Tim Donlan

thoreau

Life in the Woods

I read Walden on a tiny electronic screen, primarily socked away in the back of trains, planes and automobiles, and missed out on all the classic typesetting and ink prints that might accompany a quality hardback. But the content was there, and I think Thoreau would have understood. The book

catskills

New Views

I started using Picasa as a gallery.  The features are similar to Gallery2, but the process of tweaking and uploading albums is an order of magnitude faster.  You can go directly to the new gallery with the New Photos tab above.  Or click the small text on the image boxes

blackberry

Reading E

I finally succumbed to the necessity of a crackberry and found myself spending a lot of time in airplanes and subway cars. After reading the same Sky magazine for the fourth time, some new reading material was in order. I tried ebooks a few years back, uploading raw text files

new york

Concrete Dwellers

[](http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/gXy-acDU0a7VKWdES9YMqA?feat=embedwebsite) From [NY Early June](http://picasaweb.google.com/timdonlan/NYEarlyJune?feat=embedwebsite)

american pastoral

Garden State

For the past month I’ve been working in New Jersey. My morning commute is an hour long and identical to the Soprano’s intro. Under the Hudson and straight through the Meadowlands and Newark, this vast stretch of brown industry, acres of cranes and stacked containers and overpasses. So

Dan Deacon

New Tunes

Dan Deacon – Bromst The cover art of Bromst features a tent, glowing in the backyard of some summer night. The pattern on the fabric isn’t fatigue green or camouflage – its red and blue diamonds, like Merlin’s wizard cap. That’s perfect imagery for Deacon’s sophomore record, which

brief wondrous life of oscar wao

Brief, Wondrous Novel

I recently watched an interview with Junot Diaz on Slate. He was congenial, if a bit shy and smiled a lot – his shaved head and neat little goatee almost gleaming under the studio lights – this smooth earthy brown cocoa and coffee skin. He almost seemed like too much of a

australia

Back from Travels

Pictures are up:

new york

Last Days in NY

cold

Morning Mist

animal collective

Daddy Collective

It’s pretty easy to get stuck in normal life. We can’t escape because it makes these invisible blankets that tighten and constrict, not our limbs but our minds. This dulling, stupidifying (but perhaps blissful) blanket of the mundane. In their new record, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective puts

henry miller

Sex and the City (Paris)

“It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom. I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I

airport security

Link Roundup

Haven’t done one of these in a while, but today was one of those classic episodes of procrastination where I fish through Google Reader waiting for Outlook to ping with my next distraction. Fortunately, hooked a few worthwhile reads: My Bright Abyss [http://www.theamericanscholar.org/my-bright-abyss/] – I’ve

geese

In Flight

Milan Kundera

Outside the Thread

I was reading Milan Kundera’s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_Kundera] Art of the Novel in Barnes and Noble today. He said some interesting things – the idea that the purpose of the novel is to reveal new lines of thought that were previously not possible for the human

new years resolutions

Resolved

-Read More -Write More -Cardio More *-Waste Time Less *

experimental

Halls of Madness

It was a tarnished paperback, the cover (which strangely sits a   1/4th inch away   from protecting the crumpled bulk of pages) torn and fraying. I hefted it, flipped through, the text itself split between Courier and Garamond, odd arrangements of footnotes and text and some pages even barren save

literature

Spectral Scribe

I’d read that Philip Roth was one of the best living American authors, and for a while I’d always had a few of his novels on my ever-growing list of books to read. I think I decided on Ghost Writer wandering around Strand Bookstore: it was propped up

christmas

Happy New Year

dear science

Dear Science

I consume music in waves. Sometimes I’ll attain entire directories of random songs and wind through them in nonchalant shuffle. Other times I’ll get that perfect album that will be my one and only for weeks on end. My iPod will become a shrine, forbidden to worship anything

games

Hack the Planet

Ever since my video card died, and I pseudo-permanently let my neighbor borrow my Wii, I’ve had to get my video game fixes from interesting sources. Nethack, labeled by many as the best video game ever, is basically Diablo, circa 1987. It’s free, open-source, and available here. Nethack

ibanking

Prescience

A year ago I wrote a story called IMAGINE [http://daydalus.net/AComingCold/index.php?story=Imagine] about an dickhead investment banker. I figured it was an over the top caricature, an experiment in modern villainy. Having read this article [http://nymag.com/news/business/51402/], I’m not so

autumn

Season New

baroque cycle

Full Cycle (System of the World)

London, 1714. Here ends an immense saga, Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. It’s been three years in the reading, a tome each late spring stretching through the dog days of summer. But it’s a welcome tradition. If the first novel was vibrant exploration of the scientific revolution from

bee

Lenses and Bugs