6 Weeks into Project 365! I really need to get better at posting this as part of my routine (perhaps Sunday is a good habit to get into). You can of course watch it progress through the week on Flickr if you wish.
Another week, another round of pictures. I’ll hopefully get better at posting these promptly at the conclusion of a week.
Between being brutally cold and snow, this looks like a repeat of last week. I did however attempt a panorama after noticing how closely aligned two photos I took accidentally were. Next time I’ll try and do so intentionally. I’m trying to avoid using B&W as a crutch for avoiding color correction.
Some interesting experiments this week including some motion (which I’ve been shying away from), and bad weather seems to be an ongoing theme. Monday included a screenshot, since I technically consider that a photo 😉 .
NJ Transit’s newer Bombardier MultiLevel Vehicle (MLV) in NY Penn Station. I’m actually quite pleased how this came out after some post-processing to fix what the poor lighting did to the photo.
Five O’Clock World is a reference to the song by The Vogues, and perhaps remembered by fans of The Drew Carey Show who used it as an intro at one point. It seemed appropriate for the first Friday commute home after a holiday.
Haaren Hall, the former De Witt Clinton High School designed by C. B. J. Snyder is actually a pretty interesting building since it days from before glass curtains were a popular architectural design. I’ll likely take a few more shots of some of it’s details during the day at some point during this project.
To the left you can see the addition they are building, which makes the full thing take up the entire city block.
Time Warner Center from the 58th Street side looking up one of the towers. You can see the Hearst Tower in the reflection.
Due to the snow last week, trash has been piling up in NYC. This pile is almost the height of the van parked next to it. Notice the height of the average person walking by it.
It smells as great as it looks.
For those who don’t know, the Festivus holiday is from an episode of Seinfeld titled “The Strike”. The other plot of the episode is Kramer ending a 12 year strike at H&H Bagels where he used to work. H&H Bagels is a NYC institution that actually exists on the upper west side. What better way to celebrate Festivus than togo to H&H Bagels? I couldn’t think of one.
I haven’t been to many of the popular bagel establishments in NYC to compare, so I can’t say for certain if they are the best in the city or not. I will say it was very good and served very fresh. It’s also very likely the first Bagel place I’ve been to with a Zagat plaque on the wall.
This may be a new holiday tradition.
There’s outrage today over a story that NYC needs to spend $27.5 million to replace street signs because they are uppercase and federal regulations require title case. They will also now be using the font ClearviewHwy rather than what I believe is Highway Gothic (I’m no font geek).
However the headline is misleading if you read the actual article. A little common sense and a trivial knowledge of accounting (you most likely learned this in High School) will make you scratch your head.
The article even says typical sign lasts about a 10 years. They have until 2018 to make the change, which is 8 years. Assuming an even distribution that would mean 80% of the signs would have been replaced by 2018 anyway due to their age. The remaining 20% would be nearing their replacement time anyway. 20% of $27.5 million is $5.5 million. That’s the cost of the signs that will be replaced prematurely.
Even that however is not correct since the city would almost definitely use straight-line depreciation on the cost of the signage. The reasoning for this is as follows: If you have the sign for 8 of the 10 year lifespan, you got 80% of the value. Each year is worth 10% of the value.
The formula goes something like this:
annual depreciation expense = (cost of fixed asset - residual value) / useful life in years of asset
Again we’ll assume an even distribution of the remaining 20% (that’s 10% replacement per year or about $2.75 million). We’ll also assume no residual value though they are likely sold for scrap metal and have some token value.
($2.75M-0)/10 = $275,000
Now 10% of the signs are being replaced 2 years early, another 10% are being replaced 1 year early. That’s 3 years of value lost. That means:
$275,000 x 3 = $825,000
The actual cost to the city is $825,000 in lost value due to prematurely replacing signage. Not $27.5 million. I guess you can throw in a little more for labor, though I doubt you’ll get $26M and change out of that.