Fireworks!

Posted July 7th, 2009 by Devin and filed in Whatever

I uploaded these photos the other day but forgot to link them here.  Old age.

We had excellent conditions for the show this year; after rain on the two previous years that was a welcome change.  Also, instead of having to strain our eyes across Manhattan, this year the fireworks barges were stationed in the Hudson, to mark the 400th anniversary of the discovery of said river.  A great show overall.

It pays to be annoying sometimes

Posted May 5th, 2009 by Devin and filed in Whatever

img00006-20090422-1628One of my biggest pet peeves is the misuse and swapping about of the words “than” and “then”.  Drives me absolutely nuts.  So much so that at my old desktop support position I continually corrected the call tracking tickets of others and let them know of their mistake whenever they’d use one in the place of the other.  Flash-forward two years, I’m back at the law firm as a consultant for a Blackberry rollout project, and I see the reminder in the photo attached to a co-worker’s monitor.

Makes me smile.

The End of Battlestar

Posted March 21st, 2009 by Devin and filed in Whatever

battlestar-galactica-logoThe end of a televisions series always brings forth certain emotions, theories, disappointments, and, of course, opinions.  While the journey should be the thing — and with Battlestar Galactica it has been four seasons of a wonderful trip — everyone wants a great end to a long journey.  I’ll get it out front and say I liked the finale.  It isn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever seen and I did have problems with parts of it, but overall it worked for me.

The biggest problem with the entire episode was flying the fleet into the sun.  True, you can write it off as another bad decision in a series that shows how often we all make bad decisions, but all 38,000 people and everyone wanted to go retro and live off of the land?  No one would miss their radios, computers, and everything else that the human’s had evolved into?  I believe if they’d had more time to investigate the “breaking the cycle” notion, given it a little debate, then it might have worked a little better as written.  Give us a hint that the fuel is now finite, they’re out of medication, that everything they do have is temporary anyway (which it would have been).  But why even go through all of that explanation that still doesn’t cover everything?  This is such an easy fix:  a new-born hybrid should be able to see the foibles of the human and Cylon races, their inability to learn, how the cycle will continue.  Anders could come to that realization and simply go rogue, take the fleet into the sun of only his own volition.  The result is a great “what the frak just happened?” moment, stranded survivors with new seemingly insurmountable odds, and a truly a clean slate.

Secondly, I guess if there is a higher power, some hand pulling the strings, then the whole coincidence of the Raptor’s dead pilot nuking the Colony shouldn’t bother me so much.  But it does.

At first I was put off by the notion that “angels” were driving everything, but then I realized that this entire series has been about that.  Caprica 6 has been continually spouting religious rhetoric to Baltar the entire series.  The Colonials used religious texts to search for Earth.  The Cylons and their resurrection tech and One True God.  While I don’t like the “religion is the answer” angle, with the setup we were given, how could it be anything but?  It made sense, although that last bit in Times Square was too much.

Everything else, though, worked for me.  I’m a bit confused that Adama Sr. and Tyrol wanted to go off and die alone, but it’s their decision and I can live with it.  There are a few other things here and there, but nothing that stopped me or detracted from enjoying the episode.

Yes, I loved the resolution to Starbuck’s character.  Mainly because I don’t think the writers could have given us anything to explain her, possibly because they don’t know themselves.  There are hints Starbuck was an angel, but there are also hints that she was not – I personally think she was not.  She works better as an unknown.

The flashbacks were amazing.  My favorite part.  Tigh and Adama getting drunk in a strip club is one of the truest scenes of the entire series.  Those flashback sequences highlighted the character-based story telling that has always been the strongest part of this series.  It’s exactly the sort of thing that the sci-fi world as a whole needs more of.

Galactica’s final jump out of danger and the ensuing snapping of her keel was fantastic and heart breaking at the same time.  A fitting final outing for the old girl.

The finale was not perfect, but what is.  The more I think about it, the more I like it.  I like the fact that they arrive at least 100,000 years before sustained agriculture was successful on this planet.  I guess Baltar wasn’t that good of a farmer after all.  I like that the survivor’s descendants have to go through an ice age.  I like the possibility that if I was one of the 1% who survived Armageddon and spent several years crammed into a cigar tube in space, running for my life, that at the end of it all, if given a chance, maybe I’d say screw it all and just walk off into the forest, build a cabin, and take it easy for the rest of my days.  Maybe.

