A report from the slumber party at Wall Street.
We have plenty of peanut-butter but the bread, the fruits and the water is running thin. There are many persons with heart and resolution to make a change. Many are tiered and feel powerless in the face of big capital and the bought parties. No real democracy in this country, the 2000 election and and the Obama presidency's lack of action and fulfilment are often quoted by the people I talk to.
There are people from all walks of life in the park, although younger and whiter is the predominance.
The question now is if the police will move in and expel the protesters. We wait for their next move.
NY
lördag 17 september 2011
Biker NY IV
Yesterday I rode my bike far and wide over NYC. Going home I covered somewhere around 23 km. I was kind of bored after 75% of that ride. Even so I spotted four live rats and almost ran over a dead one. Quite the nature experience in the city. To amuse myself I also did the NY high-five with unsuspecting taxi-hailers. Twice, once in the morning going to work and once on the long ride home just to try to make it less boring. It was also one of the things I wanted to check on my NY-to-do-list. Like this.
onsdag 14 september 2011
Noise and the NY-accent
I thought that I had ranted about this before but when I was going to link to it I could not find it, so I will now either repeat myself or put forth a stunning theory in written form for the first time:
Observation 1:
Everything in NY is loud, no resources are used to silence anything. The worst places are where the subway goes over ground, sometimes on metal railing over and along street. The noise as the train passes makes conversation pointless. But even inside the subway cars when there are almost no passengers the noise level is deafening. I measured the noise level in a car once when it was almost empty. Result: peak values of 100 decibel and a mean around 90. This is the reality that a New Yorker live in.
Observation 2:
The New York accent is high pitched and nasal, much like a radio newscaster of olden days.
Syntesis:
Just like the old news casters developed their speech to a high pitched forced sound to get through the ether the New York dialect has evolved in an environment with massive noise to the most communicative frequency and sadly towards a Nanny Fine-type of sound.
Observation 1:
Everything in NY is loud, no resources are used to silence anything. The worst places are where the subway goes over ground, sometimes on metal railing over and along street. The noise as the train passes makes conversation pointless. But even inside the subway cars when there are almost no passengers the noise level is deafening. I measured the noise level in a car once when it was almost empty. Result: peak values of 100 decibel and a mean around 90. This is the reality that a New Yorker live in.
Observation 2:
The New York accent is high pitched and nasal, much like a radio newscaster of olden days.
Syntesis:
Just like the old news casters developed their speech to a high pitched forced sound to get through the ether the New York dialect has evolved in an environment with massive noise to the most communicative frequency and sadly towards a Nanny Fine-type of sound.
Central Park, I like.
I hear many New Yorkers, and people here visiting express their love for the park. It is such a symbol for the city, such an ambassador for the good of NY. Now, being Swedish, and a naturist I must object to this admiration of the park. It is big, and it is green yes. But it is also dirty in a garbage-everywhere kind of way. And it has cars inside it and it does not have the tranquillity I associate with a green area. Nothing in NY does really.
But I like the park at ten in the evening, when the park way is empty, when I can let my bike go as fast as it was made for, when I can take the curves in the right angle, when it is only me, pedals and the road. That is a NY-moment. And maybe one of the reasons I like to work late.
But I like the park at ten in the evening, when the park way is empty, when I can let my bike go as fast as it was made for, when I can take the curves in the right angle, when it is only me, pedals and the road. That is a NY-moment. And maybe one of the reasons I like to work late.
Feedback and critique
Today I got my first specific feedback on my blog, pointing out some faults on my part. I expected it to come at some point, I just had not thought that much about it. Except I tried to protect myself against this specific criticism of my language through writing something about this blog being my ramblings and that I sometimes don't even bother reading it back before publishing. What we call "brasklapp" in Swedish. In reality another fault on my part: laziness and fear of critique. So I part words when I write. Now I am trying to stop, but it is hard since there are so many words in the English language that is written apart compared to Swedish. But I shall try to better myself. And I would like to thank my dear old friend for having the courage and set aside the time to help me. I appreciate it, even though you make my life harder! I do not think I just opened up the floodgates for a storm of criticism, but if anyone who reads this feel that I should do something differently, or stop doing something or start doing something. Do not keep it to your self: tell me!
Minion
Today I took control over one of the lesser interns and gave him work. I got myself a minion! And I came to think of this because his name is pronounced very much like that although he spells it differently.
It was mot the first time I thought to myself that this that I do now is intern-work. That has happened several times before and then I came to think about that I am an intern too, just a bit more. But this time I thought it was both good to spread my workload as well as having me concentrating on the hard parts of the task. And both the CD and the traffic agreed as well as the person in charge of the intern for the day.
I really tried to explain what we where working on. I showed the assets and talked about the end product as well as showed the animations I had done and explained the code I had written. Still I did not nail it. I did not make my self clear and I did not make him see the vision. This is something that I will have to work on, it is either that or lowering my expectations. And that does not suffice in this environment. So the stuff that he gave me after one correction just would not do. And at that time it was way past bedtime for an unpaid intern. So a paid one could see everything getting pushed back tomorrow. So I ended redoing everything that he had done. And I felt shitty about it. Not that I had to work more; I had planned to go fencing but I had more or less already missed that timeslot and it has been a fun project. The working was fine. But the fact that I was a bad instructor even though I have been teaching for 9 years and that he will se that what he did was not used. He will probably feel a bit bad about it. Ok so I promise myself that I shall give him feedback about what was wrong with the stuff tomorrow. That will be the good part of this. I also got a feeling that he was really looking forward to animate some stuff. Maybe he can get some work on some banners...
It was mot the first time I thought to myself that this that I do now is intern-work. That has happened several times before and then I came to think about that I am an intern too, just a bit more. But this time I thought it was both good to spread my workload as well as having me concentrating on the hard parts of the task. And both the CD and the traffic agreed as well as the person in charge of the intern for the day.
I really tried to explain what we where working on. I showed the assets and talked about the end product as well as showed the animations I had done and explained the code I had written. Still I did not nail it. I did not make my self clear and I did not make him see the vision. This is something that I will have to work on, it is either that or lowering my expectations. And that does not suffice in this environment. So the stuff that he gave me after one correction just would not do. And at that time it was way past bedtime for an unpaid intern. So a paid one could see everything getting pushed back tomorrow. So I ended redoing everything that he had done. And I felt shitty about it. Not that I had to work more; I had planned to go fencing but I had more or less already missed that timeslot and it has been a fun project. The working was fine. But the fact that I was a bad instructor even though I have been teaching for 9 years and that he will se that what he did was not used. He will probably feel a bit bad about it. Ok so I promise myself that I shall give him feedback about what was wrong with the stuff tomorrow. That will be the good part of this. I also got a feeling that he was really looking forward to animate some stuff. Maybe he can get some work on some banners...
tisdag 13 september 2011
Caught In A Mosh
Yesterday I had got my hands and filthy rock n'roll fingers on tickets to the exceptional free show by Anthrax and friends really close to work. The arena it self is called the Best Buy Theater and looks a bit like a spaceship from the original Star Trek series, and according to hearsay takes about 1500 people, enough said.
Anthrax with Joey Belladona on vocals is a musical catastrophe. He never was a good singer and the as the band played the only song from their most important record it became painfully apparent how far Joeys register is from that of the good old days of John Bush. His own songs Joey managed to deliver somewhat without disgrace, but it was far from a shimmering performance. I did how ever not feel in any way cheated on my time there. I mean even a weak Anthrax is worth a look, especially if you get it free. There where some other features to the gig that made it interesting: Kerry King was acting as waiter, serving the band, those who are allowed to drink, some thing strong in between songs and Phil Anselmo came in and played some base. I missed some of the action on scene though because there was such a commotion going on in the mosh area, several incidents that lead to fist fights. I must say, compared to Nordic standards shows in the US suck in that respect. I really do not see why fighting should be part of a concert, for me the moshing is enough. But there where many angry young men, and even more angry old men with big bellies and gigantism. Or at least several of them where very large. The most interesting part was that one guy who got taken away by the guard after fighting and head butting other hapless men came back in after some first aid.
We can conclude that there was much to see and a gig which left most wishes ungranted. Please do what ever it takes to get John Bush back!
Anthrax with Joey Belladona on vocals is a musical catastrophe. He never was a good singer and the as the band played the only song from their most important record it became painfully apparent how far Joeys register is from that of the good old days of John Bush. His own songs Joey managed to deliver somewhat without disgrace, but it was far from a shimmering performance. I did how ever not feel in any way cheated on my time there. I mean even a weak Anthrax is worth a look, especially if you get it free. There where some other features to the gig that made it interesting: Kerry King was acting as waiter, serving the band, those who are allowed to drink, some thing strong in between songs and Phil Anselmo came in and played some base. I missed some of the action on scene though because there was such a commotion going on in the mosh area, several incidents that lead to fist fights. I must say, compared to Nordic standards shows in the US suck in that respect. I really do not see why fighting should be part of a concert, for me the moshing is enough. But there where many angry young men, and even more angry old men with big bellies and gigantism. Or at least several of them where very large. The most interesting part was that one guy who got taken away by the guard after fighting and head butting other hapless men came back in after some first aid.
We can conclude that there was much to see and a gig which left most wishes ungranted. Please do what ever it takes to get John Bush back!
Prenumerera på:
Inlägg (Atom)