Turning into my father.....

As the title would suggest, this could be of great concern! Actually its ok I still have my hair, in addition to my wife's great relief, I don't actually class Norfolk as one of the worlds seven wonders!!!


In all seriousness, I have updated the flickr site, for those who have spoken to me recently you will be aware, work is overtaking my little world again. As Laura has commented there seem to be an ever increasing number of wildlife photos! I can only begin to explain that the feathered friends seem to sit still longer than my daughter!


Hopefully another blog post and some more photos to follow soon.


Muswell

A few technical issues

So this is attempt two to get the Flickr stream working, if you checked earlier this week on the basis that I asked you to, you may not have seen the link in the blog header to the photo stream. 


Apologies, sometimes I am a muppet!


Muswell

did the ground move for you?

Just as we have all begun to settle back into normality and enjoying family life back in Rhode Island, along comes the first significant earthquake tremor to hit the area since 1976!


From limited research it would appear such tremors have been reported in New England, five times in the last 50 years, 1976, 1967, 1966, 1965 and 1963. Now a note of confession here, nether Laura or I felt the tremor. 


I was out buying a sandwich for my lunch, apparently when your stood on the ground, in the street your less likely to feel the ground shake. So you can understand my surprise when I returned to my office to discover all my colleagues asking each other if they had felt it, apparently the building swayed for a good 30 seconds.  


Laura who was is in the apartment, was also unaware when I emailed her to see if she had felt anything, I guess if nothing its pleasing to know that a quake which measures 5.8 and has its epicenter a mere 558 miles away, has no impact on the building we live in.


This is not the first the earthquake we have experienced as a family. In April 2009 we were visiting  Laura's parents in Rome when the Perugia earthquake occurred, this measured 6.1 on the richter scale* and we were only 113 miles from the epicenter. 


Now I have to confess at first I didn't think it was an earthquake, the previous night Aila (15 months old at the time) had fallen out of our bed, on the night of the quake, I merely thought she had climbed in again, only to fall out for the second night on the trot!




Muswell








* I was intrigued as to whom the scales name had been named, after all, these always are! It dates from Charles Richter who developed the scale in 1935 in partnership with Beno Gutenberg. Further explanation below.

The expression Richter magnitude scale refers to a number of ways to assign a single number to quantify the energy contained in an earthquake.

In all cases, the magnitude is a base-10 logarithmic scale obtained by calculating the logarithm of the amplitude of waves measured by a seismograph. An earthquake that measures 5.0 on the Richter scale has a shaking amplitude 10 times larger than one that measures 4.0.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale

Photos and updates

It goes without saying that I haven't been able to update here for a whilst, partly due to work and partly as I have been renewing my enthusiasm in photography....




Having come to the conclusion that i'm not going to get sufficient time to blog every time I take a photo, instead I have opened a flickr feed which I have linked back to the blog..


This way, hopefully you'll have the chance to see what we have been unto, even if the commentary will have to follow later! 


The first batch were taken over the weekend, either on the East Side of Providence or at Galilee, RI.


Muswell

when does west end?

A thought struck me sat here in the  lounge at LAX. When does West end and East begin, i'm about  to not see Saturday as i'll be in the air and land at 7.30 am HT time, having departed LA at 1o'clock on Saturday morning. Does that mean I'm still going west, and how do you arrive in the east when your flying west?


I realize the pedants among yourselves will point out to GMT and long standing time calculations, I think your missing the point though....


I had one of those only in California moments yesterday. I had to have a car take me from the office to a local best buy (US PC shop/chain).  My driver (Jimmy), a native Californian, in only 5 minutes had shared his life story with me, very similar to a cabbie in London at this stag.


its when he proclaims, he is actually a Jazz musician that I had to smile. On the return journey we listened to his latest album, ok so its not actually been pressed yet, he won't release it until he's happy with the quality. 


To be fair the jazz was very relaxing, his singing though oh dear! fortunately he didn't ask me to buy his latest offering. The ride though certainly blew away the office stress....


Muswell

New York, New York...

As part of my role, I am increasingly spending more and more time in New York, indeed one of the reasons for the move to Providence was to prevent having to be away from home for increasingly longer periods of time. A days trip to NY,is far better than a week.  When rising in the ungodly hours of Tuesday morning, I had no real desire to spend six hours on the train traveling to and from New York. 

As we departed, heading south through lower Rhode Island and into Connecticut I realised how silly I was being, train travel really is one of the more relaxing forms of travel, eye opening in that it presents you with the ability view the breathtaking countryside, from the comfort of your seat. I made the journey to New Haven two days later by car, the view on the highway comes a very poor second to that offered by the train. 

I first traveled to Providence by train after a weekend in New York, that journey in October 2007, still remains vivid in my mind. I recall not working on my presentation as I had planned, instead staring out of the window, my eyes attention grabbed by the sheer multitude of colours of foliage and the views of the Atlantic coastline as the train seemed to hug the very edge of the country. Quite simply I was hooked, wishing I could spend longer traveling this vast country, the small matter of a 6 month pregnant wife at home, is one of many reasons why ended not doing so!

Now I have to be honest, New York is not somewhere I would want to live with a young child, the sheer size of the city though is something you can ever comprehend. As the train cuts away from the coast and the city suddenly appears to rise up by your side, its a stunning sight. Living in Providence for the past four months, you quietly forget the hustle and bustle of living in the big city, only upon arriving in Penn Station am I reminded of the life we used to lead.

With a nod to the blog of a colleague, who reminded me of the power of the black and white photo. His blog http://ricardojardin.tumblr.com/ is worth 10 minutes of any one's time, below in a similar vein are two photos, which hopefully convey the size of the city and the awful view I had from the office on Tuesday.

lastly in glorious technicolour the view that greets you as you walk into reception. To the left you can make out the Hudson River, Central Park reaches out in front of you and the ever changing architecture of the Manhattan sky line finishes the view.

I have to confess the picture does not do the view justice, however my wonderful wife, finally caved in and agreed that I should finally buy that SLR. So this Tuesday I take delivery of the new camera (woo hoo!!), fortunately we had planned to spend next weekend in New York, so I should have plenty of opportunity to further capture this intriguing city.


Muswell

in the meantime

Whilst working on a little something over the weekend, I found this from last year, I thought some of you may enjoy it....

EDIT: I need to find a new host for the Video, the quality seen here is not a true reflection.