Cool Installation at NY Historical Society

This was a neat installation at the NY Historical Society.  You tilt the board, and it tilts its view to compensate.  Then you can click on whatever you are looking at. I really want to emulate this in an ipad..

Historical Society - Broadband from Chris on Vimeo.

Cool iPad Rotation App in JCrew

Although I don't actually remember if it was a JCrew, I saw they had ipad apps in the store that had both cool interactions with the models.  The rotations are especially interesting.  And I got some tips on how to size a dress shirt, which for an engineer is vital.
Sorry for the light reflections.  I was filming it on my phone and only had a limited time.


IMG 0073 from Chris on Vimeo.


IMG 0072 from Chris on Vimeo.

Interesting Digital Candle

Saw this in a shop window in soho. I loved the digital approximation of a very analog system (i.e. flame)

IMG 0109 from Chris on Vimeo.

Museum of Natural History Subway Tiles

I was standing on the platform waiting for the C train to take me downtown at the NYC Museum of Natural History stop, and I looked down and saw these tiles.  There were 1 per section between the large iron beams holding the roof up.  I have no idea what they mean or what they are (or who the artist is), but they are interesting and hopefully I'll find out more about them at some point.  They look vaguely like either ancient cave paintings or possibly inuit art, I'm not sure.  There is also wall mosaic art, and a link about it here.

Neat Sculptures in Soho Store Window

I took these pictures in a store/gallery window near my Soho office.  Although I'm not really trained in art, I do appreciate fun chunky figure sculpture.  They have a certain Golem look which I just love to bits.  Unfortunately I can't tell you what gallery it is, so you'll have to explore Soho to find out!

The Pitfalls of Free

I saw this article on LinkedIn, and found it quite interesting with regards to creating "free" apps or websites:
Uncompromising-design-avoiding-pitfalls-free

One thing I've found online is its a constant game of cat and mouse, where consumers find new ways to avoid advertising so they can just do interesting things (including pop up blockers, spam filters etc.), and then advertisers who are constantly trying to find ways to get more "eyeballs" on their ad (and click it).  I've always resented being referred to a an "eyeball".   It seems to sum up what they (the advertisers) think of us.

Interesting Musical Swing in Montreal

Neat swing in downtown Montreal where you make music, and get better tunes if you cooperate!

Musical Swing in Montreal

I am always on the lookout for tech that uses microcontrollers etc.
I'm generally down on techie art sculptures such as this.  This is not because I don't like art, but I want to see this kind of ingenuity aimed at more "practical" industrial/commercial enterprises with a dire human need. Hunger, the disabled, international diplomacy, education etc.
That said, this swing is pretty cool, and certainly seemed to attract a diverse group of people to use it.

Perhaps a our growing lack of empathy necessitates this kind of reconnection with one another and IS a dire human need!  Fountains, parks, and other public spaces are not necessarily vital, but they do provide a vital public service (just look at Central Park, Hyde Park, Golden Gate Park and other large urban planned green areas).  Have to noodle on this.

Commuting Optimizations and Learnings

Now that I've had some time to commute more in NYC, I've been trying to keep a list of observations that I'd categorize in three ways:

1. Those things that have evolved over time, and you have to get used to them before you can consider yourself "a New Yorker.
2. Things that people deal with, but perhaps could use a bit of design/redesign that maybe nobody has bothered to deal with because it isn't worth the time/money to do, but its still irritating and could/should be worked on.
3. Things I haven't figured out yet, but noticed and wanted to keep it noted for future reference.

In Praise of Buskers

Buskers are a varied bunch.  Sometimes you'll see on the side of the street or in central park.  More likely, however you'll see them down in the subway stations and platforms performing their craft.  Another group perform on the subway itself to a captive audience.  The best place I've seen underground buskers so far has to be outside the Electronics store at Times Square Station.  This one place has different buskers every day.  And they range from Opera to a dude doing rock didgeridoo.  If I can spare it, I alway give these guys money.  I feel less comfortable when they explicitly ask, but then again, those who ask tend to need it more.  i.e. They can't afford an expensive amplifier/obviously play for a Philharmonic Orchestra.  As long as they show some kind of willingness to perform a service, I'm game.  Speaking of Philharmonic, there's a guy who plays Cello on the Highline in one of the tunnels.  REALLY good, and he plays it all from memory. 

