WallBond Life

I've Got Blubber!

2012-02-05T21:06:00.000-05:00

Pierce and I did this together. Pierce did the drawings, I did the music and animation, and we story-boarded it together.

When Aliens Attack!

2012-02-04T14:39:00.001-05:00

Pierce's latest creation from his weekly art lessons with Laura: a pastel of an alien from Steven Spielberg's 2005 War of the Worlds. (click to enlarge, as usual)

Pierce's Class MLK Day Play

2012-02-03T15:28:00.001-05:00

The finale of Pierce's grade 5 class Martin Luther King Day Play at Wallace School

Kinecting at Home

2012-01-20T18:27:00.000-05:00

Pierce and me playing around with a Kinect hooked up to my Mac. Just exploring the possibilities of this interesting peripheral.

New Year's Day at the Guggenheim

2012-01-01T19:50:00.000-05:00

On a balmy New Year's Day 2012, we finally got around to visiting the Maurizio Cattelan retrospective installation at the Guggenheim. It was a lot of fun, and reminiscent of Banksy's sense of humor. All the work on display was hung from the Guggenheim's domed ceiling, and revealed itself as we ascended the spiral ramp. There's a time lapse movie of the exhibition being assembled here.

Cattelan has said that this exhibition and his recent commission at the Venice Biennale would be his final shows before he reinvents himself as a new artist. Surprisingly, we happened to see his Venice exhibit too this past summer: 2000 pigeons, watching your every move.

Christmas Morning 2011

2011-12-25T20:19:00.005-05:00

Lots o' fun presents including a Bonsai Kitty, an Evolving Darwin play set and an H.G. Wells collection.

Christmas Morning Flowers

2011-12-25T20:11:00.004-05:00

An 8-Bit flower bouquet from Pierce.

Yoda Claus

2011-12-25T14:29:00.002-05:00

From December 24th on Pierce's Lego advent calendar.

Christmas Eve 2011

2011-12-24T21:19:00.006-05:00

Preparing for Christmas morning with the all important note and treats for Santa and his reindeer.

All Ready for Our Christmas Party!

2011-12-23T17:49:00.000-05:00

Deirdre's preparations culminated with this amazing table.

Pierce's Class

2011-12-22T17:45:00.001-05:00

Pierce's class went for a walk down to the waterfront on a lovely balmy day. Only a few days left until the big day!

Swingin' Christmas Concert at Carnegie Hall

2011-12-18T11:16:00.001-05:00

Deirdre and I enjoyed the New York Pops Swingin' Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall last night. Great big joyful sound from a full orchestra, the near 100 voice Essential Voices USA choral group, and a fun mix of Broadway and jazz vocals and music.

Pierce in the Studio

2011-12-17T15:07:00.000-05:00

I took this picture while waiting for Pierce to finish his lesson with Laura. That's one of Laura's paintings on the wall.

Short Hair Guys

2011-12-01T21:08:00.005-05:00

Pastel Ghost

2011-10-01T14:53:00.001-04:00

The results from Pierce's second art class. The model: a plush ghost against a red velvet curtain.

Charcoal Frog

2011-09-24T14:38:00.000-04:00

Pierce just started art lessons today with Laura Alexander, a local painter. Here's his first charcoal drawing. The subject is a plastic frog bath toy - perfectly suited subject matter for Pierce.

A Tribute to the Tribute in Light

2011-09-12T08:49:00.001-04:00

Ten years ago I was walking down 6th Ave in Manhattan when I saw the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Not long afterwards I saw the second plane hit the South Tower. In the decade since then, I've been unable to come to terms with what took place that day. It was simply too immense. The death of so many innocent people. The destruction of two towering landmarks that I saw every day.

For me, the Tribute in Light is a haunting and beautiful memorial to not just those who perished that day, but also to the two towers themselves.

This is a time lapse movie taken of the Tribute in Light the night of September 11th, 2011. For those viewing the tribute from Hoboken's Pier A where I made the movie, the lights appeared to be partly obscured by motionless, low clouds. But the time lapse reveals a more dramatic and dynamic view. At times the clouds swirling around the towers unsettlingly evoke the moments before the towers fell. At other times, however, the clouds brighten and shine, and the towers rise heavenwards.

Canada Vacation 2011

2011-09-05T23:53:00.001-04:00

Just back from three terrific weeks in Canada! In what's becoming an annual tradition, we spent half the time on Vancouver Island, BC visiting family, along with a four day side trip to beautiful Tofino. The next half was spent visiting more family in Cochrane, Alberta, along with a four day camping trip to Kananaskis Provincial Park where we were fortunate enough to see a few grizzlies!

Sight-Seeing in Chicago

2011-08-05T20:19:00.003-04:00

After a great conference at IIT in Chicago, Deirdre and Pierce joined me for two days of sight-seeing. The last time we were there we had such a good time at the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium that we returned to both. They're both world-class institutions. The "Evolving Planet" exhibit at the Field, and the newly renovated sea mammal section and the jelly exhibit at the Shedd were particularly good.

On our way to the Field Museum

'Sue' the T-Rex

Our hotel - The Embassy Suites

Pierce's stuffed red giant squid

The weather was beautiful

One of the amazing jellies on exhibit at the Shedd

Space Invaders!

2011-07-30T13:52:00.000-04:00

Having a few spare minutes before my next trip, this one to Chicago tomorrow, I wanted to catch up reporting on our recent family vacation to Italy; Rome in particular. While visiting the Spanish Steps, Pierce noticed a tile mosaic stuck to the wall of a building adjoining the steps. He immediately recognized it as street art by Invader, a French street artist. We first saw Invader's work in the entertaining and provocative documentary, "Exit Through the Gift Shop," by the English street artist, Banksy. Invader has peppered his little space invaders throughout the world and it was a thrill to see his work "in the wild." Amazingly, the next day on our visit to the Vatican, Pierce espied another invader, on a building close the Vatican museums entrance. Coincidently, a friend ours, who recently moved from Hoboken to Paris, noticed the invaders in his neighborhood and wrote about them on his blog earlier this year.

Too Little Time in Tel Aviv

2011-07-28T20:45:00.001-04:00

Having returned from Italy for only 5 days, I found myself back on a plane again, this time headed to Tel Aviv for a 6 day business trip with two of my colleagues, Tom and Eric. Our Israeli colleagues work very hard, so we had very little time to see anything but the office complex and our hotel rooms. We did, however, manage to see a few things.

The highlight of the trip for me was an evening visit to Jerusalem's old city, and the Western Wall in the Jewish Quarter. Our hosts for the trip to Jerusalem were three colleagues from the Tel Aviv office, who conveyed to us the very long and turbulent history of the area. I expect I'll be returning to Tel Aviv again not too long from now. Hopefully, the next time I'll have a bit more time to devote to seeing more of the country.

Click on the picture below to see some pictures from the trip.

From Israel July 2011

Italy Vacation

2011-07-17T20:00:00.001-04:00

A vacation I've always wanted to take: a visit to Italy! We made the most of it, visiting three cities, with shorter visits to two more, in just over two weeks, from June 30 through July 16: six days in Rome; high speed train to Florence; six days in Florence; day trip from Florence to Pisa; high speed train to Venice; four days in Venice; inter-city train to Milan; overnight in Milan and then back home.

View Italy Vacation 2011 in a larger map

Pierce was a real trooper as we poked our noses into an endless number of churches, museums and art galleries. The weather was fantastic the entire time, but uncomfortably hot (as is apparent in a number of the photos). Our next visit will be in the Spring or Fall.

Typically, we'd eat breakfast and one other light meal at our flat, and another, bigger meal, at a restaurant. The food ranged from good to great, even at the most modest of restaurants (which we tended to frequent).

Deirdre did a great job of arranging lodgings for us. In Rome, we stayed at the IQ Hotel, near the train station. The hotel had a roof garden which we took advantage of on a number of occasions for an evening picnic. In Florence we stayed at a charming flat near the Duomo. In Venice we stayed at the the beautifully restored Residenza Ca'Foscolo apartment hotel. You can see pictures of the latter two locations in the photo albums.

We set out with two ebook travel guides: one by Lonely Planet and one by Rick Steves. The clear winner was the Rick Steve's book. It provided lots of practical, detailed advice about getting acquainted with each city. And, more importantly, it provided us with a bunch of invaluable tips for avoiding hot, long, lineups: buying a Roma Pass for the Coliseum, booking tickets online for the Vatican Museums, the secret door in the Sistine Chapel, not bothering with the Uffizi Gallery online tickets, and the bag-check trick for getting into St. Mark's Basilica.

We took over 1000 photos, which we've culled to about 150 in the three albums below. Unfortunately these don't convey the heat, the sounds, or the tastes, but you'll certainly appreciate some of the sights we saw. Click on a picture below to see the slideshow.

Rome

Florence

Venice

An "Arty Weekend"

2011-06-19T14:34:00.003-04:00

In the inner depths of suburban New Jersey, a group of friends gathered last night to take part in an old-fashioned salon. The inspiration for this came from Kingsley Amis's novel "Lucky Jim", where the drunken protagonist destroys his career prospects during a weekend gathering intended to exhibit the amateur artistic talents of his colleagues. In contrast, we gathered for only one evening, and no one was (noticeably) drunk. And the amateur artistic talents were impressive indeed. We were treated to Chopin's "Raindrop Prelude"; a Debussy Arabesque; a vocal performance of a Schubert lied and an old show tune; a delicious dinner; a violin and piano duet of an adagio from a Bach sonata; an entertaining and poignant Moth-style story; Philip Glass's Metamorphosis 4 for piano; and finally, a delicious desert. Most of the performers had rarely played in front of an audience and were understandably terrified. But the audience seemed happy to simply be entertained even if a performance was a little muddled part way through. All in all, a pleasant way to spend an evening, despite the short periods of terror.

Science Fair

2011-06-16T14:38:00.003-04:00

Pierce's science fair project this year: "Are electricity and magnetism related?". After performing 5 simple experiments with a simple electrical circuit and a compass, the answer was a resounding "yes"! Surprising to me was that we were even able to infer the shape of the magnetic field surrounding the circuit's wire. Click on the picture to enlarge. Click twice to really enlarge!

Wallace School Field Day 2011

2011-06-11T15:18:00.005-04:00

Amazingly this our 5th Wallace School Field Day and just as much fun as the first when Pierce started kindergarten which seems like a million years ago. Where does the time go? Click on the pix to enlarge.