Orange & Blue

Got my new Camera

Winter bike

The second half of January has provided somewhat of a break from the crushing cold, ice, and snow that had befallen the east coast early this winter. So with the partial thaw I've had the opportunity to get back out and put in some more miles. But even on the warmest January day my desire to put in the big miles, melts away like a snowman in death valley. My rides must be short and sweet, perfect for the fixie. I'm finally starting to really get all the hoopla about that off season fixed gear training mantra stuff:

"Early season development on a fixed gear.

A cyclist should spend the first 1600 kms of the season pedaling a fixed gear machine. This period helps develop the ability to spin a larger gear with greater fluidity, blessing the rider with the ultimate skill, a skill the French refer to as supplesse, or “suppleness”. A rider begins with a lower gear combination, working up slowly every 500 kms, progressively building in gear size."

-Belgium Knee Warmers

Besides all that, we all know they are just damn fun ride. Plus I get to ride my tubulars; 404's at 100 psi = magic

Little peelers (waves)

Recommended: Vampire Weekend - Contra

Listening to this one right now, picked it up about a week ago. After several listens all the way through I'm hooked. Great follow up album, if you liked their first disc then this one is definitely worth a spin, you can listen to it here.

Colors, Shapes, Noise

Shot these on a borrowed camera

Blue & Green

New Animal Collective Vid

erikkowalski.com

It's been a long time coming, but I finally launched a new and improved portfolio site. erikkowalski.com_2.0. Now with an actual interface, instead of just scrolling (like the old site if you saw it) and lots of new and updated work. So please stop by and check it out, and let me know what you think it's brand new and I'm looking for feedback.

Also for those of you who are interested, there's a new way to follow this blog. I've been experimenting with Tumblr's blogging service and I launched a new experimental version of this blog on tumblr. It's basically takes a feed from this blogs posts and pulls in the first image. If you want to see the whole post you can click on the image and it will redirect you here. You basically get the same content, with a few extra bonus post sprinkeled in here and there. In general though, this version is more focused on art. It uses a more simplified and clean layout which I think looks a little more professional, and if you click the blog link on my portfolio site it takes you to it.

erikkowalski.tumblr.com

The last shots

Today is a bit of a sad day for me, my trusty Nikon Coolpix s600 took a spill and finally called it quits. Even though I'm sad to see it go, I new it didn't have much left in it. After years of abuse, a few close calls (like being in my back pocket while getting assaulted by a smart car), and more drops than I can count.

I new it was on its way out. In fact it hardly worked. It didn't zoom, you couldn't view the pictures after shooting them and it was stuck in auto mode on the highest resolution setting; all because the buttons that control these functions had stopped working. Also the battery would often pop out of place, and sometimes I would hit the power button and it would just not turn on (with a full charge). But even when it seemed like it had taken it's last shot, I would reinsert the batter and hit that power button one more time and it would magical spring to life. It was the little camera that could, that is until today when it fell off the couch.

I went to turn it on and herd a clicking noise and got the message "lens error". The fall had caused the retractable lens to get stuck in it's case. That was it, this is the end of the road for my little camera buddy after three years strong of blogging it's time to replace it. So now I'm off to Best Buy to pick up a replacement, the newest edition of the same camera. Here are some of it's last good shots.

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Cold, cold, cold