The 5th Floor Walkup

Not much to say here, except that it keeps you fit.  Always tip movers and the super who has to schlep up 4 flights to get to your place to deliver your groceries/fix stuff, move a couch.  They need it.  And on move day have LOTS of ice water available for the guys to drink, especially in summertime.

Doormen as Night Watchmen

Having doormen is wonderful.  They collect packages for you, you can leave the laundry with them for delivery, all kinds of things.  If you don't have a doorman, BUT you live in a neighborhood that DOES, then you get to have the added bonus of eyes on the street.  Its really reassuring late at night to know what SOMEBODY is looking out on the street every once in a while.  Even though NY is a very safe place these days, its still a good sign for newbies.

Busdriver Standup

This was awesome.  Took the cross town bus from Upper West Side to Upper East Side across Central Park.  We had originally walked across at around 9pm to a party. Everybody thought were nuts.  Not because it was unsafe (we passed like 20 joggers on the reservoir path even in low light), but because it was such a long way.  
After that we took the bus a number of times.  On the return trip of one, the driver was telling jokes all the way from 3rd Ave to Amsterdam.  The whole bus was rolling.  Awesome stuff.

Street Cleaning

I need to look into this more, but the city seems to stay the same level of gritty no matter what happens.  Its never clean which would probably be impossible, but when/where/how does it get clean?  I see street sweeper trucks and occasionally garbagemen.  There must be something more to it however...

[Subways] Ads on Subways

The ads on the subways. How often do they get updated?  Once a day? Once a week?  I read them all the time.  Without wireless access down in the subway, its either that or stare the walls!

[Subways] Optimizing path to work

The grid system would seem to not offer any opportunity to speed things up.  I need to get to the subway station fast, since I've already had that frustrating experience of getting to the platform JUST as the doors close.  Then I have to wait an entire 4 minutes for the next train to arrive.  A freakin' lifetime.  Then again, if you're waiting for an express (see below), you could be waiting several trains, so that might be 10 minutes.  

Anyway, I have to cross 2 streets, and walk 1 short block and 1.5 long blocks to get to the station.  So the question becomes when do you wait for the lights to change to cross the street, and when do you turn and walk the short block hoping that by the time you get there, you'll have a green walkie man so you don't have to break stride? I shall noodle on this further, but I'm sure there's an algorithm to be followed.

[Subways] To express or not to express

One day I was waiting for the Q train to take me downtown.  While waiting, there were 2 R trains in succession.  Many stops for the R, but only 3 for the Q.  So I'll have to time it to figure out at what point do you say "screw it", and just get on a local train vs waiting and hoping that an express will be the next train?  This might sound like an SAT question.

[Subways] Commuters as water: The bench wake

At the same station as the R/Q conundrum, I also noticed this; At rush hour, there are THOUSANDS of people making their way through various tunnels on their way to various destinations.  The best way to avoid them on a crowded platform is to think of the crowd as water in a river.  Get behind a bench, or snack bar, and you instantly get insulated from the crowd in a "bench wake" as I have named it.

[Subways] Etiquette for entering/exiting during rushhour

Everybody waits patiently outside a subway car before the doors open.  Everyone waits on each side of the car, so that the people inside can exit properly before we all pile in.  Occasionally there's a jerk who decides that he NEEDS to enter the car NOW or it might leave.  The young woman getting out and being practically run over by this guy was obviously mad.  Kind of like all those people who line up ages before a plane begins boarding.  Its not like the plane will take off without you if you're a bit late.  Then again, you might not get that overhead luggage compartment if you're just a couple of people behind..  Definitely something to design for here.

Learning Web Development Programming

So as part of my new job, I've been tasked with introducing a number of people in my office to "physical computing".  My previous experience has been programming iphones, and programming Microcontrollers such as Arduino.

