I used to post these videos to YouTube with embarrassing regularity, but I've slowed down a bit over the years.
These fish, though, are bona fide divas. They deserve their screen time.
I'll post much more about my aquaria, rest assured. In the meantime---here's a taste. :)
Don't forget to click the resolution button---I've uploaded this puppy in HD.
The great French composer and theorist Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) famously spoke of "the charm of impossibilities." When Messiaen used the phrase, he was usually referring to what he called "modes of limited transposition," or a distinct set of seven scales which, due to their inbuilt symmetry, can only undergo a limited number of transpositions before folding back into themselves. Each of the modes contains elements with which we're all familiar---the chromatic pitch-classes of the traditional Western equal-tempered scale---but arranges them in an order that transforms them, transmutates them into something new, something mysterious, something at once extraordinarily simple and yet remarkably complex. Suddenly these pitches we know so well are heard as sounds from another world. They lack the traditionally stabilizing element of a tonic or a key signature, but their adamantine structure makes them stable to the point of immovability.
The Hancock Tower (which is really called "Hancock Place," but I don't think anyone's called in that in a couple of decades) is both impossibly beautiful and impossibly impossible. It's atowering monolith that dwarfs everything in its immediate vicinity, but---if the conditions are just right---it's virtually invisible. It thrusts up from the earth with verticality and violence, and yet maintains a sense of weightlessness, of floating, of being some figment of a half-remembered dream.
The most charmingly impossible (and impossibly charming) aspects of this building, though, are a little harder to see. A decades-long engineering experiment, the Hancock is a testament to the power of will and intellect in the face of remarkably adverse conditions. In the 35 years since it was finished (and, really, the 43 years since plans were first drawn up), the Tower has been in constant war with the laws of physics, the laws of chemical engineering, and the laws of municipal government.
Credit: Rich007 at Flickr
Here's a little overview, in something resembling chronological order.
Photo: Michael Shellenbarger/ University of Oregon Library
So why didn't they just give up? Why didn't they scrap the design and try something else, something simpler, something more proven?
I'm not sure exactly, but I think it's got something to do with the fact that the Hancock Tower is perhaps the most beautiful mid- to late-twentieth century building in Boston. Speaking personally, I can't think of a better skyscraper created anywhere in the 1970s. The Hancock is the singular fulfillment of everything the Modernists had sought to achieve for the better part of a century. It's outrageously clean---it's a building that outwardly appears to consist of little else but windows, and yet the curtain wall appears to be devoid of mullions (from far away, at least).
Credit: Andrew Paul Jackson
The firm responsible for the architectural design of the Hancock was I.M. Pei & Partners (you might've heard of 'em). The chief architect wasn't Pei, though he was involved. It was the remarkable (and remarkably undervalued, in my opinion) Henry Cobb, a man responsible for other Boston gems like the Harbor Towers and the Moakley Courthouse. The falling windows fiasco almost put an end to his budding career, but a series of critical and public successes helped put him back in high regard.
Mies van der Rohe's hugely influential Seagram Building---erected in New York about a decade before work started on the Hancock---represented what many thought to be the perfect embodiment of the International Style. It was, for many architectural buffs, the ideal manifestation of form following function, and it sounded a clarion call for similar office structures to be erected around the country. A flood of dark, glass pylons began appearing in major cities around the country (see, for example, one of the Hancock's most famous neighbors: the Prudential Tower).
Mies van der Rohe - Seagram Building
Prudential Tower, Boston
Cobb's design married this Functionalist aesthetic with a refreshing sense of minimalism. The Tower's parallelogram shape lends the building a remarkable sharpness, especially when viewed from a 3/4 angle. Two exceedingly simple notches run the full, vertical length of the building, each one splitting one of the narrow sides into two spears reaching up into infinity. In the early morning and early evening, these notches catch the light of the sun as it rises and then falls. It's really remarkable.
One of the greatest temp. jobs I ever had was a season-length position in an asset management firm occupying the Tower's 53rd floor (just about 7 floors from the top). I remember a sense of floating above all else. The core of the building, of course, is opaque, but everything lining the building's periphery is just pure, unadulterated sky.
On a windy day, I could hear the tuned dampers shifting slowly on the 58th floor, groaning faintly like two giants watching over the building beneath them, protecting it from the ever encroaching laws of nature.
And it was impossibly beautiful.
The Duralumin plays some wonderfully subtle tricks with ambient light.
The first thing you need to know about the Series 9 Notebook by Samsung is that it's just achingly, exquisitely beautiful. The second thing you need to know is that it's achingly (perhaps not exquisitely) expensive. The important thing to keep in mind is that this is a thoroughly premium product, and that you really do get what you pay for. The Series 9 backsup its looks with equally impressive internals, including a very fast Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD.
