Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, a massive X-ray laser sourced from a building-sized particle accelerator, was undergoing upgrades while I visited. Construction in the area added an mundane veneer to the superscience happening inside.
Category: Berkeley
Boxes on Boxes
The first “real” snowfalls of the winter have arrived in the North Country, and I can’t think of a better time to look back on the never-snow geometries of Berkeley. The architectural possibilities expand when structures will never have to bear the load of a late-winter storm and stairs will never have to be scraped free of ice and snow. I think the design is particularly well-expressed in the boxes-on-boxes-on-boxes design of this building. The best detail, to me, is the sunlight passing in one side and out the other of the corner window on the first floor.
Golden Gate in Summer
I love finding the little details in epic landscapes that provide the sense of human scale and presence. (It’s a bit like a photographic “Where’s Waldo?”) In the lower center of this image, at the left edge of the Berkeley Marina, you can see light tiny lights of the restaurant where diners look out over the Bay and the sunset.
Golden Gate Classic
For the most photographed bridge in the world, I’m always humbled to remember that the Golden Gate Bridge didn’t even exist 100 years ago. Seeing it now, in the bracket of Alcatraz and Marin, I think I understand better why it’s Roman Mars‘s favorite piece of design in the Bay Area.
Island Gradient
There’s this perfect moment during a summer sunset in the Bay Area, as darkness falls and the flawless gradient fades through oranges to purples, when the lights haven’t quite come on yet. Marin is dark, Angel Island is silhouetted, and the world is seems to revert to an uninhabited state.
California Convertible at Midsummer
Our first snow of the year arrived last night, so I thought now was a perfect time to look back on summer nights with convertible German sports cars and Bay Area sunsets.
Summer Camp ’17
I never went to summer camp as a child, but I have to imagine that the experience was a bit like sabbatical in the Bay Area: Warm days spent on rewarding activities in a beautiful place.
Normandy Village on Sunday Morning
Picture the setting: Berkeley’s anachronistic Normandy Village, early Sunday morning after a night of heavy rain. Quietly heading down the back stairs to get a cup of truly life-changing coffee. Passing by another tiny and odd Spruce St. apartment.
Spectroscopy Lab
After spending my entire adult life as a laboratory scientist, the web of gas lines and vacuum pumps and electrical cable seems normal. I do understand, rationally, that all of this looks overwhelming. There’s so much purpose and productivity behind the network, however, that it’s worth the sophistication.
Little Lights in Strawberry Canyon
Beyond the bustle of the East Bay at rush hour, the preserved wooded hills of Strawberry Canyon seem so quiet.
Standard Berkeley Street Scenes
The title of today’s post is somewhat sarcastic: there is such an incredible variety of vehicles and homes visible on any Berkeley street that a “standard” is impossible. This Volvo wagon and turreted home both seemed like prime examples of classic Berkeley engineering.
Sunday Morning Family Walk
Sunday morning is the perfect time to take the family out for a coffee walk. Berkeley’s busy Gourmet Ghetto is just a little quieter then.
Self-Portraits of a Sabbaticaler
I’m interested in how scientists are depicted in media. They seem to always be in one of two modes. Either smiling at the desk with a screen and board filled with data/equations:
Or in the lab, with fancy apparatus and appropriate PPE. This may be real evidence of a sort of dichotomy in the lives of many working scientific professionals: some of the time is spent at a desk, doing the sort of email-answering/paperwork-submitting tasks that are common to many fields, but the rest of the time is spent in a more technical setting. I’d really like to see a broader view of how scientists spend their time. Could the whole breadth of the approach be captured in a single image, like some elaborate Baroque painting?
San Francisco Sun Show
California summer: Blue skies (no clouds), dry grass.
California winter: Complicated skies (crazy clouds), lush grass.
Looking across the verdant hills of Berkeley Lab to San Francisco, it’s not hard to see why I prefer the winter months in California.
Brooks Magic Island
Brooks Island Reserve Preserve is a thoroughly undeveloped space in the chaos of the Bay Area. It almost seems as though it was transported to the present from another time.
Decaseconds 