On the road again…
August 3rd, 2009 § Leave a Comment
August already? Man this summer is flying past!
I’m in a rush to tie up some loose ends before I leave on a West Coast tour with Maggie Morris (which I’ll be documenting in a tour blog: Photograph That City)… so just a quick update for now. Life has thrown some welcome surprises at me lately, and I am so grateful.
My mother came to visit for a few days. I took her on a brief tour of my school, my office at work, as well as a handful of farmer’s markets.
We also made the trek to Alcatraz. I can’t believe I have waited so long to do that! People (including myself) often dismiss it as being too “touristy” an event, but it truly is a fascinating piece of SF/Bay history. Tons of pictures here and here. While she was here, I also picked up a new(ish) car… bidding farewell to my trusty old Saturn SL2. Meet Fizzy, my stately Nissan Altima!
I’ve been really getting back into video again these past few months, taking some joy in capturing brief little slices of my life in motion. I’ve been posting most of them on Vimeo, including this little video I made while volunteering at Camp Galileo, a science & art day camp for kids in the Bay Area.
Other than that, I’ve just been working a ton… and prepping for this tour. I’ve also found some time to continue working on my own songs, which can be found here.
July update
July 14th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Summer is going along rather swimmingly. I’ve certainly tried to adhere to my goals for these few months: take more photos, ride my bike more often, return to music making, and read more.
I’ve tried to take a camera wherever I go these days, whether its the shambolic serenity of the Albany Bulb (above, a nearby wetland/landfill that juts into the Bay), the summit of Mount Diablo, the abandoned 16th Street train station in West Oakland:
…or even to rehearsal with Maggie Morris, for whom I’ve been playing bass for these days:
It’s been nice returning to music in way where so much of the focus isn’t on me, and I can contribute instead to a songwriter I respect and think should get more recognition… helping them acheive their goals and reach more people. Maggie has a brilliant sense of melody and lamentation, with just a touch of California sunshine. We’ll be on tour throughout the West Coast in mid-August, as a part of the Boy Gorilla Records tour.
All this has in turn rekindled my own musical expression. Here’s a new recording that Maggie and I worked on together for a yet-to-be-named new project.
As fall quickly approaches, I’ve been thinking more and more about what to work on for my master’s thesis. Lately I’ve been obsessed with directional signage, and how different symbols translate across cultures. Lately I’ve taken to logging interesting, effective, awkward or otherwise amusing signage over on Which Way?
Other projects on deck:
- some pro bono web work in the elder care field
- prepping for my week-long visit to Yosemite in September
- wrapping a documentary of recording with The Stragglers
BART, a bulleted list, and the Bathysphere
May 21st, 2009 § Leave a Comment
This is what it looks like when I am sitting at the corner of Market and Montgomery during rush hour in SF, waiting for the “No Bikes” restriction to end on BART. If you look closely in the first few seconds, you’ll notice one of SF’s most famous residents, Frank Chu, waddling by. Another video I made of my usual afternoon BART commute got picked up by BART’s un-official blog, so that’s kind of cool.
School is out for the summer, Alice Cooper-style. I’m fairly sure I aced my finals (well, I haven’t gotten my CSS grades back, but my site looked & worked fine in multiple browsers, so I think that’sa good thing). I’ve got a few projects lined up for the summer, mostly right brained activities:
- Take lots of photos
Prime Smoked Meats - downtown Oakland
I’ve been taking a few safaris with my salty friends Leica, Lubitel and Holga… mostly around Oakland and SF, as you can see from this latest photoset. I’ve also booked a week in Yosemite at the end of the summer, both to unplug from the world a bit and to replicate a series of photos that my dad took in November of 1968. I need to scan these in first (both for comparison and research purposes), so I will share them when I can. I’ll try to shoot a few other locales if possible (Albany Bulb, Freetsone, Monterey, Los Angeles, and the North Coast come to mind).
- Ride my bike more often
This is kind of a given, since I ride it to work every day… but I’ve been meaning to take more weekend excursions. My car is on it’s last legs anyway, so I am toying with the idea of getting rid of it? I could certainly use one less money drain in my life. I recently had some work done on my Nishiki at Manifesto Bikes in Oakland – single gear conversion and switched out the handlebars. They are a really cool and un-assuming shop that does good work, and take particular pride in their local biking community.
- Return to music-making
That statement should probably come as a welcome surprise to anyone I’ve spoken to in the last 3 years or so. I’ve been avoiding my instruments until recently. I’ve been collecting song fragments here and there, but there’s been offers to contribute to one or two top secret local projects as well. I’m probably keener on the latter… I enjoy being in the background. Good thing I didn’t sell off my bass.
- Recreational reading
It may sound silly at first (especially coming from a failed librarian), but really I’ve been saddled with so much reading for school that it would be nice to digest something that wasn’t a CSS manual or a monograph on postmodern epistemology in art. Right now, I’ve been into Descent, which is an account of Beebe and Barton, the two guys who built the first bathysphere.
Current music: The Wooden Birds
Goodbye 2008. Also: Top 10 of 2008
December 22nd, 2008 § 1 Comment
The year is over, and it’s definitely been an eventful one: lots of ups and downs. I am just relieved that finals are over!
Packing for a week in Louisiana visiting the fam. The weather there has been pretty nutty lately: snowstorms, record lows followed by record highs, raining frogs, etc. Not exactly sure what to pack! Looking forward to some gumbo and fried catfish, and rough-housing with my nephews.
Here’s my annual top 10 album list, followed by a mix of selected mp3s from said albums. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did this year!
See ya in ’09!
- Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
- Chairlift - Does You Inspire You
- Mount Eerie – Dawn
- She & Him – Volume 1
- Beach House – Devotion
- Jolie Holland – The Living & The Dead
- Rachael Yamagata – Elephants/Teeth Sinking Into Heart
- Santogold – Santogold
- Thee Oh Sees – The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending The Night In
- Cat Power – Dark End Of The Street
