Home
News
Photography
Professional
Contact
Je m'appelle Adrian Secord and I live in New York City with the kittens of doom Orange and GriGri.
Most of my time is spent coding or working and the rest with friends, the cats, learning cello, drawing or photography. I have an amazing family scattered around the Earth but mostly back home in Canada.
June 11, 2008
I live with musicians, and we just figured out how to connect the electronic piano here in the house to our laptops via MIDI for lots of GarageBand fun. You can drive the virtual instruments on your laptop using a real instrument (the piano). So fun! Here is my spooky first MIDI test, including a single arhythmic tom-tom drum (hi, Joe!).
May 4, 2008
I've just arrived in Seattle for another internship at Adobe and another chance to enjoy an amazing Pacific northwest summer. I'm a little swamped with arrival minutia, but I'll be able to post some pictures soon. I have, however, sort-of found a cello to play for the summer...
Feb 12, 2008
I'm back in New York after a very successful International Friend Tour that took me to Guelph, Smiths Falls, Arnprior, and Ottawa in Ontario, then over to Montreal in Quebec, and finally back to Toronto before coming home.
Check out some of the photos above...
January 28, 2008
The pace of news has outstripped my ability to write it up. In any case, I'm currently on vacation in Canada, with an International Friend Tour starring friends and family in Guelph, Smiths Falls, Arnprior, Ottawa, Montreal and glorious Toronto. Pictures to come here and on Facebook...
October 19, 2007
...and we're back in New York. Vick's on a fast track to finish her PhD, and I'm on the slightly-slower-but-hopefully-still-progressing track for the same goal. Last night we calculated that I've been in grad school (or grad school-like environments) for seven out of my thirty years of life—that's a quarter of my lifetime so far. Grad school is kind of like going up north to work on the oil rigs: you should get in, make your money, and then get the hell out before it kills you. Although I'm unlikely to physically die from grad school, something's dying inside of me, and I can't help but wonder where I'm going with all this.
Oh! I'm playing the cello now; it's the best thing in life at the moment. I started this summer in Seattle with the wonderful Kaia Chessen, who taught me well and I was sad to leave. I'm now with Noah Hoffeld here in the upper-west side of New York, who is equally great in a completely different way. I'm learning pretty fast, I think, and I've started to play a bit with other people. Maybe I'll add a cello section to this website, we'll see...
June 3, 2007
Vicki and I are now settled in our houseboat in Seattle, and I'm looking out on the water of Portage Bay as I type this. On Monday I start my second internship at Adobe with David, which means a return to nine-to-five life.
While we were in Canada, we had a whirlwind, too-short tour of friends and family in Guelph, Toronto, Smith's Falls, Ottawa and Montreal. Thanks to everyone for letting us stay with you! Vicki's got a bunch of pictures, and we're trying to to get them up on the web as quick as possible.
We also spent a week rock climbing with instructor Chris Simmons of Northwest Mountain School in Leavenworth, Washington. Chris led us on three to six climbs each day, with lots of instruction at the beginning of the week and a focus on just climbing later on. Towards the end these climbs where the separate pitches of a single multi-pitch climb.
The climbing was really amazing for a couple of reasons: one was the climbing itself, which is sort of the grown-up version of a kid's tree-climbing adventures. Also, you're almost always by definition somewhere beautiful and surrounded by nature. For example, there were swallows living near many of the rock faces we were climbing, and on the days when we did one long climb in, say, six pitches, we'd start climbing way down below the swallows, then get up to where they liked to fly, and then end the day above them, watching them whirl around. They were really great—I've never been that close to swallows before.
The final reason climbing was great was the changing level of what I called the Terror Index. The Terror Index is a ten-point scale, defined by the question: how terrified is Adrian right now? I'm moderately terrified of heights in general, so you may rightly point out that rock climbing is perhaps not my ideal sport. A Terror Index of zero is equivalent to sitting on the couch somewhere safe. A Terror Index of ten would be curled up in a little ball rocking and whimpering to myself (manly!).
