Given how scarce and expensive living space is in New York City, most New Yorkers share an exceptional obsession with Real Estate. Given how utterly unaffordable any even somewhat nice or spacious place has become, there is ample opportunity for senseless lusting over pictures in the NY Times real-estate section or in the windows of Brokerage offices.

The next level of pornography is to go to open-houses for apartments you know you can't afford - which at this point is pretty much anything. We are not pushing the curve too much and try to see if it could be possible to find a 2BR in Manhattan which we maybe could afford, if we recklessly over-extend ourselves financially.

For example, we learn that the reason why apartments in Battery Park City are somewhat cheaper per sqft is that the entire complex is on a land lease which leads to a monthly tax and maintenance fee on top of any mortgage payment, which is higher than what most people would be willing to pay for housing. Or that 19th century 10ft wide tenements can be converted into luxury apartments, with bedroom to small to fall down without hitting the head at the opposite wall but kitchens full of exotic German made hardware.

The conclusion of all this is that even though it is becoming popular again to have a family and still live in the city, this is the exclusive privilege of those who do not rely primarily on a salary for their likelihood. Gentrification has reached a level where the employed middle classes (without huge bonus or ownership in a flourishing business) are pretty much forced to live outside the city center - not because they can as during the urban flight of the 60ies - but because that is now the only pace which is barely affordable enough.

Carnegie Hall

We went to a Saturday afternoon family concert at Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke's with the theme of "Symphony in Space. $10 tickets for orchestra seats sounded like quite a deal for a world class orchestra at Carnegie Hall, besides it was a good way to see what people with kids do for fun around here.

The program included excerpts from works with a more or less direct connection to space with some explanations from the conductor. During some of the pieces, NASA imagery from various planetary missions was projected on the back of the stage.

The program included:

* Opening of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (Richard Strauss), famous from the earth-rise scene in "2001: A Space Odyssey"
* Jupiter from "The Planets" (Gustav Holst)
* Finale from Symphony No. 41 "Jupiter" (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
* Excerpts from the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 (Johann Sebastian Bach), which supposedly is included in the series of artifacts carried on board of the Voyager I space probe
* Variations on the nursery song "Twinkle, Twinkle little Star"
* Arrangement from the sound-track of "Star Trek" TV shows and movies
* Finale from Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" (Antonin Dvorák), which had been the one personal item which Neil Armstrong had taken with him on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon
* Mars from "The Planets" (Gustav Holst)
* As an encore, excerpts from the score of the "Star War's" Movie trilogy.

The Down Town Association

A black tie ball in the in the home of a venerable old-shool gentlemen's club in downtown manhattan as a fundraising event for the NY harbor foundation. The party is spread over various rooms on 4 floors of the building with different music, themes and alcohol sponsors in each. But one of the main attractions is the building, which is the kind of place where us mere mortals (non members) don't get to hang out on a regular basis.

Today we tried out my new zipcar account for a family visit in New Jersey. I had always liked the concept but after reading very bad reviews from users in NY. In summary: don't even dream of being able to get any car for the week-end and should you ever score one, it will be filthy and break down after a few miles. Besides the insurance coverage is really ridiculous compared to the cost of anything you might collide with in the streets of New York.

Since then, Zipcar seems to have raised its insurance coverage to reasonable levels (300k basic liability) and I could sign up through work without paying signup and yearly fees.

Since parking in the building is so expensive, taking in the car for 3 nights is more expensive than a zip-car for the afternoon. Our experiment wether there would be any cars available for a weekend outing with less than a weeks notice was quite successful - maybe because this is really off-season.

For this trip, we get a red Mini Cooper convertible, which is a lot of fun to drive, but rattles quite a bit. The car is clean and in pretty good shape, except that the gas card is missing.

For my wife's grand-parents who are from Slovakia, Easter is probably the post important family holiday in the year. Their tradition involves a very particular meal on Easter sunday. Tradition also involves that a basket is prepared with some of that food and brought to church on Easter to be blessed before the meal.

