Broadway, I spied the first bit of signage for my neighborhood's highly-anticipated Trader Joe's.

I read an article about Trader Joe's the other day, and now I'm even more excited.  Turns out Trader Joe's staff members are very well-paid, which means I probably won't have to endure scowling, monosyllabic cashiers, which describes the majority of conveyor jockeys at local mainstays Fairway and Westside Market.

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This one was pretty good; juicy and bloody, and just big enough to cancel out today's exercise.

Not sure if it's "$15 good," though.

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The High Line is old hat to me, but it occurred to me that I had somehow neglected to shoot video of it.  So, here's a very brief look, along with a few other Downtown shots.

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I'm not sure which I'm prouder of: Installing a new head today, or MacGyvering the old one with piano wire last night.

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When I woke up this morning I knew I probably wouldn't end the day with the FiOS Internet service I had ordered.  I was originally supposed to have it installed last Saturday.  On Friday I received a call from a Verizon representative who sounded exactly like Bugs Bunny.

"Hi, this here's Mike in the field office of Verizon FiOS.  How yas doing today, sir?"

Did you expect him to ask, "what's up, Doc?"

"Yas got an appointment for Saturday, but unfortunately your building doesn't allow work on Saturdays."

He rescheduled my installation for the following Thursday, a day on which I sometimes work a later shift.  He gave me a four-hour window: 8-12.  This was an improvement on the web site scheduling system, where you're required to submit to house arrest in eight hour chunks.

He gave me his direct number, and told me he would call on Wednesday to confirm.  I ended the call happy that I had decided to switch to a company that's responsive and accessible.

But, having plenty of experience waiting around this apartment for work to be done, I woke up today with very little optimism.  Mike hadn't phoned to confirm, and calls to the field office went unanswered.

And, of course, I didn't actually take the day off work.  So by noon, I was jumping out of my skin, and running to the window like a lonely dog, looking for Verizon trucks and howling at police cars.

Calling their 1-800 phone maze ended with an hour on hold while listening to a infinitely-looping piece of synthesized music, composed by a man who later committed suicide by dragging his Moog into the bathtub.

Finally, I was told that the installer would be there "within the hour."  An hour passed, and I tried Mike's number again.  He actually answered.  Because I don't sound like a beloved cartoon character, he didn't remember me at all.

But he put me in touch with my installer.  Genuine ETA: Dinnertime.

"Uh," said Me, "I'll have to reschedule."

In the past, I probably would have been exasperated, muttered angry nothings to the call-center schlubs, and stormed out of my building wondering "why me?"

But, now that I'm over 30 and no longer have a pulse, I've come to accept that this is the new reality.  The guys on the phone are underpaid, and I'm sitting on hold because there are too few people doing too much work.  I have some perspective on that, actually.

But, for God's sake, it's the Tens.  As long as you're cutting manpower, why not employ a little technology and keep your customers informed?  Not to go all futuristic on ya, but I'm thinking GPS and a Google Map.  If I can clearly see my installer is "threading cable" in Chelsea, I know I have time to break free and get a sandwich here on the upper West Side.

Combine that with free-flowing SMS messages and direct access to an automated scheduling system, and nearly everybody wins:  Customers, rich phone company executives, and wage slaves who have grown accustomed to answering phones with both hands.

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New York Triathlon competitors, from my window.  This is the last leg; a run down 72nd Street from Riverside Park to Central Park.

It started with a swim and bike ride at 6am, so I'm gonna guess these are the stragglers.

I'm going back to bed.

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Ah, July in New York, when stepping outside is like shimmying through a warm, wet washcloth.  This, combined with with the wafting stink of subway grime and hot garbage, can cause the average person to stop in his tracks and wonder, "wait, am I a hobo?"

Unfortunately, it doesn't take 90% humidity to make me perspire.  I've been sweating since at least March, and that's if you don't count the multiple times in January and February when I wore a wool cap, and had to face the difficult choice between earcicles and swamphead.

Yes, I'm blessed with the year-round ability to feel the sting of a hard day's work in my eyes without ever legitimately earning it.  I am, therefore I sweat.

I think I'd be happier if I could learn to accept my fate as a sweaty person, and use it to bolster my self-image.  I could re-envisage myself as a manly brute, rather than a poorly-wired, sickly monkey.

But for now, I don't like taking two showers a day, and I don't like doing laundry twice as often.  So, on these warm Summer nights when I should be roaming the streets and nodding my shiny forehead at girls in tank tops, I find myself making a beeline for all places air-conditioned.  Usually, that means apartment to work, and back again.