I love the climbing itself, so I was determined to get better at the heights! On day one the Terror Index was roughly 7 out of 10, but that's only because Chris took it easy on us. That level of terror is roughly equivalent to peeking at the ground, but then shutting your eyes tightly, hugging the rock for a while and praying that the mountain doesn't decide to fall down. It turns out that the Terror Index drops with repeated exposure, so by mid-week the Index had fallen to perhaps 5/10 (looking at the ground with occasional "You're going to die!" thoughts). Finally, at the end of the week, when we were climbing quite high over several pitches, I was pretty easily able to look out over the trees and down into the valley without much fear—a final Terror Index of maybe 2/10. That's well in the range of acceptable terror: enough to keep you on your toes so you don't accidently do something stupid and die.
So this climbing trip was a major accomplishment for me, yay! I guess systematic desensitization really works in some cases.
There are some pictures on Vicki's new photo gallery. Please ignore the dorky helmets! They kept us safe and the mountain school lawyer-free. Also, we promise we'll have more studly muscle-bulging photos next time!
April 13, 2007
Vicki and I finally have plans for this summer: we'll be travelling in Canada the third week of May, then heading to Leavenworth, Washington to take rock climbing lessons for a week. We'll end up in Seattle for the last week of May, and I start working at Adobe on June 4th. Vicki will be working on her thesis, probably at the University of Washington. We'll be staying in Seattle until September.
Where are we staying? I'm glad you asked! In a house boat! This one is on Portage Bay, which is off of Lake Union, which is one of the many lakes Seattle is built around. The house boat is basically a floating two-bedroom apartment with lots of windows, a back deck on the lake, and a canoe! It's basically perfect for Vicki and I. We can canoe to Gas Works Park and hang out, or read on the deck, or even borrow the dog and go for a run. I can even canoe to work at Adobe, since it's on Lake Union (they have canoe and kayak parking in the parking garage).
Here are some photos:
P.S. It has a guest room!
Sept. 29, 2006
I'm back in New York working on my thesis. The summer in Seattle went extremely well! I worked at Adobe with David Salesin and Hendrik Kueck on a photography-related project. We should have publishable results if all continues to go well, and I now have a new research direction for my thesis. Also, I got to hang out in Seattle all summer.
June 7, 2006
Research on procrastination, really interesting. Also, I'm leaving for Seattle soon for three months.
May 14, 2006
Still trying to catch up since the latest busy time at work...
Mar. 26, 2006
Vicki and I took a much-needed vacation and went hiking in Spain for ten days earlier in March. I've worked through the photos for about half the trip and have written a quick sketch of where we went and what we did. There's more to come, but I'm out of time again for this week... ;(
Feb. 9, 2006
January is one of the busiest months of the year for academics in computer graphics, and now it's over. Yay! We didn't end up sending a submission to Siggraph, but we are going to send something to the Symposium on Computer Animation, a second-tier conference. The deadline is in April, so there's some more time to keep working on the project and improve our results.
Apart from that, I've been working on the lab's new web page, assisting in Introduction to Operating Systems, doing a little consulting on the side, and trying to figure out what to do for my thesis proposal.
Dec. 20, 2005
Happy Honk Day! Honk! Honk! Sweet, New York's transit union is on strike, stopping all the buses and subways! The system moves something like 4 million riders a day, but not today. The city also has a fairly interesting contingency plan for dealing with the massive amounts of cars that are apparently trying to get into the city right now. You can't get onto the island of Manhattan below 96th street with less than four people in your car. They should do that all year! And, since 96th street is just a bunch of blocks south of our apartment, there's big lineups of cars waiting to get past the barriers. Honk! Honk! Happy Honk Day!
In other news, it's that conference time again, so I may not be that responsive until after January. Vicki and I will also be in Guelph from Dec. 22 to Dec. 29. It'd be good to see you if you're local.
Nov. 22, 2005
Vicki and I went hiking with Sarah and Matt in the Adirondack Mountains near Lake Placid, New York. I took some photos. In the center of the previous map of the Adirondacks (provided by Google Maps), you can see Heart Lake, which we could see from the top of Mount Jo.
Oct. 29, 2005
Amy Norris and Dave Burke came up to New York last week for a quick three-day visit . We had super weather and they were unstoppable in exploring the city. They went off by themselves on day two, and eight hours later I got a phone call from Amy: Hey! What time is it? We got eaten by the Metropolitan Museum of Art! I'm glad the city didn't really eat them. Documentary evidence.
