Brian took this on his iPhone. Sad, happy times, since Pie Day will be changing and this one will be the last with the regulars for a while. Love you guys, mean it.
July, 2010
15
Jul 10
He skates better than you or I
Atticus is taking part in the A.skate Foundation program. His parents invited us to watch him skate today — and skate he does! I had the chance to help a little. He’s doing the balancing and learning to steer. The big person, that’s his coach Rick above, is really just providing the propulsion. That’ll come.
He’s great at it, and I think this is just his second day skating. Atticus has just nearly perfect balance. And he has the biggest smiles, skating on the pavement, being pushed up ramps or even up a small half-pipe.
That picture is from my cell phone, because today was a silly day to forget my real cameras. Not to worry. I ended up stealing his mom’s camera and taking pictures for her. She had a great day, because it was a big day because Atticus had a big time.
He’ll be in a documentary. This isn’t it, but I shot a few seconds of video from my cell phone.
We also visited Toys R Us and had dinner at Whole Foods, but his little chesire grin while skating was the best part of a great day.
14
Jul 10
Still unwell
Remember how, yesterday, I didn’t feel too hot? That continues today.
Did manage to clean out a section of the garage. It seems we had more kitchenware than we needed. I’ve had a quality bachelor kitchen in boxes for years, inherited a lot of things from my lovely mother and then added The Yankee’s to the mix as well. We’ve been trying to offload it for a year to someone who might need bowls, silverware, pitchers and various other useful and decorative things. What didn’t get shipped off to individuals got donated today.
And I just realized there’s an entire plate set somewhere I didn’t discover today.
So I loaded up the car for a garbage run. And then I returned and used every free space in the car for a trip to the Salvation Army.
Unloaded it, watched the guys at the Salvation Army loading bay critique my offerings, got my receipt and then turned to home. About halfway between here and there the not feeling good returned. I was just wiped out.
So I spent most of the rest of the day relaxing. Still have the medicine head, still have the fatigue. A trip up the stairs was enough to leave ready for a break.
Sports Illustrated takes advantage of a new delivery method. The world continues to spin as only the old media are stunned by this new flexibility.
Print readers get a cover featuring LeBron James and his new teammates. But anyone who buys the iPad version will see a cover story on Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who died this week.
News of Steinbrenner’s death broke early Tuesday morning, a half-day after Sports Illustrated’s conventional issue had gone to the printers. After a relatively quick conversation, says editor Terry McDonell, the magazine staff decided to give the iPad edition a new cover, along with a story by Tom Verducci.
“We all sort of looked at other, and said, ‘you know, this is an opportunity to do this,’ and why wouldn’t we?” McDonell says.
Everyone else knew it was both an eventuality and a logical conclusion. However, the story reaches a disappointing conclusion. “Time Warner’s magazine doesn’t plan on making a habit out of it. If you want up-to-date sports news, SI doesn’t expect you to rely on the iPad.”
Swing and a miss.
Which came first? Science now says, based on a protein found in chicken ovaries, that it was the poultry. Unless it was the egg. Not unsurprisingly this creates a great debate among commenters, who do not consider the discussion closed. In fact there’s the Biblical wing, the science could do something more useful side, the “they got it wrong” angle, the epistemological and more.
The best one, though: “I resolved this issue to my own satisfaction when I realized that no egg ever laid a chicken.”
Makes perfect sense.
13
Jul 10
Nothing from me, amuse yourself with video
I haven’t been feeling well today — nothing bad, just the cotton swabby feeling of medicine head, without the medicine. Sitting or relaxing is fine. Getting up and moving around doesn’t feel so hot today.
So have some videos I discovered. Sadly there is no embed function on this site, but the videos are golden.
Auburn beats Miami 14-13 in Birmingham in 1954. My parents hadn’t even been born when that game was played. Even better, meaning older, there’s this Auburn versus South Carolina game, featuring Shug Jordan and the Phantom of Union Springs, the great Jimmy Hitchcock. That Auburn team was 9-0, they’d outscored their opponents 255-34 before this game. And then Carolina fought their way to a 20-20 draw. The game made Time Magazine, Auburn finished the year 9-0-1, winning the Southern Conference title.
The description on this one says “workers being employed under Works Progress Administration for constructing houses in Birmingham, Alabama.”
Here is the 1939 National Air Carnival and it is clear that these guys might have been nuts. Incidentally, here’s the poster from the 1937 air show:
And here are some driving scenes from Cullman, Ala. and through Birmingham in 1960. The first stretch of interstate-65 you see here might not even be open yet. As best I can tell it would see traffic the next year.