I could rattle off a list of horrible things about my new apartment, but one of its only redeeming qualities is that I'm able to keep it cool.  My dad, who is steadily transforming into the wise owl from those Tootsie Pop commercials, told me earlier this year that my South-facing abode would be warmer in the Winter and cooler in the Summer.  He was right, of course.

Part of the Winter warmth was a radiator I could never quite shut off, but the sunlight was also blindingly direct.  Now the sun is mercifully high in the sky, thus sparing me the dual indignity of being sweaty and being awake before 9am.

Unfortunately, this doesn't mean I'm using my air conditioner any less.  In my old apartment, I settled for 80 degrees, because that's the best job my AC could do.  Now, the overall temp is probably about 75, and I've placed the unit so that I can blast my head with icy air whenever I'm sitting at the computer, which is...always.

Every once in a while, I'll try to do my environmental duty and turn it off, but about three minutes later I'll feel a nascent bead of sweat, and jump faster than a girl who's just seen a half-mouse, half-spider.  The lights flicker, the compressor roars to life, and my inner hobo slinks away for another evening.

He'll be back in full force when I decide to panhandle to pay my electric bill.

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I have to admit, my pink-edged monitor is bumming me out.  I'm a textbook example of "buyer beware," or at least "buyer, pay more attention when you have money burning a hole in your pocket."

Based on the price, I'm pretty sure the seller knew it, too.  Oh, how I long for a time when libel laws were lax, and men regularly challenged each other to duels.  I'm not really angry, but sometimes I'd like to take my gut feelings about people and emblazon them in 90-point blinking font on my web page, or hire a skywriter.  But alas, we must be civil.

I'll probably end up selling the thing on Craigslist, at an even deeper discount, and with pictures demonstrating the exact problem.  The only religious vestige of my youth is my Catholic guilt, so I can't bring myself to be the guy who smugly lures nerds with shiny Apples, accepts their stacks of cash, then screams, "no givesies backsies!"

The funny thing is, almost every monitor with IPS technology has a handful complaints on the web about uneven colors.  Obviously, complainers drown out satisfied customers, and my friends rave about IPS, but there definitely seems to be a quality control issue--perhaps at LG Philips, who manufactures every panel I've considered (including the Apple).

But, there's a silly advantage to buying new, called a warranty.  Sure, I can't send it back to have them coat the ugly plastic bezel in pretty anodized aluminum, but I can send it back if it gives me the throbbing eye ache I'm nursing right now.

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Goddamn do I hate real estate brokers.*

Where was I?  Oh yeah:  Despite my visceral aversion to the site, lately I've been poking around the For Sale section, searching for things that I've often dreamt of buying, but only for really, really cheap.  Like, it'll be 2am--still early in the insomnia cycle--and I'll grab my laptop and search for "iPod shuffle," then sniff indignantly when I can't find one for a dollar.  "It's the size of a stick of gum," I loudly proclaim to no one, "and should be priced as such!"

And yes, 90% of the time it's Apple stuff.  I'm not one of those people who's blindly loyal to Apple, but I enjoy using many of their products.  And I often look for them used, because I totally agree with the contention that Apple products are overpriced for what they are.

One of these products is the Apple Cinema Display.  I use one at work occasionally, and after watching my China videos on it one day, I became convinced that I needed to get one.  It's one of the higher-quality displays out there, for technical mumbo-jumbo reasons, but there's nothing unique about the technology it uses.

What is unique, at least to pre-2008 models, is the low-profile aluminum housing.  I think Apple must have filed a patent on it, because from what I can tell, all other manufacturers kept churning out beautiful displays wrapped in fat, ugly, socially awkward molded plastic.  Yes, I'm kind of shallow like that. 

So is everyone else, apparently.  People regularly paid a 40% premium for aesthetics and branding.  And, in turn, the resale value was incredible.  Stupid-incredible.  5-year-old monitors were going for more than the price of new ones from other brands.

But today, on Craigslist, a gentleman put his 23-inch Cinema display on sale for a completely reasonable price:  About 100 bucks less than the lowest price I'd previously seen.  It was a great price for any IPS monitor, really.  (There's some of that tech talk.)

His reasoning:  "It's old, and I got a new iMac."

As a Craigslist For Sale newbie, I was overly cautious, and Googled the heck out of him to make sure he was a real person, or at least an axe-murderer who was being up-front about his identity.  Turns out he's the CEO of an advertising agency and lives in a giant apartment with his hot, personality-free wife, and young son.  Actually, I didn't know the last three quarters of that statement until I showed up at his building earlier this evening.

