What's cooking...

Here is a quick recap of some of the events and items capturing my attention these past few weeks:

Flickr
Opened an account in Flickr and placed a photo feed on Elliptic (see the right-sidebar). This will allow me to keep a frequent feed of photos rather than only creating albums every so often. Flickr is an interesting site for many reasons - I've already discussed one of them.

"Home"
My old college friends, Matt and Jen, have made a film that is curently touring the film festival circuit. In true independent (read: financially-strapped) spirit, I was an actor, cameraman, boom operator, lighting monkey and associate producer (among other things). Now if I could only get my act together and assemble a crew to do my own script.

Philadelphia Film Festival
Here is an initial list of films I am planning to view:

• 5 x 2: Five Times Two  dir. Francois Ozon
• Ma Mere  dir. Christophe Honore
• Lonesome Jim  dir. Steve Buscemi
• Clean  dir. Olivier Assayas
• Kings and Queen  dir. Arnaud Desplechin

Seattle Album

I have made a selection of photographs from a recent trip to Seattle available as a photo album. You can find it in the right-hand column or here.

Visual Collections

I bumped into a wonderful site that collects hundreds of thousands of "maps, fine artwork, photographs and other items from over thirty renowned collections." These are not simple jpg images, however. You will need to use their Insight Browser or Java client in order to search and zoom in to view the fine details.

The Visual Collections site from Cartography Associates contains dozens of digital image collections from Museums, Universities and private collections throughout the world. Our mission is to encourage the development of future collections and facilitate their worldwide distribution to both scholars and the general public.

Cartography Associates strives to provide an on-line environment wherein all types of digital collections from a wide range of resources can be seamlessly fused together into one large, comprehensive collection.

| Visual Collections |

Rittenhouse Square and Development

Inga Saffron, the architecture critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, has written a nice piece on the possible impact of development projects on Rittenhouse Square. Those developments include three new apartment towers, a 10-screen movie complex facing the park on the 1900 block of Walnut and a parking garage to hold 500 cars.

You can track some of the history of the movie complex and garage project by visiting this old post in EllipticBlog. Here's what Saffron has to say about the proposed garage and theater:

So, instead of privately funded housing, a $35.4 million publicly funded garage will be built on the square. It will pay no property taxes. The garage will bring 500 more cars to the overburdened square. Yet, owners of private garages just two blocks north, on Market Street, complain they can't fill their spaces in the evenings and on weekends...

...Individual residents continue to fight the Parking Authority's plan in court. On May 25, the Common Pleas court is expected to decide whether the agency can tear down three historic buildings on the site. Meanwhile, other residents have been waiting for more than a year to learn whether the state Supreme Court will consider their appeal of the city's zoning variances.

One thing we already know is that a garage and theater are not what zoning experts call "highest and best use." The frenzy of apartment construction around Rittenhouse Square is proof that this site has a better use.

| "Changing Skyline | Throngs from a garage and theater pose a threat to Rittenhouse Square" by Inga Saffron |

| Rittenhouse Square - from EllipticBlog's Photo Album |

36 N. Front Street

Click for larger version (252 Kb) Added some new shots in the Philadelphia photo album today.

Philadelphia Cityscapes

Decided to add a selection of some photos of Philadelphia in the photo albums. More interested in capturing the textures of walking through the city rather than focusing on the recognizable landmarks. I don't want to tax your download times so the photo sizes and quality have been reduced significantly -- some detail is lost in the process.

Cafe Orbital

OK, found a decent Internet cafe that allows me to work with and upload photos. It is called Cafe Orbital -- right across from the Jardin de Luxembourg on Rue de Medicis.

I took some photos just to have some in the arsenal in case I bumped into a good Internet cafe. You can find them within the Paris Photo Album.

AI Press Conference