the pyramid of the sun, the sun, la collecion jumex, yum, el tunel de la alegria, mexican culture is quite macabre

los angeles without smog

the bedroom walls are are on the soundtrack for the this american life tv show

thank god for on demand.

and for those without US channels, you can see the first show here.

don't worry, cakes

i practiced while away.

last day in the df

i've been reading 'the corrections' while here. the book is excellent so far - well written with complex, rather self-involved characters.

i'm right in the middle, so i can't make any sweeping characterizations about the book yet, but i can say that reading it while traveling in a developing country makes me occasionally want to rip through into the literary reality and strangle some of the characters for being such petulant jackasses.

or maybe that has nothing to do with being surrounded by poverty. maybe that's just the nature of the book.

i feel like i understand los angeles a little bit better now.

early tomorrow morning

sometimes, when i have a lot of work to do

i just do bunny photo shoots instead.

case in point

i am currently reading (to the nerdtastic delight of marty and other imaginary friends) my first graphic novel: the watchmen. the book is slightly obsession-inducing.

and guess what the main mode of transportation is in this alternate reality?

the airship, aka dirigible.


now i just need to find a dr. manhattan to make dirigible travel feasible in this reality.

the impac experiment

the latest photo project with marcel: a cheap, dusty old 'impac' camera unearthed from the back of a closet. i wasn't even sure if it worked, much less how it worked.

but it did - and i think it may be a permanent addition to the rotation.

balloons

slim

ambient walkman

you know that old problem with headphones? that when you wear them you tune the rest of the world out?

this obviously isn't a problem when you're on a plane or lying on your bed, but when i lived in new york i frequently heard people criticize headphones because they allowed people to shut out the city. that is, when you're walking down the street you can drift off into your music rather than interact with the world around you (this problem does not arise in LA, as we walk no further than the valet stand). although i suppose this criticism has been around since the walkman, i always associate it with the introduction of the ipod and the white earbud elitism that surrounded it.

well, someone has come up with a solution (sort of). noah vawter, of MIT's media lab, has introduced the ambient walkman. this device records the sounds around you and loops them into music. so instead of tuning the world around you out, you're actually tuning in.

does it really mean solve the problem of interacting with the world around you? who knows? i feel like i'd be so fascinated by this new music that i'd walk in front of a bus.

but it sure is a cool idea.

it came!

as some of you may know, i've been having a minor obsession with dirigibles of late. they have been appearing in my thoughts, my conversations, and especially my dreams. i don't know why. maybe because of this song. but i can't seem to get them out of my head or even the physical world around me. suddenly, they're all i can see and they're everywhere.

so i bought a model building kit. it arrived yesterday. balsa wood and airplane glue. i don't know why, but i think the construction of a model dirigible will cure my obsession. as if by building it i'm taking the idea from my head and putting it into a physical creation. i can then put it on a shelf in my room and reflect on it gently from time to time, but it will no longer haunt me. so, ladies and gentlemen, i give you the USS Los Angeles:


wish me luck!

10 seconds

1

2

3

4

part of me wants to know and part of me really doesn't

last night i dreamt

that all of the freeways in LA had been replaced with giant plastic tube slides, and to get anywhere you just climbed to the top of your house, set the chute configuration for your destination, and hopped in, on your back, feet first, arms clamped to your sides. you'd go flying through plastic tunnels, where the seams of the slide caught at your clothes and the sunlight was filtered through the red and white plastic tubes. at the end you were shot out onto a mountain of red pillows, which you'd climb out of to find yourself at the destination of your choice.

sometimes

i get so worried about graduating, and finding the right job and doing the right thing and how my life will change, that i just want to stay in school forever.

but sometimes, like tonight, i meet people and talk to people and start to realize all the possibilities that are out there, that i just can't wait to get started.

i need to hold onto this feeling, for as long as possible. i think this means stepping out of my usual routine and pattern, and putting myself out there more. its not an option, really, at this point. it's the only way.

haunting

the light at the end of the tunnel is a train - whitey

monday

marcel and i decided to each document a day last week. i did monday.
the photos of me were taken by people i interacted with who i wasn't comfortable asking to photograph...i consider their portrait of me to be, in some ways, a portrait of them.

never quite at home here

i think this opinions piece captures something about the city that i've never quite been able to verbalize. its almost visual in its precision.

