Archive for the 'Project 365' Category

Project 365: #13

Thursday, November 9th, 2006


Yahoo! Time Capsule Camp

Taken: November 6, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

This one was a hard choice as there were so many fun photos from the day. But in the end, this summarizes the events best. I will be blogging separately about the experience at a later date, but I’m so behind in posting my Project 365 photos that I couldn’t wait for coverage any longer.

Project 365: #12

Wednesday, November 8th, 2006


Interesting tree

Taken: November 5, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

It only hit me late on Sunday that I hadn’t taken any pictures all day. I figured a scene from the neighorhood would do. The plants around here are amazing. I like the way the color of this tree makes it stand out from among its surroundings. I’ll be sure to capture it in daylight sometime as well.

Project 365: #11

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006


Opening presents

Taken: November 4, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

On Saturday, I went to a big birthday party in celebration of Andrei turning thirty. I had over 100 photos from which to choose one for the day. As you can tell from the entire set [slide show format], many were probably better than this one. However, this one captured several fun aspects of the evening. Since it was not staged, it’s not as elegant as it could have been, but it references a bunch of things so I picked it for Project 365.

On the left is Chris sporting an “I love White Russians” T-shirt with a picture of Andrei on it. This seemed to be the party theme and the T-shirts Chris created were very fitting and amusing. In the middle is Andrei with his myriad of gifts. On the right is Mirek who kindly gave me a ride to the party and then proceeded to quote and refer to Deepak Chopra all night.

It was a very fun evening with lots of nice people, plenty of good food (including a fountain chocolate fondue), all sorts of drinks (including the opportunity to add your own open source mix🙂 and exotic plants (so is this a palm or a pine?).

Project 365: #10

Monday, November 6th, 2006


Fortune cookies

Taken: November 3, 2006 (What is Project 365)

I spent all day Friday in a meeting at Stanford with fellow MacArthur grantees talking mainly about methods of data collection.

In the evening, we went out to dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. Brigid and I were talking shop just before we cracked open our fortune cookies. Hers was the one on top above and while not exactly a fortune, it’s certainly fitting. Mine was the one on the bottom, which was amusing, because I had just responded to a question Brigid asked me a moment earlier about work. I guess my answer must have been the right one.:-)

Project 365: #9

Sunday, November 5th, 2006

Amanda's defense

Taken: November 2, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

On Thursday, Amanda Hinnant defended her dissertation. Congratulations, Dr. Hinnant! She is my first student to defend. She is also the first graduate of our Media, Technology and Society PhD program.

As you can perhaps tell from the photo, I participated in the defense virtually. We used Skype and it worked very well. I could see Amanda and the other committee members. I didn’t have a webcam in my room, but I figured it wasn’t nearly as important for the folks there to see me. They did hear me, however.:)

Here are some other photos from the event.we

Project 365: #8

Saturday, November 4th, 2006


Featured Wines: Hungarian

Taken: November 1, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

I was at a restaurant the other night and noticed that their featured wines for the day (the week?) were Hungarian ones. I thought that was interesting. I didn’t recognize any of those wines, but I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to wines so that’s not too surprising. I did look through their entire wine list and ordinarily they don’t have any Hungarian wines.

When I took the photo, I thought the shadow of my hand taking it might look interesting. (I didn’t have too much choice over the matter, but I could have minimized the interruption.) In the end, I don’t like it, but so it is.

Project 365: #7

Saturday, November 4th, 2006


Lit purple pumpkin

Taken: October 31, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

Tricia had the perfect Halloween decoration in her office from my perspective. The purple pumpkin is a good representation of my Northwestern roots.:-)

Project 365: #6

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006


Beautiful sunset

Taken: October 29, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

Little commentary here, I think it’s obvious why I took this photo. The sunset on Monday was amazing. This is the palm in front of the Center’s main office, on the side of the parking lot.

Project 365: #5

Wednesday, November 1st, 2006


Princeton-Stanford intersection

Taken: October 28, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

I decided that my photo for this past weekend had to include something about the schools I have attended. Why? Interestingly (and very pleasantly) several people from my past decided to get in touch with me recently. In fact, when I stopped to think about it, I realized that one of these old friends was from Smith, one was from my time at NYU, and one was from my first couple of years at Princeton. Can you spot a theme after reading a bit about these people?

Wendy I met in college while hanging out in the Computer Science Department lab a lot. Cecil was our tech support guy at NYU where we shared an office, sort of, since as the departmental Web master I got to have some nifty space in the IT corner. And Paul was getting a Master’s degree in Engineering from Princeton where we were part of the same entering cohort of graduate students (me in Sociology). I haven’t been in touch with any of these people in at least five years so it was a delight to hear from them. And all on the same weekend, it had to be commemorated.

It occured to me that Stanford has a row of streets named after colleges and universities. On Sunday night I went looking for the street called Princeton and the above photo is the result. Here it is from another angle. But I picked the above photo, because I preferred its composition.

