Meditation Overview and App Guide

I've taken up meditation this year and have introduced it to several people who enjoyed the practice. Below is a list of meditation references for those interested in getting to know meditation through self-practice. To add more color and zen to this post, I've added some photos I've taken around NY and Jersey City.

battery park sculpture

Websites
Equinox meditation (free, great for beginners): I didn't download the app. Right on that website, they have short 10 minute sessions for different times of the day.

• Rise (waking up, early morning) 
• Recharge (refresh, good for late morning or maybe afternoon when you're aching for coffee but should actually take a walk and listen to this instead)
• Unwind (great for coming back from work or maybe a workout)
• Sleep (listen and relax before going to sleep). Once you go through all 4 sessions in some combination for a week, you'll build up good habits to incorporate this practice into your daily routine.

https://plumvillage.org/ this site offers a lot of reading and resources. If you haven't read any books by Thich Nhat Hanh, you should check them out at the library or your favorite bookstore. 

Mobile Apps (Google and AppleStore)
Meditation studio ($3.99 one time fee): they have intro as well as themed collections. so you can quickly pick up a theme like "dealing with stress" or "relax before sleep" or even body scan. You can also filter by type of meditation and length of the session. I like exploring different teachers and then looking up their other meditation sessions. Two teachers I have enjoyed are Chodo Campbell and Elisha Goldstein. This app links to the Mindfulness section of Apple Health.


Calm (free for limited meditation, subscription for more): good background music and some free guided meditation. If you subscribe, you get a nice library of guided meditation as well as a daily themed meditation. I also like their calendar for tracking your meditation time so it's encouraging to keep up with the daily routine. You can add outside meditation sessions to the app by using their "add a session" function. I've been tracking Yoga classes there. This app also links to the Mindfulness section of Apple Health. After trying this for free for a few months, I signed up for an annual subscription when they were running a promotion. If you are interested in signing up, I can send you a referral.

ship near Liberty State Park

Relax Melodies (free for limited sound library, paid for more and also meditations): Mostly music and some free meditation as well. I like the playlists you can build from sound blocks. Enjoy rain and city sounds and the ocean? You can make it into your own sound playlist. Timer for exiting the app is also helpful when you want to drift off to sleep but don't want the app running all night. Unfortunately it doesn't link to your health app for the meditation sessions so you have to track it separately.

In Person Resources
Besides some meditation before and after yoga class, I have not been to a meditation class in person. There are a lot of different resources in NY and Jersey City so feel free to try them and see if they are helpful for you.

• https://meditationinnewyork.org (multiple locations in the boros of NY as well as a few sessions in Jersey City, suggested $10)
• Rubin Museum: wonderful art museum which hosts some meditation classes. Also check out their concert series and cafe too. 
• http://www.shinnyocenternyc.org/ (midtown NY)

Lower Manhattan seen on top of ferry

Where to try meditation (besides your home)

• Neighborhood Park. I love Van Vorst Park for this, especially when it's raining lightly (bring an umbrella) or when it's early morning, right before the crowds get to the playgrounds.
• Beach (or even the waterfront just to hear sound of water)
• Friend's apartment or house. Offer to take a break together if you're doing a game night or cooking food.
• Before, during, and after music practice. Good for clearing your mind, practicing breathing, and reflecting on your intentions for your group (or even playing solo in a practice room).
• Quiet corner of an art museum or botanical garden

Van Vorst Park Fountain

Try it out and enjoy!

Ship and State of Liberty

2015 Katsucon Cosplay Notes

Recent Katsucon anime conventions have been taking place in the Gaylord hotel in National Harbor, a dream location for cosplayers and photographers alike. Beautiful lighting, garden setting, and plenty of indoor temperature controlled space all make cosplay photo shoots possible in middle of freezing February.

I was not mentally prepared to take photos. It took at least 30min of gawking before I remembered to take out my camera. Please contact me if you want a link to your site/cosplay profile!

Classic

I spent most of the time gawking at the Sailor Moon shoot. I should have taken more photos of the various sailor scouts but you can probably find them online. Sailor Mercury was one of the best and totally in character as a shy, bookish girl (someone even lent her a book to pose with). and the Sailor Moon / Tuxedo masks were just very sweet. I like the classic Sailor Moon pose with the crossed arms below. Link to new Sailor Moon series here: http://www.crunchyroll.com/sailor-moon-crystal

Game Fun

Vincent was a bit out of character but managed to organize some fun photoshoots for Final Fantasy series, including this can can dance number.

2014 Favorite Series

Two of my favorite recent anime series are RWBY and Yowapeda (crunchyroll stream). I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer number of people who showed up for the Yowapeda photo shoot (including someone with a full bike too). It felt like we were in the middle of Interhigh competition. Who knew that all the three top teams were so popular as cosplay characters too!

Love the detail on the scythe and the bad-ass attitude too.

Maki-chan smiled for his pose and handed me a business card. Follow them here: https://www.facebook.com/ShimapanCosplay

DC Universe

Not everything has to be Japanese anime related. Check out this group of batman universe! The lighting is a bit off because it was getting darker outside.

