Jefferson stand up desk from monticello.org
A week ago, Karen, always finding ways to improve my life, sent me a link to a New York Times article “Don’t Just Sit There” criticising our sedentary lifestyles. Turns out that our ritual of 2 3/4 mile walks are insufficient. All of the time spent shifting from one gluteus maximus to the other in front of the computer and on the phone has such negative effects that I might as well forgo the walks and have another donut. Continue reading
Karen, with friends Esther and Rose Hanig, went off to Ramp Fest Saturday. I stayed behind to mind the store.
They gave the food and the ambiance rave reviews. They ate enough so I barely had to make dinner.
Here are a few photos taken by Karen.
Jeff Gimmel - one of the prime ramp movers
Sam Starr's Truck Pizza got in on the action
Karen got carded - "Drinking Age Verified"
A couple of weeks ago I came on a new sidewalk on Prospect Ave. that seemed to be out of compliance with local ordinances. At the time I wrote a bit about this, “Sidewalks in Hudson – Dangerous for Lack of Code Enforcement and Common Sense“.
Yesterday, my walk took me up Prospect again.
Now we seem to be seeing the finished product. Not only is it not as wide by 16 inches as the ordinance calls for, there is no curb.
Perhaps our Code Enforcement Officer Mr.Wurster could shed some light on this state of affairs? Or perhaps it is to the Superintendent of Public Works Mr. Perry that we should address a question. It is not clear in the city Code about who is responsible for overseeing sidewalk construction.
We pulled the plug on Mid-Hudson Cable (MHC) for our internet service a couple of weeks ago in favor of Verizon DSL service. I have written about MHC’s terrible service and misrepresentations earlier. Most recently here.
Being fortunate enough to live less than 17,000 ft ((the current maximum distance from a switch office for DSL)) from the Verizon office next to the Post Office, DSL is available to me. Through acquaintances I learned of their good luck with DSL.
After the installation I ran a number of tests using the same test site, Speedtest.net, that I have used to measure the bad performance of Mid-Hudson. This showed that Verizon is very consistently delivering 5.2 MB/sec download and 750KB/sec uploads with a ping of 50 millisecond. And, my continuing tests using Speedtest.net show that the service is consistent throughout the day. No more of the slow downs so common to the party line affair of cable internet services.
Though this is hardly world beating service ((the US is 13th in the world with South Korea at the top with an average 13.8MB/s download speed of )) the real surprise came from the impact of the fast ping speed. ((Ping is the time between the click of a mouse and the return of a packet of information from the host server to your web browser))
I use Skype videoconferencing for both business and family purposes. With MHC the ping regularly measured in the hundreds of milliseconds. This caused jittery or frozen video and chronic echoes in the audio. My first Skype conference with clients revealed great audio without echoes. I even abandoned by headset. Just using the microphone on the desktop gave me great sound and the frozen video are now a memory. ((Verizon logo used without permission))
Last week we went to NYC for a Nyla event at Trinity. Along the way we went to the Guggenheim largely to see the Francesca Woodman show. We had to walk up the ramp quite a way to get to that show and I found myself enthralled by the sculpture of John Chamberlain.
John Chamberlain – untitled 1962
John Chamberain – Miss Remember Ford – 1964
Kiss #12-1979 (30 x 31 x 27 inches) by John Chamberlain-from Guggenheim show catalog
Though he is apparently usually noted for his wide use of car parts in his sculpture, he noted, in an audio clip, how annoying this is to him, “Do you ask a painter what brand of paint do you use?” Any connections to Pop Art or other commentaries passing as art was clearly not his intent or desire. The car parts were just material to him.
As I moved up the ramp it dawned on me that his use of painted/colored metals introduced, for me, color as a major element of sculpture. Although there is obviously color present in every sculpture, for the most part, I have been most focused on the 3-dimensional form not its color or even surface textures. Looking at Chamberlain’s work I started to see the color not as a surface element but in an entirely new dimension.
As I moved around the sculptures, the fields of color shifted into new juxtapositions of color. Because my mind does not process 2-dimensional forms with much interest I have always been left mostly uninterested in abstract expressionism and other non-figurative 2-dimensional art. Chamberlain’s work has given me new access to these forms of abstraction.
As we were leaving the Guggenheim I purchased the catalog. A bit later I opened it to a few of the photos of works that I had liked the most. I was immediately struck by how unsatisfactory these photos turned out to be. Though the photos were of high quality and the reproduction on the pages very good. They lay flat. It was not possible to get any of the experience of moving around the sculpture.
This reminded me that for years I have taken multiple images of sculpture with the intent of providing a weak simulation of this experience. With this in mind I went back to my photo collection and created a little slide show of a work Karen and I saw earlier in the winter on a walk through the field sof Omi International Arts Center in Ghent NY.
My earlier posting, “New Sidewalk, Short on Common Sense and Oversight, a Disaster for Pedestrians“, about the new sidewalk in front of Wunderbar brought a number of comments and some interesting dialogue about what is really going on with sidewalks in Hudson. As wunderbar commented about that posting, “Stay your gavel and break out your ruler”. In fact, this sidewalk was built to the city’s code requirements.