Oct. 26, 2005
Occasionally people ask to use my photos for various projects, and I usually happily help out in exchange for credit. I was contacted by Laura Norden to use my Philadelphia skyline shot in a video product for Philly's fire department, and today I got this nice email:
Adrian,
Sorry it took me so long to respond to your e-mail. I meant to
write sooner and thank you for sending a larger picture file and
for allowing us to use your picture for our presentation.
Because our video was so short, there were no credits at the end
like a regular movie. However, your copyright and photo
information were given to the person who put the credit list
together. Also, the fire fighters who previewed the show liked
your picture a lot because they thought it set the scene of the
fire (which happened in the evening) and asked that I thank you
for them.
Your photo was used exactly as it was sent to me with no
modifications nor text on top of it.
Thanks again!
Laura Norden
Sun Mountain Media Services
I think it's cool that a bunch of firefighters liked my photograph of their city.
Oct. 13, 2005
Hot damn! The Academy of American Poets has an audio archive where you can listen to poems read by the authors! Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost and The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W. B. Yeats. Great stuff.
Sept. 29, 2005
More photos! More! My friends Mike Waite and Tara Innes got married September 5, 2005 at a lovely party at Tara's dad's place in the Ontario countryside. Mike and Tara are friends from undergrad, and they lived in a house of students that was famous for having big potluck parties every couple of months. Their wedding was a 150-person vegetarian potluck, and it was amazing. The whole album is a decent enough record of the event, but my favourite photo is of Mikey, the dog, or perhaps the dinner tent from outside.
Sept. 28, 2005
Some new photo albums:
Aug. 31, 2005
We're back in New York again with the cats and starting to settle in for the next long school haul. The end of the summer is here, and all is well at this end of the world. The weather is absolutely horrible: hot, humid and smoggy. I'm looking forward to the fall.
In scholastic news, I passed my second death exam with flying colours. It was much, much better than the first one and I think all parties involved were happy. It's a good way to start the new year off. The coming eight months or so will be an attempt to figure out what exactly I will be doing in my thesis work, culminating in a thesis proposal next summer.
Photographically, I have been very busy this summer. I'm working on getting things up on the web, but it will take some time. Soon!
July 9, 2005
Hey! We're currently sitting in our friend Dima's house in Vancouver. We're visiting Vancouver for the weekend and heading back to Galiano Island Sunday night. I put a few photos up of Galiano.
June 23, 2005
Vicki and I have finally decided on a honeymoon (boy, I don't like that word). We've rented a cabin on Galiano Island, one of the Gulf Islands between the British Columbia mainland and Vancouver Island. Vicki and I are both partial to the area since I was in Vancouver for two years doing my master's and at one point we shared a tiny little cabin on Vancouver Island for a summer.
The Gulf Islands are an amazing set of small islands, sparsely populated but easy to get to from Vancouver or Victoria by ferry. Taking a BC ferry is one of the defining experiences for many people visiting the west coast. The ferries all have to thread their way through the islands, which are closely packed and beautiful. There are some reasonable pictures here.
The cabin is at the “populated” end of Galiano Island — it's five minutes from the only pub. We'll be taking our bikes, so we'll be able to easily travel to Vancouver or Victoria for visiting, or explore Galiano for some camping. In the middle of the month we'll be going to Sechelt, on the coast north of Vancouver, for Eli and Scott's wedding. I'm really looking forward to doing some photography, since me and my camera are finally starting to do that mind meld that comes from using a good tool.
(Aside: the mind meld link was to Wikipedia's entry on Vulcans, presumably written by a Star Trek fan. Star Trek fandom is a strange thing — note the use of the word “canon” to distinguish official sources of Star Trek lore. See also this entry on writing Star Trek articles. )
We'll be gone from roughly July 1 (we're driving to Canada on Canada Day!) to August 8.
June 11, 2005
Morningside Park is right across the street from our apartment, and it is a really lively place in the summer. Every weekend there are whole families that picnic out in the park who set up Saturday morning and don't seem to leave until Sunday at dark. Often different organizations set up public music and entertainment events.
Today, since about 10:00am Saturday morning, there's been a bag piper piping traditional tunes and an amplified preacher reading to the crowd. The preacher intersperses his readings with a capella singing. Right now I'm listening to Amazing Grace and some bag piping tune at the same time.
June 8, 2005
We've got the first wave of wedding photos up. A lot of them were really good!
