New York City
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Since the beginning of the new year, I upgraded our broadband from a copper wire service, specifically Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner, to a fiber optic connection from Verizon. Immediately, we more than doubled the downstream throughput: from an average 11 Mbps to more than 25 Mbps. The biggest difference, however, came in the upstream. Whereas our upstream was about 500 kbps with the copper wire cable, it is now about 25 Mbps with fiber optic. Theoretically, I can now upload files at about 50 times the speed. None of this, however, should come as a surprise. Not only is fiber more capacious than copper wire, the Verizon 25/25 service is also more expensive than Road Runner’s 10/0.5 service.
Independently, we also signed up for SamKnows broadband monitoring, which is how the FCC is measuring the nation’s broadband capabilities. Each month, SamKnows sends a summary of our broadband connection.
Here is our downstream…
…and our upstream.
As you can see, the connection is pretty stable. It is consistently around the advertised 25 Mbps, which is good. Uploading and downloading files always seems zippy, and when we stream video, it always looks very sharp. I never notice any buffering delays or any sudden pixelation in the picture.
However, two other very important metrics have been off. Our latency and our packet loss, which should be low, have been inordinately high.
Even with good throughput, latency can slow down broadband by delaying the connection with a remote host. Similarly, packet loss can cause errors that will result in either a “dropped” connection or requiring redundant, duplicate connection.
As you can see, it looks like those two metrics have dropped significantly around March 24. I wonder if there was an equipment upgrade on that date that might have improved the “fidelity” of our broadband connection.
From a purely observational perspective, I haven’t noticed any improvements in our connection. In fact, I thought our connection had been getting slower over the last week, but, of course, these kinds of observations can be deceiving.
(Via SamKnows.)
A large group of school children gathered at NYU’s Tisch Hall to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The factory was located at Washington Place and Greene Street in the heart of what is now NYU’s Washington Square “campus”. The fire and its aftermath led to the passage of a number of workplace safety and labor protection laws in the midst of the Progressive Era.
Our friend Ellen Schneiderman staged a significant show of her paintings at the Jeffrey Leder Gallery, a beautiful two-story brownstone in Long Island City. She paints some very beautiful shades with a mix of intricate layers. She already sold a number of paintings so I recommend visiting the gallery soon if you want to get yours.
In honor of Ellen’s big show, Sarah and I hosted a brunch at our place. About a dozen folks came to wish Ellen well, and then we headed to the gallery where scores of friends, family, and art lovers gathered to celebrate her work and the work of Brandon Friend, who also opened a show that day on the gallery’s second floor.
The show of both artists is on view until April 8, 2012. The Jeffrey Leder Gallery is at 21-37 45th Road in Long Island City.
It’s been several months since NYC Runs held its first race in Riverside Park. As a favor for the organizer and figurehead, I snapped a bunch of photos of the Lousy T-Shirt Race. Since then NYC Runs has grown significantly. They even staged a pretty serious marathon in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park the weekend before Thanksgiving.
On Sunday, NYC Runs staged a Ekiden relay race in Central Park. Again, I brought my camera and shot photos of the relay race.
Aside from the excitement of watching two- to four- person teams split the sixteen-mile course in Central Park, there was one funny moment. It was when one woman was trying to pass on her sash to her teammate. Unfortunately, she was wearing earphones and it came off with the sash. After a quarter minute or so, she managed to untangle the earphones from the sash but not before her iPod hit the pavement. There’s a lesson here, which I heard from many experienced runners: “don’t wear earphones in a race.”
If you stumbled here looking for your race results, check the NYC Runs Ekiden page for official information and results.
Every winter, the 7 train closes all stations west of Queensboro Plaza. For 2012, the work is expected to last eleven weekends. Here’s a worker on the 23rd Street viaduct at 44th Drive in Long Island City.
New York has more than a fair share of famous buildings, and on Saturday, Open House New York and DoCoMoMo New York staged a scavenger hunt of Modern Architecture. Contestants were given about forty clues to find buildings, rooms, and sculptures around New York, mostly in Manhattan, and collect points for each one.