With Carole Osterink pointing me the way to the applicable city codes (Chapter A330. CURB, SIDEWALK AND STREET REQUIREMENTS and Chapter 266. STREETS AND SIDEWALKS) where the requirements are spelled out in considerable detail, I now see a bit deeper into this problem.
BTW – Carole has a different take on sidewalks in a recent posting, “Where the Sidewalk Ends”. Her words speak one story, the photos seem uniformly to support the assertion that our sidewalks are a hazardous mess.
The city has ordinances that are not being enforced. And, based on the evidence of a new sidewalk just up the block from the Wunderbar sidewalk as you turn the corner onto Prospect Ave., not being administered with consistency. The code calls for the width of a sidewalk to be 5 feet. 44 inches is a bit shy.
It seems that perhaps the deeper issue revolves around a reluctance by the city to enforce its own codes to get property owners to rebuild sidewalks. In some places, like lower Allen St. near Front St., the sidewalk has simply disappeared. We need an injection of pride of place. Hudson is such a compact walkable place, with many charms. But, one hesitates to walk almost anywhere without gazing fixedly downward for fear of treachery by sidewalk.
Clearly this problem cannot be solved without some action by the elected officialsThis might include developing a multi-year city wide project and perhaps the city asking for bids from contractors for large volume sidewalk construction so that the cost of the construction can be driven down. This could also facilitate whole blocks being rebuilt at once so that the finished product is a flat, safe surface for pedestrians.
Another area of enforcement that would appear to be flagging is the attention to the details spelled out in the ordinances for the materials and tamping of subsoils before concrete is poured. Everywhere in the city there are examples of subsidence of the sidewalk relative to the curbing of one and more inches. This can only be the result of poor construction techniques.
Finally, wheelchair ramps. Laws, regulations, and general social consent that disabled people should have fair access to social spaces have been in place for decades. Somehow, our sidewalks are exempt. There are innumerable intersections where there are no curb ramps. As part of a rebuilding of sidewalks we should put these ramps into place.
I do still stand by my comments that the sidewalk constructed in front of Wunderbar defies common sense. Practical people solve problems in a way that is workable and durable. This abrupt transition between the two sidewalks is not workable nor safe. The city code enforcement and the contractor should have come up with a solution that resolved this. Lacking some vigorous action by city officials or the shame of the owner of the building adjacent, this sidewalk mess will be with us for years (decades?).
Mid-Hudson Cable continues to provide substandard internet services here. I have written of this earlier. Last summer I suckered up for the “up to 10 MB/sec” service for an extra $5 per month. Recently I updated my test results over this time span. The average download speed (all results based on 130 tests from August 2011 through today) is 5.9 MB/sec; the average upload speed is .43 MB/sec. The ping time average is 160 milliseconds.
So, in the strange world of Mid-Hudson Cable 5.9 equals “up to 10 MB/sec”. One does not need a calculator to see that there is a 40% shortfall here.
You can download the spreadsheet here to check out the data
This catalog showed up last week. Wow, I thought. Lands’ End is offering a whole bunch of US manufactured clothing. This should be interesting.
After turning the cover, there were two more pages of puff about the wonder’s of “Made in the USA”. A two page spread followed of a sweat shirt and two more pages of gym ware – “Made in the USA”.
Then, for the next 60 pages (excepting one page in them middle of “Made in the USA” wool socks) not another US manufactured item appears. Every page included the word “Imported”. Undoubtedly the good durable clothing I expect from Lands’ End, but NOT “Made in the USA”.
Went to library at 10am for staff and volunteers mtg. Then met wi Theresa about upcoming library design consultant mtgs.
Went to Toyota Kinderhook to look at new Corollas. Very much like our ten year old car.
Howard Saunders called to say he was coming on the train. Invited him for dinner. Boneless pork ribs. Made BBQ sauce Kansas City style. He brought wine. I had Scotch before he arrived. We talked about the need to live a long life. What does one do at 85?
After dinner he suggested Swoon. We gladly agreed because we had missed yesterday.
Dave’s 13 yr old cat is feeling better. Talked loudly about movies. Spoke with young couple visiting from Brooklyn. She is a clothing designer, he a writer.
Came home. Karen was funny and pawing a bit. She was a bit tipsy.
NO ENTRIES between these two.
Library design consultant in town, Kimberly Cullin. 8 am Breakfast at Tanzys. Theresa P. and Kim. 9:30 at 400 State. With Emily Chameides. 11am presentation with Tom Swope and Dan Kent from Galvan. Marie Rasner, Ginger Benedict from Board. Good discussion. Visited Armory. Swope indicated that architect selection is well underway.
Also he has interest in partners for incubator space in front space of Armory. Partner for artist spaces in basement.
NO FURTHER ENTRIES for this month.
Back on September 15, 2010 I wrote a little piece, “Frequency – Scrabble and the actual frequency of letter usage in English”, about what seemed to me to be a puzzling mis-match between the number of tiles in Scrabble and my superficial sense of the frequency of occurrence of letters in English. While I was away in Hong Kong in December, I received the following email note from David T. Wong, Continue reading