Time passing

Welcome to winter and the change of the clocks!  It happened today here in the US (Swedes are ahead of us as usual, they changed their clocks a while ago).  Back to normal Eastern Standard Time for us now, no more Daylight Savings time (which is called Summer Time, 'sommartid', in Swedish).

The amazing hybrid solar eclipse (Nov 3, 2014) we had planned to watch this morning was hidden by a large could bank.  Oh well.  Somewhere behind those clouds were a partially visible sun.  We will have to wait to 2014 for another solar eclipse. There is some photos and info here of this rare event.

And, sad memories and news - it is 50 years since developers in New York City crushed the old, beautiful Penn Station and built a mega-ugly box on top of it.  Penn Station now are horrible cramped tunnels below Madison Square Garden.  Look at the photos of what once was here... At least Grand Central Terminal is still standing in New York, and Penn Stations are left in Baltimore and Philadelphia.  If you wonder about the names - Penn Station comes from the old Pennsylvania Railroad, and Grand Central was the railroad station for the rival New York Central Railroad.  Union Station in Washington, DC, had several railroads, that is why it was called 'Union'.  (PP can correct me if I am wrong :)

Top of the Rock in New York City

Manhattan used to have three high places you could visit - World Trade Center (gone since 11 Sept 2001), Empire State Building (the classic), and then Rockefeller Center, built in the 1930s.  Of these, I have visited World Trade Center and Empire State Building with visiting friends and family years ago, but I never went up in Rockefeller Center until two days ago.  What a treat!  This is where you should be :)

For the record, I am afraid of heights, but Rockefeller Center was no problem.  It didn't move in the wind like World Trade Center did, and it didn't feel claustrophobic and tight like Empire State Building.  We had a calm, clear September day and could see far, far away into New Jersey, New York State ('the Empire State'), Long Island, and Connecticut.  Empire State Building and the new World Trade Center tower are still higher, but the views from this sky scraper is better, I think.  Green Central Park is to the north, Hudson River and the rocky ledge of the Palisades to the west, then southern Manhattan and Statue of Liberty to the south, and Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island to the east.  Fantastic views!

The architecture and design of the building is also classic and wonderful with black floors and shiny brass designs.  Like late Art Deco (PP can fill us in on this, I am sure).  The uppermost floor at level 70 is the roof (called Top of the Rock, of course), and you step out from the elevator straight onto the roof, straight into the sky, but on a big platform... without tall glass round.  Still it felt safe!  The lack of giant hoards of tourists made it nice and pleasant too, plenty of space to look around and see and experience.  Below us, on the other 69 floors are offices, the famous Rainbow Room restaurant (to be reopened next year), and NBC's TV studios.

So, how did it really look like?  Like this! (more photos here)

Happy Birthday, PP!

Instead of oysters, there will be other amazing stuff.  Remember these oysters from the Oyster Bar at Grand Central?  I think that was another birthday :)

Garden update from New Jersey: baby mantis and poppies

The baby praying mantis' are out, growing quickly by eating aphids.  We see up to 10 at the time, and they are hanging out by the daylilies, which opened their giant yellow flowers today.

We have had too much rain already.  But the plants love it. In the last week we have had 7 inches of rain, which is nearly 200 mm. The fruit on my car window is an immature red maple samara.

AREA and I went to The New York Botanical Garden a few weeks ago. Philip Hass has an exhibit there where he has made giant, oversized sculptures inspired by Arcimboldo's The Four Seasons.  What do you think?  We weren't too impressed.  Gaudy and overblown, I think. It also looks like a plastic flower arrangement. (more photos here)

And, among the nicest things our town has done recently is the installation of solar panels by each school, and, the sowing of wildflower seeds around their newly planted trees.  Here are the weedy cornflower and poppies flourishing, with the solar panels in the background. People stop and take photos, just like we did.  This is so much nicer than green, sprayed, sterile, lawn.

What if.... Ponderings over technology

At work we have a copy machine that you have to sign out of when you are done, by clicking buttons on the Touch screen THREE (3) times.  First, click your name in the upper right corner, then select Log Out from the menu, then a new menu comes up asking: Are you sure you want to Log Out? and then you have to hit yes.   Isn't it amazing that something as simple as logging out is made so convoluted?  They can't blame it on safety. 
     When you drive a car and turn left, nobody stops you and wait for you to confirm once or twice that YES, INDEED, I want to turn left.  Imaging the number of accidents that would happen if you had to confirm every little action while driving a car... and response times would increase as would frustration and road rage.  What a waste of time in front of the printer.

At home we have a printer that stops working as soon as one of the colors is finished, even if there is black ink left and you only want to print in black and white.  It just won't print.  It is on strike until you have bought new, expensive color ink (or photo gloss, or whatever it might be), that you don't need for that particular print job. 
    When you drive a car, and the windshield washer fluid runs dry, the car just doesn't stop working and waiting for you to fill up more of it, regardless of where you are.  That would be inconceivable.