Why I like it:
1. It's beautiful
There are very, very few hardware manufacturers in the world that can challenge the eternal elephant in the design-review room, Apple. Two companies that can occasionally be thought of as being in the same league (emphasis on "occasionally") are Samsung (Korean) and Sony (Japanese). They might not be as innovative as the wizards from Cupertino, but they can at least keep pace in terms of build quality, ergonomics, and genuine, aesthetic value.
Sure beats printing things out to play through them.
Sometimes, of course, this can lead to some problems.
Still, there are moments when each of the Big Ss strike design gold (check out the Sony Vaio Z Series). The Series 9 represents such a moment: it is aesthetically original, resembling its obvious arch-nemesis only in its footprint (and, to a degree, its touchpad). The designers have spoken at length about drawing inspiration from organic forms (a leaf, water, etc.), and I sincerely believe them. This isn't a design that comes about by iterating something for a test group. This is a design that came directly from some sort of artistic impulse, from a desire to create something beautiful.
The look works because it marries the masculine (brushed, black Duralumin case, sharp edges) and the feminine (that beautiful "light-catcher" that curves around the periphery, a sense of fundamental lightness and elegance) without appearing to try very hard.
It also achieves the same impossibly-thin look as the Air, but does so through different design cues. Part of why the Air shocked everyone when it debuted back in 2008 was that, from certain angles, it basically looked as thick as a supermarket tabloid. This was because a) it was as thick as a supermarket tabloid, and b) because Apple engineers pushed anything remotely bulky in the chassis all the way to the hinges, tapering the rest of the case to an impossibly thin crease. This was a masterful application of trompe l'oeil, emphasizing just how portable this next-generation laptop was (and is). The Series 9 underscores its own svelte lines not so much by tapering, but instead by way of a delicate aluminum band elegantly tracing its profile.
Both laptops have eliminated optical drives from their respective equations. I use an Asus external disc drive for my Series 9, but when I say "use" I really mean "purchased, utilized to install Finale, and then held onto as a nice little sculptural piece for my desk."
Samsung further slims the Series 9 by way of concealed ports. Each side has a flap-down compartment containing three connection points (left: network, HDMI, high-speed USB; right: micro SD, headphone/microphone (combined), USB).
That's actually the ethernet port on the left: you connect the network cable by way of an included dongle.
The ports feel (and, indeed, are) very sturdy, opening and closing with a solid (albeit small) "thunk."
2. It's functionally well-suited to writing music
The primary purpose of any computer I own is to help me compose music more effectively. Three key aspects of the Series 9's design have proven invaluable in this respect: the screen, the keyboard, and the trackpad.
First, the screen. Aside from the fact that it has absurdly bright, crisp colors and a striking contrast ratio (this is Samsung, after all, and they're known for their screen technology perhaps above all else), it's matte. This, more than just about anything, was what steered me towards the Series 9 and away from the glossy-screened Air. It means I can routinely enjoy moments like this:
The fact that the whole thing is just so darn portable makes it that much easier to tote it around with me wherever I go, whipping it out if inspiration strikes.
Backlighting and chiclet-style keys make me happy.
The keyboard also has some distinct advantages over the competition. Among other things, it's backlit. Not only that, but the backlight is manually adjustable (and very responsive to ambient light conditions when left to its own devices). The chiclet-style keys are a joy to navigate, with softly textured faces and precise weighting.
The trackpad might not be quite up to Apple standards, but it's easily the best I've ever seen on a non-Mac computer. It has a soft, rubberized texture, and features fluid multitouch capabilities that I've never experienced on a PC before. The thumb-down-while-navigating-using-another-finger method works like a charm. Dragging articulations, entering notes, and even simple graphic design is just a pleasure. I used to wonder how it was possible that my friend (and Mac-geek) Andrew Paul Jackson actually preferred entering notes and other score items via trackpad, and had no desire to buy a mouse for his MacBook. Using this buttonless, multitouch, accurate trackpad has been quite an enlightening experience for me, to say the least.
3. It is among the most well-rounded devices (of any kind) I've owned.
In summing up, I can't think of a better compliment to give Samsung than the fact that I, as a relatively tech-savvy, aesthetically judgmental, cash-strapped consumer not only bought this computer, but that months of using it haven't changed something I realized the moment I first turned it on: I wouldn't change anything about it. I still get that little thrill when I flip the lid open and it wakes up from sleeping in 3 seconds, the keyboard backlight surging to life, the Duralumin gleaming darkly like a panther.
I love how, after hours and hours of intense usage (running Finale, Word, Chrome, Zune, even SketchUp), I can hover over the battery icon and see that I've still got 60% remaining. I love how "60% remaining" means that I've still got a few hours before I start looking for a wall port.
I love how I can tote the system around in an office-use-only envelope and no one has any idea I'm carrying a fully fledged, desktop-replacement-worthy system.
I love how I can look at the Series 9 every day and feel like I made the right choice, even if the right choice was an expensive one in this case.
It was worth it.
ADDENDUM: Check out this ridiculous line of crystal-studded Series 9 notebooks announced at Samsung's IFA press conference last week.
