Matt Hobbs

SF of A

Sometimes I forget that America is such a diverse country, and that New York is not America! Trips over to San Francisco always help address that imbalance. It’s a a beautiful sunny day, slightly chill but no humidity. Everyone’s happily driving everywhere in their cars, SF is not the walking city that NYC is as I keep realising when I try and cross a road. The hills flow across the city, giving stunning views back out towards the bay and the bridges. Beautiful. SF was always the city I wanted to live in when I first visited the states, hating New York when I first went there – how times have changed, but part of me would still like to try living here sometime.

Of course I almost didn’t get here at all.. Due to the cunning idea of getting ‘one quick drink’ straight after work, and then the even more sensible idea of continuing to drink through the evening without dinner I ended up over-sleeping. My 8am alarm was snoozed to leave me staring at the clock just after 9am going ‘sh*t’, and wondering how I was going to make my 11.20 flight. After rapid packing, a slight mis-direction (jetBlue domestic is terminal 6, not 4) was almost the final straw – leaving me at the check in desk just after 11! Thankfully this is the US, and I managed to make the flight and still not be the last person on board.

It all got better after that… Dave provided a fun evening’s entertainment and a sofabed for the night. James directed us towards the evening’s venues – local wines at EOS wine bar followed by heavenly sushi at Ebisu (thanks to Tommy our sushi chef for the evening). James also provided a random .celebrity moment when he dragged Craig down to the bar for 5 minutes to answer a question for Christy.

Lighting the way

Tonight the towers of light were shining in the New York sky, shortly turning off as dawn approaches. I came out of a resFest film showing at the Tribeca arts center to suddenly realise the whole sky was lit up. The lights stream straight up into the sky, I’d estimate 4-5 miles into the atmosphere, and when you stand anywhere downtown the refraction of the atmosphere means it looks like the lights are ending right above you – a very strange effect. Not only that, but the bottom half mile or so is filled with insects playing in the light and creating an effect not like glitter floating in the breeze. Breath taking.

The sight moved me immensely, and I’m truely glad I got to see it so close.

In fact the whole day has been quite emotional, with tears flowing freely a few times. Being back in New York on this day for the first time has really brought everything home. In 2002 I stood on the Millenium Bridge in London looking towards the heart of the city. In 2003 I paused for a moment in Melbourne, a bright sunny day on Freeman Street. Three years on I stood a few hundred metres from the site, gawking like a tourist, remembering what it was like when I worked on the 96th floor and the people who died without warning.

At resFest we all laughed watching the Bushwhacked show, videos grouped by their political commentary on the Bush regime. So much anger directed at a President and his cronies. Many of the videos edited footage of Bush addresses together to give new meanings. The two that hit home most were the flipside of each other – one re-working the state of the nation address to say that America was an evil terrorist that must be stopped from using their weapons of mass destruction. The other, my favourite, re-worked Bush’s words to suggest we all live together in peace and lay down our arms. We can only hope that turns out to be true sooner rather than later.

Lest we forget

Three years now since the devastating events of September 11th 2001. It’s the first time I’ve actually been in New York since then, and that includes the day itself when I was out in State College watching the unbelievable events on 20 huge screens in a Sports Bar. It’s still upsetting to think about it too directly, and I’m lucky enough to have not lost family and friends. My thoughts are with those people today, and with the hope that at some point we can all realise that hate breeds hate.

When 9/11 happened I posted up my last photo of the twin towers with a phrase. I don’t think we’ve reached millions dead yet, but the related death toll is definately rising – with 1000 US troops now officially killed in Iraq. It’s easier to want to kill someone when you think that person is trying to kill you or your family. The ‘war on terror’ just tries to make people in the west feel secure by bringing more terror to people elsewhere.

Here’s to peace… for everyone in the world.

Liberty or cake

An amusing little political leanings test over at Politopia. Apparently I fall into the South West – to quote:

You advocate a large degree of personal freedom and a large degree of government control over the economy. Your neighbors include such folks as Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Hilary Clinton, and Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, and may refer to themselves as “liberals,” “left-wing liberals,” “civil libertarians,” “democratic socialists,” “egalitarians,” or “anarcho-socialists.”

Huzah for rage against the machine!

