Month: April 2013

Sylvan Lake

Starting the job search after ten years with the same company can be mentally exhausting. I've spent time thinking about what should and shouldn’t be in my resume — searching online for work that matches my skills and interests. I've also been thinking about whether or not I want a full-time job or rejoin the ranks of the freelancers. With so much going on, my mind was a jumble. I needed to clear the machine. I decided to take a drive to Skillman Park and walk about a bit.

Skillman Park is one of Montgomery Township's newest parks.

The property originally consisted of three large farms. These lands were purchased by the State of New Jersey for the establishment in 1898 of the “New Jersey State Village for Epileptics” at Skillman, during a time when there was no known treatment for epilepsy. The village layout was designed by noted Landscape Architect/Engineer Charles W. Leavitt in 1901. For many years it operated as a self-contained “town” that consisted of hospitals, housing, farms, maintenance areas, schools, a theatre, a power plant, a wastewater treatment facility, cemeteries, and an on-site landfill. It was one of the first such facilities in the United States.

In the mid-twentieth century, with the discovery of medicines for the treatment of epilepsy, the facility’s focus shifted, and it became the New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute. Most recently, and until 1998, the property was known as “North Princeton Developmental Center” or NPDC, a New Jersey Department of Human Services’ residential psychiatric care facility.

I parked my car on one section of the Lakeview Drive circle and walked down one of the abandoned roads. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to be there but … I was hoping to find something interesting. I did. I found Sylvan Lake.

The lake was very dry, but I could imagine that it must have been quite full during recent storms and its banks were deep. I spent a few minutes sitting on piles of broken concrete stairs into the lake and past it into the horizon. The air was crisp and refreshing, with a slight breeze. I found the quiet I was seeking.

The image is a three-bracket HDR (Photomatix Pro). I applied the FixelPix “Grit” free Lightroom preset and then some additional work in Nik Software's Silver EFX Pro 2.

Scripting the web with IFTTT

If this then that (IFTTT). It's a service that connects one service to another with actions on specific elements of those services. So, for example, I can tag an image I've just uploaded to Flickr and automatically have a blog post created with that image. Or Add item tagged readability in Feedly or Google Reader to Readability to my Readability reading list.

IFTTT calls a service a channel and connecting services is creating a recipe. There are about 60 channels and quite a few canned recipes you can use right away. However, I chose to create my own to have more control.

Before a recipe can be created each associated channel must first be activated. Activating a channel simply means logging into that service and via IFTTT and giving permissions to access the service. Once a channel is activated it can be used in a recipe. Creating a recipe means selecting a trigger channel and trigger – this – and the destination channel action – that – along with various ingredients. Once your recipe is created you can activate it. I'm bit sure of the timing of recipes. I don't know if they run every hour, half hour etc. Recipes can be edited later and even shared publicly for others to use.

There isn't much more to say. The service is quite easy to use.