sarah sosiak

Rodeo Beach

Photos from Vancouver

Photos from my Olympic trip are up on Flickr. Some highlights after the jump.

O Canada

Standing for O Canada at a medal ceremony in Vancouver. Full post on the Olympic trip to come. (Best viewed large.)

No Fixed Address

At Ocean Beach.

addLibbing

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the addLib iPhone app this weekend. From the developer’s site:

addLib mixes the Grid System, a fractal theory, the golden ratio and the Facial Recognition System, and then creates graphic design. It seems the layout is made at random, but it comes from the rigorous calculated system. These theories have been made through the process that people has been trying to find new expression, and they are also the ways, to capture very ordinary “beauty” in nature, namely algorithm.

$1.99 well spent. More photos on Flickr.

Update: Group pool on Flickr. Add yours.

Wild Things

 

At the California Academy of Sciences.

Flickr Favourites - 2009

Favourite photos from 2009. Slideshow below (On Flickr):

Mixed Media

Composite of the car-turned-container-garden at Flora Grubb Gardens.

Happy 2010!

Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah

Bryant Park Holiday Rink, NYC

Eggnog Pancakes

Over on Twitter last night, I mentioned an experiement in making eggnog pancakes. I know I'm far from the first person to try this, but thought I'd share my method to spread the word on what just may become your newest holiday tradition.

I found that the sweetness and flavour from the eggnog held up on its own...no need for syrup. And that the extra sugar in the eggnog caramelized on the surface of the pancakes to add a pleasent bit of sugary crunch.

Super-simple instructions:

1. Take your favourite pancake recipie -- I used this recipie, as found on Kottke.org.
2. Replace whatever milk the recipie calls for with eggnog -- I added an extra splash of skim milk to thin the batter as I prefer my pancakes more crepe-like than fluffy.
3. Sprinkle in a bit of cinnamon & nutmeg.
4. Cook.
5. Enjoy.

The Sunset Tree

Friday night's sunset, from Strawberry Hill.

Remixed

Remix of the Creative Commons logo by Shepard Fairey. Get your tee by donating to CC's Fall Campaign.

Mmm...Q4 Food

 

Thanks to the bounty from a pumpkin picking up in Sonoma on Sunday, it's Squash Week at Casa Sosiak. For dinner tonight, I made this butternut squash with browned butter, and am about to start in on roasting my first pumpkin to make puree for pumpkin muffins.

Good Morning

Sunday morning with tea, a pecan bun from Arizmendi Bakery and the New Yorker.

Patio Lights | Norwood Club

 

From the archives. This photo's popped up on a few other blogs, so I suppose it's only proper that I post it on my own. The back patio of the Norwood Club in NYC.

Day at the Beach

 

I found this photo -- from a beautiful evening at Crissy Field last spring -- on my phone the other day. Now that we're deep into San Francisco "summer" (read: cold and foggy with a side of wind), it's living on my desktop as a reminder of warmer times.

29 000km later…

Update: It was pointed out that my photosets didn't capture some of the highlights of the trip, so now...with more words. (And a map.)

June, from just east of the Baltic to the middle of the Pacific, in pictures.

View Escape the Fog - 2009.06 in a larger map

Helsinki (on Flickr)

Where I fell in love with delicious cardamom pastries, experienced 120 straight hours of daylight, climbed a church to get to the park on its roof, visited the gorgeous Kiasma Museum of Modern Art, wandered the Finnish Museum of National Photography, ate a lot of great tomato-cheese-lettuce-on-rye sandwiches, and explored Suomenlinna, the Swedish-then-Russian-then-Finnish sea fort off the coast of the city.

Tallinn (on Flickr)

Where I fell into conversation with a local, and spent the afternoon wandering the off-the-tourist-track bits of the Old Town talking about heavy metal and life in Estonia.

The UK (on Flickr)

Where I spent quality time with good friends, went geocaching in the woods and accidentally found a film set, took a quick trip to Oxford, saw a Body Worlds exhibit, visited the Cabinet War Rooms, spent an afternoon in my favourite building in London (St. Pancras Station) and discovered the genius in using butternut squash to make a veggie burger.

Hawaii (on Flickr)

Where I spent more quality time with more good friends, climbed the rim of a volcanic crater tuff cone, celebrated Pau Hana on Waikiki beach, went for a moonlit swim in the ocean, visited a Buddhist Temple, surfed, body boarded and ate a lot of fish.

Kiasma

The ramp at Steve Holl's Kiasma (the Finish Museum of Contemporary Art) in Helsinki. More on the building here.

More photos of the building and current installations on Flickr.