The second stretch you see actually has cars on it, but not many. That section in the middle of the video is supposed to be the drive into Birmingham, but the skyline is wrong. (The last segment of the video, on the surface streets, is actually Washington D.C. The sharp eye of Andre Natta caught the change. A little tour on Google Maps showed me the right street and then it changed again, to this one.)
Check out some videos yourself. When you do, thank Ken Booth; he found the site.
I have another video from there I want to share, too, but I want to shoot a contemporary companion piece. Give me a day or two to get back out from under the weather.
12
Jul 10
Reaching out for Facetime
Just to catch up from yesterday: Watched the World Cup final, pitting a disappointing Netherlands versus an underwhelming Spain. Referee Howard Webb tied his hands early with cards and that hurt the game. Spain were the better team, so the outcome is neither a surprise nor upsetting, but the manner of the resolution was unfortunate. It is a shame, really. A game, no, the game was too easily swayed by one person who wasn’t even playing.
I’d rather have seen the two sides play, but Netherlands didn’t really oblige us of that either. The legendary Oranje temper came to play late after it was clear their game plan wasn’t going to work. Spain just kept moving until the opportunity presented itself, as they had the entire tournament. The resolution was unsatisfying for everyone not already a fan of La Roja. And now we have to wait four more years.
(I watched every game. Had a great time doing it.)
We visited Ann Taylor yesterday, marking my second time in almost as many days. The Yankee visited again today, but I declined. A third time in a week was just too much. I consoled myself at the Apple Store. I did not buy anything, but did play on the iPad. I’m no better at the air traffic controller game on a touch screen than I am with a mouse, making me believe I’ve made a good career choice there.
Played with the new iPhone, which has plenty of promise. The video is incredible. The speed is good, apps look strong and so on. Now they just have to convince everyone that antennae issue isn’t a flaw, but a feature. The first time someone calls that you don’t want to talk to? Finger over the antennae and disconnect. No more “I’m going through a tunnel!” That doesn’t work when the person on the other end knows there are no tunnels in your tri-state area.
And then there’s Facetime. It will, of course, catch on when there are enough phones in circulation. If the technology holds up there won’t even be any other way to look at this. (I’d like to be able to record Facetime, but that will come too.) So acknowledging the value and quality of the HD cameras and the opportunity that comes with Facetime I’d like to point out what is really important, the commercials.
These will be the most evocative commercials since the really good reach out and touch someone ads.
Is it a coincidence that both campaigns are for phones?
Upgraded WordPress tonight. The first step, the helpful tutorial says, is to back up your files and database. I’d assumed that WordPress was doing that for me and that all of these important messages I’ve been sharing with you were being preserved on some off-site, off-the-mainland island guarded by the mist from Lost, powered by the trees from some M. Night Shyamalan movie who were advised by aggressive ninjas amped on Red Bull and dozens of John Woo explosions.
These being important messages, and WordPress having been a free service I’d only assumed they went this extra mile. Turns out a guy named Earl, asleep in a rickety old chair leaned against a dingy wall next to the On/Off button has been serving as my backup. Earl, I read in the forums, doesn’t read none too good. But I don’t hold that against the guy. He’s got a lot of blogs to back up. It is only reasonable to expect reading comprehension to deteriorate over time and volume.
So I read on, now knowing that every moment I waited the threat to my data grew exponentially. There is no threat quite like the one you know you aren’t sure about.
The second step and the subsequent 15 steps became too much to consider this late into the evening. I found a widget that will back up my site automatically, so WordPress can do this, they just don’t offer outright. Safely backed up — I chose Email, offsite FTP, three Scandinavian children memorizing things in a limerick and a bird using a chisel and hammer — I could proceed to the next steps of the upgrade.
Which were, fortunately, incredibly easy steps. Click this, click that and you’re done.
I started playing around with the capability to host multiple blogs through 3.0, which kept me up late. Just to see if I could make it work I started an irregular snapshot photograph blog. (I back-dated a few posts, just to give it something to do.) The first few steps involved in starting that second blog using the new WordPress interface are a little more confusing than necessary, but once you get that figured out it the CMS is once again as you’ve come to know and love.
Elsewhere, there’s Tumblr, Twitter and the rest of the site. Tomorrow there will be … something. Be sure to come back and check it out.
