George Washington Parkway Sunrise Photos

One of my New Year's goals was updating this blog at least a couple of times each week.  I am not doing so well on that.  I have plenty of content, but after everything else in the day...

This update is actually not even my content.  My daughter Eva have been taking iPhone photos from the car during her morning ride to school.  Her commute follows the George Washington Parkway from Alexandria to Washington, DC so most of the photos are taken through the trees looking across the Potomac River.  

Some of the photos are taken with the window down, and some with the window up.  Because of the moving car, slow shutter speed and occasional rain or other stuff in the way, the photos have a distorted, almost watercolor look.  I love it, and think I will be getting some of these printed.  

I especially like the photo with the jet taking off from National Airport.  Somehow the clearly articulated jet is an interesting contrast in what could otherwise be an abstract painting.

Bill Kirchen / The Grandsons - First Night Alexandria

First off, Happy New Year.  2012 was eventful, and I expect 2013 to be another interesting year.  

Old Town Alexandria has a 'First Night' celebration, and one of the bands that usually plays is Bill Kirchen & Too Much Fun.  Bill shares the Torpedo Factory venue with The Grandsons, which is appropriate since both bands are good Americana roots rock.  

Since it is late, I won't go into a lot of text on the bands, and will let the photos speak for themselves.  Needless to say, both bands are great, and Bill Kirchen is an institution.  If you listen to music, you have probably heard his guitar.

Antique Scale

Digital measuring tools are not only binary in their guts, they are binary in function.  They either work or not.  When the batteries die on our digital scale or thermometer, they become useless pieces of plastic.  ​

Analog measuring tools are different.  They may loose precision and require calibration, but it takes a lot to break them.​

​There is also beauty in this hanging scale that my digital kitchen scale will never have.

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Antique Hanging Scale​

Antique Hanging Scale​

Industrial Tools

The tools of the computer age are typically just methods to represent information.  Programming languages and data structures are the hammers and wrenches we use today to create much of the world we inhabit.  These information age tools lack the tangible aesthetics of industrial age tools.  ​ 

The photos below were taken at ​Carbon Industrial Design in Alexandria, Virginia.  Carbon recycles parts of old factories, as art and as furniture.  I love the heft of the old tools, and the sense that they have done real work, building things of permanent substance, not things that can disappear with a key stroke.

A Brace of Wrenches​

A Brace of Wrenches​

Long Pipe Wrench​

Long Pipe Wrench​