This makes it sound like I completely know what's up when it comes to developing for the web.  So as soon as you say "HTML, Javascipt, PHP, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, JQuery" etc. etc. etc. I get confused really fast.  People who have been doing this for a while just seem to know, but I feel like there is a vast cavern between regular programmers and web programmers.. Perhaps its just me.

I shall therefore endeavor while I'm here to learn to link iphones, arduinos and the web into one lovely unified tech chain.  i.e An Arduino reads a temperature, sends this temperature to a server, and saves the number in a web based database.  An iPhone app, or webpage can then grab this database and display it.

I want to record my progress here to help anybody who might need it, and also so I can refer back to it when things start getting complicated.

At the moment, what I understand is this:
- HTML displays text and images to a webpage
- Javascript gives event based functionality to the HTML pages
- PHP dynamically CREATES HTML based on access to databases or some kind of information.   I think PHP is used to generate your Amazon recommendations and other stuff that changes very fast.

... ok that's all I've got for now.  Will learn more and post more as we go.  Right now my knowledge of JS (Javascript) variables and displaying text from those variables.  Eventually we will get into frameworks, functions, and all the insane number of frameworks that use Javascript (JQuery, Underscore I think etc.)

Using a Kinect for artificial sight

There's a lot of news in the hacker community regarding interesting toys that use Microsoft's Kinect, Arduinos, iPhones and the like.  I've been looking for really USEFUL applications that are beyond just interesting "coolness". Then I saw this:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/16/kinect-hack-head-mounted-kinect-makes-for-rudimentary-artificial-vision/

Its obviously a student project, but it really has some potential I think.  At the very least, I'm interested in where the Kinect can go, and this is one place I haven't seen yet.

Recycling Cans in NYC Trash

Continuing my "noobs in NYC" previous posts, I was walking across Central Park today and noticed a couple of guys digging through the garbage bins picking out cans and bottles and carrying them in large plastic bags.  This made me wonder if they were in fact city employed, or simply guys who were going to eventually cash in the recyclable material for a small amount at the end of the day.

Instead of writing a fairly ignorant posting about what I'd just seen, I searched on the web and sure enough here's another blog posting about it, this time the poster was in Brooklyn.  There's another website that does an analysis of whether you can this for a living.

It seems this is indeed a private venture, and given the number of people I've seen doing it, a popular way of making cash if you are highly in need.  It struck me a perfect example of a small incentive (<10c per can) and demand for a service (recycling that may be costly for city services to do) being provided by the private sector.  Having the city doing the recycling would I think on first blush a) raise the cost even if it is distributed across the entire city through increased taxes, and b) deprive people of an income (however small) who otherwise may have little to no alternative.

I had a few questions about this.  Does trying to get people to separate their trash/recycling even work in a large city environment?  The subway system separates it for you which you probably pay for in your subway tolls.  If you made it easier/safer for the people collecting to collect and cash in on their finds, is there a marginal amount of missed recycling that you could capture?  There is often a problem with the collecting machines outside of supermarkets that are either broken or full early in the day.  Is this a stable city ecosystem, or would a small investment yield large citywide results for recycling?  Is that even needed?  i.e. How much of the city's garbage could be recycled vs is recycled now?

Mindmap WebApp

Been thinking a lot about what I want to get accomplished while I have the opportunity to be NYC.  But overwhelmed by all the options.
Looked for a mindmap application on the web.

Found this.  http://www.text2mindmap.com/

Super easy, and you can take a pic and share it!

Only drawback I've found is the layout algorithm sometimes has overlapping text, but you can rearrange fairly easily.
Would like to be able to draw links between headings, but the text is effectively tab based so difficult at this simplicity level.
Will keep searching with findings

Living In A Compact Material World

As an extension to my Moving to NYC post, my wife and I have been figuring out how to "live smaller".  Since our space has substantially been reduced, we have been forced to find inventive ways to fit our stuff into a smaller space and still make it look hip.

There are plenty of websites out there all about how to create an apartment space that is efficient such as Apartment Therapy, so I won't bother trying to reiterate those.  I do however want to point out some amazing inspiration that I wouldn't have thought of, and which seems to get it roots from an older time.

