Archive for the “design” Category

I’m a big fan of lunch.  It’s one of my favorite three meals of the day.  Yesterday I went with tangyslice and our CTO to a new to us place, Martsa on Elm for a Tibetan buffet.  We weren’t sure what to expect but we were happy with what we got.

I’m not sure how authentic or representative the buffet selection was, but it was pretty chicken-heavy.  On the first plate, I sampled the steamed bread, tofu with creamy spinach sauce, lemon curry chicken, and sauteed eggplant and vegetables.

The tofu was like a watery palak or saag paneer, but the lemon curry chicken was citrusy without the syrupy sweetness you sometimes get in chinese style lemon chicken.  It had a nice curry flavor too.  The eggplant was tender and a little smoky flavored.

About the steamed bread: it’s not for everybody.  A bit like the dough in a cha siu bao, it’s, well, doughy.  Not much in the way of flavor and you might feel a bit cheated at an all you can eat buffet if you eat a fist-sized blob of bread.  But I love anything that I can use to mop up sauce.

On the second trip to the buffet, I decided to sample each of the other dishes and picked up chili chicken, mixed vegetables and “chicken n cabbage”  I skipped the lentil soup and rice pudding dessert.

The chili chicken was nicely spicy with some kind of cornstarch coating and a selection of crisp bell peppers and onions.  The vegetables were carrot-heavy and not overdone, always a plus especially on a buffet.  The third chicken, with cabbage, was pretty much as advertised: chicken with cabbage.

I’m not sure how often we’ll return, but Martsa is a welcome addition to the run of Davis square lunch options, giving us a little more variety and diversity.  Vegetarians are well-served but not as well as chicken-lovers.

Kudos also for Martsa’s smart decor and quiet vibe.  Love the lampshades.

I was late to Boston Media Makers (full report in an upcoming post) yesterday because my car battery died and I had to wait for AAA to jump it.  Weather had been cold and I’d been in England for a week, so the car hadn’t been driven, but that’s not 100% of the story of the drained battery.

It goes way back to when I asked Rabbi Low to install fog lights in my car while I was out of the country on business.  It was sort of a treat for him, since I knew he wouldn’t take care of my car without performing some sort of maintenance or upgrade.  One time, he detailed the engine compartment.  I got my fog lights, but I also ended up with a bazooka subwoofer.  These things happen, I’m sure you can relate.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the woofer was wired directly to the battery, not through the ignition system, so it draws current even when the car is off.  After several bouts of maintenance and investigation, a Scion engineer finally asked the ah-ha question, “where’s your shutoff remote for the woofer?”  The answer is, I didn’t have one.  So I started unplugging the woofer whenever I knew I wouldn’t be driving for more than a couple of days.

Another triumph of style over substance.

With this weekend’s Photographic Resource Center auction, my personal photo auction season ended, not a moment too soon for the budget.  As I had suspected, the season’s poor economic outlook was in evidence at both Woodstock and Boston events.   Bidding was a little hesitant, and although it only takes two bidders to make an auction, some bargains were definitely available.  Both events were no less fun and exciting, and I got to meet or catch up with many artists and collectors.

Usually I gravitate towards black and white photographs that have some abstraction or obscurity to them, some mystery added by the photographic process and not explained by a simple recording of the scene.  This time I found something completely different, Chromosomes, a digital C-Print by Kevin Van Aelst.

I don’t often go for the conceptual.  After all, once the idea is stated, who really needs the work?  OK, chromosomes look like gummy worms or vice versa.  Now what?  But there’s something about this piece that really makes me happy.  I’ve been assured that Van Aelst is a rising star but I wouldn’t have bought it just for speculation.  Maybe its the intersection of food, photo and science.  See more of Van Aelst’s work on his website.

In not totally unrelated news, a friend brought this to my attention a while ago: a company in England is offering prints made from a cheek swab of your very own DNA.  Clever, and rather attractive in an abstract way.

