travel

Leaving aside the (in my opinion) sorta sappy music, and the (pretty low-key) corporate sponsorship, this made me quite happy.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Check out the site wherethehellismatt.com for more details.

...to Davis Square, that's why I've not been posting so much. Sorry about the lag.

Prepare for me to post a collection of recently discovered interesting things starting...now!

...and having traveled to Argentina for half of July: this is why I haven't been posting. Anyways, here's a video of the 'cat city' in Buenos Aires for your enjoyment (beware, it's about 175 MB, but well worth it, I promise).

Oh my! Here's what I'm obsessed with right now:

• SuperCollider is the latest toy I've been playing with. Max/MSP/Jitter is a bit on the back burner right now. Here is my very basic first SuperCollider GUI code, a simple sequencer based on example code from the help files. And I haven't even gotten to the interesting sounds yet!
• Processing is up on the list. I'm excited by code-based artist tools lately, I guess--while the graphical programming environment provided by Max/MSP/Jitter is great for fast-prototyping, I feel that it imposes limitations on architecture over time, and can also impose speed hits on the application itself--the fact is, added a user-interface overhead to every object becomes expensive after a while!
• The wonders of science. I just finished the book Art & Physics by Dr. Leonard Shlain. No, he's a medical doctor, not a Ph.D., and unfortunately it shows; there are some real limitations to this book. However, I can say that it was worth reading for me because it really made me consider the connections between art and science, how science and math can provide (and has provided) a vocabulary for artists. I feel a new excitement for stuff like Dan Shiffman's The Nature of Code course at ITP. I wish we had something like that at Parsons. As soon as I finished Dr. Shlain's book I picked up QED by Richard Feynman--now THAT is a mind-blowing book. I'm getting towards the end of chapter two (there are four chapters, one for each lecture that he gave in the series, each one builds on the last). Even though he used language in the lectures aimed at the layman rather than a theoretical physicist, some sections still require that I go back over them a few times to really absorb concepts. But, nevertheless, a fascinating read, highly recommended, so far.
• My trip to Argentina. I don't know what to expect, or rather, I have no expectations. I've barely planned for it--I just wrote up a TODO list for the trip just now, and only purchased a guidebook and simple Spanish text a few hours ago. I'll be there from July 2nd to July 12th, and I'll be joining my parents who got there a few days ago in Buenos Aires, and then the three of us will head to Mendoza (or thereabouts) to meet up with my sister, who has been there since last fall. While I can't say I'm very excited yet--this is just how I am--I will be once I get into the airport, I'm sure. I expect it to be a blast, full of good food and drink, sightseeing, exploration, relaxation, all that good stuff.

More to come...

Suzanne and I took a trip to Portland, Oregon and Langley and Seattle, Washington from the 1st of June to the 8th. It was a blast. I love Portland and want to move there.

Here again is a link to my Google Maps history of places we went in Portland (and some we didn't). Flickr set from the Pacific Northwest visit is here. I've got some pictures left to upload, and I'd like to better tag/title/describe the ones I just uploaded, but I wanted to get at least some of them up before the trip lost its freshness in my mind.

But this blog is, apparently. I shall bring it back from the dead!

I've been busy setting up the MFADT Thesis show
at Parsons. Now I'm in the Pacific Northwest for a long-anticipated vacation with Suzanne. I've never been to this area and it's amazing. I'm now at Whidbey Island near Seattle, but until yesterday, since last Saturday, I've been in Portland.

Here's a Google Map showing the places I went in Portland (and some places I didn't go to). Let's just say that the Portland inhabitants seem to have gotten it right: $3 movies with pizza and beer, a beautiful Japanese garden, incredible food everywhere, affordable housing, art and greenery everywhere, and the beer...oh boy. I want to move to Portland.

Found this on the profile page of a random Flickr user. Here's where I've been, to the best of my knowledge (pretty good, I've hit about half!). I didn't put Alaska down but I've flown over it and taken pictures of the tundra...does that count? I guess not.

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Also, here are the countries. Much bigger empty spaces there...

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Here they are. The entire set is 149 photos, which is still a subset of all of the photos I took that weekend (227) but I probably could have filtered them a bit more, even still. However, I'm including some that I wanted in order to remember certain situations or places with emotional associations.

Today I was poking around looking for information on Kendall, New York for one of my descriptions of a photo and I found the Wikipedia page for Kendall again--I'd seen it a while ago but hadn't looked at it for some time: here it is. The demographic information there is about six years old, but I don't think it has changed that much; the population certainly hasn't grown dramatically, and I'd be willing to bet you dimes to a dollar the racial make-up hasn't changed one lick (97.04% white). Let's see how my math is: if the population is about 3000, and we have .6% roughly black population, then that means there are about 18 black people in town. Sounds about right based on how many black kids I knew growing up.

I'd be interested to know more about the religious constituencies in the town; it was a surprise to me when I realized that my Italian family was buried in the cemetery in Holley because that was where the Catholic church was. I always knew that was where my grandmother went to church when she lived there, but I'm dense enough that I didn't put two and two together and think about the fact that the town was mostly Protestant--in the center of town there is a Lutheran church and a Methodist church, and while there is a one Catholic church in town it is pretty new--I don't think my Italian family went there when my father was growing up.

Kendall Links

Just what you were waiting for, I know! Here is the link to the school district web site where I went to high school. Superintendent O'Laughlin was the principal of the junior/senior high-school (yes, it was all of one, and still small: my class had 60 graduating seniors if I recall correctly) when I was there. Here is the link to the town web site. Here is the link to the Kendall Volunteer Firefighters site. That's got some good stuff on it. Watch out for the sound on that history page though.

As soon as I learn a bit about Final Cut Pro I'll edit together the footage I took of the area from that weekend (August 10th to the 13th, for the record). I've got some good stuff of my dad with the riding mower and a lot of driving around having conversations with my folks. Excruciatingly exciting stuff, I guarantee you.

I uploaded another 32 today. Only 43 left to caption, tag, and upload, I think.

Here's a link to the full set, again.

Here is the set. I've got about half the photos up so far. It's taking me a long time this time because

• I have almost 150 photos out of my 250 that I'm putting online for this set,
• I'm titling and tagging every one, and commenting a large number of them, in some detail. Probably too much detail.