This year, we were getting up bright an early to go to their church, the Cathedral of Saint Michael the Archangel. This being a cathedral and Easter being a very special if not the defining event in the christian calendar, the ceremony and blessings were performed by the new Bishop of Passaic himself.

Since my previous experiments with Apple's Time-Machine online backup solution had not turned out as expected, but I really like the idea of continuous online backup - specially since the new 10.5 Leopard release does not seem as stable any more as my old 10.2 Panther release.

The basic idea is to use rsync, which is an efficient and robust way to synchronize two file-system trees over the network. This article for example explains in much detail, how to use rsync and unix-file system hard-links to create multiple snapshots of a filesystem tree over time and only consume disk-space for the files which have change in the meantime. Minus the fancy GUI, sounds a lot like what Time-Machine is trying to do...

For my purpose a few monthly snapshots are more than good enough with the current one being kept reasonably well in sync - daily at least, as long as the laptop happens to be online long enough for the changes to be pushed over. Since the network is private, I am using a native rsync server directly instead of running over ssh, which should hopefully increase speed and reduce CPU consumption of the background backup task.

On the linux server, rotating the monthly snapshots from the current tree (using cp with hard-link option...) is as simple as adding the following script into the monthly cron queue:

/etc/cron.monthly/rotate-snapsots.sh:

#/bin/sh

cd /home/backup/powerbook
rm -rf snapshot.3
mv snapshot.2 snapshot.3
mv snapshot.1 snapshot.2
cp -al current snapshot.1

On the Mac side, the backup should only be triggered, if the laptop is connected to the home network. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be an easy way to trigger an action whenever the wireless interface connects to a network, we'll have to run a periodic job to check for it. Since the linux server advertises itself through bonjour, this could be done by detecting its presence - e.g. ping its local name - "tinylinux.local". Since this name is not very imaginative and somebody at work or on any wi-fi network I might connect could have a host with the same name, I use a check for the name of the wireless network instead to trigger the rsync backup:

#!/bin/bash

netname=<my network name>

sleep 30 # make sure wifi network is up and configured

# check if we are in home network
system_profiler SPAirPortDataType | grep $netname &> /dev/null
if [ $? != 0 ]
then
exit 0
fi

echo "starting backup"
/sw/bin/rsync -vaHKL --numeric-ids --delete --progress \
--exclude="*/Cache/" --exclude="*/.Trash" --exclude=".Spotlight-*/" \
--exclude="*/Caches/" --exclude=".Trashes" --exclude="*.trindex" --exclude=".fseventsd" \
/Users/<my homedirectory>/ tinylinux.local::backup &> /tmp/backup.log

Launchd seems to be the recommended way to run periodic and background tasks on Mac Os now, so here is a user specific launchd config for the backup service, to run the above rsync-backup.sh script every 1800s (30min):

~/Library/LaunchAgens/rsync-backup.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-
1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>rsync-backup</string>
<key>Program</key>
<string>/Users/<my homedir>/backup/rsync-backup.sh</string>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>1800</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

It seems the StartInterval does unfortunately not take into account hibernation time, otherwise the job would start up most likely right away whenever the laptop is unsuspended after sleeping for more than 30min.

Even if rsync is interrupted in the middle of a synchronization, it is smart enough to pick up right away when started the next time. As long as the laptop is online for at least somewhat more than 30min on the home network, any changes made since the last time, should be synchronized properly to the current snapshot on the linux server.

The latest version of Mac Os comes with automated backup system called time machine, which besides the cool GUI is basically taking periodic snapshots of all changes and saves them to an attached disk. Since my new 17' Powerbook is suspended most of the time and moving back and forth between home and office, any solution which assumes a static environment is going to be challenging.

I was hoping for a solution which would automatically back up any changes incrementally to my linux server at home, whenever the laptop finds itself on that network. This means, the system would have to auto discover its network environment and deal with interruptions, since I am not going to wait for any invisible backup job to complete before closing the laptop again.

Following these instructions , I created an AFP share from my linux server, including a bonjour zero-conf advertisement, which can easily be discovered in the network neighborhood and mounted as a share on the mac. Despite Apple's stated commitment for zero-conf plug-and-play wireless networking, there does not seem to be a way for a share to be automatically re-mounted whenever it becomes in reach. Funny enough, this seems to work only for AFP shares exported from Apple's own new Airport extreme base-stations, which can double as a network share based on an USB attached or built-in hard-disk. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have reverse engineered yet how that is done to replicate it on linux... Another interesting quirk by Apple is that Time-Machine does not work with any AFP shares other than those base-stations anyway - something which can be circumvented pretty easily.

So far, I can at least activate time machine on that network share to play with it, but given that it will time out when disconnected and not re-connect when back in range takes out most of the fun. In addition, Time-Machine seems to want to complete writing one of its snapshots and doesn't' re-try incrementally, which means it may never finish a single one if my laptop never stays online long enough. In addition, Time-Machine seems to have a tendency to fill out any available disk-space which is quite nasty on any shared disk unless it is given a dedicated disk.

All in all, I don't seem to be able to get Time-machine to do what I want - except maybe by spending another $300 for Apple's new Time-Capsule base-station with file-server, which might get closer to a usable solutions for mobile host like my laptop. On the other hand Time-Machine seems very rigid and not very thought out yet, but I like the basic concept so maybe it is time to build something myself...

Ocean Township, NJ

After getting married sometime last year, this is now the wedding reception for friends and family.

Starting my new job at Google today. For the first time, I can actually commute to work by walking to the office which is at the Port Authority building which fills the whole block between 8th & 9th Avenue at 16th Street.

All in line with the trend of the latest US Dept of Labor employment statistics, I am experiencing today a brief period of unemployment until I start a new job on Monday.

Such periods of transition often bring an exciting air of freedom, of new possibilities outside the usual constraints. And with increasing age, the excitement is also mixed with a certain tired anxiety, that the new might not be all that good, that any transition comes brings additional cost, effort and risk.

From the point of view of of the existentialist, this is not even the biggest moment of pure freedom. Even in the absence of external constraints, we are restricted by our own plans. As Alfred Andersch claims in "The Cherries of Freedom ", we can only be truly free in the split second before taking a major, life altering decision...

Effective today, I am quitting my job at Bloomberg L.P. It's not an easy thing to do since Bloomberg is a rather generous employer - by todays standards. Compensation, benefits and working environment are well above par. In its about 25 year history, the company has only been growing and has never had any lay-offs and a fair amount of people have long tenure. It's the kind of company which seems to offer a pre 1980ies stable career environment where one could retire from.

One of the things I learned in my 2.5 years at Bloomberg - other than an insight into the financial services industry - is that I am still too much a technologist at heart to settle for a cosy job a above average pay working in the boiler rooms of wall street, fixing leaking pipes with duct tape or whatever it takes to keep creaking old infrastructure running. Finance companies do and should care about finance - technology is a necessary evil, a cost factor that nobody who matters fully understands or appreciates.

Today is the first ultrasound. Something is in there... about 11mm long, moving and with its own heartbeat. On the printout it still looks like a kidney bean or a space alien, but experience assures us that it will eventually grow into a full sized human being. Kind of miraculous...

Today, we are moving - a whopping 3 streets and 1 avenue to the north-east. However this is enough to change the zip code and instead of trying to do this ourselves, we hire a moving company since traffic conditions, elevator restrictions on both ends require a swift move. Even the professional movers almost get in trouble as the truck is a block away and we almost miss the our reserved time-slot for the loading dock and freight elevator at the new address.

No matter how far, moving is always a pain, with all the packing, unpacking - the disruption and the need to change utilities and mailing addresses along the way. I always thought as highly efficient studio dwellers, we had very little stuff, but all lined up on dollies in the hallway it still ended up being quite a bit.

Over the next 3 days, I am painting the new place. Instead of standard issue hospital-white, we chose a warm yellowish color for the rooms and some kind of light blue ("battleship grey") for the kitchen island. Despite all the effort, the result turns out to be well worth it in creating a personalize feel and to help lighten up the space.

