Category Archives: for fun

5 Pros & Woes from a First Time Citi Bike Ride

September 18, 2013for funbike, citi bikekreniske

Like many of my New Yorker friends I let the summer slide by without taking a ride on a Citi bike. As you know if you’ve seen some of my past posts – I do have a couple bikes, so why use Citi bike? Last week I gave it a try, and here’s what I found:

Me outside the Graduate Center (CUNY) on my Citi Bike (Photo courtesy of Manfrankager) — Outside the Graduate Center (CUNY) on my Citi Bike (Photo courtesy of Manfrankager)

Citi Bike Pros:

1. Crosstown Cruising

It’s great for short little jaunts, like going from the red line to the east side, or from the Graduate Center (34th and 5th) where I go to school, to Baruch (24th and Lex), where our gym is located.

2. Freedom

You get a little exercise and fresh air, instead of being stuffed in the subways and sluggish buses.

3. One Free Ride!

The price is reasonable, I did the $25 for a week pass, and $100 for the year doesn’t seem so bad either. Citi even has a promotional offer this month – a day for free!

4. Where’s My Bike?

It’s so reasonable that in midtown the bikes were all gone at 6pm – luckily the Citi Bike website has this realtime map so you can check which stations have bikes and which don’t.

5. Room for Two

As Manfrankager and I found out you can even ride tandem – getting more bang (pause) for your buck!

(Sorry no photo – you’ll have to use the old imagination).

$hiti Bike Woes:

(sorry- I couldn’t help myself)

1. The Codes Don’t Work

To get a bike -unless you are an annual user – you need to insert your card into the bike kiosk which then gives you a code for each ride. The codes generated by the machines never worked on the first try, even after trying multiple bikes. When you call the Citi Bike helpline they require your name, phone and credit card number before offering innovative solutions like:

‘Are you sure you typed in the right code?”

The code was 33333, yes I’m sure!

Good news, by that time the mandatory two minutes between getting a ride code is up – so you can go to the machine and try again. For me it was usually the second or third code that worked.

2. Killer Bees!

I’ve been biking in the city my whole life but on my first Citi Bike ride I nearly met my end as a cabby sped to make a quick right – into me! Wouldn’t be the first time an NYC cabbie hit a cyclist this year.

3. Doors!

Also on my first perilous trip I watched a woman exit her cab and door a hapless Citi Bike rider (I’ve had nightmares of being doored but – until last week I’d never actually seen it happen).

4. Sorry Foreigners

According to the Portuguese speaking women trying to get a Citi Bike on west 27th street, foreign cards don’t work, and $25 gift cards don’t work either – I watched them try and fail as I waited (thankfully after the third attempt they let me get my code and get moving).

5. The Annual Pass…Not so fast!

After my trial week I signed up for the annual pass. I was ready to ride on. Not so fast! It takes up to 10 days to process. Granted they have to mail you a key – but wouldn’t it be easy enough to let people use their cards at the bike kiosks as they do with the week pass?

In closing – the time is now and Citi Bike is the Official Transportation of the Apocolapyse.

Words from Writing Restructures Consciousness by Walter J Ong

September 4, 2013dissertation related, for fun, Recent ReadingsOng, wordsd, Writingkreniske

I’m writing a piece of my dissertation proposal where I theoretically explain how writing leads to cognitive and emotional development, and what better place to reference than Walter J. Ong’s essay Writing Restructures Consciousness, in Orality and Literacy (1982/2002).

About every other page there is a word that I don’t know, or at least can’t define off hand.

Below are some of the fun words I’m finding. Also, it seems Google has picked up on this digital humanities trend popularized by Moretti and started sharing graphs of word use over time, some of which I’ve included below.

Here’s a good one, Ong writes: “Texts are inherently contumacious”.

contumacious

“/ˌkänt(y)əˈmāSHəs/ stubbornly or willfully disobedient to authority”.