Sarah had signed us up, under the name The Whiskey Thieves, and we started our hunt at Room and Board, a modern furniture store in SoHo at 11:00 AM, and we had until 5:00 PM to find as many buildings as we could. To ensure we found the buildings, we took photos of ourselves, wearing a bright orange-and-black button, in front of the building, such as the photo in this post.
Although each of us had lived here for over ten years, we saw a good number of buildings for the first time. For example, I’ve probably biked past the corner of Park Ave and 59th St dozens of times, but I never knew that at the south-west corner, at 500 Park Avenue, was the former Pepsi Co. headquarters. A good number of the buildings were clustered around Park Avenue in the 50s, including the Seagrams Building, Lever House, and the Mercedes-Benz of Manhattan showroom (formerly the Hoffman Motors showroom).
Aside from finding buildings, we could earn points by taking photos of other assorted items, such as holding one of those Great Architects Lego models, one of us sporting Le Corbusier–style eyeglasses, or a copy of Le Corbusier’s Towards A New Architecture. We found a pair of glasses at Studio Optix in Rockefeller Center (thanks for letting us try them on), and at the Lego Store we found built-but-encased model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House. We couldn’t find a printed copy of the Le Corbusier’s book so we settled for an iBook on my iPad.
We had to upload our photos to the Modern Architecture Scavenger Hunt Flickr pool by 2:00 PM today. You can see the results on my own Flickr set, and, of course, in my photo gallery.
Sarah and I are hoping we can do a scavenger hunt like this again. Will they do an Art Deco version in the future?
The above links to Amazon are affiliate links. If you buy something through those links, I will earn a commission fee.
For those interested in hearing a conversation, the first of a new Penguin Salon series, about two seemingly competing ideas about connectivity in the digital age, Eric Klineberg and Clay Shirky will be speaking at 192 Books in Chelsea on February 7, 2012, 7:00 – 9:00 PM.
I hope some of my students from fall’s New Technologies class can attend. RSVPs are required.
The Penguin Press Presents: Together Alone: “The Penguin Press Presents celebrated public intellectual Eric Klinenberg, author of the forthcoming Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, and Clay Shirky, author of the seminal Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, coming together to discuss what it all means and where we’re all heading.”
The above links to Amazon are affiliate links. If you buy something through those links, I will earn a commission fee.
The first significant snowfall since late October brought a relatively minor amount of accumulation, but here in the city, the snow went through an accelerated pace through its usual steps. First it snowed, leaving a thin blanket of powder, which was quickly turned to slush. Now, it looks like it snowed three days ago and the grey sidewalk slush is going to make crossing streets an adventure.
Winter is here. Groundhog Day is about two weeks away. But for now, we got slush.
As I walked around Long Island City this afternoon, I noticed that the building housing the former Jackson Avenue Steakhouse has made a little change to its exterior. The first story of the building, including the new sports bar and even newer Caribbean restaurant, is now blue. I guess they chose that scheme to clash, as much as possible, with the red awning. Or figuring that since so many flags use the red-white-and-blue combination and are pretty successful, it should work just as well for a sports bar.
I haven’t been to this spot since the old Steakhouse was temporarily closed for health violations, then abandoned its $8 “burger and brew” special, and then changed its name to Al’s Steakhouse. I noticed that it had reopened as a sports bar some months ago, but I never felt compelled to go in. Take a guess if I’ll be going there anytime soon.
The marathon has come to New York City again, and shortly after they reach the halfway point, the runners come to Long Island City and Vernon Boulevard.
As we’ve done for the last few years, we stood outside among the crowd and enjoyed a beautiful day outside, and I snapped off about 1,000 photos. After hours of reviewing, I posted about 100 of the better shots to my photo gallery.
While I shot photo after photo, Sarah made a snarky sign, reading “It’s Not Going to Run Itself,” in response to my “Get the lead out!” and “Finish Already!” jeers. Julia screamed more encouraging words into her megaphone, and Nicole cheered throughout the whole thing. It’s always good when they come to watch the marathon, otherwise I’d just stay in bed and sleep too much.
I’m looking forward to spectating again next year.
