Jun 4, 2008 8:12PM
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Happy Birthday Ferris!
Everyone’s favorite artist-slash-model, Ferris Plock, gains another year of age today. Happy birthday old timer!
Everyone’s favorite artist-slash-model, Ferris Plock, gains another year of age today. Happy birthday old timer!
Well, well. I’ve been in Barcelona for almost two months now, and have been having a blast. There’s a lot to report on (obviously), but I can’t really convey two months abroad in Barcelona, a weekend in Paris, a weekend in Granada, and visits here and there summed up into a few paragraphs. I have been updating Flickr fairly often, and using that as a form of blog. Some pictures are set to friends and family only, so if you aren’t friended yet, do so.
I live in the old part of the city, which also happens to be the most central. In other words, I lucked out. The apartment is on the 5th/top floor, so there’s a private sun terrace with a table and chairs. The laptop reaches the table via the power cord, which makes for great evening working. There’s an amazing market half a block away, and the cooking has been often and awesome.
I brought my bike over, in a big bike bag, and haven’t really used it much. The streets in the Gothic area are sometimes arm-span width, and full of pedestrians. I needed a map to walk around for the first three weeks, so biking was mostly inching along, rubbernecking around to see where I was and where a potential path could lead me. Only out at the beach could I really crank along- the promenade goes for a mile or two and ends at the Forum, a large complex of buildings, parks, and is largely deserted. But, there’s no main park with a stretch of pavement, and the rest of the city is on a grid with semi-confusing lights. It makes for more walking, which I’m kind of into anyway.
Bikes here are mostly old, pieced together 70’s and 80’s frames, that have been stolen, stripped, rebuilt, and re-stolen many times over. I see a road cyclist here and there, and a few guys with BMX bikes, but only two or three fixed gears in two months.
Interesting so far, right? OK. The buildings here are amazing. Some Roman ruins dating back to the 2nd and 3rd century, a lot of Gothic buildings from medieval times, complete with horseman-height doors, wrought iron door knockers, bizarre archways, and streetlamps at night. This may sound generally European to those of you who have been around, but it’s really well preserved in the old quarter here. For the first month we hit a lot of museums, walking tours, one bike tour– things of that nature.
Culturally (and I speak for my demographic, since it’s what I know), things are about 10 years behind. It feels very 1990s to me– skater dudes, baggy clothes, creative facial piercings, hashed out hippies. My theory is that it’s because Franco was dictator until 1975, and a lot of youth culture was nonexistant. People seem generally friendly and happy here. I try to speak Spanish as much as possible, which they like, since a lot of tourists don’t bother. The language is getting easier to speak, too, as I practice and learn the common phrases and informalities.
Workwise, I learned Actionscript 3 from a couple books upon arriving here (had to order them overseas via Amazon.com, quite an ordeal with customs), and am 100% immersed in that for a single project for work. Thus, I am a programmer now, and am into it. It was hard and complicated at first, but now is more or less smooth sailing.
I miss San Francisco a bit, but am not done yet. I only have one link to post, and then I’m done. I’ll write again soon.
Link o’ the Summer:
- Ferris’ new site! Nice work, Buzzard!
One last thing, regarding culinary delights. Lots of seafood here. I’ve been enjoying whole anchovies, salted and grilled. I had a bowl of cow-stomach. Things are a little more lenient than in the US. In Granada, I had their signature tortilla (omelette, not bread-circle) with sheep brains. And Paris was awesome. My first time there. I ate snails, pig’s feet, and unfortunately half an andouillette sausage. I grew up being the pickiest eater ever- and now this. Talk about extremes!
Oh, seriously, this is the last thing. I’m already over this site design, and as usual have ideas for a new one.
So, the bags are packed and the dollars are about to be changed for a paltry few Euro. In the morning it’s off to Newark, and then a few hours later off to Barcelona. I’ll keep writing some things while there, and definitely staying up on the Flickr posting. I’m looking forward to crazy architecture, late nights, cafe culture, and a break from the ol’ US of A. I’m bringing my bike over as well, and am interested to jam around a new city via saddle (and navigate cobblestones on 25mm tires).
On to the news and links digest!