One example is the "trunk", a large suitcase type thing with a hinged top that contains basically collections of stuff.  Is the kind of thing you think of from Harry Potter:

Or perhaps the walking bad tempered "Luggage" from Terry Pratchett novels:

Either way, its a bit from an "older time" and yet they are sold all over the place, and we are actually thinking of getting one.  This might be simply my own "asymmetric information" moment, and I just need to get out more.  OR it might people are returning to smaller living spaces and are beginning to adopt similar means to storing belongings because of necessity.

Returning to alternative methods isn't limited to storage either (which one way or another hasn't changed THAT much in the past hundred years I don't think).  It also is to do with cleaning...

In California, we take for granted that washing machines are close at hand.  Our old apartment had a washer drier right outside the apartment.  This unit was shared by the other 5 units in the complex.  Many apartments didn't have any washer/drier access and so there were of course laundry mats that we used if a single washer/drier wasn't enough, or was already taken by another resident.  Move to NYC.  Now the norm seems to be "send it out".  Lots of things are delivered here, such as groceries, and laundry, you can usually get pickup/dropoff service form laundries that are all over the place.

My suspicion is that what I am witnessing is not unique to the NYC, but more likely is a '"burbs to city" change.  But at any rate, my wife saw this and I thought it was AWESOME:

Its a manual washing machine that you hand spin, after adding soap and a bit of water.  In about 4 minutes, you've done an albeit small load of laundry, but perfect for hand wash knits or other items that require delicacy.  It instantly reminded me of this:

As far as I know, nobody has used this for actual washing in an awfully long time.  A quick google search only shows these being used as musical instruments.  Although this manual way of doing laundry wasn't because people were in small spaces so much as the washing machine hadn't been invented, but still.  Interesting to note people are not simply looking for whizz bang technology to solve their problems.

In retrospect, given my last couple of posts, perhaps I should have called this blog "Suburban Dude and his wife move to the Big City".

Herp Derp YouTube

This is old, but for those of you who just don't want to deal with the negative energy of reading that slew of horrible youtube comments, this is the browser extension for you.  It changed my life.  If you tune out the jabberers, you might just find interesting stuff on the internet..

Kindle Thoughts

This image taken from Amazon website 

I bought a kindle for my wife as a Christmas present a couple of years ago.  She likes to read things on the train etc. so I felt it would be a good $80 gift.  Given our current "no stuff" philosophy, having all our books (especially paperbacks which are usually never read twice) online in the cloud seems like a great idea.  A further bonus is that we have an ipad and iphones, and can read them on there as well.  I like the feel of the kindle and reading it is a pleasure.  Recent reads on it have included Susan Cain's "Quiet", Colin Powell's "It Worked For Me", "No Easy Task: Fighting in Afghanistan" by various Canadian Military Personnel, and have just started "The Mission, The Men, and Me" by Pete Blaber.  My Canadian Military friend recommended that one and its quite a fun read.  Also just read Neil Barofsky's "Bailout" all about TARP and its failings etc.  I might talk about those books in another post but for now I wanted to share thoughts about the Kindle.

One thing you can do with the Kindle is read it on the subway.  But I realized a difference between reading this and a regular book.  If you see someone else on the subway reading a regular book, you can surreptitiously sneak a glace at the cover of the book they are reading.  This information does 2 things.

1. It gives you a bit of a look at the person's personality in a "judge the person by the cover of their book" sort of way.  Not all that relavent unless the book sparks a conversation, which is unlikely in a subway car.
2. If the cover of the book looks interesting to you, you might be tempted, even if only subconsciously, to pick up that book in the near future and read it too.

Whether these two items have any real impact or are just postulations I don't know, but the ability to hide the book cover from other stranger-viewers might also be important.  

I gave my wife Milton Friedman's book "Capitalism and Freedom".  I remember it fondly from undergrad, although I feel like he has a bad name as I think he's been associated with the "cut all government" types, whom I disagree with.  Anyway she was reading it on the train in San Francisco. Someone sitting next to her saw that cover and immediately remarked "oh you're reading Milton Friedman? Perhaps you'd like a different perspective in Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".  I think the guy thought my wife was a Republican (practically a four letter word in the Bay Area) and wanted to help her see the light.  She also read Naomi Klein's book after that, so the interaction seemed to work.

