Aronoff Center for Design and Art Facade Replacement Webcam

As you all know, I’ve been obsessed about Peter Eisenman’s Aronoff Center for Design and Art Facade replacement project, which has ballooned to a $10 million facade renovation. So it’s nice that I can cyberstalk the DAAP building via webcam to see how they are fixing the facade. I think after total cost of initial construction and renovation, the university should have committed to a better facade construction system in the beginning instead of renovating the building every five years.

They should keep the building the grey, as shown in the above webcam capture.

Saint Crispin’s Day

What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.

By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.

No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!

Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’

Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

– Henry V, Act IV Scene iii

Go forth and gentle your condition.

Trading Pit Hand Signals and History

For those who have seen Trading Places – and like me wondered how the final scene actually works or loved the New York Board of Trade flip dot board) – and wondered what all those hand signals meant, well there’s a website for you. It is called Trading Pit History and is curated by Ryan Carlson, who has worked at the Kansas City Board of Trade, Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Mercantile Exchange and New York Mercantile Exchange.

This project solicits any and all examples of hand signals from any futures trading floor which aren’t already on the website. Any critique of information contained is also encouraged as some hand signals are from secondhand sources and the aim is accurate historical record. The catalogue of knowledge will continually be updated as additions are made.

I wonder if pit trading signs will end up like semaphore, maritime signal flags, and morse code where only a few keep the language alive.

California’s Central Valley, Land of a Billion Vegetables

California’s Central Valley, Land of a Billion Vegetables - NYTimes.com

California’s Central Valley, Land of a Billion Vegetables.

You know that huge pile of cello-wrapped carrots in your supermarket? Now imagine that the pile filled the entire supermarket. That’s how many carrots I saw upon my arrival at Bolthouse Farms. Something like 50 industrial trucks were filled to the top with carrots, all ready for processing. Bolthouse, along with another large producer, supplies an estimated 85 percent of the carrots eaten by Americans. There are many ways to put this in perspective, and they’re all pretty mind-blowing: Bolthouse processes six million pounds of carrots a day. If you took its yield from one week and stacked each carrot from end to end, you could circle the earth. If you took all the carrots the company grows in a year, they would double the weight of the Empire State Building.

Bleecker Street Station finally gets a two-way transfer

For more than half a century, it has stood out as a singularly vexing flaw of the subway system, a glaring inequity that has frustrated generations of riders and has even puzzled transit officials, who have wondered how the situation ever came to be.

But beginning on Tuesday, once the first travelers make their way between a B train and an uptown No. 6 at Bleecker Street, a daily frustration will have given way to a whimsical remembrance: Here stood New York City’s fussiest subway transfer point, the one that went one way but not the other.

via Vexing Flaw in the Subway Is Finally Corrected – NYTimes.com.

The Hidden Mass Transit of the Bay Area

The City from the Valley, 2012 | Stamen Design

Historically, workers have lived in residential suburbs while commuting to work in the city. For Silicon Valley, however, the situation is reversed: many of the largest technology companies are based in suburbs, but look to recruit younger knowledge workers who are more likely to dwell in the city.

via The City from the Valley, 2012 | Stamen Design.

Private mass transit options offered by tech companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook linking San Francisco to Silicon Valley transport approximately 40% of the amount of passengers Caltrain moves everyday. Google alone runs 125 daily trips throughout the city.

In Manufacturing Shift, Made in U.S. but Sold in China

Brooklyn Bridge

After generations of manufacturers in New York and across the United States folded because they were unable to compete with imports, Watermark, with its only factory in the East New York section of Brooklyn, has managed to crack the code. Instead of trying to make Watermark’s products cheaper, Mr. Abel has prospered by first making them more expensive — offering custom-made fixtures unique to each building — and then figuring out how to do that at lower cost. The company has supplied thousands of fixtures to six new luxury hotels and condominiums being built in Shanghai, Macau and Hong Kong.

“The days of mass producing in New York City are gone,” Mr. Abel said. “If you were producing nuts and bolts by the tens of thousands 50 years ago, you’re not going to do it today. But creativity, or uniqueness or design is definitely something that can flourish in New York.”

via In Manufacturing Shift, Made in U.S. but Sold in China.