Sometimes when you surf the web and look at stuff, the network gets clogged, or the software slows down, and even sometimes, the program or even the computer just crashes, and you are forced to restart the computer.  
   When you drive a car, it suddenly just doesn't stop randomly or goes at tiny speed because of some outside force field or sluggish connection.  That would be pretty dangerous.

Many times you look around on the web and try to find a good restaurant so you browse their web pages, but when you go to their website you are met by 'the intro' - some awful music, slow things (usually photos) moving across the page, and you have to sit there and waste your time unless you can find the tiny semi-hidden text called 'Skip this intro'.  After that torture and time-waste is over, you can start to look for 1) opening hours, 2) address and directions, and 3) the menu.  You would think those three things are the most important information to get to your potential customers, and that at least 1 and 2 should be listed on the opening page of the home page. Oh no, you often have to guess where it is, maybe under 'Contact Us", or 'About Us', or some other non-direct heading.  And often you have to scroll down because the bottom of the page can't be seen at first sight.  For the menus, those are often under a tab, but many are hidden under headings that are tiny, and on extremely slow-loading pages (including the crashing pdf-format), or just small.
    If you drive a car, it doesn't play unwanted intro music when you start it.  It starts up, then it immediately shows you if anything is wrong with the car on the dashboard (any Check Engine light on? Doors open? No, good!).  All information is right there, ready to check out and react to.  Restaurant web pages are like Lego Men hidden in pizza dough, you can't find them or you find a little piece but you can't see the rest.

Who designs these things?  I thought designers' jobs were to make things that WORK WELL and LOOK GOOD.  The first of those things, i.e. practicality, user-friendliness, and usability is as important as that it looks great.  The funny thing is that often the companies insist that their way of doing things are for our convenience, when in reality these things cause us inconvenience, frustration, or just waste time.  Books never fail to open.  Compasses never run out of batteries. Simplicity and ease-of-use means just that, simplicity. 

Will it take 50-100 years to make the internet, printers, copiers, and computers as user-friendly and reliable as cars?  I hope not.  Of course cars break down at times, but they are far more reliable than most of our other home electronics.  I love things that work and that even if complicated, are easy to use. Don't get me started on the design of remote controls... you would think they get paid by the numbers of buttons they put on them.  How long did it take for cars to enter the phase of user-friendliness?  And maybe cars are now on their way to become less user-friendly again?  I haven't mastered the GPS in PP's car at all, because it is not at all intuitive. 

PS.  OK, you want examples of bad design offenders? Here is one...
Prune Restaurant, New York City   
You have to CLICK to enter their website.  What did they think, that you got to their website by accident and need to confirm with them that you actually want to be there?  And then click on Menu and see if you can see their partial tiny menu in a scrolling window... The prices on the lunch menu are about 4 mm tall on my screen.  That is about half as big as a black pepper corn.  Anybody that can read the ingredients on the Bloody Mary menu online ought to get a free drink, or two. Prune, shape up, and fix your website please...

I think Steve Jobs got it right in this quote:

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

6 days later - photos

Hi - back at work now with internet access, and the photos on New York Times websites are just devastating and so sad.  All that damage!  We haven't seen them before, and seeing them makes the size of the catastrophe so much bigger.

Here is the link.

Sandy: the big picture

When something big has happened,  words aren´t enough. I recommend you to look at the pictures at www.boston.com/bigpicture

A light house struck by waves and wind, one of the photos published by Boston.com, photographer Tony Dejak, Associated Press. The waves and the force of the wind has damaged so much along the coastline, maybe more than 1000 miles of coast affected on the NorthAmerican mainland.

"Your life is your most important project"

Selected fantastic quotes from this video with industrial designer Ayse Birsel that you should watch (I just LOVED it):

I am a designer of life.

I put aside an hour every day just to think... without judging myself.

Design is imagining things and if you can imagine things you can make it happen.

      break preconceptions

              shift your perspectives

                     harmonize what you want and what you need which equals value

 If you want, you can maybe have an original life.

October 24, a date as any other? (and Stamps of the Day)

There is probably some significance to each date during a year, but somehow this date is stuck in my mind.  Maybe because my oldest grandparent was born on this day in 1897 and that seemed so far, far away in time, even when I grew up many decades ago.  So, I had to look up what else had happened on this date. Very many things indeed - telegraphs, stock crashes and so on.  