Yesterday was ‘fun’ in New York, the remnant of tropical storm Frances decided to come visit bringing torrential rain all night and subsequent breakdown of the subway system. Took most folks 2-3 hours to get into work. Yowsers. Luckily Tim’s apartment didn’t flood and the cats found the rain highly entertaining. In looking into this storm I noticed that we’re only a few major storms away from Hurricane Matthew… Finally, recognition for my own particular brand of mayhem and destruction. Mwuh hah hah hah!

Property is theft

Well, the Republicants have left the city… and thankfully nothing happened! I attribute this to my brave decision to leave the town and hide in the Hamptons for a couple o’ days. Big thanks to Roland and Nancy for being our gracious hosts as always.

Just had a quick flick through Bush’s speech. One quote pulled out by the Beeb caught my eye;

“Another priority for a new term is to build an ownership society, because ownership brings security, and dignity, and independence”

Ouch. This summarises quite accurately the problem faced in American society, the leaning on having possessions to make you happy. I came to realise while I was travelling last year that America is a capitalist society more than a democracy. The fact that the current President is up to his neck in business ‘associations’ is part of the issue that people around the world have with him. Anyone can come to America and be rich and famous – but it all revolves around getting money and possessions. There is no drive to achieve spiritual balance, or deriving comfort with what you already have that cannot be taken away from you such as your beliefs, thoughts and mind.

The corollary to this that Michael Moore picked up on in Bowling for Columbine was the use of fear in the mass media to drive consumption. Watch a program on Fox on the world’s deadliest killers, who MAY BE IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD NOW! Then be pacified by an advert for a nice, shiny new SUV.. surely then you and your kids will be safe?

Fear/terrorism to drive the need for security/consumerism. What a great running platform. I’m sure Bush’s fat cat lobby group friends are sitting in their private clubs chinking glasses together already at what they’ve created. Getting wealthy on your discomfort and un-happiness.

It’s your vote America… use it well.

Good mornin’ Viet-york!

Just watched some scruffy looking protesters get arrested outside of the hotel behind our office. Thought they were Eastern European tourists into def rock when I first saw them, but then noticed the flaming elephant logo on their drums. The police ran after them quickly with their fun little plastic ‘handcuffs’ and the protesting was rapidly ceased.

My friend Jen’s in town from Sf on the way to more studying north of Boston – huzah! She’s sporting a natty ‘Vote or Die‘ t-shirt which was getting lots of comments as we walked around after lunch. Best was from a guy selling paintings on the side of the road – “Vote or die? Whasthatallabout? I ain’t ever voted and I ain’t dead!”. Ah well.

Well luckily it’s remaining quiet here thus far, as I imminently prepare to run away to the Hamptons for a few days. The rest of the world seems to not be faring so well… Bombs in Moscow and Israel. Why can’t we all just get along? And will the results of the election here help stabilise the world? Fingers crossed…

Suck my D*ck C.

Well the madness around the office now has a name… And the name is Dick C. The hotel right behind us is totally cordonned off by MIBs, police and large concrete fences and the police have created special ‘Republican Car-Shares Only’ lanes down 5th Avenue. There’s probably about 300 police within 500m of our building. I feel very warm, safe and protected. Not!

Back to the hotel. So obviously this hotel, along with many others right around us like the Four Seasons right next to CitiBank (poor CitiBank) is chock full of Republicants. So we’ve hit on the idea of putting protest posters up in the windows facing the hotel. Shweet. What makes this even sweeter is that we found out from the guy who cleans up every night that the hotel is Mr C’s favorite when he’s in town. How funny/worrying is that. Keep having flashbacks to the Brighton bombing in the UK, 20 years ago.

Our new neighbour, combined with a nightmare I had the other night about dying in an elevator makes for a very jolly trip up to the 16th floor every morning. Huzah! Still, made a nice change from dreams about dying in plane crashes. Plus the 3D effects in the dream and the feeling of rapid falling motion were way cool. Let’s go again! Let’s go again!

*u, as in Duck. Obviously. Thanks to the Passer By bar for that title.

From the heart of darkness

Wow. It’s hotter than hell in New York today. 90 degrees odd. Plus the satanic troupe descending on this poor beleagured city for Repub-con’04. Grrr… obviously New York needs more shite going on in its life.

