Often when I look at my to do lists and my “want to do list”, I get anxious. There is so much that I want to do — write and iOS app, start my web development and computer security consulting firm, launch a photography business, go on a food tour of Italy with my family, start a technical school — that I often don’t know where to start. Looking at my current list, I’ve got a few projects I still haven’t started and even more that are in a state best called “pending”. Too many ideas, too little time, and not enough discipline.

Then I spend time beating myself up and feeling bad; less than. Wasted all this time. I guess the question is what am I really looking for to fill my soul. Is it accomplishment? Is it fame? Or is it … just filling the desire to make something. I’m not sure. Sometimes it feels like all the above but I think I am beginning to see the truth. My truth.

I think I just want to find the zen moments that my 11 year old self found while sitting in his room taking things apart, seeing how they worked, and then creating something new — exploring what and wherever my mind took me. WHether that was experimenting with electronics building radio frequency transmitters, programming firmware, writing computer games for my friends, breeding tropical fish, cultivating my plant hybrids, …

Nothing about reviewing the security equivalent of TPS reports sounds fulfilling. The thought about doing that for the next year … I shudder to think what my mind might look like. I blame myself mostly. I blame myself for not being who I needed to be. I blame myself for not continuing to pursue what was meaningful for me. I got distracted being and doing what others thought was needed.

So my friends, if you are reading this, I need your help. I need help finding my way back to a place where I was happy. I’ve been in an angry space for a while and it’s eating me alive. Where do I go from here?

This filter is based on a model of the eye developed to enable an artificial intelligence to see. We asked it to show us what it sees, and this is what came out. There is nothing to tweak–just select or snap a photo for Painteresque to revisualize, and a few seconds later the resulting image is ready to save.

For my first image I chose this photo I took just this weekend at the Clinton Station Diner. Not a great photo given the limited lighting in the diner and the fact that I had already had four cups of coffee that afternoon.

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This is the same photo after processing in Painteresque.

This is the same photo after processing in Paintereque.

I cochaired the Village Elementary and Lower Middle School Invention and Science Convention this year along with two energenic and commited women. The event was scheduled to start at 9:15 but we were convening at the High School at 8AM. Because it was snowing I gave myself a littl extra time to navigate the local roads.

I wanted to get capture some sort of snow scene and I drove along the roads I kept looking for a place to stop to capture the experience of the snow falling on the canopy of trees lining the roads. I was almost to the High School when I noticed the entrance for Skillman Park.

The park has a long storied historied history that you can read about on the townshop web site. The park was once the site of a psychiatric care facility which eventually fell into disrepair. The township and the county are working to restore the space to its former beauty.

A few weeks ago a friend at work presented my wife and I with a token of her appreciation. Inside a small box was this large amaryllis bulb along with some coconut coir. I was told to plant it immediately which of course I did not. I procrastinated and planted it almost two week later.

I planted the bulb and placed it on a sunny window sill in the kitchen. Over the last few weeks the bulb sprouted and a long stem grew and I could start to see the node where the flowers would be. Then suddenly in just a day … these beautiful fluted flowers — four of them — exploded atop the stem. These flowers are expected to last many weeks. What a wonderful gift to enjoy during the dreay days of winter.

Albert Hinds Plaza

I did not get out much this week. This work week felt like a month and the weekend just started. I know that I have until the end of the night to capture something for the weekly project but I wanted to make sure that I had something. So if you are reading this then you know that I didn’t do any photography today. This was taken at the beginning of this week; Sunday.

The photo was taken in Albert Hinds Plaza facing toward the row of shops with the Princeton Public Library behind me and The Witherspoon Grill of to the left.

What I love about this space is that it reminds of similar spaces in a larger city like Manhattan but on a smaller scale. Princeton in many ways reminds me of the Soho neighbourhoods with their boutiques stores and cosmopolitan clientage. I am just as likely to hear German, Italian or Japanese while walking down Witherspoon street as I am to hear English. Princeton has an art museum and theatre, a trolley tour company, an Italian market, spice shops and tea souks, and a world-renowned university, and incredible community oriented public library and some of the worlds best scientists and entrepreneurs.

Any of those things can be found in New York but Princeton has them as well, albeit on a smaller scale. In every way, this is a little big town.

People who know me, also know that I’m fan of neither cold nor snow. I grew up in the warm climes of the English speaking Caribbean (the West Indies) and had my first experience with snow when I was almost nineteen. I it was my first semester at college and I had made a few new aquaintances. One of them came banging on my door yelling “Snow”! I stepped outside with him to experience this wonder of white stuff falling from the sky. I remember enjoying the cold wet fluff in my hands and was told to try and catch a snow flake with my tongue. It seemed wonderful and magical. It was only later that I came to understand the true meaning of a snow fall.

It meant truding out in the cold and wet to a class. It meant that my shoes were full of sand and salt. It meant that I had to spend months uner a blanket. Yeah, I’m not too positve about snow. Today’s snow fall means my back will get a real work out. It means the roads will be full of incompent idiots in SUV who think they are invincible (thank goodness Montgomery Martial Arts is closed today). My wife, Bhavna, wonders how I managed to survive the winters in Michigan while attending the University of Michigan. I did it because I wanted an advanced degree. She’s right; I survived it.

But now … I’ve got kids. The first words I heard from my eleven year old daugher this morning were, “It snowing! It snowing!”. My almost thirteen year old son says he won’t let us move to California or Florida — I keep threatening to do it — because it doesn’t snow. Perhaps I need to see this through their eyes. Perhaps, it’s time to put away adult thinking and just enjoy what is. “It snowed!”

If you want to learn more come back to blog after 8AM tomorrow (EST).

Location:Grant Way,Skillman,NJ

I don’t like the cold, so I did not take my camera out all week. Last night around 10 PM I suddenly remembered and looked around desperately for something to shoot. I saw this toy car that my nephew left here last time he was over. I tossed it on the couch and .… here we are.

This is my first submission for my 52 week photography project. Her name is Sasha. I took the photo late last night at a dinner party hosted by my wife’s employer. Not much of a story here. Sasha had the run of the house and decided to spend her time trying to eat the ribbons sitting under the Christmas tree.