Retro Futurism

In the thousand year old Old Town of Tallinn, Estonia.*

----------

* Via Helsinki, via London. More photos to come.

photos from big sur

 

At the end of last month, I drove down to Big Sur for a few days close to nature, and far from technology. (Need to be unreachable? A 150km long cellphone dead-zone starts just south of Monterey.) As anyone who’s been here will tell you, the area is simply stunning. Mountains, water, plants, wildlife, a fun stretch of Highway 1 and little else.

I stayed at an excellent family-run resort called Treebones, a collection of campsites and yurts nestled in the hills above the ocean. Highly recommended. The atmosphere was relaxed, the yurts were a nice compromise between camping and…well…not camping, and I met some interesting people* over breakfasts and dinners on the communal deck. The only downside was that coziness and amazing views made it hard to venture further afield. I did a bit of hiking around the south end of Big Sur, but left with a list of places left to visit on a return trip.

Slide show below (and on Flickr):

* Including a man from Scotland cycling from Seattle to Miami, via Los Angeles (and writing a great blog about the trip), and a couple I have a connection to via a friend from New Brunswick. Small world.

photos from seattle

A few weeks back, I flew up to Seattle for a long weekend of catching up with friends, eating fish and lazing in cafes waiting out the rain. I fell back into my habit of forgetting to take photos of people, but otherwise like this how this set came together.

Slide show below (and on Flickr):

de young

The de Young museum in Golden Gate Park, as seen from the roof of the Academy of Sciences.

(Best viewed large.)

localization

The cover of the March 2009 issue of The Atlantic, as purchased in Toronto. Compare to the below, spotted on newstands in New York:

(I'm 99.5% sure I saw a "Chicago Wins" cover in NYC as well.)

milk bar

The desert display case at Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar, home of cereal-milk-as-upscale-treat.

flickr favourites - 2008

Taking a page from Richard, I've put together a Flickr set of my favourite photos from 2008. Of the 572 photos I posted to Flickr over the year, 66 got the nod. I like that I have a decent number of portraits here -- 2008 was the year I finally started to break out of my shyness around taking photos of people.

Slide show below (large version on Flickr):

meta-licious

I have a thing for all things meta. Like photos of photographers. (And photos of photos of photographers. And...well...you get it.)

bio-dome

Portals on the roof of the California Academy of Sciences. More shots of the building and its collection (including the two headed snake) here.

towers & tree

bridge, park & city

surfers*

Another great Sunday at Baker Beach.

* Correction: Thanks to Daisy, skimboarders, not surfers.

bridge & city

hot glass | cold beer

At Public Glass' Hot Glass | Cold Beer fundraiser.

Come on out and help us celebrate Halloween by supporting Public Glass. Select a hand blown drinking vessel, allow us to fill it and sit back to watch and evening of glass blowing demos by Bay Area artist Guido Gerlitz. Music by Loose Change Collective.

10/31

72 hours in new york city

Full set on Flickr.

teddy bear hangover

Teddy Bear Hangover, originally uploaded by rbanks.

90 seconds in grand central

photos from toronto & ottawa

Oh, hey. I went to Toronto last month. And Ottawa. And ate a lot of waffles. And took some pictures.

More photos on Flickr.

rides rides rides

Ticket booths at the Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto's take on the county fair.

fog to the west

Serious fog rolling in over Twin Peaks tonight.

model city

Downtown San Francisco, looking across Union Square from an elevator in the St. Francis.

descent

Escalators in a London tube station.

presidio parkour

Photos from a Parkour session in the Presidio yesterday are up on Flickr.

victimless leather

The Victimless Leather exhibit at the Design and the Elastic Mind show. A tiny coat made out of living mouse stem cells. I'm glad I saw it before the museum had to kill it:

Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at the museum, had to kill the coat. “It was growing too much,” she said in an interview from a conference in Belgrade. The cells were multiplying so fast that the incubator was beginning to clog. Also, a sleeve was falling off. So after checking with the coat’s creators, a group known as SymbioticA, at the School of Anatomy & Human Biology at the University of Western Australia in Perth, she had the nutrients to the cells stopped.

-- NYTimes

decay

The dining hall at Alcatraz.

San Francisco's been good for my fascination with decaying and abandoned buildings.

Looking through my photostream I'm surprised I have so few shots of Hill 88 and none of the Presidio Hospital or Sutro Baths. Must resolve that.

alcatraz

Photos from a trip to Alcatraz back in March are up on Flickr.

father | son

Another favourite from the New York set. Also at The MoMA.

three

A favourite from the New York set. The Museum of Modern Art.

photos from nyc

Finally finished putting the photos from my trip to NYC up on Flickr, including a handful from the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit at the MoMA.

master of reality

Like a Mountain Goats album, in novella form. ♥. What more can I say?