Autumn Afternoon, Prospect Park, November 2011

Last week I checked the LightTrac app on my iPad to figure out the optimal time / place for late afternoon sun streams. Here are the resulting photos.

See the series on Flickr or Google+

LightTrac

Alaska 2010

Highlights from my awesome trip to Alaska with Muchmore include the Anchorage to Seward ride on the Alaska Railroad, the Kenai Fjords boat trip, the Mount McKinley / Denali park visit, flying lessons over the Knik Tundra with Greg, hiking the Winner Creek Trail with Nancy, and a lot more!

Queens Pride, 6/6/10

Both summer and gay pride month start off with the Queens Pride parade and street festival in Jackson Heights. It’s always a lot more fun, less crowded and touristy, and a far less grueling experience than the Manhattan parade. The crowd is also a lot younger and more diverse. Check it out!

Faces of Holi, 3/7/10

Last week was one of my favorite annual events, the Hindu spring festival Holi (also called Phagwah or the Festival of Colors) out in Richmond Hills, Queens. It was my third time attending, and in addition to group photos I also concentrated on a series of portraits.

The weather was beautiful, with bright skies and a bit of a breeze to kick up the colors. Enjoy the photos, and if you see one of yourself in there post a comment and say Hi!

Brighton Beach Sunbathers

I love watching the Russian ladies in their big fur coats enjoying a sunny winter afternoon on the boardwalk at Brighton Beach.

Ashokan Reservoir

As environmental regulators prepare to allow drilling in a wide area from Virginia to southern New York, they better make sure there is no drilling in the New York City watershed. (NY Times)

Just got my 2007 Green Power Certificate, which shows how I bought 4858 kWh of wind-generated electricity last year. That’s just a little over 13 kWh per day, which isn’t so bad considering I work at home. I haven’t been tracking the exact costs over time, but despite the small premium paid for wind power, my bill has actually been lower. Probably had something to do with the new refrigerator. I only wish Con Edison Solutions had an ‘account billing history’ page to keep track of these things.

Wind power is already available and isn’t as disastrous as John McCain’s national park drilling plan.

On June 9 Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) spent 4 hours reading into the Congressional Record 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. Interestingly, those articles (63-page PDF via Coral CDN) include not just complaints about signing statements and the war in Iraq, but also charges that the President “Sp[ied] on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment,’ ‘Direct[ed] Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens,’ and ‘Tamper[ed] with Free and Fair Elections.’ These are issues near and dear to the hearts of many here, so it’s worth discussing. What little mainstream media coverage there is tends to be brief (USA Today, CBS News, UPI, AP, Reuters).

That’s the approximate translation of the sign on the waste bin.

Halfway through the first full day an no jet lag yet, which is a good sign. Spent the morning scootering around Tel Aviv and Yaffo, and now off to the beach again.

The Orphan Works 2008 Legislation would change that. It would force you to register every image you make with privately-held commercial registries. All unregistered works will be exposed as potential “orphans” for commercial infringement. In other words, Congress proposes to remove automatic copyright protection, opening the possibilty of unlimited, unlicensed and unathorized COMMERCIAL use of your works.

This site makes it easy for you to communicate with your members of Congress. Please feel free to use the templates below and when you fill out your address, your members of Congress will be automatically identified. Non U.S. artists please go here for a sample letter and the U.S. agencies to contact.

TAKE ACTION TODAY and tell your colleagues.

So without further adieu, I’m launching Superfuzzy, which will be less visual than Atomische (but still include lots of lovely photos) and will give me a better platform for sharing the daily stuff.

This is also a bit of a technical exercise for me, learning Wordpress and open-source content management. Please be patient while I work out all the kinks in navigation, design, and programming.

-Tom