A woman at the Yamaha grand yesterday made me smile, not for her talent but for her guilelessness. The out of tune piano did not help matters, either, but she really sounded like a clown, hacking at the piano with all her heart and sounding like an avalanche of tiny terrors. Still, I could smile. I didn’t get a chance at the piano that day but at least someone did. A nice little gift, that Yamaha grand.
Yesterday’s commute was snarled by what I heard was a suicide. Someone here says she was on the train right behind the train that struck a person somewhere up in the Bronx. She ended up being 45 minutes late to work, which is unheard of here, but I would think her explanation checks out on the MTA’s widget that verifies subway delays and disruptions. I’ve never seen that widget or had reason to but it is said to be out there.
Cold snap coming and I’m not ready for the return home tonight. It’s not like I have miles to journey from subway to home but it could be a bit of a drag if there is much wind. I neglected to bring a hat or anything to cover this precious head.
Talked to someone about rats. He was looking at one standing on his bed, locked in a staredown. Another rat in the ceiling, dead for weeks, stunk like nothing else and drew a small swarm of flies and insect buzzards. Two or three other rats stomped through his apartment at will. It was scary to hear this person’s voice, steely and nervous but unable to just move somewhere else.
I have a lead on a new-to-me old derelict payphone up around 200th Street in Queens. I spotted it on Cyclomedia’s Streetview, where I later discovered a slight surprise. Cyclomedia, itself a bit of a surprise is itself full of surprises. It appears to be a version of Streetview strictly for New York City but when you get to the city limits you find that it does not stop there. I was well into Nassau County on the Hempstead Turnpike, finding that coverage of Nassau actually goes beyond what they do in NYC. I’m not even sure it’s legal but they would go through strip mall parking lots and go through drive-thru ATMs and other sorts of spaces where Google’s SV seemed to be a little more careful.
I was on the GWB heading toward New Jersey when carpal tunnel started to seem like a possibility and I gave up. So I know it goes as far as Nassau now the question remains how far does it go in other directions? I cannot use those regions the same way as NYC because there’s no search function. I could make educated guesses about lat/lon coords, I suppose. Cyclomedia has been a great find, though. I wonder how much of the U.S. they’ve covered.
In some ways it is an improvement over SV but in most ways it is a primitive competitor, not that it endeavors to be a competitor. No keyboard shortcuts, and janky navigation are key shortcomings but you’re not being bludgeoned with ads and other distractions. Cyclomedia also has an annoying way of revealing its vehicle. Somehow GV has made its vehicle almost invisible save for the shadows it casts.
Another Cyclomedia advantage is that there appears to be no way to request that your house be blacked out of the imagery. SV is marred by occasional blasts of white over a property where the owner requested removal of their imagery. If you need to see that property simply go to Cyclomedia.
