Football wound down. We tolerated basketball for two weeks. Now we have the ping of ball off bat. Today was the opening day of the college baseball season.
Auburn opens their season with a four game homestand against Maine. Why Maine? Because the coach from Maine would rather be in the South in February. And he was handsomely rewarded today. Just a gorgeous evening for the game, even if we forgot the peanuts:
A good game too. There are so many new players even veteran fans were diving for rosters. Even still, there were plenty of things to remind us all of seasons past in this close game. We had random bunts. There was an error at shortstop. We had fun with the good-natured heckling of the opposing left fielder.
And there we were, in the bottom of the 9th, in a tie game. Someone started the heckling chant version of the slow clap for the freshman left fielder. (Who had put together a nice game for himself.) To lead off the inning was Auburn’s new third baseman, Damek Tomscha, a junior college transfer brought in to add some defense at the corner. He took a hanging fastball and put it somewhere the pitcher hadn’t anticipated:
Earlier another one of the new players saved a home run:
And the bullpen looked sharp, too. Baseball season is here.
Oh, look, one of those sunset photos made it on the nice new AUSunset Tumblr. Follow her.
Tomorrow: Intolerably colder, but more baseball and one other important sport.
These are the first tests of a new app I found for my iPhone. It produces tilt-shiftesque videos.
The free version of the app only seems to produce a 10-second clip out of about four minutes of real footage, but I think that would work for most every project, really. (I added the audio in post, as the app doesn’t record any.)
The app is called Miniatures. And this is a test at the Arkansas at Auburn gymnastics meet.
Because I didn’t take any other pictures — I was really only thinking about ways to try that video app — here is my ticket:
I wasn’t working, but I sat in the media area with The Yankee, who was covering the meet for College and Mag. Behind us was one of the first guys I worked with in commercial radio. Hadn’t spoken with him in years, but it was nice to visit with him briefly. Nice guy, still in town, still working in radio. Looked good.
Auburn trailed earlier in the meet and managed to pull things into a tie after three rotations. Arkansas is a talented team and were probably the favorites going in. But, they had a few falls on the beam and the next thing you know:
The little smiley face lets you know the score is official, Auburn won 196.325-195.650. Apparently they set an attendance record, too. Some 7,300 people watched the 15th ranked Tigers get their second victory of the season.
We went to Mellow Mushroom with a friend for pizza after the meet. I ordered the vegetarian pizza. It was delicious. I’ve never eaten a veggie pizza, but I will again.
Stayed cloudy and gray and dim all day. Never topped 55 degrees, according to the local weather station. Though it never really felt like that warm. I had a few minutes that I could have pedaled around on my bicycle, but I did not. Too cold. Presently my baseline is 52 degrees.
So I stayed inside and did other things. And I counted the minutes until dinnertime, when we could enjoy the rest of last night’s delicious gumbo. Homemade and good stuff. You should be so lucky!
Every so often you see stories about social media fatigue. On the other hand, here is a piece discussing Innovative uses for social media:
(W)e predict that in 2013 social media intelligence will become much more commonplace as businesses, government agencies and not-for-profit organisations seek to leverage this new, unparalleled wealth of information.
There’s a list. It should include things like tracking illness, moving money, wide scale gaming, collaborative art and more.
aggregation or curation is a fact of life in the digital age — just as record companies have had to learn to live with rampant downloading and sharing of music, publishers of all kinds are trying to get used to the idea that their content is no longer under their control.
… which is fine as a philosophical point. The reality is you can’t put it back in the box.
The Weather Channel’s latest reality show, and coastal Alabama’s latest taste of reality-show exposure, “Reef Wranglers” makes its premiere at 8 p.m. Central time on Tuesday, Feb. 12. It’s a limited four-episode series focusing on the adventures of the crew at Reefmaker, a business based at Walter Marine in Orange Beach.
Should be worth it for the underwater scenes. Ignore the stereotypes, if the producers allow you.