Tonight I am picking up the keys to our new 1 BR apartment. We had been searching only half-heartedly since we really liked the Kensington-house , where we were staying, the character of a pre-war apartment with art deco accents as well as the sweeping views of open sky, city skyline and the empire state building.





We were still debating if we could not somehow make it by adding more storage or convert the dressing room (a.k.a. "walk-through-closet") into a nursery.

In the end pragmatism won over sentimentality when we found a 1 BR in one of those brand new luxury rental buildings at a "reasonable" rent, since this is the low season of the year. The apartment has a state of the art kitchen with dishwasher, marble appointed bathroom, built in AC in both rooms as well as well sized closets. The building itself has many amenities and services like a large roof deck, laundry, game room, lounge and an on-site gym. On the other hand, instead of a stunning view, we are now looking at a tall building across the 23rd St & 6th ave intersection which is one of the busiest in the area. While 20th st & 7th ave is quiet and residential, at the edge what in character is really Chelsea, this is now much busier and more commercial - dominated by chain stores and franchise restaurants - a small outdoor mall in the middle of Manhattan.

As last year, we made a reservation for low-key new year's eve at our local neighborhood French bistro. A bit more quiet than last year, probably a function of the crowd. Also a bit preoccupied with other things and we left 30min before midnight to go home toast to the new year with ginger-ale and watch the Time Square thing on TV - in HD... not as simple as it once was - they now even have life music.

My wife has not been feeling well for the last 2 weeks or so and otherwise started to exhibit some symptoms which are commonly associated with pregnancy - like a sudden appetite for strawberries at 4 in the morning... The pregnancy test from the drug-store turns positive bright red within seconds and will all the other evidence, the case seems to be clear: we are going to have a baby later this year, probably in July/August.

The happy news creates somewhat of a planing frenzy since we quickly need to decide on some logistics for the coming year. How quickly perspectives change - now I find myself with a sudden new interest in hospital ratings, baby cribs, strollers and 2 bedroom apartments.

Christmas Eve dinner in my wife's family is traditionally at the grand-parent's house. The traditional holy supper meal on Christmas Eve consists of bread with honey & garlic, mushroom soup, sauerkraut soup and piroghi.

Finally all the gifts are wrapped and ready to go for the next few days of visits with family.

We had our own Christmas tree lighting ceremony tonight after finishing the decoration today.

Chelsea Community Church - St Peter's Church 346 W 20th St

We had gone there a few years earlier and found it a very nice event to get into a festive mood for the holidays and to rediscover that Christmas once used to be a religious holiday centering around the story of the birth of christ.

Heicrich Hotel, 10 Livingston Avenue New Brunswick, NJ

Tonight we are heading to NJ for the holiday party of my wife's company, an up and coming startup, which is quite a bit bigger every year and so is the party. Pretty nice this year, in a hotel in downtown New Brunswick, which can be reached easily from NYC.

Suspenders Bar & Restaurant, 111 Bway

We got there about 1h after the party started and left not too long after since alcohol on empty stomach wasn't exactly what we needed at this time.

Jersey City

With an entire parlor floor of a JC victorian town-house as its new venue, this fixture of our pre-holiday social calendar is taking on a whole new scale - with ample bread, social games and everything.

In the tradition of my childhood, Santa Claus - or "Samichlaus" was not associated with Christmas, but with December 6th - the day of St. Nicholas. In the evening of this day, he would come out of the woods with a donkey carrying heavy bags of nuts, chocolates, mandarins, gingerbread etc. to hand out to kids who, according to the big book, supposedly had been reasonably well behaved throughout the year or at least can somewhat redeem themselves on the spot by reciting a poem or sing a song. While Santo Claus does the talking and clearly seems to be brains of the operation, "Schmutzli" a dark clad, usually somewhat sinister fellow is the muscle. He does the heavy lifting with the bags and rumor has it that he takes children who are not nice, stuffs them into his bag and carries them off into the woods with him, never to be seen again. Nobody seems to actually know anybody in particular who disappeared in such a way, still most kids seem to think that Santa Claus is a guy you better don't want to mess with...