Plan To Spray Toxic Biological Chemicals Over San Francisco Announced Yes, apparently the EPA needs to eradicate the brown moth, and to do this theyre actually spraying toxic-to-human chemicals on San Francisco and surrounding areas. NOT an April Fool’s joke.
“The chemical to be sprayed is classified by the EPA as a ‘pesticide’ and the plan is to douse cities with this chemical designed to stick on everything for 90 days or longer.”
My old pal Craig is going to Liberia to renovate a war-torn house for orphans. Liberia is in Africa, for those of you who don’t know, and has had BRUTAL civil wars for years and years, that ended a couple years ago. Now there are lots of orphans, ruined buildings, and this beautiful country in need of repair. If you have some extra bucks, send some his way- some of the kids who will live there have grown up in Ugandan refugee camps, so this is a life-changing homecoming for some of them.
Adobe snuck out Photoshop Express. It’s photoshop but web-based. I haven’t tried it out yet for fear of spam emails, but the concept is cool. Whowouldathunkit?
Our tax money is back to work killing more people. ‘We’ launched a new offensive in Basra, involving airstrikes hitting peoples’ houses, and more innocent civilians dying. Sure, they are aiming for militants, but it’s like digging up an anthill- they get more pissed off and you don’t hurt anyone.
BigDog robot. This one is new (aka scary as hell) to me, and will turn into some sort of soldier robot in the future. The noise it makes is terrifying in itself. Imagine a herd of these things with robot riders all buzzing and whirring at you! It’s funded by DARPA; you can connect the dots from there.
Yugo Nakamura came out with another fancy graphical thing. This time a 120mb clock screensaver of numbers being dropped in water in slow motion. Nothing groundbreaking, but pleasant to look at if your processor can handle it. Download site
And finally, in the cartoons-in-real-life category, Arkitip posts a walking bike. Not much for power transfer but entertaining nonetheless. Thanks Daniel!
Quick update; not much to post on the linkage front. I’ve got less than two weeks left before my trip overseas to Barcelona. The accommodations have been arranged, the plane tickets are in hand, and all I’ve got to do now is pack my bike up and make it to the airport.
I’ve been messing around with an app for practicing language with flash cards; it’s MySQL-based, using CodeIgniter for the CMS/admin and Flash for the frontend. It’s about 65% complete, so nothing to see yet, but it’s the first project I’ve actually written a functional spec/model for (big project at work this year, gotta practice up).
Happy Thursday everyone. Happy Friday, Nihon! Today I bring to your screen a hot animation from our friend Jay Howell. It’s bizarre to see illustrated characters moving and doing things:
I’ve been clearing out old FTP space today, and found some gems. Below is an embed of a project I made in college. I went to school for all things computers + graphics, so this was for an animation course using Lightwave 3D on a Silicon Graphics machine. I kind of like it, but in the midst of how advanced CG has become over the years, it’s more or less a cute novelty. Little do you know, but I spent weeks working on it:
Also, for your enjoyment, I give to you the first version of my first domain, twoblocks.com. It probably dates back to ‘98 or ‘99. Aw, what the heck, here’s versions 2 and 3 as well. I particularly like the contact form pulldown on V3; “now I want to die” is one of the options for ‘opinion of site.’ The blog posts are intact, because it was all hard-coded back in those days!
I got my links page up and running. Make sure to look at the del.ic.ious (I can never type that right!) link on the right sidebar. If I left you out, all apologies. Holler and I’ll link you up (IF you’re good enough!!).
My good friend and contemporary Justin released Ravegression mix 10 yesterday. The public has been crying out for a new one since they promptly stopped production sometime last year. Sure enough, he delivers. It is a little slower than the usual ones, and the whispery nature of the first track reminded me of the Bing Bong Brothers video below, but overall its awesome and he should keep putting out the jams. It’s also nice to have all the hot new electronic music in digest form, so I feel up to date again. As a bonus, Justin also posted a guest mix from Rchrd , who is the BigStereo guy. I have yet to listen to it but I’ve seen a lot of bloggy chatter about his site and night in SF, so it’s perhaps more dancey. We’ll see. Without further ado, the Bing Bong Brothers (iPhone users try this link).
