NYU's Center for Academic and Spiritual Life Construction Update

In the fall of 2009, NYU and the Archdiocese of New York came to an agreement on the sale of the old Catholic Center to NYU. Deconstruction, followed by new construction soon followed and has been progressing quickly ever since. The new Center for Academic and Spiritual Life is planned to open in the summer of 2012.

As seen, the construction crew has begun enclosing the building, designed by Machado and Silvetti, in a brownish, sandstone like stone facing. Once the facade is complete, the construction will shift from stage two to stage three and the crew will begin working more intensely on the inside of the building.

Winter's Here

Winter is officially here in New York City: the Rockefeller Park lawn has been closed, though the sheets usually laid down to protect the lawn from geese haven't been put down yet. No more sports practice, picnics or relaxing on Battery Park City's largest lawn until next April (give or take a couple weeks).

Hudson River Park, You Rock!

One of my first "New York" experiences was running from Washington Square Park to Hudson River Park (via Christopher Street) and then running south on the Hudson down to Battery Park. I fell in love. The different piers and park areas and public plazas made my run interesting and the views of Ellis Island and Lady Liberty reminded me of why I came to New York: it's a city that contains the whole world.

On Sunday, I was walking on the Hudson with a friend and discovered that Pier 25 opened! I wasn't expecting it to open until spring. The Hudson River Park Trust has added lots of activity areas to the pier: a children's playground, a skate park, volleyball courts, an Astroturf field, mini-golf, boat moorings and public bathrooms. Some of the areas won't fully open until Spring, but the skate park, Astroturf field and skate park opened on November 4.

Here're are a few pictures I took:

Astroturf field 

Sand volleyball courts 

looking back at the mainland

Playground 

Skatepark (street-style)

And for extra fun, there was a dude with a parrot walking in front of us on the Greenway:

Meet David Trejo, creator of Mixest

I've been using Mixest for a little over a month now; both its website and Android application. David Trejo, 20, designed the simple indie music site with Eric Zhang. David is from Berkeley, California but goes to school at Brown University where he studies computer science.

What is Mixest?
Mixest is a Pandora style internet radio site focused on only the newest indie music. We especially like obscure music, the music you would only find after spending hours scouring the internet to find.

How did you get involved?
Eric Zhang and I were inspired by HipHopGoblin, a site that does the same thing except for new Hip Hop. I helped the front-end developing of the site. That means that I focused on simplifying the interface, culling bugs, and improving the user interface. I also coded the recent songs list, wrote the code that handles hotkeys and easter eggs. I also wrote the client code that handles unique song links.

Transplanted

My blog is named Transplanted because, when I created it, I felt uprooted. I had moved from Wisconsin to New York, had visited several countries with NYU, including a summer session in Dublin, and was preparing for a semester abroad in France. I wanted to document my experiences as a citizen of the world, as someone whose roots were spread from WI, was studying in NY, had lived in Dublin, and was preparing to live in France.

Lately though, I've had so much homework and so many meetings that my "world" has been my desk, my books, and my bed. With Thanksgiving coming around the corner, and Christmas soon after, my time will free up a little and this blog can go back to its basic function, to show that one's home is where he makes it, and that more than one physical place can still be home. To show cool experiences and interesting moments of my life wherever I am backed up by everywhere I've been.

You, my readers, can expect continued music posts and posts on whatever's going on in my journalism courses, but you can expect more experiential posts with pictures from my life in New York and elsewhere. Cheers!