Since we now live a bit far from the forest, we had to make our own basket of nuts etc. for our inner child.

The best thing about Christmas in my childhood always was the anticipation. It always starts with the 1st Advent, i.e. the 4th sunday before Christmas Day. Every Advent sunday would be a small celebration with a festive dinner, the lighting of one more candle, musical performances and maybe some small presents for the kids.

Today was the closing for the sale of the house in Washington Town Center. It had sold after only about 10 days on the market - in fact the people who ended up buying it had made an offer on the first week-end, before it was even officially showing. They needed to get out at the end of their lease, so the time to close was rather quick too, not leaving us much time to clear out. Most of the stuff which was in the house, is now in storage - "organized" in such an arbitrary way, that we will probably never find anything in there unless we clear it all out. The apartment in the city is now starting to feel like a ship being readied for a 3 year voyage of exploration into the south-sea.

Garfield/North Haledon, NJ

A traditional Roman-Catholic wedding in the local church, by the long-time parish priest (coming out of retirement once just once more for this occasion). Followed by a big feast afterwards.

Garfield, NJ

Because of the wedding tomorrow, this traditional thanksgiving at my wife's grandparents is unusually busy - with over 17 people from all over the country. As I have been told, it hasn't been that busy in a very long time - which might be true then be now even at the "children's table", the average age is over 30.

As the year before , we dress up a and head down to Canal street to join the Halloween Parade heading up 6th avenue. This time, we are more experience, bring a camera and manage to sneak out at 19th street to the west-side. Maybe it was the colder weather or the looming recession, but the streets along the parade route seemed to be a bit less crowded than last year.

openhousenewyork

As part of the 5th annual New York Open-house event for opening some architecturally notable and significant buildings to the public, we went to see the Freemasons Grand Lodge on 23rd st. The unassuming 19 story building from 1910 on 6th avenue, between 23 & 24th streets contains a series of meticulously restored meeting rooms with different architectural themes from Egyptian to 19th century empire style. All the decorations are plaster painted or plated to look like wood, marble, textiles or metal and are all newly restored or recreated during the 1985 restoration.

Tonight, we celebrated our 3 month wedding anniversary with a glass of champagne and a nice dinner a the Red Cat Inn in Chelsea.

Ely Crescent, Robbinsville, NJ

Today we put up the house for sale in central NJ and prepare to move into my studio in the city temporarily until we figure out what we are going to do next. This is a very hard time to sell a house and specially so for my wife who has put a lot of heart and effort into making this her home. I feel awful about making her go through all this and hope that some day we will find a place together that will be as much home to both of us.





The next few weeks we will be packing and put a lot of things into storage to consolidate our households into a minimal size for the immediate near future and until we see how our plans are going to pan out...

Ocean Grove, NJ

After labor day marks the end of the commercial summer on the Jersey shore - the boardwalks are rolled up, the lifeguards are off duty, but on the other hand, you don't need a $5 a day beach-badge any more to stick you feet into the ocean.





It's a bit cold an rainy today, but we are really here to visit for dinner with friends at their new house, which they built themselves over the last few years.

The Tribute in Light has become a regular presence in the NY skyline on every September 11. This year it is rendered particularly spiritual and ethereal by the rainy and cloudy weather, which was shrouding the city into a veil of mourning today.



(photo by scubapup )


Intended as temporary memorial in 2002, it is still seen by many as the most serene and meaningful form of official commemoration: pure, simple and mostly immune to the politicking and bickering which seems to affect most 9/11 related projects in downtown Manhattan.

Clubhouse, Manhattan Sailing Club

After completing the sailing class over the week-end, we receive an invitation for an evening out on the floating clubhouse of the sailing club, which is operating the school along with other regular racing, casual sailing and social activities for its members. The launch takes us from the North Cove marina at the World Financial Center out to the clubhouse floating in a lagoon between Ellis Island and the Jersey City waterfront.