Regardless of what you think of either Milton Friedman or Naomi Klein, that interaction, and by extension that perspective on Capitalism and Economics would NOT Have happened if she was reading a Kindle.  Although this interaction is more likely to occur in the Bay Area than a NYC subway car, I thought it was interesting to note in case there is something to be taken away from it.  If she had been reading a guilty pleasure such a trashy romance novel for example, then the Kindle becomes the PERFECT medium for reading on the train.  Sort of like reading a comic book hidden inside a large copy of the Iliad.

I will say however one minus of the kindle is the complete lack of images available.  Many of the books that I read are non fiction, and they are of the public servants' or military service type books where there is always a sliver of 5-10 pages of photos in the middle ("this is me shaking hands with the president", "this is me talking with another figure in the book" etc. etc.).  This cannot happen in a kindle book, and I wonder how much is lost because of this.  Perhaps the Kindle is the perfect Fiction medium but loses out when it comes to Non-Fiction?  Perhaps a public library card might be better suited to us if we are worried about what over people will/will not see.

All Gender Bathrooms

Something I've noticed in NYC which I haven't seen anywhere else are the public all gender bathrooms.  Many restaurants have them, and most public spaces do too.  The first time we ran into it we were in the Chelsea Market.  This nice market has all kinds of interesting foods, and crafts (as well as a place known as the "Tuck Shop" where they serve Aussie Food.  I'm from Australia originally so its AWESOME to get a meat pie or sausage roll or lamington immediately.

Anyway, we were walking past the bathroom and there was a long line.  Everybody was in it.  I always felt that it wasn't fair to in bars, there were two bathrooms.  The guys' line was tiny.  The womens' was huge.  I started thinking of all kinds of ideas like if we time how much longer it takes a woman to go than a man, then we could just make that ratio MORE women's bathroom stalls than the mens, and then each gender would wait the same time (approximately).

But the same gender bathroom is a great solution.  One line, and as long as you have enough bathrooms to service demand, I think you take up less room.  Of course there are no more urinals, so perhaps mens' messiness could crop up.  Although I wonder if the knowledge that this bathroom is shared might actually influence guys to a) put the seat down, or b) just be cleaner in general.  It might just be that they service them more often.  No sure how the system actually works, but I was glad to see an egalitarian method at work so wanted to mention it.

Moving from SF to NYC: Lessons Learned

Thought I would share some of our successes and failures as we moved from the Bay Area to NYC, both as a diary and perhaps helpful for people who also might be making the move.  There are guides out there about just this topic such as this one so I won't bother reiterating them, but just talk about our experience.

Lessons Learned

1. You have too much stuff

We learned this lesson because we lived in the Peninsula of the Bay Area.  If you don't live in Palo Alto, of San Francisco, the rent you have to pay will be quite reasonable.  Perhaps not be midwestern standards, but at least we felt that our rent was able to cover the one bedroom that we had.  It had a large kitchen, nice alchove dining area, decent living room, a couple of large closets, and (get this) a BASEMENT.  Originally designed to be my man cave where my wife and I could do all our crafty hobbies, it soon became a larger storage space for a lot of... stuff.  When it came time to move, we tried very hard to get rid of as much stuff as we could.  Many of the books that I have spontaneously bought on Amazon (and a number I hadn't really read) were given away.  I sold quite a lot of my gaming stuff. Clothes were given away etc. etc.  A large subsection was taken to my in law's house since they had room and were relatively close.  There it will stay until we either move back or decide to get rid of it.  We still had a lot of kitchen stuff that we took with us, but only 3 sticks of furniture; the queen bed, a coffee table, and the 42" flatscreen that we got as a steal from conn.com.  All the other IKEA furniture was given away as we ran out of time to sell it.

2. No Seriously.  You have too much stuff

When you move to NYC, you suddenly realize a couple of things.  

