pootling

The collection of snowman art on Deputy Dog reminds me a lot of my favourite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. It’s the simplicity of this particular one that got me though.

Manhattan Glows, originally uploaded by minifig.

OK, so this isn’t all that different from the last Manhattan picture I blogged, but I do really like this shot, and it also makes rather a good desktop, even if I do say so myself.

It too, is taken from the top of the Rockefeller centre, and I could post hundreds of photos I took up there, since many of them came out really well. If you want to see some better Rockefeller pictures, then I’d recommend the Flickr photo stream of Matthew Strong who takes wonderful pictures of New York, and regularly makes me jealous of the fact that (I think) he gets to live there.

I do find the cartoons at Wulffmorgenthaler to a be a little patchy, but this one took my fancy. It has a certain underlying message on the human condition, I feel. Click on the image for biggitude. (link)

More here. (via Metafilter)

Personally, I think this is a sign of good writing rather than bad. But then, if mine said College Level, I’d probably be arguing the opposite.

Manhattan and Central Park at Night, originally uploaded by minifig.

This is taken from the top of the Rockefeller Centre, which if you’re going to New York, I would recommend going up instead of the Empire State Building. Firstly, and quite obviously, it means you can actually see the Empire State Building, rather than being on top of it, and it’s also quieter and easier to take photos from.

I was worried that these photos weren’t going to come out, since they were taken on a pretty slow shutter speed, but clearly I’m not quite as shaky as I thought I was.

The views you get of Manhattan are breathtaking and beautiful. Semi Eco-Nut that I am, I did spend quite a lot of my time thinking about the huge amount of electricity New York was consuming as it make the sky glow orange, but that’s probably just me.

Incidentally, the large dark patch in the middle of the picture is Central Park.

Guggenheim, originally uploaded by minifig.

There are quite a few photos of the Guggenheim on my New York Flickr pics, but I think this one is my favourite. It’s a beautiful, but also extremely practical building, and a real joy to wander around. Mr Lloyd Wright clearly knew what he was doing.

Grand Central and the Chrysler Building, originally uploaded by minifig.

These are two of my favourite New York buildings. The pictures from inside Grand Central didn’t come out too great, although there are a couple on Facebook if you know me there.

The Chrysler is an amazing structure - imposing and beautiful, and yet oddly organic at the same time. The lobby’s pretty gaudy though. Half of the world’s marble must be found inside the lobbies of New York buildings, and the other half is attached to the outside of the rest.

5th Avenue iShrine, originally uploaded by minifig.

Apple Fanboy that I am, I had to go and visit the Apple Store in New York. It’s probably both the busiest, and prettiest of the Apple Stores. As you can probably gather, the actual store itself is underground, and this cube thing is really just the entrance and lightwell for the cave of goodies found beneath.

Autumn in Central Park, originally uploaded by minifig.

Or should that be fall?

Central Park is beautiful, huge, and a surprise coming as it does slap bang in the middle of Manhattan. From the edges you can see all the skyscrapers around you, which is pretty surreal since the park feels like real, proper countryside throughout most of it.

I think we picked a pretty good time to go. The leaves were gradually changing colour, and the weather was cold, but very bright, and seeing the light shining through the colourful leaves was quite a sight.

Manhattan from the Ferry, originally uploaded by minifig.

The Staten Island ferry was bloody cold. Especially by this point, since we’d already gone out in the cold, and then were on our way back, during which time it had, if anything, got colder still. However, it affords some beautiful views of Manhattan on the way back, and I think I just about managed to keep my hands still enough for the photo to come out.

Clearly this has been cropped a little to lose the large expanse of sky and water on the top and bottom.

Brooklyn Bridge in Black and White, originally uploaded by minifig.

I’m going to go through some of my Flickr New York pictures giving a little more detail on them. New York is a wonderful city, and frankly, I enjoyed being there a lot more than I thought I would.

The first of my proper posts about the place shows a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge from our first day there. We were lucky enough to have some lovely friends to stay with in Brooklyn, so besides walking across the bridge being a very touristy thing to do, it also had the big advantage of actually getting us where we needed to be.

You get some great views from the bridge, being able to see a lot of Manhattan, the Manhattan bridge and even the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building on your way across, but it was the bridge itself that really took me. A great structure, and I thought, rather photogenic.

(via Bits & Pieces)

I flew back from New York yesterday, and because of being shown this by the wonderful friends that we stayed with on the first night, this kind of became the song of the holiday. So many great New York tracks to choose from, and the song that’s going to sum up the holiday is a track about taking advice from a baked potato. Cool!