June 6, 2005
Now that I'm back I have to figure out what to do about my damn Death Exam. I have to arrange to be examined on the syllabus by the end of the summer. My current plan is to turn each of the major sections of the exam into a small course that I could present to other grad students in, say, an afternoon. I don't actually care if I actually teach the courses, but it's the best way to get the material into my head. I'm generally more interested in teaching and supervising than actual research right now — at least this way I can scratch that itch while accomplishing what needs to be done.
Adrian's Death Exam Course
June 5, 2005
Vicki and I are finally back in New York from the grand trek to the Motherland (a.k.a. Canada). We are now officially married and I have a ring on my finger which should slow the flood of inappropriate offers I get on the street. The wedding itself was absolutely fantastic, with friends and family from all across the Americas showing up in Guelph and hanging out. Vicki and I had a ball, and I think one or two of our honoured guests had fun. I'm working on processing all the photos I took, and should have them up here in a few days. If you have photos you'd like to contribute (as several people already have), then send them to me and I'll get them up on the weeb. Also, Chris, our photographer, has promised that the proofs will be ready very soon now. He will make them available on a web site where you can order prints directly from him, no need to go through us.
May 21, 2005
Vicki and I got married!
May 13, 2005
Vicki and I are back in Guelph and in full wedding swing. Today I'm going to Toronto to visit Joe and Jill and meet little Tori. Also, I have to buy a suit and get a haircut. The things you do for love . . .
May 7, 2005
Well, that answers that.
May 6, 2005
So the answer to the Death Exam question turned out to be b). I guess two weeks wasn't enough time to cover the syllabus we drew up, so I'll be redoing the reading part at the end of the summer or the fall. I passed the research part, which is the more important part of the exam, so we'll call the whole thing a “conditional pass.” I'm actually happy to have a chance to learn the material better — it's really interesting stuff.
As the for the oral exam itself, it was absolutely horrible. In its honour, I have assigned it its rightful title as “worst academic experience so far,” and I'll quite likely remember it forever. (There is no humour in this paragraph.)
If you're interested, this was the syllabus:
May 1, 2005
Hey, long time no see. The wedding is nearly all planned and ready to go, except we don't have the wedding registry done yet. Wedding registry? Yes, they're making us accept gifts. It turns out that a wedding is a commnunal event, with the power over decisions shared among many people: us, our parents, and the billion or so humans before us who have defined "tradition" at the current moment. We were originally planning on asking people not to buy gifts for us, but that was flat-out rejected. Hence we need a wedding registry. Woo.
In other news, Vicki is almost done with her obligations here in New York and will be heading to Guelph next week. I, on the other hand, have my Depth Exam (pronounced "Death Exam") at the end of this week. This is your traditional pass-or-we'll-throw-you-out deal where I present some research for an hour and then three faculty members interrogate me about anything they feel like. At the end they decide if a) I flunked the research part or b) I flunked the interrogation part or c) both.
Mar. 26, 2005
Vicki and I are going insane with work and organizing the wedding, so if you're wondering what the heck is going on, it's okay, we're just insane.
Mar. 6, 2005
More photos! From two months ago! Well, that's faster than the previous bunch, some of which were over a year old. *ahem*
The new photos are of our Christmas in Philadelphia and Andrea's kitten Jasper.
Mar. 4, 2005
Jesus, is it March already?
This is a beautiful interview. Tom Waits, a hero if there ever was one, interviewed by a sympathetic soul.
Have you heard about Christo and Jeanne-Claude? We went to their latest piece, The Gates in Central Park. Spent some time making vanity photos, and then took some others. Peruse here, if it pleases you.
Feb. 21, 2005
Vicki and I are trying to figure out wedding invitations now. Note to future selves: "Elope."
Feb. 11, 2005
Holy cow, I'm 28 years old. Sweet. Soon I'll be old and cranky and I can sit on my front porch and yell at the neighbourhood kids. "You kids! Get off my lawn!" It'll be great.
Jan. 24, 2005
I've had this backlog of roughly six billion pictures to process. It didn't help that I got a new camera and all excited by photography again, either. Here are some of the pictures I've managed to get cleaned up and put on on the gallery:
We were supposed to fly to the wedding from Toronto, but our flight was scheduled the day after the Great Blackout happened in eastern North America. So we took a 24-hour train to Truro and arrived pretty much an hour before the ceremony. It was a really great time and totally worth it.