Popped down to the protest march yesterday. An amazing sight indeed. New Yorkers are always up for a good march, as witnessed every Halloween in the East Village. Suspect we got a good preview of some folks costumes for that night already, especially if Bush still gets in. The display of good natured dis-content was awe inspiring. That and the shear variation in anti-Bush t-shirts on display. Definately a good show for ‘W’ crossed out, along with the perennial women’s favorite ‘the only bush I trust is my own’. My favorites were:

• “Yee-haw!” is not a foreign policy
• The Republican Elephant being f*cked by the Democrat Donkey
• Are we fascists yet?
• More trees, less bush
• He was better drunk

Nice to see such creativity derived from such a subject. Be interesting to see if the Republican t-shirt brigade produce anything better. Of course the fuel for this t-shirt fire will be sadly diminished if the rumours of Dick Cheney being dropped as Bush’s running mate are true. All those Bush and Dick images wasted. Sigh.

Given the mild feeling of imminent death and destruction it’s not surprising that the city seems hornier than the proverbial horndog. Or could just be the weather. Maybe we all should just stay at home, get wrecked and have threesomes. Or there’s always church. Oh no wait, Bush might be there praying for his god to be stronger than their god… Yee haw!

Mmm… wet

Watched a most wonderful movie on surfing last night, Step Into Liquid. The main story revolves around four surfers, from Santa Cruz and Maui, taking on 66ft waves out off the Cortez reef about 10 hours out at sea. Intensely crazy watching and wonderfully shot. The rest of the movie is interspersed with other surfing fanatics – including a hydrofoil enabled surfboard that keeps the rider a foot or two above the water’s surface at speed. Crazy. A must see movie for plenty of ‘is that for real?’ type action. And it is real…

Many things keep making me think about the sea at the moment. Going out to the Hamptons and lying listening to the waves, reading books on wreck divers finding sunken U-boats off the Jersey shore, being told about shark movies. All of which is conspiring to make me really, really, really miss being near the ocean. Or in it. Or even under it.

Image Frenzy

A while back I noticed a little link subtly tucked away off the Google home page for a product called Picasa. Being an inquisitive, and easily distracted from work, type pixie I downloaded it and spent a happy few minutes going ‘ooo’ and ‘aaaahhh’ at some of the iPhoto type functionality I now had access to. That and the nice fades between photos which can create some pretty cool animation effects if you flick back and forwards quickly. Cool!

I digress (no change there – Stephen), after a bit of digging it turns out that Google, in their continuing spate of random acquisitions, had aquired this product which allows you to categorise and order your local photos. Bit of a strange buy you might think, although they’ve got soooo much money they’re allowed a random bit of craziness.

Then I got to thinkin’… Why would they want to do that? Then it struck me. A few years back I was a big fan of a book called Futurize your Enterprise. In it, the author David Siegel outlines a wonderful vision of the future (cue swirly fade) where everything is tagged with XML, including your photos. Not only that, but combined with full GPS location tagging, UMT tagging and orientation sensors in the camera you could have an absolute description of the space-time co-ordinates for your photo. Shweet! Not only that, but Mr Siegel also outlined a vision where everyone could upload practically infinite amounts of stuff onto shared servers – where you could tag content as public, family, private or whatever.

OK brainiac, I hear you cry, what’s this got to do with anything? Well, apart from scary progressions like GMail giving you 1 GB of storage free and other stuff like that it appears this vision is moving closer and Google want to be there owning it. They already have an image search but it is, to be frank, a bit crap and relies on people putting sensible titles near an image – something that happens rarely. So by getting you to tag and collate your images on your local machine you can easily see that Google could offer cheap storage online for these same photos, offering high quality backup services, and letting you tag images as public/private/etc. At this point it all starts to make a bit more sense, although the end goal is probably a few years out.

Now much though Google’s going through a bit of a hard time at present I do applaud some of the forward thinking they’re doing. They’re demonstrating a degree of intelligence and planning that you don’t see many places. Yahoo keeps adding services, but Google is wanting to be the next leap forward at all stages having already finessed Yahoo at its own game. Watch this space. Guess that means I probably ought to buy some shares.. maybe.

In the meantime though, I’m just looking forward to the time when I can do a search query on the web asking for all the publically available photos taken at major tourist spots, like the Empire State building, and creating a big animated flowing interactive art piece of all of them (imagine a waterfall of time lapsed images swirling round). See you in the future…