Changing My Designers

My shirts are no longer from Custo Barcelona, my new shirts are all from Lenka Srsnova.  My shoes were Fluevog and after a brief detour through Cydwoq,  am back to exclusively Fluevog again.

Art in Mission

I hosted a ludic art show and brunch at Chez Poulet the other weekend in SF.

• Venue: The venue is run by the legend, Chickenjohn, who has anchored the underbelly of emerging artists in SF for long.  Support on site and photography: J. Astra Brinkmann.
• Food: Catering by Caroline Hummer of  Fogcutters.  Liquid Nitrogen ice-cream by Smitten. Wines from Big Basin Vineyards by Bradley Brown. Bartender was Anya Sollish whose recent project is This Kind of Love: A Film by Jeanne Hallacy. Beer growlers from Cellarmaker. Nuts  from Nut Kreations. 
• Kids: Storyteller phenom Michael Katz held kids and grownups alike spellbound. Electronic lego for child-parent play by Littlebits,  thanks to Phillip Torrone for pointing them out. Phillip, the Awesome, helped start the  Maker Faire. 
• Artists: 
• Sarah Bianco. I love her series of paintings of bodies in hypermotion. 
• Limor "Ladyada" Fried  is an electronics DIY pioneer and runs her manufacturing company in Manhattan! She presented the Wave Bubble: a self-tuning, wide-bandwidth portable RF jammer, disruptive electronics on the  edge of legality.  
• Ruchi Goyal is a mixed media artist who explores travel and texture. She is also a tech executive combining entrepreneurship and art. 
• Scott Graham and  Cristy Aloysi do extraordinary contemporary glass. Friends know I use the great Ron Arad's work as dining table in NY. I also use Viscosity Studio glass work in everyday life. 
• Dylan Hosey is a woodworker artist, he display his recent project: handcrafted skateboards  from up-cycled hardwood. 
• Crystal Liebold  is a superb leather artist from Santa Cruz mountains. 
• Lisa Neimeth is an exquisite ceramics artist. I will fill my place with her  poetic tableware. 
• Kyle Reicher is an industrial artist and superlative metal worker who built immense steel doors for me.
• Veronika Sramaty is a photorealistic painter and showed her remarkable ``Top 10'' series. 

Rutgers CS Professors Do the Hard Thing Twice.

Here are 3 examples of Rutgers CS professors being recognized twice, where once is already a big achievement:

• Mario Szegedy wins the Godel Prize in 2001 and 2005. 
• Tomasz Imielinski wins 10 year impact award for VLDB in 2002 and SIGMOD 10 year test of time award in 2003.
• Badri Nath wins 10 year impact award for VLDB in 2002 and INFOCOM test of time award in 2015. 

Organic

In early 90's, I followed the emergence of organic fruits and vegetables, and that meant, at that time, buying uneven, knarly, deformed fruits (apples!) at the east village buying club/coop because being organic meant you couldnt grow the fruits to be picturesque like in the regular supermarkets. Now I go to Rainbow grocery and the fruits are so perfect textbook that I need to check their product code to be sure they are organic (shld start with a "9").  What happened?

PS: I remember an old standup comedian quipping, "I see three types of gas in the station, leaded, unleaded, premium, but I see only one gasoline truck that stops by each week to refill the tanks in the station." 

Why I need the NYer

I was sick, shivering, my windpipe choked, that I woke up and with nothing to do, light still dimmed, peeked at the NYer lying on the desk, flipped it and started reading a random article, with a quarter open eye. Soon, my eyes opened, I brightened the room some more, I continued and finished reading the entire piece. It was on Mark Bradford. I discovered him a few years ago and blogged about him a couple of years ago. The piece is as sly as his work, his personality of living on "slippage" ("slipping is something I believe in, something I depend on"),  his journey triggered by James Baldwin and juxtaposed with his work in the hair salon, the backdrop of the social tensions of the past few  decades, and culminating with " "I never have artist's block," he said, as though the thought surprised him. "I work when I'm sick, happy, depressed, constipated, jet-lagged. I show up. If I can't work, I go to Home Depot."" Home Depot is where he gets his work supplies. 

Life Theme 3: Movies

Someone (a student, this fact matters seriously) asked me to watch the movie Whiplash, story of a promising Jazz drummer who wanted to be top class, reached out to a teacher at Juilliard who proves to be a taskmaster. Apparently the actors do a good job, but I loved the NYer review, which really focused on the fact that the movie got the Jazz wrong. Nothing wants to be compared to "benihana". 

Life Theme 2: New Little One

A colleague pointed out I didnt blog about the new little one in my life. Well, I sing to her:

  A B C
  It's easy as, 1 2 3
  As simple as, do re mi
  It's like counting up to 3
  Sing a simple melody
 That's how easy love can be

She usually moves her tiny hands gently, places them on my lips and shushes me.

Life Themes 1: NY

I was in NY for a few days, and after much hesitation, went to see the WTC memorial. I have more than 2 decades history of visceral reaction to the towers from the initial attack in '93 to the last weekend when I saw the world's contemplative reaction to the events. My one wish was the waterfalls be eternal -- somehow tap into an infinite water source underground and unending power source, maybe solar, removed from the city's electric or public water supply grids -- so they would exist far past the survival of mankind itself. 

Gala Academia

The Computer History Museum in Mountainview has a Fellows program and I got to attend the Gala event where the Fellows for 2015 were awarded/recognized. The new fellows were

• Evelyn Berezin, for her early work in computer design and a lifetime of entrepreneurial activity.
• Charles Bachman, for his early work on developing database management systems.
• Bjarne Stroustrup, for his invention of the C++ programming language.

The event was all gala, and I got to hear about interesting themes and early days. Bjorne quipped that the Museum should have more exhibits on Software, not just cool gadgets and hardware. Indeed.