What I find myself looking for here in L.A. is a sense of dislocation. And what I’ve come to realize is how closely dislocation and a sense of the ordinary are linked. I’ve discovered that I’m looking for a different topography than mountain and ocean, cactus and palm, landmark and icon. I find myself watching instead for the pattern of ordinary life, which is all the more moving to me here because I do not understand its rhythms.

from the nytimes.

everything's gonna be alright

three little birds - 13ghosts

three little birds - bob marley

oh my god below the stars

silent movies - peter and the wolf

bonsai tree - peter and the wolf

monday

my worst nightmare

this girl has been hiccuping 50 times a minute for over three weeks.

for those of you in the design/build fields (or anyone who's interested and can take 3 hours off in the middle of the day) architecture 2030 is hosting a global teach-in on tuesday, february 20th.

considering the role the built environment plays in climate change (buildings consume 68% of all electricity in the U.S., and emit 36% of all carbon dioxide), the program aims for complete ecological literacy in the design/build fields by 2010.

i'm not sure what the teach-in itself will consist of (i'm hoping for more informational than inspirational), but people are gathering all over the world to attend. at UCLA we'll be in ackerman ballroom.

if you're interested, check out the website.

the best laid plans

i'm in hour 5 of a special 6 hour econ class.

i love economics, and i love this professor, but i'm about to lose it.

i'm so tired.

once you see it

it's everywhere...

happy valentines day

the woman who lives two doors down from me

the woman who lives two doors down from me is either crazy, or an actress.

at least once a day i hear screeching monologues or fights coming from the open door of her apartment. at first i assumed a tumultuous love affair, but on the occasions that i've stopped to listen to what she's actually saying, i hear tirades about "the curse of abstinence" or the "the dust of the thousands dead beneath our feet."

as best i can figure, she's either an actress rehearsing for a part, or totally off her rocker.

i hope for the former, but suspect the latter.

bureau two ways pt 2

after reexamination, i realized that the scanned two photos in yesterday's post do not capture the delicate details of the original photographs.

at all.

they come across kind of pale and washed out and boring. absent a much better scanner, we fiddled with photoshop and did our best to restore their original colors. it's better, but now i think they look "photoshopped" i.e. have colors/shading that do not occur without digital aid.

what do you all think? would you have suspected photoshop if i hadn't mentioned it? or am i just being crazy?

bureau two ways

running circles around my head

+81 - deerhoof

collarbone - fujiya and miyagi

chilling

the homicide report: an latimes blog accounting for every homicide in LA, every day.

that patterns are painfully clear.

i am not a football person

but some of them (including my roommate) took over the house on sunday.

they don't fuck around, these football fans.

my piddling low-def TV just wasn't cutting it, so they projected the superbowl 8 feet high on the living room wall.


the main interest of the day (at least for me) was the culinary battle that erupted between chicago and indiana.

representing chicago:
7 deep dish pizzas, flown in from ginos and giardanos in chicago
3 flavors of cheesecake, also flown in from chi-town
14 cumulative layers of dip
1 ridiculously large gift basket of frango's chocolate
untold sausages

and from indiana:
rotelle (salsa and velveeta mixed together, for the uninitiated)
corn chips
popcorn
bud light
8 boxes of dove bars, which no one touched and are still occupying my freezer

although the colts took the super bowl, i'd have to say that chicago won the culinary wars.

anyone want a dove bar?

tulip mania!

i bought some tulips today.

seeing as punxsutawney phil didn't see his shadow, i figured i'd better prepare for spring.

on an unrelated (but totally nerdy) note - the title of today's post is actually an economic term.

new bookmark

foundtrack posts a new mixtape (mixzip?) every month.

plus you can still download their archives - i'm liking november at the moment.

scarf season

beautiful evidence

i attended a seminar today given by edward tufte. i had lunch with my friend ashish, and ended up describing the course as "how to make really good charts," which doesn't quite do it justice. the course was about the effective visualization of data, something i think we all deal with in one way or another. i should probably make up a graphic or something to demonstrate how cool this seminar was, but instead i'll just rely on my usual text and scans (have i learned nothing?!)

one concept that tufte pioneered is that of sparklines - tiny, work-sized graphics that fit neatly into text and convey more information than a word, in less space than a traditional graphic. tufte is all about high information resolution, and these little "datawords" can increase the informational content of text significantly. or, they can be used in sets of small multiples, to convey large amounts of information in small spaces.

some examples

apparently the sparklines were inspired by galileo's original text describing saturn's rings. galileo incorporated drawings right into the text.

(very) rough translation: saturn looks like this XXXXXX; when saturn is blurry, it looks like this XXXXXXX .

brilliant!

news year's day

vivian in her kitchen

special friends, indeed

but before i go...

why did the


cause i finally got my lazy ass to the lab to pick up some film!

gobble.

sacramento bound

and i'm itchin' to get on the road

see ya!