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Back half of line:

Front half of line:

There was a long line, but it moved fairly quickly. We met some new acquaintances. Lots of press were down on Wall Street interviewing voters (NY TImes/various foreign television networks).

BTW, if you vote, you can get a free tall coffee at Starbucks!

If you're in DC, check out the Newseum. They have some interesting exhibits going on: FBI and G-Men (from gangsters to terrorists) and Pulitzer Prize Photographs. This is a great place to take kids too (i.e. news-anchor simulation of green screen).

World Trade Center:

Berlin Wall (I heard that they had to alter the profanities on these walls for public display):

Found another folding bike at Design Within Reach in Soho. It appears to fold vertically whereas the Dahon folds horizontally. I'm not sure the DWR bike is the same one that MoMA sells (i.e. brand is Strida), but if it is, then it looks like the orange bike below. With the Strida bike, there is no metal chain. My friend, Angelos who builds mountain bikes told me, that this type of chain requires little maintenance.

Design Within Reach:

MoMA:

Dahon:

I'm loving these new Google themes for personalizing your email interface. You can choose from a variety, kind of like what you can do with Twitter and MySpace pages without having to code. I chose the artsy-sketch theme. The art switches randomly from a giraffe to a tall ice-cream cone... Very cute. It's also useful if you have multiple Gmail addresses to distinguish from opened on several browsers.

Speaking of personalization, I thought this was neat: Personalize the Flip Cam. The Flip Cam is a compact video camcorder that can take HD as well. It's compact, and around $220, and easy to upload. They give you the specs, and you can upload your design, which will be printed on your camcorder. Once you design the template, you can upload it onto Cafepress site, and if your design sells, you earn $10 per camcorder. They have a whole section of bestsellers and top designers, which are other options than using they're Pattern Generator.

I forgot to mention that a couple of the themes change according to weather information.

Ever since Citibank announced their plan to layoff 53k people earlier this week, the price of Citibank fell as low as $3.16. I don't know if this is a fire sale, but if you have a couple of hundred dollars, you can buy 100 shares. At one point, this stock was valued at $40. But if you're thinking about buying, I would read some of the discussions here. If you're thinking of making a quick profit, they're talking about the short sellers ban.

My friend Tim McNerney is working on a cool Bike-Sharing Program and NYU that he had proposed. So far, we've gotten three pcomp things (1. magnetic card stripe reader; 2. solenoid-electric lock, and 3. Xport, which is an ethernet connection) to work separately with the Arduino, but now we are trying to merge everything together. The pcomp experience is slowly coming back to me, which is much like being an auto mechanic when troubleshooting.

Now we have to hack the Arduino code to get the solenoid to release when it reads the N number of an NYU ID card. Fun stuff. Figured out on Tom's site that you can use this breakout board (RJ-45) for the Xport instead of this sold out breakout board, which is $2.00 more expensive. Or, you can get this shield for $15.00.

Recently, I was watching this PBS special on architecture, and one of the architects that was interviewed mentioned that architecture was moving towards an "organic aesthetic," which inspired the design on of this ring.

This ad is on 49th Street and 7th Avenue. It's one of the series of Dexter ads in the form of popular magazine covers. I thought it was clever. There's also one of him on Rolling Stones and Wired. To see other covers, click here.

Located on 18th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues.

I saw this on my way home. Wired Magazine, and displays and demos tech and sustainable gadgets, and is open temporarily until the end of this year. If you wanted to see Pleo (responsive toy/robotic/dinosaur), you can demo it there. I saw this portable printer by Polaroid, the size of a compact camera, that prints business card-sized photos taken with a cellphone.

Banksy, the artist/graffiti artist just had an exhibition at a pet store in Greenwich Village, which closed on Halloween. I stumbled upon it with Giana and Joo Yon, ITP Alums, who knew about it. We couldn't get in, but at least we were able to see the window displays.

This looks like a leopard resting with its chest heaving and tail moving, but it's actually a fur coat.

A hen with her chicks, except they were chicken nuggets instead.

A mother surveillance camera, with little ones in the nest.

Rabbit wearing cosmetic products that are typically tested with. The twitching rabbit's movement looked pretty smooth. Check out this video of the monkey, it looks so real.

There was a squirmy hot dog in a bun, but I wasn't close enough to take that photo. To see video, check out this site.