Alex, Marika and Dima came down from Toronto last May, and I managed to catch a few pictures here and there.
Vicki and I went canoeing in Killarney with Kirsten, Drew, Nadine, Helen and Miles in August 2004. We know Kirsten, Drew and Helen from high school and beyond, but it was our first time with Nadine and Miles. We had a great time. It makes my heart hurt to see these pictures, especially now that it's mid-winter New York city.
Mike Cline was between jobs and flew out to visit us and New York. Mike and I spent a few days happily wandering the city together.
A few of these are from when Vicki's mom came to visit in June, 2004. Unfortunately I don't have many other pictures from that visit.
Vicki and I took pictures of our collection of drawing exercises and pieces from class. The oldest exercises date from Toronto around 2003.
Vicki and I will be getting married at the Arboretum at the end of this May 2005. It's a beautiful place, and we thought folks might want to have a preview. These pictures are from August, so things will be a bit greener than the pictures show.
There's roughly another six billion more pictures to sort through. Wish me luck.
Nov. 26, 2004
Ugh, check out the demographic categories and iconic pictures at this "data quality solution" provider. I think they probably consider me to be in the "Bohemian Mix" category. Better that than "God's Country" or "Bedrock America". It's a pretty sad view of the world — everyone's a consumer.
Nov. 21, 2004
Vicki and I have been taking figure drawing lessons at the Pratt Institute here in Manhattan with the excellent Stuart Parker. It's been fun and forced me to get better at this drawing stuff. I've put a few pictures up in the gallery at the end of the Art section. I particularly like The Foot. ;)
Nov. 10, 2004
Research is going swimmingly, and since I only have one class right now I can focus almost exclusively on research. As an aside, graduate students in NYU computer science nominally take three classes a term, but they are enthusiastically encouraged to convert some of those into "independent studies", that is, research. In contrast, Columbia philosophy students are required to take five courses a term, three with final papers and two on an attendance-only basis. Yes.
Sept. 24, 2004
Yesterday, while I was walking to the Columbia philosophy department, I passed a sidewalk cafe and a used bookstore on Broadway. Outside of the bookstore stood a large black man, clad only in boxer's trunks. He had boxing gloves on, one black and the other red, white and blue American-flag style. He was hollering, just bellowing poetry at the bookstore, rhymes about pages and books and words. It was amazing—I think he was improvising as he went. His entire body tensed with every yelled line and he was going at it with all his might. Just awesome.
Just before I lost sight of him, I saw that he had moved on to the sidewalk cafe and was giving the customers there the same treatment. Sometimes I really love this city.
Aug. 17, 2004
I went to SIGGRAPH as usual for this time of year. I wasn't presenting anything this time, so I was relatively free to enjoy myself and hang out with other graphics geeks. I actually went to nearly every paper session for the first two days, and then the Siggraph Blues hit and I went to the art gallery and animation festival and generally avoided the technical side. Anthony Santaro made an excellent 50-foot-long photo montage with no special tools. The session in which Anthony talked about his piece was quite inspiring, including a talk from Scott Draves, who came up with the rather famous "flame" fractal and "bomb" program, as found in many screen savers and image manipulation tools.
Aug. 7, 2004
Vicki and I just got back from Jill Parsons and Joe Sorbara's wedding up in Smithers, BC, and we had a super time. Joe's one of my best friends from high school and undergrad. I've been really happy to get to know Jill over the last few years, especially while living in Toronto. The wedding itself was great, but hanging out in the mountains, with plenty of quiet, clean air was stupendous. God save getting out of New York every once in a while.
It was almost painful how nice it was to be surrounded by Canadians and even Guelphites again. It's not that the Americans are bad or anything (well, excepting the current administration and their policies), it's a shared values thing. The following things are not issues for most Canadians: universal health care, cheap higher education and gay rights. This is not the case in America, and it kind of wears me down.
Check out the wedding photos, including some of the wildlife in Jasper provincial park, the mountains, and friends. Jill and Joe also took us up a mountain to Crater Lake, a beautiful glacial lake. Vicki swam in it, but she's nuts.
July 15, 2004
I'm starting to get used to living in New York City, though it can still make me grumpy at times. The people are amazing and the architecture is pretty fun. If I can get a handle on research and get publishing again then everything will be fine.
Copyright 2000-2008 © Adrian J. Secord, all rights reserved.