From the first sunny day in what seems like weeks: 1, 2) Mom had to give a talk at her alma mater, the University of Baltimore Publications Design Program, so Cianna and I hung out in the Graphics Lab area for an hour. Cianna pulled out a bunch of stock photo books to flip thru and toss around. After the talk, we drove by the old 'hood where 3) the new building at the northwest corner of 33rd & St. Paul has progressed dramatically, and 4) the southeast corner's row houses are now a hole in the ground awaiting the foundation of more condos. 5) Our old house on 33rd Street is now apparently rented to students by the investors who bought it. Not visible here are two old couches on the front porch, which suggests the place is a party house now like many of the other houses on the row. This is sad to see after all the work we put into fixing the place up. We visited Hampden where at Atomic Books I scored Stephen King's The Colorado Kid, Retro-Electro: Collecting Technology from Atari to Walkmen, and Stolen Sharpie Revolution: A DIY Resource. 6-9) Dinner was at nearby Susie's Soba where we enjoyed our usual sesame seaweed salad and shittake mushroom noodles. Cianna attempted chopsticks for the first time. The sticks didn't stay together long before they went flying. We ended our roadtrip with a sleeping child in car seat and a stop for groceries.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

Well I started feeling crappy Wednesday afternoon, left work early, and ended up staying in bed most of the time thru this [Friday] morning. 1) Shows the lovely 36-hour view of the inside of my comforter. I went into work this morning to move some projects along. Notable from the non-stop meetings was a good first visit from Randy Covington of Newsplex to talk about converged newsrooms, seeing the first photos of our newest office baby, 2) Natalie Nicole M., and getting my copy of We Love Katamari. I'm totally envious of Rachel's Katamari Birthday Cake pictured on Flickr. Tonight, toddler girl, mommy, and doggie continue the family parade while I go to bed early again.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

I finally tried Austin, TX Flickr photographer Ryan Gallagher's camera tossing technique tonight and produced some cool results. Ryan pioneered this radical approach by tossing his old Agfa ePhoto CL18 digital camera in the air at night in front of street lights with the shutter open. On most digital cameras, if the flash is turned off, the camera will do a long exposure when the scene is dark. Ryan's camera view tumbled past street light sources to create amazing digital spin-art abstracts. He is also adept at catching his camera! Ryan's work, and others--including mine now--are collected in the camera toss group on Flickr.

The best examples from my first night of camera tossing are in my own photo set on Flickr. I used a Polaroid PDC 3080 3.2mp cam I bought at Target tonight.

If you can stomach the risk to your equipment, Camera tossing is a refreshing new way to create generative digital art. I plan to do some more camera tossing during my upcoming trips to Boston and San Francisco. Stay tuned.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

The cold front continued its stall over the U.S. east coast today making the day cold and grey (but dry). This family day out started with dim sum lunch at nearby Good Fortune. All of the cart-delivered standards we had were good except the charsiu bau (sweet barbeque pork buns) were way underfilled (2) as usual. But they were still tasty.

I stopped into Toys 'R Us to pick up a Shrek doll for Cianna since that is her new favorite video character along with Gromit. The kiosk for the upcoming release of the amazing LeapFrog FLY Pentop Computer was right by the entrance to the store (4). My FLY pentop is on pre-order from Amazon.

The day's main event was the Sugarloaf Crafts Festival in the county fairgrounds in Gaithersburg. The 450 artists on display were weather worn from 2/3 of their days being rained out. The memorable geeky displays for me were the photos by astrophotographer John Chumack, the architectural sculptures in clay by John Brickels, and the fantasy clocks by Richard Birkett, which I was very tempted to buy, but passed. Cianna picked out a wooden grasshopper pull toy by Countree Crafts of Michigan (8, 9).

After the fair closed, we dropped Cianna off at her grandma's so we could catch the dinnertime show of Wallace and Gromit's Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Aardman and Dreamworks did a brilliant job of maintaining the handmade look of the shorts in this 94-minute feature length film. The non-stop gags are clever and hilarious. Go see!

- mike lee - wheaton, md

Aside from a trip out for groceries today, we decided to stay in and not drive to New Jersey for a pumpkin carving party. Local news reports a record-setting 7.25 inches of rain dumped on the area in the last two days, after two months of drought. There are all kinds of moderate flooding, power outages, and some event cancellations. The storms brought chilly air that feels like the first tickle of winter. But instead of a mass die-out of our fall foliage, the waterlogged ground will ensure a colorful display of leaves this month.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

...sandwich at Mosaic. Yum!

- mike lee - rockville, md

I ran into our director or broadcast after lunch today on the elevator, and hopped off with him on his floor to see the construction progress on the total digital-era rebuild of our TV & Radio broadcast studios. Most of the studio will be operational in three weeks, so I'll blog more then. Today I saw the smart glass windows that surround the control rooms (1). A push of an ordinary light switch in the room turns the floor-to-ceiling windows to milky translucent by electrifying a layer of LCD crystals sandwiched in between two layers of glass. The switch from analog to digital saw the ripping out of miles of old coax cable to be replaced by fiber optics. Racks of tape decks have been replaced by racks of data servers (2). The big control room is all touch screen LCDs in front of a giant Barco rear projection screen which offers total flexibility in showing multiple video sources (3). The new studio will be the envy of any James Bond villan.

- mike lee - washington, dc

...after an animated three hour dinner with some of our advertising sales team last night, an early schlep from Laguardia to Reagan to get back to the office in time for a 9am All Staff Meeting that will run three hours. Nice.

- mike lee

We got to the Hudson Hotel by Columbus Circle just before lunch and checked our bags. Then we decided to walk down Broadway to Times Square for lunch at the Croton Reservoir Tavern with some guys from Yahoo! After the Tavern, we taxied back to the Circle for our meeting in the TimeWarner Center. Check out the view of Central Park and Columbus Circle from the 15th floor! After getting our brains topped off at TW, we checked into our tiny rooms at the Hudson. Now we're off to a dinner meeting with people from our advertising office.

- mike lee - nyc