I was listening to Leo Laporte’s iPad Today on his TWIT network and during the most recent episode (#82) of the show, he and Sarah Lane walked through MacWorld. One of the people they met up with was Bert Monroy, who is a prolific Photoshop artist. One of the pieces of art he did was the above featured Times Square, which is jaw dropping. The actual artwork is 5 feet high by 25 feet wide, its file size is 6.5 Gigabytes, it used over half a million Photoshop layers and it took over 4 years to complete!!

The Apple Store on 5th Avenue unveiled its new glass cube that now only uses 15 panes of glass vs the previous version that had 90.

Via Business Insider

Super cool photo set depicting New York City moving from Day to Night in one photo. Basically, the photographer took a huge set of photos from the same position over the course of a day and then layered them together to show the transition. The above one of the Flatiron Building is one of my favorites since the building itself is a natural divider between day and night.

Via Amusing Planet

Mindrelic – Manhattan in motion from Mindrelic on Vimeo.

Amazing time-lapse video of NYC from various vantage points. Apparently, the author took the videos from several different hotels around and across Manhattan. Worth a view!

Via Buzzfeed

Via Wall St. Journal

On a quiet April morning this past weekend, a sad event took place at the legendary McSorley’s Old Ale House.  If you have been to McSorley’s down in the East Village, you may have noticed the chandelier above the beer taps…you know, the one that had inches of dust on it and numerous wishbones, also caked with layers of dust accumulated over the years.  You know you were always curious but didn’t dare go near them.  It wasn’t the most appetizing sight, but it was part of the charm and legend of this old ale house.  Well, this past weekend the NYC Health Department forced the hand of the proprietor of McSorley’s:

So, with heavy heart, the proprietor, Matthew Maher, 70, climbed up a small ladder. With curatorial care, he took down the two-dozen dust-cocooned wishbones dangling on an old gas lamp above the storied bar counter. He removed the clouds of gray from each bone. Then he placed every one of the bones, save for those that crumbled at his touch, back onto the gas lamp — where, in the context of this dark and wonderful establishment, they are not merely the scrap remains of poultry, but holy relics

So the dust is gone, but the wishbones remain. Mr. Maher treated the dust with reverence, placing it all in a bag and taking it home with him to archive it as another relic of the McSorley’s legacy. But again, on a broader scale, a tiny bit of the story and uniqueness of NYC has been taken away.

Photo via NY Times

(Taken with picplz at MTA Subway – Franklin St (1) in Manhattan, NY.)

As part of Broadcastr’s debut next month, it will host over 2,000 interviews with eye witnesses and first responders about their experiences on September 11th, 2001. About a week after the site goes public, Broadcastr will offer both iPhone and Android versions of an app that will be able to associate geolocation data with uploaded stories.

via swtched

Model NYC (Taken with picplz in East Brunswick, NJ.)

The exhibition, set for October, will showcase videos from as many as 20 finalists of YouTube Play, a contest for graphic artists and users of Googles GOOG video site. A celebrity jury that includes Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami and The Wrestler director Darren Aronofsky will wade through about 200 videos whittled down from thousands submitted in July.

The goal of this initiative is to try to re-position YouTube as a site/service that can cater to a more upscale, arts driven clientele and move it beyond the perception that its content is, er, lowbrow.

Back in the day, Colonnade Row was a top address for the guilded age wealthy of NYC. However, in the infinite wisdom of other NYC real estate moves, John Wannamaker tore down five of the facades of this beautiful architectural landmark to put up one of his warehouses. And since that infamous decision, the fate of these ruins have remained a mystery. That is, unless you went to the Delbarton School in Morristown, NJ:

In the 1890s the Philadelphia dry goods magnate John Wanamaker, who had taken over the old A. T. Stewart store on Broadway and Eighth Street, acquired the southerly five houses of Colonnade Row. In 1902, or perhaps 1903, he demolished his properties.

Two decades later, Delbarton, the country house of the banker Luther Kountze in Morristown, N.J., came to be owned by a Benedictine monastery, St. Mary’s Abbey, which also operates the Delbarton School.