Project 365: #4

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006


Monkey bag

Taken: October 27, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

On Saturday, I was feeling a bit under the weather so I cancelled my plans and stayed at home in an attempt to beat the oncoming cold. Not having gone outside all day, I was faced with the challenge of finding something to photograph in the house. Note that this is my temporary home so many of my more cherished and interesting possessions are not with me.

Monkeys were my favorite animal before I switched to being a big turtle fan in my early teens. This particular pouch (that’s what it is, it actually holds things) was availble in turtle form as well. However, I decided to get one of those for my brother while getting a monkey version for myself. I use it to hold batteries and assorted small gadgety things when I travel.

Project 365: #3

Sunday, October 29th, 2006


Photo opp during lunch with Craig

Taken: October 26, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

The Board of the Center was meeting on Thursday and Friday. On Friday, Board members had lunch with Center Fellows, which gave me an opportunity to catch up with mentor Craig Calhoun. To social scientists Craig should need no introduction. To others, I’m not sure it will mean a lot to find out that he’s the President of the Social Science Research Council. (To be sure, the SSRC plays an important role in the social sciences, but it is not clear how widely it is known otherwise.)

In any case, he’s a very careful and interesting thinker and I had the good fortune to meet him exactly ten years ago when he moved to New York to chair the Sociology Department at NYU just as I was starting my graduate studies there. For those who don’t know the details of my grad career, I left a year later to join the Sociology PhD program at Princeton. However, I continued to stay in touch with Craig.

He was already thinking carefully about the social aspects of information technologies in the 1990s, which made conversations with him particularly interesting for me. One of the first related pieces I read in this domain was his paper on Communities without Propinquity Revisited [pdf]. Since he’s been thinking about these issues for quite a while, I’ve always found him to be a very helpful sounding board for ideas about my work. He kindly agreed to chat with me about where my thinking on my book is these days and gave me some helpful feedback.*

One of Craig’s unusual abilities – that is, it is way too rare among academics – is his capacity to make meaningful comments without elaborating on points at unnecessary lengths. I also find him to be one of very few sociologists who uses “big” sociological terms in a way that actually makes the discussion more meaningful and succinct rather than derailing the conversation and suggesting pretentiousness. It’s such a pleasure to engage in discussions with him.

It was great to have him here and thus my Project 365 photo dedicated to our lunch.

The photo is posted with Craig’s permission. Here’s a more traditiona shot.

* I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet that I’m working on a book. You’ll be hearing more about that here as things move forward, I’m sure.:)

Project 365: #2

Saturday, October 28th, 2006


Blueberry pie at the Center

Taken: October 25, 2006

We get great lunches at the Center thanks to our wonderful chef Susan Beach. On Thursday, we had more food (and thus more desserts) than usual due to the Board meeting. Dessert of the day was blueberry pie with the usual option of fruits.

Each day, we get amazing soups, entrees and salads in addition to a yummy dessert. Susan is selling calendars with her most requested soup and salad recipes, it’s worth checking out on her Web site.

Project 365: #1

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Bruce, Bengt & Maria chatting below

Taken: October 24, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

Yesterday, the Carnegie Foundation hosted a reception for CASBS fellows and staff. In 1997, the Carnegie Foundation moved to Stanford from Princeton, New Jersey. It is now located just up the hill from the Center. The Center is itself on a hill, the Foundation is just a bit higher up.

In this photo, fellow fellows Bruce and Bengt plus Maria are discussing area travel opportunities.

I took the photo from the second floor of the Foundation. Here is a more abstract shot from the same spot. Of all my Carnegie photos, I picked this one to represent the day, because it captures well an important aspect of our fellowship year: interesting conversations among fellows on a daily basis. I’ve been meaning to blog about that forever. I may still do so, but I thought this was a good opportunity to mention it.

This entry is part of the my Project 365 series.

Announcing Project 365

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

Inspired by this Photojojo story, I have decided to start taking at least one photo every day and posting these regularly to the blog.

Those of you who are familiar with my uses of the photo-sharing site Flickr are probably thinking: as if you needed any more reasons for taking photos. True. But I don’t take photos daily and I think it’s an intriguing idea. Moreover, one-a-day suggests that when you take several dozen, you still have to pick just one to represent the day. Interesting.

Morning sun from my CASBS officeI happened to be GChatting with American Frog aka Katie Bessiere as I was thinking about this yesterday and successfully got her to join the project. She has started a blog just for this. I’m still working on getting Jeremy to join in. Anyone else interested? Let me know and I’ll start a sidebar just for one-a-day photo blogs of people I know (or people I may not know, but who know me:). I am not starting a new blog for this, but I’m starting a category for ease of access.

I usually travel enough that I can supply a wide array of photographs. However, I have no travel plans in the next few months. (That is by design. Why leave paradise?) This means that you will either see a LOT of deer photos or I’ll have to get very creative.

The photo above I took yesterday as I was thinking about doing this project. In a later post I’ll kick things off with Photo #1.