And I swear, while I was there, I tested out the monitor in every conceivable way, minus licking it.  It wasn't until I got it home that I noticed that the top and bottom of the display have a discernibly pinkish hue.  Most colors look very uniform (especially compared to my cheap old HP monitor), but on web sites with boring white backgrounds (ahem), it's pretty apparent.  You can sort of see it in the picture above.

The pink has actually faded a bit now, or my feeble brain is compensating for it.

But I bought it for video, and in that capacity, it really shines.  For the price I paid, I can't really complain.  I'm a skinflint, pure and simple.  Not the best match for Steve Jobs and Co., but they've already got quite a bit of my dough.

And, as I've said, I'm not some mindless Apple-addict.  I can quit anytime I want.  There's lots of other technology companies who deserve my business.  Er, can you excuse me for a second?

Mmmmmmm...Apple-y.

*This is a New York thing.  If you are a real estate broker in Omaha, carry on.

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I know what you're thinking: He didn't change anything but the header image. Everything else looks the same.

Ah, but so much has changed. I've retired my Wordpress-powered blog, and am now using a completely free service called Posterous. I'm not sure what their business model is; as you can see, there are currently no ads of any sort, and they've yet to offer any "premium" services. But, by the time they become the Geocities of the 2010s, I'll likely have moved on to something else.

There are lots of glowing reviews of Posterous out there, but I can tell you it's not perfect. Customization is somewhat limited and difficult. For instance, on my old site, I hand-rolled my own video player. Now I'll have to embed YouTube's ugly player.

However, the downside of Wordpress is that it begs to be customized. Believe it or not, despite the boring vanilla look of the site, I spent countless hours tinkering under the hood.

And all I had to show for it was 20 measly blog entries.

Posterous, like Wordpress, allows you to post via email. Unlike Wordpress, Posterous is designed so that the most sensible way to post is via email. Attached media is posted as inline images, video and audio. Paste a YouTube link, and a player is automatically embedded.

Anyway, this behind the scenes stuff is probably not very interesting to most of you, and obviously there's no telling whether I'll actually be motivated to post more often. But I'm encouraged.

And, now that I've got this up and running, I vow to stop tinkering and just concentrate on content. I'll sit in Starbucks and dash off quick updates via email. That's what I'm doing right now, in fact.

That's my story. Let's hope it continues.

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Independence Day was my latest excuse to bust out the new(ish) camera, and I figured I ought to go downtown, where our founding fathers spent a fair amount of time.

Of course, I'm still obsessed with the street pianos, so I had to seek out a couple of those.

I'm kind of disappointed in New York's tepid response to the pianos.  I saw some footage of a similar display in London, and there appeared to be crowds of people lining up to play.  Maybe they were all in one spot.

Here, they seem to be hidden away at the end of piers, or in low-traffic parts of city parks, and finding them is a bit of an adventure, verging on a hassle.

Speaking of which, why do people in booths labeled "Information" rarely possess any useful knowledge?  When I asked about the pianos at Lincoln Center, I was met with a slack-jawed stare from the dude behind the counter.  And today, at City Hall Park, I was confidently told, "those haven't been installed yet."

In his defense, the booth wasn't labeled "Correct Information."  But, in a possibly futile effort to help the kid's veracity average, I went back later and told him exactly where it was.

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I hope my compulsion to continue busting out my HF S20 continues even after the new-camera smell wears off.  Picture-wise, it's not that much different from my old camera, but the flash memory and gigantic battery (purchased separately) eliminate two of the biggest headaches I experienced with the HV20.  I finally have a camera that can outlast everything I want to shoot.

Today I roamed around my neighborhood and gathered a some fun shots of people, music, and scenery, including a few of the pianos placed around the city as part of an art exhibition.

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Earlier this month, old pal Brian and I took a trip to Beijing, all thanks the generosity of my Aunt Lily (a flight attendant for United Airlines).  I didn't really know what to expect, but I was taken aback by how Western and Capitalistic it all seemed--from the expensive cars and luxury hotels, to the vulturous salesfolk trying to hustle foreigners (that's us) at every turn.  I'm sure if you spend more than five days there, or leave the big cities, you begin to feel the sting of Communism and draconian laws.  But through my eyes it was just another big city, with people of all stripes, and enough sights and sounds to keep my head on a swivel.  Enjoy the video.

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