Here are some things listed on Wikipedia:

1632 – Anton van Leeuwenhoek, Dutch microbiologist was born (d. 1723) (Imagine seeing cells and moving euglenas for the first time, in the water you drink... )

1861 – The First Transcontinental Telegraph line across the United States is completed, spelling the end for the 18-month-old Pony Express. (From horses to copper lines. )

1929 – "Black Thursday" stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange. (A big stock market crash also happened on Oct 24 2008)

 1931 – The George Washington Bridge opens to public traffic. (It now costs $12 to cross it into New York City)

 1945 – Founding of the United Nations (I didn't know they had their own stamps)

(Source: links and entries from Wikipedia)

Favorite artist: Erin Wilson, quilting queen

An artist grows in Brooklyn and her name is Erin Wilson.  We saw her work for the first time at the Philadelphia Craft Show in 2011, where her large quilts of tiny, tiny pieces of handdyed, stitched pieces of fabric caught my attention and drew me in.  I love them!  The photo above is borrowed from her website, and shows one piece of a much larger quilt.  The patterns, geometric, but also natural and slightly random invokes fantasy, imagery, and emotions in a way that no textile work ever has before for me.  Here you have architecture, geology, interior designs, sailing, machines, factories, trees, shapes, and tepees, all at once - and what one person sees is not the same as the next.  Simply wonderful!  Expensive too, so I never thought I would own any of her work. (photo above, copyright Erin Wilson)

After we came home from the Philadelphia show, my husband gave me a package and in it was, you guessed it, one of her miniquilts, a 2 x 2 block mounted neatly on a wood frame for hanging on the wall.  Here it is!  What do you see?  I love it and it is now at home in our newly renovated guestroom/office.  This is really creativity at its best.  Thank you Erin for sharing this with us.

 

And then, right after Christmas we got a little brown package in the mail.  Hmm, we thought, wonder what this is.  Erin sent us a quilted tree ornament, just like that!  What an incredibly wonderful surprise!!!  When I see this I think about the power of red love, how it cracks through hard rocks and layers. Others might see the Washington Monument at sunrise, or a rocket at the Florida seashore... the impressions and feelings and interpretations are endless.

Dear Erin, Thank You so much for sharing your work and love for fabric with us.  You are absolutely amazing! We love your work and will buy more of it, promise.  Looking at these quilts make me so happy!

 (Now, go over and visit her website and GET LOST IN COLOR AND SHAPES)

Media in Manhattan should think before they talk

I find it very disturbing that those people that think this storm was 'not so bad' and that the government 'cried wolf' and 'over-warned' people, seems to be the ones that are sitting in a high-ground area and never lost power (such as Manhattan).  Guys, look around you, outside of your immediate comfort zone. In the media, both Swedish and American, there has been several articles saying this or quoting people saying just that.

I bet these are not the people that are volunteer firefighters trying to get a sick 7-month old to a hospital in the middle of the storm, or a friendly neighbor that comes over at 4 AM to get a second sump pump going in someone's basement.  No, these are people complaining that they bought too much bread and water because of the warnings.  Guys, grow up. Be real.

Millstone River, had record flooding at Blackwells Mills, the highest EVER recorded, at 21.24 feet (about 7 m) over normal. This is the river I have to cross to get to work... might take some days before the bridges are open. Manville downriver is evacuated and flooded. Bound Brook is horribly flooded. Things are bad and crazy out there, and New Yorkers complain that they bought too many batteries?

Note that of the last six major floods, three has been in the last five years.  We are getting more rain than ever. This is the effects of climate change.  Less than a week ago, we had record rainfall... the list will not stop, it will get worse.

(1) 21.01 ft on 09/17/1999
(2) 19.24 ft on 04/16/2007
(3) 18.68 ft on 08/28/1971
(4) 16.84 ft on 07/15/1975
(5) 16.15 ft on 03/14/2010

300 000 households in New Jersey have no power back yet. We were just lucky to get it back so soon. (Actually, it is even more people without power.  And part of a highway is now in a River. And so on, read more here. )

Brattleboro and many other towns in Vermont are under water. That is a street down there, under the brown guck. Our favorite stores in Brattleboro are under water, as is historic Hotel Latchis, you can see their brick building in the distance.

So, if you managed through the storm OK, that is great, but do not complain that you were warned too much. Next time your house might be hit by a tree, your stuff might be under muddy waters, or you might be out of power for days.  You never know. You might just have been lucky this time.  Nature is more powerful than you.

Here is a summary of the media coverage and destruction caused by hurricane Irene, showing that in fact it was really bad, whatever media and unaffected people say.  Maybe not bad not for some pampered and grumpy city people in New York, but for the rest of us. Here is a quote from the same article:

"On average, hurricanes that make landfall in the United States as Category 1 storms have produced about $600 million in economic damage. The losses from Irene look as though they’ll be something like 25 times that. In terms of the amount of economic damage it caused, in fact, Irene is much more like a typical Category 3 hurricane than a weak Category 1."

Quote of the Day: from Mad Men about Swedes

PP and I are watching Season 4 of the Mad Men TV series about 1960s advertising executives.  Fascinating and good.  And the set is so right, down to the wall paper and cereal boxes. No sloppiness here.

So, in today's episode Peggy said this:

"You are never gonna get me to do anything Swedish people do!"

(episode 3, season 4)  Won't tell you more, the rest you have to see. :)