I got a newGlomerata today. Actually I have a few new ones to add to the site, so I’ll do that in the next few weeks. But this one is especially special, one of the earliest editions. Inside was this:
There are two pages of sheet music to this diddy. This book is so old that it is entirely possible that no one alive has ever heard this tune. Can’t wait to know what it sounds like.
We discussed critiquing news stories in class today. How to do it, what to critique, what not to get overly zealous about. How to treat this as a constructive exercise and not as a personal reproach, and so on. The idea is that the more you watch things critically — because I make you critique them — the more you’ll see things that work and things that don’t work.
A critical eye is very important in the craft.
So we talked about television packages. I showed this story’s video package, which was still timely early in the week. It was a nice example of localizing the story when it came to the Midland standoff.
The reporter found a local police officer who has gone through the FBI negotiation training and interviewed him about what might have been taking place. It was a helpful story to a degree. There are some vagaries, which is both based on the nature of this officer not knowing every detail about what is happening hours outside of his jurisdiction and a need to speak generally for tactical reasons too. But it is nice localized story. It has some production issues and some very strange B-roll shots. It gave us something to look at.
And then I showed them this:
That is never going to get old, even as fewer and fewer students are familiar with the YouTube sensation.
And then we got started in our efforts to set up WordPress blogs. They are a sharp group of students, and I’m sure they’ll be running the Internet by the end of the semester.
I have done thy bidding, Internet, and given you many more people to add content!
Lovely, busy day otherwise. It was national signing day, and the Crimson’s sports editor was posting stuff continually to their Twitter account. That earned him follows from two of the television stations in town. Nice little reward for his work.
On the way home I stopped at Buy Buy Baby to get something off a friend’s registry. This place is full of things you didn’t know you needed if you’re raising children. Glancing at the products it is amazing any of us made it out of toddler years without these things in our homes.
The store is bright and smells of baby powder. Just add water, I suppose.
That’s an improvement, though, really. The last time I was in this store it was still a Circuit City. As I noted on Twitter, it was dank and dim and smelled of desperation then. I remember trying to test a camera of some device and the guy there was not able to put a battery into the thing.
I looked around at the deep sockets of the eyes of the few people actually in the store, realized that everyone there was touching, but no one was buying. I knew it was over.
Within a year they were all gone.
If only that one floor guy had bothered to look for a battery, things might have gone differently.
But probably not.
Anyway, in a much more pleasant environment with a thoroughly enjoyable young lady helping, I managed to find the appropriate burp cloths. They were very, very decorative. I’m sure yours were just a flat white, once upon a time.
I have a lot of things stored away to write over there. Get used to the links, I guess.
Saw this sign, the oracle of our time:
I know the owner. His son and daughter are friends. The sign has become a big fun quasi-event lately. It isn’t true until Krystal’s says it is, and all that.
When I took that picture it was halftime in the Alabama-Auburn basketball game. Alabama was leading Auburn 23-13. Halftime. In a basketball game, full of varsity, scholarship players. Presumably for both teams. (So you see why the word “Just” is important on that sign.)
In the second half Auburn went on a 36-14 run — that was all of the scoring. The final was 49-37, Auburn. Weird game. But Auburn held Alabama to its lowest point total in the 146 game series history, so there’s that.
“This is fun when they play well,” The Yankee said. And, indeed, it was. A struggling Auburn basketball team had a nice game going against the visiting 23rd ranked Ole Miss team. They started out with a 9-0 run, and had another nice stretch to extend an early lead.
The Rebels, though, are not pushovers. They fought to within two at the half. It stayed close in the second half, with only three lead changes and no lead greater than five points for either side.
Auburn struggled from the field, shooting just 37 percent. But, then, they’re only shooting 41 percent on the season. They finally had a strong night at the free throw line, and this was the difference in the game. Where Auburn shot 15 of 19 at the stripe Ole Miss, after 39 minutes and 54 seconds, a terrible 2-of-15.
And so with six seconds left and the scored tied Auburn was called for a foul. Mississippi’s best player, who was having a lousy night, walked to the line and dropped two shots: 63-61, final, Mississippi.
Our friend Kim said it best:
The company of good friends is always better, even if the basketball was entertaining for 39:56.