1. Your rent is going to go up.  

2. You won't have as much room as did back out west.

Although we were expecting to be paying more and having less room, its amazing just how much MORE true this was.

We fell into the stereotypical trap that apparently befalls so many fresh graduates.  They come to the big city a $2000/mo budget and big ideas about a doorman, brownstones, 1 bedrooms in the village etc. etc.  They soon discover that that doesn't exist.  So they begrudgingly raise their budget and/or change their preferences, and eventually find a place somewhere they weren't expecting.  It'll be a closet, especially if its in Manhattan, but it'll be home.  We found a place with a really nice renovated kitchen.  The bedroom was TINY, and only 1 closet in the whole place.  BUT, my wife loves to design for small spaces, and the kitchen solves all our storage needs, so from our perspective its perfect.  Not sure where my remaining hobby stuff will go but we'll figure that out when we finally move in.

3. Figure out what brokers are

You don't HAVE to have a broker in NY, but I think its hard to actually avoid the fees whatever you do, especially if you're new and don't really know what you're doing.  

There are so many horror stories about fraudulent craigslist ads, and people being ripped off, that we felt using a broker would be the best option.  People will tell you there are fee-less apartments out there, and I believe them, but don't have any experience so can't judge.

There are 2 types of broker; there are the seller brokers who are usually showing the individual places, and there are the buyer brokers, who show YOU around to various places that either they have found or you have supplied them that you want to be shown.  Whatever you do, you'll have to pay around 15% of the annual rent to someone.  If you found the place on something like streeteasy.com, then they'll almost always be a broker who put the listing up there.  If a broker shows you a place, you'll have two brokers.  The nice news is that you don't have to pay each of them 15%.  Instead they do what's called a "co-broke" where they split the 15%, so win there.  Some brokers don't like to split commissions.  This is illegal, but usually those brokers will be listed somewhere online (such as Yelp) as shady.  This is a bit stressful because when you're new, you don't know who to trust.

4. You can shop for a broker

We had two broker companies.  One person was referred to us, and so we went with them.  I won't rant at them, but I think it was not the best fit.  They were a little eccentric, and showed us places in the areas we thought we should look, but we just weren't seeing enough places.  So we started looking at places on our own.  This made us feel shady, like were looking at places "behind the broker's back".  In addition to this, the broker stoked our fears a bit when they said that "you have to apply immediately if you like a place because it can get snatched up from under you", "the market is INSANE" etc. etc.  This is not what you want to hear when you first move and have a limited time to find a place.  That 15% is a punch to the gut if you're not ready for it (For a $2350 1 bedroom, that's $4230 just in brokerage fees ALONE.  Ouch).

5. Don't put up with pushy brokers if you don't want to

They also got pushy.  The broker company wanted us to move into a condo complex.  We were initially excited about it, but changed our minds at the last minute because we went back to the neighborhood and decided it wasn't for us.  The broker who I think could smell commission so close, got a bit upset, and then got frankly hostile when I said we were backing out.  They (3 different brokers from the same company) kept trying to tell us how much we wanted to move into the neighborhood, and continually cut us off over the phone.  It reminded me very much of when I was at a timeshare sales pitch event.  Pushy pushy pushy.  Eventually I stopped answering the phone because if you're just going to get cut off, why bother?  We eventually simply said that we wanted to look on our own for a bit, a nice way of saying we didn't want to work with them anymore.  I HATE pushy salespeople.  I get very stressed out, and get angry later when I calm down because I don't know how to fight them fire with fire style.  I don't think these brokers were trying to be shady or mean.  They just were excited about finding places, but I think went about it the wrong way from our perspective.  Perhaps if you are pushy back, things work out better.  But we don't work that way.

