Lamp post, 8th and H Streets, NW
Originally uploaded by Novak
Took a walk around Chinatown last night. There were some particularly cool-looking clouds. For this one, I focused on the clouds with the aperture wide open...ended up giving the lamp-post a nice soft-focus kind of look.
Back in January, I was all full of hope at re-discovering the act of blogging, sharing observations and irelevant quotidian moments with friends and followers. And yet, here we are five months later and my blogging habits have tanked...I'd venture to say they never got off the ground. The truth is, I'm finding it easier to use Twitter and Facebook to stay connected with what I feel is a more specific audience.
View From Craggy Range
Originally uploaded by Novak
One of my favorite photos from my recent trip to NZ with a certain someone.
David Denby argues that a certain mean spirit is infecting the national conversation and debilitating America. He traces the origins of snark, and explains how his mission to reduce it is aimed at preserving humor in America.
Woo-hoo! From a Jolt press release:
Jolt Online Gaming today announced that it will be publishing Legends of Zork™, which will give players the chance to once again take up the mantle of Zork™, this time via an Internet browser....
LegendsofZork.com will provide online gamers with a persistent online adventure, playable from any Internet browser.
Nice!
Designed to provide gamers with a casual MMO game they can play on their laptop, desktop or Apple iPhone (in school, work or on the bus), there’s nothing to download, just go to www.legendsofzork.com
Wait...what? MMO?
This is not the Zork I'd hoped it'd be. Still, let's see what happens.
[via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
Valor
Originally uploaded by Novak
I took the camera for a walk on Sunday -- 'twas a wee bit chilly what with the wind and all, but great fun. My feet took me down to the Mall then over to the Memorial Bridge, the location of one of my favorite works in this city of statues.
Pictured above is a detail of "Valor," part of "The Arts of War" by Leo Friedlander. ("The Arts of Peace" by James Earle Fraser flank the parkway a few meters to the south.)
According to the National Park Service web site, "The sculptors were commissioned in l925 and their designs approved in 1933, but the statues were not erected until 1951 after they were cast and gilded by Italy as a gift to the United States."
Picnik-ed Tree, Too
Originally uploaded by Novak
At one point, perhaps, I would have attempted to give this post a more "creative" -- or at least, wordy -- title, but really it's just a photo of a tree and not, as I've seen so many times on flickr, "the triteness of tritey triteness by tritery tritersone with love and fluffy kittens and rainbow bunnies."
On a more interesting -- or at least, different -- note, this bare tree was among a copse of evergreens (so it stood out for obvious reasons) at George Washington's birthplace. True story.
The "PIcnik" in the caption refers to the nifty photo-editing tool, picnik, which is available in flickr.
I've been blogging in one form or another for nigh on ten years now, and I have to say, when I'm good, I'm okay, and when I'm bad, I'm horrible.
Of the many old-school, non-electronic, susceptible to dust, humidity, and light books in my old-school library, only a few are revisited by me with any regularity over the years. Herman Hesse's 1922 novel, Siddhartha, is one. Hesse's simple style, bereft of austentation and ornament, is incredibly accessible. The plot, too, is simple, and yet the simplicity is a veneer -- under it, within this novel's scant pages lives an incredibly rich and complex allegory of enlightenment through experience.
Ironically, I didn't like the book when I first read it as part of a required English class my freshman year of college. I found the characters flat, the writing simplistic. I could relate not at all. I was, in a word, young. Yet, I held on to the book, along with a few others that I struggled with, because I could tell they were important, somehow. And, as the years pass, I revisit each one (as I'm inspired to do so; not, as it might seem, according to a schedule) and find that they become more important, more relevant to me the more I live.
I am far from enlightened, but it is the curious parallel that we all have with Siddhartha's eponymous protagonist -- that is, as we age and experience new things, we are able to reflect on ourselves and our actions (ultimately to understand our place in this universe, but who is anywhere near that level of understanding?) -- it is this curious parallel that imbues this novel with its relevance.
Do yourself a favor -- read this book now so that you may re-read it five, ten, or fifteen years and truly begin to appreciate it.