Darker and at a higher price would have been better.  Anders stealing the fleet for the “sun run” would have fixed 99.9% of the issues I had with this episode.  But, after the four years of pure hell and hopelessness that the people of the fleet endured and the price already paid, I’ll grant them this almost happy ending.

Flight of the Peeps!

Posted March 15th, 2009 by Devin and filed in Modeling, Whatever

peeps_web

Here’s what you can do with a full day, a box of peeps, some scrap styrene and construction paper.  Kristen did an AWESOME job on the hair!

This is for the third annual Washington Post Peep Diorama contest.  Based on this poster.  Basically the contest is “take a bunch of peeps and make something out of them”.

Both peeps were liberally coated with clear lacquer before starting work.  I’m not sure if that changed the digestibility of the things.

A more permanent mount for the piece (the background is just construction paper and quite flimsy) will be built this week, I’ll get some better photos and show some of the details.  The guitars have strings!

Posted February 1st, 2009 by Devin and filed in Whatever

envelopeWith all of the talk of change being passed around in D.C., I would like to  suggest a new policy:

For the foreseeable future all 401K statements need to be mailed in red envelopes.  That way I know to pull it out of the mailbox and insert it directly into the paper shredder.

Wow, I really didn’t need to see that statement!

Just a New Year’s test…

Posted December 31st, 2008 by Devin and filed in Photography, Whatever

manhattan1After setting up the cool new WordPress 2.7 for a friend, I decided to upgrade my old version as well.  This is just a test so I can assure myself I didn’t make the whole thing go BOOM.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Chanel Mobile Art

Posted October 27th, 2008 by Devin and filed in Photography, Whatever

chanel I put together the in-progress shots I have taken during my stint at the Chanel Mobile Art project in Central Park.  The event has opened to the public and runs through November 9th.  The exhibit houses approximately 10 art installations, including painting, photography, film, and sculpture.  Each visitor gets a personal tour,  guided by an MP3 player (which thankfully is NOT an iPod!) and makes for a unique experience.  As I heard a visitor remark yesterday, “Say what you will about liking the art or not, but you’ll never experience anything like that again!”

Pizza in Central Park

Posted October 6th, 2008 by Devin and filed in Whatever

Did someone say pizza?The Chanel project continues in Central Park.  I’m finally, after two weeks, into the groove of the 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. schedule, enough so that I can get some things done during the day and get back to writing.  I guess the two week acclimation period is just another indicator that I’m not in my early twenties anymore (when I used to work the night shift aboard ship with no problem).

Here’s some information: The raccoons in Central Park go nuts over pizza.  We see them every evening, stealing cookies from the catering table and generally being nosey.  On Saturday night, though, we had pizza and they went nuts.  Literally under foot, four of them at a time working together to get to the pizza boxes, multi-pronged approaches from opposite sides of the tent.  Quite funny.

Oh yeah, and the building continues to go up.  It looks like the cross between a UFO and a conch shell.

The skeleton structure2.jpg pizza2.jpg

Central Park Gig

Posted September 30th, 2008 by Devin and filed in Whatever

September 27th So, Chanel has decided to build a temporary museum in Central Park, as reported in the New York Times, and I’m helping.

We’re about a week into the project.  In the first photo see the beginnings of the foundation and skeleton of the UFO-styled building.  In the September 27th, late nightsecond photo the multi-faceted glass roof is being hoisted into place.  My production assistant duties involve a little bit of everything, from helping move trucks onto the site for unloading, to running off the raccoons that love the catering tent.  As you can probably guess, New York City raccoons aren’t afraid of much.  Overall, it’s a big change from sitting in a Blackberry littered cubicle at a law firm, and that ain’t bad.

I’ll keep posting photos as the structure goes up.

Travels Part 2: Upstate Retreat

Posted August 20th, 2008 by Devin and filed in Photography, Whatever

img_1964.jpgAfter returning from the Nationals, Kristen and I went up into the Catskills of New York to spend a few days at the Dai Bosatsu Zendo.  If you want seclusion you can’t do much better than this place unless you know of somewhere that has no electricity.  We spent several days in what they call Beecher House; it has some connection to Harriet Beecher Stowe, but I am not sure exactly what that connection is as of yet (I haven’t researched that hard, though).  Regardless of the connection, it is a great place to write.  I took a few photos of the lake, from the lake, and of the family of 7 snakes that lived under the patio, who would come out every morning and sun themselves on the grass.

Mist on the lake    Beecher House

Snakes!    The mountain