6. Not Pushy Brokers are GREAT.  You WILL find a place.

We looked on our own, but from other personal references, we found another broker that was much nicer.  I'll mention them by name because they ROCK.  Cooper&Cooper.  They allayed our fears, and even when we asksed "but what if we don't find a place today?", he said "then we keep looking.  There's quite a lot out there".  THAT'S what you want to hear as a new New Yorker.  Our first day, he showed us 2 out of 3 places that we could have signed, with about 2 hours notice that we were working with him and hearing our initial preferences.  Then he gradually figured out our preferences, and asked us about them, rather than telling us.  He was the opposite of pushy.  That said, he did say if we liked a place to put in an application as soon as we could (even if we wait a day) because places do get signed off quickly.  So we signed on a place that we liked and we signed but we hadn't handed over any checks.  That night, the place was run by a management company and we were uneasy about some negative reviews it had received online, so we called to cancel.  The broker said "ok.  No problem.  My priority is to fit you with the place that you want.  Let's keep looking tomorrow".  THAT'S not pushy.  That's class.  We were so happy and trusted him so much that we found a place on our own (went to an open house really), but wanted him to vet the place and the brokerage/landlord to make sure it was kosher.  We were also happy that he would be getting at least a co-broke from helping us so much.  Cooper and Cooper also seems to be the only brokerage that has 5 stars on Yelp.  I do hope they push their cred as helpful to out-of-towners.  I don't know how big the market is, but I guessing there's money to made in that with great customer service.

7. Everything is negotiable.

And I mean everything.  The broker's fee? The monthly rent? You name it, you can haggle about it.  As long as you have something to give in return.  Say you want to lower the rent by $50.  Offer to sign for 2 years, or to pay 3 months in advance if you have the savings.  The worst they can say is no. You can't go TOO low or they won't take you seriously, but $50 or even $100 is not out of the question I think.

8. Prices drop throughout the month.

As the renters want to rent places, if you wait long enough (and the place hasn't been snatched up), you'll see places start to drop their prices.  We saw a super cute place (except the kitchen) go from $2450 to $2350 in a weekend.  Its basically a dutch auction where the price keeps going down until someone rents the place.  Beware though that if the month resets (i.e. the 1st fo the month comes around again), then the price tends to reset because they generally want people to move in by the 1st of the month.  We had to move in a little early so we kicked our landlord a little advance rent.  He said there was some stuff like the bathroom that might not be cleaned before we moved in, but it wasn't that dirty, and we can clean it.  Like I said.  Everything's negotiable.  Gotta love this town.

9. Give yourself time to look for a place

We were lucky in that we were able to housesit at a friend's house for August while we looked for a place.  This enabled us to take our time and really decide before signing. If you have that option, I recommend it.  There are quite a lot of sublets available during the summer because people don't like to move out of their place and they may skip town for the summer.  Perfect if you're looking to move in right after that month.

Well as Forrest Gump said "that's all I've got to say about that".  I might add to this list if I can think of anymore.

New Blog from NYC

Since my wife and I have just moved from San Francisco to NYC, I thought I would start a blog.

I like well run organizations and improving systems.  I figured this would be a good outlet to talk about potential improvements that I see in anything I happen to see during the day whether it be the taxi riding experience, or executive transparency at a company.  I like economics, game theory, history, and technically geekiness (my career), and I'm looking for a way to combine all of them.

I named this blog Asymmetric Information because there is a lot of things I don't know but still have opinions about.  That and I wanted to drop an game theory term that I learned back in undergrad.  A lot of the worries that my wife and I have are usually because of uncertainty.  Most recently we moved, and the procedure of finding an apartment in NY is frankly one of the more stressful and uncertain things I've ever done (we're probably a bit sheltered in that respect).  I'll write a whole post about it, but suffice to say lack of knowledge of this process and potential for fraud sucks.  If other people suffer from this "fear of uncertainty" the same as we do, perhaps it can be fixed.

Since a lot of the thoughts I'm planning on having in this blog are new, many of them will only be half thought out.  This blog is not in any intended to be any kind of political platform, rant, call to revolution, or anything else like that.  Instead, it is intended to be an evolving opinion that might produce something that someone somewhere will find useful, and possibly act as a springboard for more thought.  If people want to leave comments, I'll welcome them as long as they are constructive.  Even if they are half thoughts, at least this will have a bit of a "brainstorm" effect and hopefully something positive can come from it.  Here we go..