What’s interesting about this point is the contrast to oral language, once a text is printed it can’t be refuted, at least not in the immediate moment. Interestingly, in a text like a blog there is often a space for comments where people can immediately refute or support a text.

a fortiori

(thanks Merriam)

“\ˌā-ˌfȯr-shē-ˈȯr-ˌī, ˌä-ˌfȯr-shē-ˈȯr-ē, -ˌfȯr-tē-\ : with greater reason or more convincing force”

“A fortiori, print is vulnerable to these same changes” (p. 79).

quiescent

“/kwēˈesnt,kwī-/ in a state or period of inactivity or dormancy” (p. 90).

“All script represents words as in some way things, quiescent objects, immobile marks for assimilation by vision”.

In contrast to script, or written word, which is quiescent, oral language is evanescent, or fleeting.

Ong goes on to detail how writing has specific effects on noetic processes (103).

“/nōˈetik/ of or relating to mental processes”.

I remember an interview with Walt Clyde Frasier where he said that he picks out words from the Times each day to try out on his Knicks broadcast. Try using some of these words from Writing Restructures Consciousness in your daily life and you are sure to sound magniloquent (p.102).

To rinse or not to rinse; a reply to Brody’s ‘keeping food-borne illnesses at bay’

August 26, 2013for funNew York Timeskreniske

repost from nytimes:

In her recent post Brody shares some solid guidelines for keeping food-borne illnesses at bay. However, I disagree with one of her suggestions. Brody writes “some suggest that poultry and meats not be rinsed lest they contaminate the sink”. I too used to rinse all meats and fish before cooking. ‘Some say’ implies that my great aunt Jane says this. In fact the USDA recommends not rinsing poultry and other meats because of cross contamination. The USDA explains that many of these harmful bacteria cannot simply be washed off, and those that can often get washed off onto other items in the sink area. Cooking kills the bacteria. By washing these meats you only increase the risk.

Grandma’s Poems

August 7, 2013for funfamilykreniske

Among her amazing attributes my 90+ year old grandmother has an incredible memory for poems, she also posts them on her fridge (above is a pic of the current selection).

One of her recent favorites, which she recites with a wry smile, is a poem with the lines “when I’m old I shall wear purple”, which I’ve just figured out is titled Warning, by Jenny Joseph.

Grandma

Thinking about these purple themes I’m reminded of last summer. While visiting friends in Vermont we stumbled upon a concert and the singer cackled “Start wearing purple”.

Of course Grandma doesn’t only read poems, she recently handed me a copy of Kandell’s In Search of Memory. Although I work with human participants and not animal subjects as Kandell does, one of the most striking passages tells of how in order study certain phenomenon one needs to select the appropriate subjects. For instance the crayfish and the squid have large axons and therefore are ideal for studying certain types of neural activity.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how, on a completely different scale, this relates to studying humans at certain points on a developmental trajectory. Specifically, how we see development at key transitional points. One way to think about these transitions is in academic terms, the transition from middle to high school or from high school to college. I’m thinking that certain changes might only be noticeable at these major transitional points, when developmental processes are in some ways magnified.

Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Jenny Joseph

My Beach Cruiser and Boomer’s Houndabout Bike Share

July 26, 20132nd doctoral exam, for funbike, Boomer!, Core IIkreniske

As promised a few weeks ago, here is the fun reward I got myself for completing the second qualifying exam! It’s a Nirve Beach Cruiser I found at PedalUniverse and I finally hooked up Boomer’s HoundAbout.

Last year I tried to hook up the HoundAbout to my old bike but I was unable to do so. I felt like a failure, especially after reading reviews like this “It was so easy to hook up…”. So I asked the old Manfrankager to give it a try – and he couldn’t do it either, and that made me feel better.

What I realized, thanks to the guys at Metro Bicycles, was the HoundAbout can only hook up to bikes that have less than 7 gears and are not quick release.

photo-24 — Old bike with too many gears and quick release wheels

Enter the Nirve Cruiser – which has 3 gears and is not quick release.

Happy ending: