Robert Nealan

Goodbye Tumblr

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 22:22:05 -0500

Oh Tumblr. How I hate to let you go. You and your vowel-hating ways (I’m surprised you even kept the U as it’s sometimes a vowel itself). There’s always a chance you’ll censor this post and delete my account almost instantaneously, but hopefully that’s not the case. Either way, I’m retiring you. I’m done. Your constantly crashing servers can only be blamed on TumblBeasts for so long before I conclude your animal control issues to be due to internal management problems. Either way, this has been a long time coming. Goodbye. I won’t be coming back (except to read Clients from Hell of course, but you won’t know it’s me). Enjoy your time without me.

TLDR: Integrated my blog into my main site via Wordpress, to be found at robertnealan.com/category/blog

The sad state of the land of the free. (Click the High-res...

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 10:39:00 -0500

The sad state of the land of the free. (Click the High-res button)

Two short clips (1 minute total) showing the steep insanity that...

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:55:11 -0500

Two short clips (1 minute total) showing the steep insanity that was hiking up Pu’u Manamana (say that 10 times fast). Definitely bring someone with you if you do this hike.

An amazing video of urban explorers revealing just a few of the...

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:53:15 -0500

An amazing video of urban explorers revealing just a few of the hidden wonders of New York City.

Hiking Pu'u Manamana

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:33:05 -0500

Despite numerous announcements in the fashion of, “I’ll be waking up early and going on a hike tomorrow morning”, today was actually one of the first days I followed through with it. By 7am I was on the road heading towards the East side (what up!) of the island, but not before grabbing some food/water for the hike and a cup of coffee at the Coffee Gallery in Haleiwa (if you’re in Oahu and enjoy coffee, be sure to check it out).

And there she is in the distance with the rising sun shining through the clouds. To my surprise the hike ended up taking me all the way along the top ridge further to the right than this photograph shows. At 4.5 miles long it isn’t the length that gets you but the 2000’ of elevation gain going up and then coming back down.

“Pu’u Manamana is one of the most dangerous hiking trails on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. Known for its spectacular yet perilous narrow ridge sections, Manamana is legendary and revered among Hawaii hikers.” [Source]

I’m generally very nonchalant when people make claims of a hike being incredibly dangerous or difficult, but in this case it was well deserved. It easily takes the gold for as the most dangerous trail I’ve hiked, and that’s ignoring the fact that it was a mudslide for the middle half of the hike. At times I found myself clawing my hands into the mud just to prevent myself sliding back downhill.

The views going up were spectacular despite the suns inability to properly defeat the morning’s cloud cover and made the pain that was to come further along well worth it.

Despite how much I thoroughly enjoyed this hike, I can’t particularly recommend it to many people. One blogger ended up turning back before he reached the top, and it only gets increasingly harder right up til the end. If anyone ever does want to attempt this I can’t stress having a good pair of hiking shoes (my running shoes were relatively inept) and would suggest waiting until it hasn’t rained for a day or two.

My full Flickr photo album of the hike (and other parts of Oahu) can be found here.

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For info on the hike and more photos:
Unreal Hawaii Article
Pu’u Manamana on Associated Content
Pu’u Manamana on Island Trails

View fromPu’u Manamana Trail (Taken with Instagram at Kualoa...

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:57:30 -0500

View fromPu’u Manamana Trail (Taken with Instagram at Kualoa Ranch)

Oh, Ah, Who?

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:58:12 -0500

Winter break finds me walking through snow to board an airplane to tropical Hawaii. Quite the contrast if I do say so. Unfortunately architecture insists on remaining present if only by preventing me from developing a normal sleep schedule (currently 6AM).

The excess of time has lead to a combination of web design for a few SLOrganizations and an renewed interest in the nerdy pasttime known as “playing videogames”. I really havn’t gotten into gaming throughout most of college, mainly since I quit playing World of Warcraft (go on, laugh). This break I’ve become hooked on a few different indie games, currently Super Meat Boy and Braid. The prior is easily the toughest, and most addicting game I’ve played in years (besides WoW), and the latter is a unique puzzle game in which you collect puzzle pieces (ironic much?).

Touch my niece’s pony and she might have to break your face.

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Stereo Hands (White Panda Mashup) - Edward Maya & Waka Flaka
Praise be to Dion

Acid Raindrops - People Under the Stairs

October - Broken Bells

Forget It - Breaking Benjamin
Not a remix, not new, but good nonetheless.

Peter (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 20:51:27 -0500

Peter (Taken with instagram)

Google Docs Animation. These guys just have to be so trendy...

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 11:22:31 -0500

Google Docs Animation. These guys just have to be so trendy with their ads everytime.

Of Blogs, Projects, and Bears Oh My.

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 04:52:11 -0500

Dead week has set in and sleep has taken a vacation. Yet I oddly find myself procrastinating not with rest or trivial internet surfing (okay, maybe a little), but instead with the realization of multiple web projects that have taken the backburner until now. I’ve come to the conclusion that attempting to make all-inclusive things is often a bad choice as it dilutes the end result, in this case a end-all blog. I’ve used this for a wide host of purposes…blogging about architecture, life, music, etc. What I’ve produced is an odd amalgamation of juxtaposed topics that ultimately have little to no relation between one another. While this might be fine for my own self and what few friends may actually read this, it doesn’t serve the goal of actually drawing traffic with meaningful discussion. If I were to not aspire to this goal then I should’ve never left Livejournal in early high school.

Therefore I’m beginning to break apart and create blogs for each of a small handful of categories that I wish to explore and investigate more thoughtfully. Below is a list of all web projects that I’m currently building and hope to bring to full realization within the next 3-6 months:

collos.us - A blog oriented towards architectural discussion, thoughts, and the like. It will often pose larger over-arching questions on life as attempting to write about purely architecture would be denying the very variety that makes its study so unique. I’m still brainstorming further areas that it can become involved (architecture competitions, etc), but for the time being the blog portion is live so the thoughts filling my brain can be digitized and shared. A customized design will be introduced soon, likely over winter break.
thestereolove.com - I currently own the domain but am holding off on hosting it for the moment. It will ultimately serve as part music blog, but more importantly as a platform for the social discovery and rating of music and playlists. It’s a long term project in the works that likely won’t be up until this summer, but in the meantime the work in progress can be viewed here. It currently should display a line or two of text that is the ID3 tags of an mp3 file pulled out of another music blog’s RSS feed. ”Very excited.”
robertnealan.com/blog - Oh shit. Wordpress? What the hell? Yes, I know. It’s not that I have anything against Tumblr, but I will be migrating my blogging over to Wordpress soon so as to afford more flexibility in the design and experiments in using it as a CMS platform for web development purposes. I still need to look into whether or not I can feed each post into my Tumblr account automatically, but if it’s possible I will make it so. (Funny seeing how my Tumblr currently feeds into my old Blogger). Additionally, it’ll likely contain progressively less ramblings on life and become more oriented towards architectural investigations and my thesis as I begin to delve into the mysteries of Manhattan.
kefea.com - Currently you’ll see a demo page for the Lemonstand App platform. A project with the grand vision of uniting local coffee everywhere, this is my first serious endeavour into the world of online business. Don’t hold your breath, but the design is nearly done and I’ll be attempting to begin organizing the business aspects by the end of winter break.

Additionally I do own another domain that is currently unhosted, but will eventually serve as a platform for political commentary, change, and discussion. We live in a time where political events are becoming more and more alarming while public discussion and activism grow increasingly lackluster. This is something that I believe needs to and can be changed.

Keep Dead Week Alive

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 14:19:39 -0500

Two Weeks of Hip Hop (Dead Prez vs Grizzly Bear) - The Hood Internet

Got Your Money - Wu Tang Clan vs The Beatles

Never Forget You ft. John Legend - Lupe Fiasco

Take Me Over - Cut Copy

Website Redesign

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 04:41:23 -0500

In an odd turn of decisions (and even odder method of procrastinating) I decided to completely redo my website’s layout tonight. While the old layout wasn’t bad by any means, it felt somewhat overdone and overbearing. To update it was a task in itself, and to update it without breaking some part of the layout was near impossible. Whether or not I kept the same layout it had an underlying rewriting coming sooner or later.

The best part of web design is the “design” part, whereby the designer is able to create and explore new ideas. Once a site is finished it almost instantly begins to feel stale and outdated. I’ll immediately either begin finding ways to change it or upload it to the internet as is, never to be looked at again.

This newest layout seeks to circumvent this stale bread effect by using a minimalist (dare I say Mies van der Rohe esque) layout, whereby the main focus is the content presented while navigation and header take to the back of the mind. In doing so it not only becomes simpler to update, but also leaves extra room for customizing specific pages as I might desire. I’ve been looking at beginning to publish occasional articles on current events and various subjects, and being able to customize the layout of each in the fashion of a magazine spread will be invaluable.

New Layout: www.robertnealan.com

Diagram Hell

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 01:23:06 -0500

1 Website redesign later and 2 diagrams later it’s 1:30AM…/headdesk.

[[Vehicle Traffic Analysis]]

[[Foot Traffic Analysis]]

Nobody Cares

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 23:25:50 -0500

All too often I’ve stopped 2 paragraphs into a blog post only to delete it all and start anew at another time. It isn’t that the writing is bad, but that the content less interesting for a public blog and instead better suited for personal journal given its inner-rambling nature. I’m not trying to bash on anyone I know or anyone in specific, but the problem with blogs is that when you start posting about every single thing or event that crosses your mind, typically nobody cares. So instead of posting my latest inner thoughts I’ll share my latest rendering-in-progress.

NY[D]C

Sat, 27 Nov 2010 20:12:08 -0500

Thanksgiving was less than conventional to say the least. Despite being called the city that never sleeps, people do in fact close up shop early on Thanksgiving, leaving Gina and I momentarily lost in our search for a delicious dinner. Roaming back and forth across a weather dreary Manhattan ended with french toast at a very American diner and relocating to a 24/7 Starbucks in the depths of Penn Station, which I believe will be the starting point of the forthcoming zombie apocalypse (it’s a massive maze of underground tunnels if you’ve never been).

My return to DC was greeted with being fired from my job for the past few weeks for reasons that are still unclear despite asking for specific examples as to what I’d done wrong. While I don’t hold any anger towards them I get the feeling I’ll be making coffee from the comfort of my french press more often than in the past.

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Sweet Talkin Woman (Electric Light Orchestra Cover) - Five Iron Frenzy

Hot Mess - Chromeo ft. La Roux

Slats Slats Slats - Skrillex

N|Y|C

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:52:00 -0500

Despite the dangerously tall stack of homework that’s threatening to topple over and maim me, I’ve taken a short break up to NYC for the first time (sadly). All in all it’s everything I expected and more. Prior to now I’ve always claimed that after college I’d likely move to SF, NYC, or out of the country. Now I can happily say that NYC definitely is in that list of possible destinations.

[[41 Cooper Square, New York City - The Cooper Union by Thom Mayne]]

[[72nd Street Subway Station to Downtown]]

Porject Porgress

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 11:46:18 -0500

Progress continues on my Swiss embassy for studio in Washington DC. The conceptual basis of the project began with the idea of subtracting from the cube-shaped volume of the site (creating the void space in the center) and using the building skin as both enclosure and topographical surface. I havn’t gotten the opinion of my main teacher, but my secondary Bauhaus teacher can only say it isn’t her type of architecture.

Just Gimme Some Good Old Coffeeshop Atmosphere

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 23:23:00 -0500

Project Progress, freezing Virginia bike rides, triple state runs, and a new job at my local coffeeshop Misha’s. Starbucks may not have been my thang but based on the 2 months I’ve pretty much half lived at Misha’s and my first (short) shift today, I think things are going to work out relatively well. Day 2 is tomorrow and my first full shift is Friday. Best part is I can now be witty, sarcastic, grumpy, snarky, friendly or any combination of anything to customers as it’s what’s really behind the great local shop atmosphere: barista attitude.

The music world is going crazy with some new stuff bouncing around in my head. Kanye has leaked some more new songs from his upcoming album that continue the trend of 5+ artist collaborations, Cee-Lo Green’s (Gnarles Barkley) album continues to impress, and I’ve taken to perusing my full 16,000 song iTunes library again. Funny how much music we can amass so easily these days.

Block After Block - Matt & Kim

The Best Day - Atmosphere

It’s OK - Cee-Lo Green

All of the Lights - Kanye West

Quite possibly one of the more fascinating short films...

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 16:46:31 -0400

Quite possibly one of the more fascinating short films I’ve seen in some time…

The Cathedral (Polish: Katedra) is the title of a science fiction short story by Jacek Dukaj, winner of the Janusz A. Zajdel Award in 2000; and of a 2002 short animated movie by Tomasz Bagiński, based on the story. The film was nominated in 2002 for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film for the 75th Academy Awards. The movie won the title of Best Animated Short at Siggraph 2002 in San Antonio as well as several other awards.

The True Face of Winter

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 23:34:43 -0400

I woke up with grand aspirations to go on an awesome bike ride for the first time since I took my California adventure. Said awesome bike ride did happen (represented by my previous post’s picture of a scene resemblant of the Blair Witch Project), but only after checking the weather to find today would have a HIGH of 45 fahrenheit. I admittedly love cold weather, but I know I’m in for an experience when the high in November is similar to California’s lows in January/February. Also, I might need to invest in a coat as my current winter gear (jeans, tshirt, and a beanie) isn’t going to cut it.

50 miles of rolling “hills” later I painfully finished an out and back into Virginia countryside. I unfortunately have the problem of living almost in the middle of the DC metro area, so finding true countryside as I so fondly remember in San Luis Obispo is going to a bit more of a challenge involving lots of investigating via Google Maps and possible metro rides to starting destinations. I always thought driving to a starting destination to ride was a bit hypocritical, but when your starting destination and the start of low-trafficked countryside roads is blocked by the glow of 10,000 traffic lights it suddenly starts to make a lot more sense.

I Want the World to Stop - Belle & Sebastian