Generations of students wandered into the woods for nonacademic purposes, encountering a mysterious group of tumbled Corinthian capitals, column drums, wreaths and cornices that came to be known as the Lost City.

The archivist of Delbarton was always curious about these ruins in the forest behind the school, and it was a recent and amazingly simple Google search that solved the mystery.

In a chance encounter with a garden designer, Marta McDowell of Chatham, N.J., Father Benet mentioned his continuing quest. Within a day or two, he recalls, she had typed into Google the search string “wanamaker Corinthian demolition,” raising a March 2008 article in Period Homes magazine by the classical architect Thomas Gordon Smith on the surviving houses of Colonnade Row — with images that match exactly the pieces of Delbarton’s Lost City. Bingo.

As it happens Mr. Smith, a professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame, has for years been studying Colonnade Row, making measured drawings of the surviving houses and interiors. He used them as an inspiration in designing the 2007 Classical Galleries in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

When he learned of the Delbarton trove, he was in Morristown in a week, like an Egyptologist who has found out that there is another chamber in King Tut’s Tomb.

Doing a simple search on Google today yields a Flickr Photo Set from May of this year that also connects these dots, so while this mystery is profiled in the NY Times today, it’s really been in the public domain for about 4 months now.

Old Colonnade Row Photo courtesy Curator of Shit

As seen at the NYC Subway Museum in Brooklyn, NY

Posted via email from Stephen’s Posterous

Citi Field – NY Mets
New Yankee Stadium – NY Yankees

Five years ago, I was sitting in a conference room at Lycos in Waltham, MA about to embark on a full day’s worth of mind-numbingly boring training on an irrelevant subject I can not for the life of me remember. Soon after the session started, the instructor came in and informed the class that the US was under attack. We all went into another conference room and watched the day unfold in stunning reality.

I did not want to be at work. I went home to be with my wife and my then 2 month old daughter Rebecca. I sat in front of the TV and just stared in stunned disbelief. The rest of the week and the rest of the year was just a blur, a surreal and sobering time.

To this day, it still so hard to comprehend. The images looked like they were from a bad terror movie. But they weren’t. I can not begin to imagine what it was like that day in Lower Manhattan. Five years later, I now work in Lower Manhattan, about 200 yards from the big hole in the ground that is “Ground Zero”. People I work with were there that day. I don’t mention it unless they bring it up. And even then, its awkward. I walk past “Ground Zero” every day as I go to and from work, and do my best not to dwell on what happened at that site. Because when I do, it is just too overwhelming. And I did not even lose a close relative, a close friend, or a loved one.

I don’t know what it was, what it is, like to lose a loved one in such a horrid manner. I don’t know what its like to have to rebuild your life after such loss. All I can do is provide my support and encouragement to those that were directly impacted by that day. Their strength is humbling.

One day, I hope soon, the idiot politicians will figure out what to build at that site, and maybe, just maybe, the collective “we” will be able to have some minor sense of symbolic closure.

Today is a sad day.

Fixed Income Special
8AM-4PM Pabst’s Blue Ribbon – $1.25

If you have to ask wether the deal was for cans or bottles, then you just don’t know… PBR at 8AM…now that’s dedication. I would have taken a photo but I was driving.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Ellis Island with my co-workers as part of an afternoon away from the office. It was really interesting to visit Ellis Island and see all the island in its restored state. For a long time, Ellis Island was in disrepair until the state of NY took over and restored this very historic part of our country’s history.

And in these short few weeks, my iPod has already paid for itself. It is a lifesaver for the commute as I just plug into my tunes and I am on my way. The biggest problem now is just finding the time to load up more songs!!

If you build it, he will come.

I have also been able to crank through the book Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella (This is the book that the movie Field of Dreams is based on. If you are a fan of Field of Dreams, then I would highly recommend reading the book. Like any other book-to-movie story, the movie had to remove a ton of details and several characters that were pretty important to the original story). I am currently working on What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson. Not sure what books to take on next but I will figure that out in short order. Any suggestions?