New Year's Eve Photowalk

According to my Nike+ Fuel Band, I've been pretty inactive for... well, the whole month of December. In a quest to end the month (and the year) on a strong note, I decided to go on what turned into a rather epic photo walk.

I started in Prospect Park, worked my way through Windsor Terrace and Park Slope, then headed towards the infamous Gowanus Canal (I hear it has gonorrhea). I then made my way over to Cobble Hill, and finally finished up in Downtown Brooklyn, where I hopped on the Q train and headed back home.

It took about 3 hours, and got me to within a few points of my daily Fuel Point goal. Here's to an active 2013.

2012 Journal

As we come close to the end of 2012, I thought I'd put together a collection of some of the notable moments in my life over the past year.

The first part of the year was heavily centered around my finally becoming a citizen of the United States. Other than that, babies were the other big thing this year - I went to no less than three baby showers. There was also a wedding, a 60th anniversary, a Grammy-winning artist, a comedian, some hip-hop, some classical, Las Vegas, and a mustache.

This is one of the things I love not just about being a photographer, but about the exploding ubiquity of cameras in our culture: much of my life is fairly well-documented, and looking back over my photos helps to remind me that despite the mundane-ness of my day-to-day existence (sleep, work, home, rinse, repeat), I have a pretty great life.

From the Vault

A little friendly reminiscing with my pal The Resident about some of the gems we worked on in the early days of the dotcom boom prompted me to do a little digging on some backup CD's(!) I have hanging around in my office. I didn't find the stuff we were reminiscing about, but I did find these two gems from my sketchbook.

"I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!"

This was probably drawn sometime around when I got my BFA at SCAD. Which means it was drawn on an Amiga 3000, with a mouse that resembles a brick, probably using Deluxe Paint.

"Fatman"?

I think this next image started life as just another sketch in my sketchbook, which I'm guessing I scanned and used to practice inking and coloring in Photoshop, which would date it several years after the Juggernaut sketch. The file was simply named "fatman.psd". I'd really love to know how I made that cool watercolor background in what had to be Photoshop 4 (not CS4, just 4).

The Waiting Place | Dustin Curtis

I didn’t realize this until recently, but the most destructive thing smart people do is spend their lives waiting. Even people with lofty dreams and aspirations get distracted by the inertia of ordinary events and subconsciously store their goals in the waiting place.
This made me see just how comfortable I've been - I'm not only in The Waiting Place, apparently I've taken up long-term residence there.
Source: http://dcurt.is/the-waiting-place

Is the GOP stealing Ohio?

Funny business going on in Ohio, beginning suspiciously close to the 2012 Presidential Election. At the behest of Secretary of State Jon Husted (R), an unverified software patch was installed on electronic voting tabulation machines in 39 counties to "assist counties and to help them simplify the process by which they report the results to our system."

Re. a sketchy election result from Georgia in 2002:

No one will likely ever be able to prove that the November 2002 election was rigged, but that infamous software “patch,” along with the anomalous election results from 100 percent unverifiable voting systems (which are still in use today across the state of Georgia and in many other states) has cast an everlasting cloud of suspicion over that election.

The more I read, the more this is making me queasy. Even assuming there's nothing nefarious going on here, it's still highly suspect that they waited to install this uncertified patch on these machines only days before the 2012 election.

Source: http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/

Broken

First time in four years of owning an iPhone that this has happened to me. I guess I was due? I still don't really plan on getting a case. I might, at most, get one of the anti-glare screen protectors that I had on my iPhone 4, but I think that's it. ​I'll just have to not drop the replacement phone they (eventually) give me.

​8 days later...

The Flatbush Frolic

Brooklynites flocked to Cortelyou Road in Kensington for the Flatbush Frolic this past weekend. I hung around with  fellow students from the Midwood Martial Arts and Family Fitness Center, as demo lessons in Karate, Zumba and jiujitsu were given.​

I didn't make it too far down the street, as I was helping out with the demos, and distributing flyers and info about the school, but I did manage to get to my friend Auria's booth a few tents down the street, where she was serving up the most amazing spicy Malaysian beef sandwiches (I believe it was beef rendang, but I could be wrong).

The weather was amazing, the vibe was great, and a good time was had by all.​

Insane in the Chromatophores

​And here is another beautiful example of the intersection of two topics that are right up my alley: science and hip-hop. The nerds over at Backyard Brains hooked up a squid to an iPod and stimulated its chromatophores (pigmented cells) with some Cypress Hill, and the results are beautiful.

I thought it very considerate that they played the censored version of the song, perhaps out of concern for the squid's delicate sensibilities.

[via John Nack]​

​

Source: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2012/09/insane-in-the-literal-membrane.html