Go Go Gadget

Inspector Gadget outfit was genius. I remember liking the live action movie when it came out in theaters (long long time ago). I wish I didn’t cut his leg off by accident in the pic. It was a bit crowded in that space so I must have just aimed without checking for accidental cropping.

I did not get the name of this anime with incredible detail on the armor. The facial expressions and the pose look really fitting too (even though I’ve never seen the show). I have to find someone to ID this anime!

Misc Tips

I liked the idea of handing out business card with contact info to photographers. Hey, it helped me figure out where to send a photo. The other way is to post photos and ask on forum, which may take a while to ID.

I couldn’t find tips on how people get organized for those group shoots, but I marveled at the fact every group had a very good leader who made sure people got organized and also had fun. The Sailor Moon one was super coordinated, with people doing different outfits of some of the scouts. So when you called for “Sailor Mars” grouping, there were cosplayers dressed as Mars in different uniforms, casual wear, formal wear, and sailor outfits. I wish I took a pic of the Doom Tree duo (demon form with face paint and colorful hair).

The final fantasy group put together many situational photo shoots: Aeris sleeping among flowers with Cloud looking on, Emo looking Cloud/Zachs, dudes flexing muscles, can can group dance, etc. They definitely had a lot of fun being in character and out of character.

In Action

I searched for some katsucon videos and thought I’d share a few of my favorites. There is something more real about videos because it captures cosplayers in action. Hm maybe something to try next time.

http://youtu.be/MntXRLxMDxY

http://youtu.be/slUsQKLHcUE

Photos and Texts

My earlier blog entries were heavy on text not because I didn’t have photos (I had plenty) but because I didn’t find an easy way to post them and share them on the blogger editor. Eventually I got Windows Live Writer in 2010 [entry here] and it changed my entire blog experience. Just a quick look back at my pre-Writer blog entries will show you the difference.

[Exhibit A] 2009 April Archive had ten entries of entirely text! Who actually read this? What was I thinking?
[Exhibit B] 2012 June Archive showcased enough images and text to make it more enjoyable to read/browse through (ok, so I had to shuffle through some more months of text before I found a good example)

Before I dive into the technical stuff, please find your favorite music player (pandora/youtube/Spotify/LPs/whatever) and find Jimi Hendrix. I listened to his albums on Spotify for the few hours I spent on this blog entry. His music should be tagged energetic, inspiring, brilliant, motivational, virtuoso, colorful, the real thing.

Several Photo Options:

1) The Basics in Writer

Just click “Insert” Picture and then click on the picture to access Formatting options. Looks simple enough to get started? It totally is. No photoshop skills required for clean photo frames, resizing, and color effects. You can also easily add fancy things like watermarks.

When I started to blog about my west coast trip, I had wanted to share more photos to break up the long travel diary kind of entries. My usual use of frame/watermark/tilt functions became boring and made it necessary to explore a photo album or collage look.

2) Writer/SkyDrive

Luckily, Writer does have an extensive photo option and creates some very cool album arrangements.

 

 

 

 

The Writer/SkyDrive feature was easy enough for me and the Seattle Mt Si album [link] looked great, even on my iphone. There is nothing I love more than pages/features that are pre-formatted for mobile devices. Prior to blogger’s mobile support, I had to use some kind of web-to-mobile translation device. J. refused to read it because the format didn’t work on his phone. Now everything works beautifully.

One downside is you have to upload the photos into SkyDrive (Windows Cloud?) and without the app download, it’s impossible to change the orientation of photos automatically. I had uploaded a bunch of photos into Shutterfly and the orientation changed automatically. For some reason the photo album in Writer/SkyDrive does recognize the correct orientation but when I clicked into the album for individual pics, they are all original pics (without any correction for orientation). I also had to sign-in for my SkyDrive/Hotmail account before I can publish my blog entry with this built-in photo album. Was it worth all the trouble? I guess if you already have the hotmail account (I signed up long ago for MS messaging but later didn’t use it much) it’s not that bad. If you wanted to create photo album effects without Skydrive/Hotmail, I’m sure there are easy photo programs+some screenshots+html links that would do the same trick.

3) Shutterfly Post to Blogger / ShareSite to Blogger.

The pro for this option is that I already use Shutterfly anyway for photos (online and offline prints/books/projects). So creating a separate folder to post into Blogger is as easy as a few clicks. The downside is the embedded album is not visually pleasing like the photo album/collage function from Writer/SkyDrive. This goes for both the desktop and mobile versions of the blog.

Comparison of Regular Post to Blogger (front view is same, I’ve included screenshot of actual album after initial clicks)

http://azuleteats.blogspot.com/2012/10/2012-10-downtown.html

vs. ShareSite to Blogger

http://azuleteats.blogspot.com/2012/10/2012-10-downtown-to-uptown.html

I actually liked the ShareSite black album background. Still, I don’t like the layout enough to use this option unless I have a lot of photos.