You send in a swab and then choose a variety of color and style options and get your print in the mail.  Perhaps demand for DNA was slow or the public’s tolerance for swabbing was low, as they also offer somewhat less invasive lip and finger prints.  I wonder what other body parts or chemicals could be turned into artwork?

I visited the hip South of Washington Street (SoWa) arts district Accompanied by some good people from the DeCordova and gallery buddy L for the YMOD gallery walk.  There was a similar event on Newbury Street in the Spring.

We began at the 450 Harrison at Thayer Street complex with Gallery Kayafas, Bromfield Gallery, Kingston Gallery, OHT Gallery, Samson Projects, Soprafina Gallery and Steven Zevitas Gallery.  The Thayer Street alley itself was decorated with some timely guerrilla art.

Nearby were also the Laconia Gallery and Boston Sculptors Gallery, and the crew wound up the evening at Rocca for some snacks and drinks.

It would take several posts to describe everything I saw, but I’ll devote some extra space to the work on view at Gallery Kayfas because Arlette and Gus were such gracious hosts.  Kayafas has just moved upstairs from their prior location and approximately doubled their exhibition space.  They have three shows running now: Robert Knight, Bruce Myren, and “Ahh, Italy,” a group show of images of Bella Italia.

Knight, whose current body of work, “My Boat is So Small” investigates the spaces we inhabit and the stuff we keep there, was good enough to give a brief gallery talk and answer some questions.  He photographs people’s homes and is always looking for subjects, so get in touch.

Bruce Myren showed a completely new body of work, The View Home, as well as a trio of tripychs from his markers series.  The View Home shows each of Myren’s residences photographed at an angle directed at his current home, along with the duration of his habitation and the bearing and distance.

In the interest of disclosure, you should know that Bruce is a friend of mine and my tonsorial inspiration.  He also has an upcoming solo show at the Danforth Museum in Framingham where you can see his Markers:Memory work.

The small show of photos of Italy included classic images by Mario Giacamelli, a set of 1891 photogravures of Venice, and more contemporary work from the likes of Nick Nixon and Eric Lewandowski.

Also of note, Rose Olsen’s subtle translucent geometries on wood panels called Just Colors No Curves at Kingston, and Randy Garber’s What You Already Know - prints with intricate verbal and typographic themes - at Bromfield.

We ended the evening with drinks and appetizers at Rocca, a stylish italian place next to the galleries.  Despite a minor mixup on what was vegetarian and what was not, we filled up on tasty finger foods in the engaging company of the other gallery walkers.  Plus, I must give kudos to the alert valet who recognized me coming out of the restaurant and fetched my car without even asking for the ticket.  Wow.

Have you noticed that just about every computer or TV screen has gone widescreen?  I’m not sure what portion of TV programming or movies comes in what aspect ratio, but I’m definitely seeing computer monitors expanding horizontally.

There are some good reasons for wider screens - such as looking at two full pages of a document or watching a widescreen movie - but I have to suspect part of this fad is actually fed by the monitor manufacturers giving us less and marketing it as more.  Why?  Because we measure monitors by their diagonals, and you can deliver less total screen on the same diagonal if you go wider.

For example, the popular MacBook has a 13.3″ diagonal screen with a resolution of 1280×800, from which we can calculate an aspect ratio of 1.6:1.   This means the screen is 11.28 x 7.05inches for a total screen area of 79.50 square inches.  An old style 4:3 (1.33:1) screen with a 13.3″ diagonal would be about 10.64 x 7.98, or 84.91 square inches.  This means that Apple and other laptop makers who go wide are delivering 6.4% less screen and positioning it as the same or better.

Sinister plot or giving the consumers what they desire?  I’m not sure.  The most screen you could get on a given diagonal would be square, and that doesn’t seem attractive or practical for a laptop.  As a reader and occasional creator of web pages, I feel like we’re too willing to go wide at the expense of the height or length of a page.  Scrolling down is one of the enemies of good web usability, and more and more sites seem to float in wide margins to the right and left.