I am the Tourist, Goo Goo Ga Joob!

Last weekend, we had some special visitors from out of town. Reiko's long time friend from high school and college had got married on Valentine's Day, and set their honeymoon destinations for Lima, Peru, and New York City. We set out Sunday morning amidst cold rain to show them around town. Because let's face it: when you have two days to see as much as possible, you can't let that damn rain stop you!

The thing about having others from out of town to visit means that we also get to become the tourists, doing things we usually don't do. For example, the Water Taxi from Pier 17. The one hour tour took us from the financial district into the Hudson River, a pass by Jersey City, right past Ellis Island en route to temporarily park right in front of Lady Liberty. Several pictures later, we turned around, shot up a bit of the East River, then came back to the dock. Was the closest I had ever been to many of those sites, definitely neat to see. Also notably interesting was seeing Brooklyn from the water - I've never really seen the cityscape outline of the city I call home.

That afternoon, we also followed up on a couple of Sex and the City cites: most notably, Magnolia Bakery for their cupcakes and Carrie's brownstone (the actual film location, which is different from the address from the script.) Thing is, that much overrated cupcake was really not that great: the extra icing was all straight sugar with no flavoring, and the cake was a thick dry cake that couldn't have been much more than flour, egg, and sugar - skimping on essential oil / butter to give it the right fluff and moisture.

Monday night, amidst some cold, windy conditions, we made it down by Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park for the impressive view of downtown NYC. Words can't describe this site, which gives an incredible sprawling view from the financial district to midtown, revealing the beauty of the downtown city skyline. Too bad it was so cold, and I didn't have a tripod!

I AM: Pepper and Kolache Smuggler

Last weekend I headed back for Ohio to visit some old stomping grounds and meet up with friends and family. A late flight on Friday put a minor setback on everything, but all things considered, I think it was a pretty productive weekend. Which included, 3x beer pong champion, Heroes of History crooning with Kyle's weimaraners, Skyline Chili, Maxass recording (with guest stars Nick Baker and the real (Fat) Max from Athens), free mega nachos plates, Schmidt's Sausage Haus, Kolache, and finally, some pepper smuggling.

Baba's spicy banana peppers are the shit. Full of zing and punch, and a little bit oily makes them fit alongside most any Euro-inspired dish. Damn thing is, I couldn't bring the jar back this time due to the sad fact that US Airways charges for any checked bags, so instead, I brought back a full Land-O-Lakes refrigerator tub (1/3rd of a large jar's worth). But even better than the fact that I brought this back was how I carefully wrapped them.

I pepper prepped by wrapping the container in two seperate ziplock bags, then wrapped that in a thick paper bag, which I marked with a sharpie, "HOT PEPPERS". I used this orange bomb-sealing duck tape at Andrew's house to run a clean, orange seem up the side of the front. It just looked so damn funny and looked highly suspicious. After all, they were hot peppers! Placed them on top of the three rolls of Kolache I got from my parents. Anyway, to me, it looked pretty funny, filling up the better portion of my suitcase, which was otherwise full of all this recording equipment I had - no laptops, just gadgets with dials and cables and ports, and the security had a head scratcher when my bag and suitcase passed through. Someone else got called over to take a peak... and then my bags came right on through, no problems. Peppers and Firepods are ok folks!

Happy Mega Weekend

Friday the 13th, Valentines Day, Presidents Day. What a weekend!

Headed back to Ohio for the first time since Thanksgiving. It's time to see the folks back home and lay out some new Maxass tracks. Been some time since our last session, looking forward to this one. Also notable is that this is the sendoff of sorts, as my brother prepares to depart the country to move to Japan.

Been a busy week here. From freelance to band practice, to more freelance, been a bit slammed. Time to take a break!

A bit concerning are airplanes these days. Last night came the news that 50 people were killed when a plane crashed into someone's home in Buffalo. Of course then there's the epic flight of 1549. Thing is, both of these flights have been from this area. Couple that with the superstitions of Friday the 13th whoooo~~~! Should make for an interesting trip.

See you on the flip side!

Skiing Expedition

Saturday morning R, myself, and our friend Midori made the trek to Hunter Mountain via the Emilio's Ski Shop tour. Not a bad deal, just early hours: up at 4 to leave at 5 to catch a bus that leaves at 6:30. Yowza! But really, it's worth it in the end: there's nothing quite like hitting the slopes early in the AM. Too bad the rental lines were so long: gotta get my own gear, but that's a separate story.

Beautiful day out there nonetheless. Huge vertical on the main mountain. Temperature was about 40 at the base, low 20's at the top of the 1600 foot vertical, and so windy! Had some good rides in before we stopped for lunch.

In a way, I wish we hadn't stopped for lunch.

Was doing just fine in the morning, a little bit of the boot pain setting in. Then, after lunch, we made it back to the top. And my legs just didn't want to work anymore. I don't know how to describe it, other than, I just couldn't turn to the right gracefully anymore. Turning to the left, no problem. But trying to shift back to the right - not so good. Like damned dangerous. I'm on top of a mountain, on a decently slick slope, and I cannot stop. I will crash. And die. This is not good. So I did the only sane thing to do: slide it down to safe territories again and figure out what the hell is going on.

In the end, I determined that due to muscle strain on the inside of my lower leg (gastrocnemius perhaps?) coupled with some tiredness in by upper right (gluteus, yes), with a bit of slick ice caused by the sun, was enough to throw me off.

I worked my way down the black diamond part of the hill, took my skis off and chilled for a minute. My legs at this point did indeed feel pretty much shot. Fortunately, there was an easy glide the rest of the way down, which I could navigate no problem. And that was pretty much it - time was running out and we had a bus to catch. Before long we were on the way home, with the bang bang movie Rock and Rolla playing on the bus tv.

Personal firsts from the trip:
Early morning weekend train trip... some dude was leaking puke (not that interesting but worth mentioning)
Traveling to Harlem, hello UES
Traveling to the Bronx, seeing Yankee stadium
Going upstate in NY
Driving through suburbia and missing the convenience of having a car
Not being able to ski down a hill (g'hoh!)
Stopping at NYC's first Juice Bar, Papaya King (the papaya drink really is damn good!)

Down By the Virus

My company's busy, bustling pace came to a near halt the past few days.

An apparent virus breakout ("Sality") on our parent company's server basically left us unable to use the internet. It's funny - I use a mac and have zilch problems, but there was the fear that I could propagate the damn thing, since technically everything we access first passes through our heavily infected parent company.

So Wednesday was spent going around the office scanning computers, yesterday I got sent home right away and got to work from home. The problem is finally getting fixed but sucked out a fair amount of production time.

The irony is, known of our computers seem to have been affected by this - just a big bug hunt for the bogeyman.

Cyclops Robot

Next up for gaming: playing robots.

Just saw this short clip of this cyclops robot made by Dutch designer Ivo Vos (sweet name) showing a robot with an integrated webcam that will Pong you to oblivion. Made me ask, could this be part of the future of video games? Imagine going to an arcade and seeing one of these!


Pong Robot from Ivo Vos on Vimeo.

Which brings up a good question: how would this work in an ethics tournament? If the robot were set at some ridiculously high AI, most folks wouldn't even stand a chance. In the case of this little guy here, the first thing I imagine you'd see is either a covered up camera, or worse, ripped off appendages. Rather, the gameplay would have to include the robot in some way so that the player didn't feel like they were getting completely cheesed over.

Ah yes, but didn't somebody already try this?