We get to watch the finish of todays race and the night fall over the lower-Manhattan skyline as the sun sets and sip a few drinks from the bar.

Manhattan Sailing School

Since we did not have any plans to go away for this long week-end, we signed up for a basic sailing class (ASA Basic Keelboat standard) - primarily in order to get a bit out onto the water. The class turned out to be pretty intense, with a lot of theory and vocabulary sections... It was a good idea to take it on a long week-end with another day to relax afterwards! The weather and wind conditions were excellent during both days so we did have a lot of great sailing. Learning to sail in the New York harbor can be a bit stressful, with currents, and very busy traffic situations, but I guess as Frankie S. used to say - if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere...

Washington Town Center North Park, Robbinsville, NJ

We had always been planing to have a somewhat more elaborate party for all the friends and family who could not come to our wedding, which was a deliberate small affair. Since there is a park right in front of the house , having a BBQ there sounded like pretty good idea. Not sure if this would work, we contacted the township administration, which did grant us a permit for the use of the park without much trouble (no alcohol, though...). Hiring a caterer who was able or willing to accommodate our date on short notice was a bit trickier, but finally everything is arranged pretty easily. Luckily we also had decided to get a tent, since the day is turning out one of the hottest of the year, after a week of rather cold weather.

We clearly seem to be setting a precedent, since to our knowledge, nobody has used the park before for any kind function, public or private. Once the preparations are starting to show signs of unusual, if not suspicious activities - like setting up a tent in the park - the police arrives on the scene, since they had apparently been receiving quite a few calls on the matter. We show the permit, which seems to satisfy. Shortly thereafter the shift supervisor arrives on the scene personally for a second visit, since the first officer had apparently failed to inspect the permit properly.





The party itself is quite a success - despite the very hot weather and many people being stuck in traffic trying to get there - as any NJ resident can attest that on any summer week-end, there simply is no good way to go south... ;-) Being next to the house is ideal, for going to cool off, going to the bathroom and getting something to drink since the caterer runs out of liquids halfway through the afternoon.

At the end of the day, everything disappears they way it came (except the tent stakes are stuck in the ground overnight until somebody comes to remove them with special tools the next morning). We did not seem to have caused too much damage or disturbance. But it remains to be seen if next year, this type of event will be more common or banned by a new town ordinance against disturbance of the peace...

Washington Town Center, Robbinsville, NJ

My wife owns a townhouse in a neo-urbanist development "down south" by I-195. The developer did quite a nice job with the site. The development is denser, not as sprawling as the usual suburban subdivision, the houses have some nice touches and decorative details above and beyond the standard NJ neo-colonial architecture, the garages are in the back as detached "carriage-houses" on a back-alley/service road , the streets are in grid pattern with some broader boulevards, an artificial lake some small parks and squares to lighten up the layout. They are currently building a "town center" - i.e. a fancy looking strip-mall with some apartments above the ground-floor commercial space at the edge of the development. The initial grand plans of 3 more phases like this, re-routing the highway and turning the current road into a quiet main-street has probably gone the ways of many ambitious development plans and land options in the current real-estate melt-down.



(morning fog)

Even though the place does have a certain atmosphere, there is still a big difference between neo-urbanist and urban. Towns live because they are places of public life, all kinds of business, social and leisure activity, and even though some people are walking or biking around on a nice evening, this is basically still a suburban bedroom community where neighbors barely know each others names.

The park, surrounded by blocks of brick-faced town-houses is a nice touch, but feels dead most of the time. Maybe what would have been needed to jump start a livelier atmosphere would be a mix of residential and commercial development along the main roads, squares and parks. Imagine the corner house at the park a restaurant, coffee shop or ice-cream parlor, maybe even with a outdoor seating area in the park.

But maybe that would start to get noisy and messy and isn't what people who moved here would want after all. Or it simply wouldn't work and still not enough people would come that far off the beaten path to get a coffee, sit in the park and read a book.