iPhone


9
Nov 10

Tock tick

Need a good college? Samford is on another one of those nice good-value lists. Samford’s overall rank was 80th and is second cheapest in terms of total cost per year, fifth in need-based aid and just eighth in average debt at graduation. So there’s a good value, if you’re looking for a place to attend, consider Samford.

I’ve been in recruiting mode lately, can you tell?

Meanwhile, The Yankee’s alma mater also made the list, Fairfield University, was ranked 85th.

Another fun set of statistics I found today, Wall Street Journal is trying to parse out what your cell phone says about your spending:

The average monthly credit card bill was $6,872 for iPhone users, compared to $5,693 for BlackBerry users, $5,330 for Android users and $5,076 for Windows Mobile.

Happily none of the data in this piece applies to us. We couldn’t afford it, even if you cut the numbers into much, much smaller fractions.

We have a 21st Century problem in the newsroom this evening. The heater is blowing cold. This isn’t unusual. The nice people from the facilities department loaned us some space heaters, with strict rules to be sure to turn them off and unplug them whenever we looked away from them. I think someone suggested that it would be a good idea to turn them off even if we looked askance at the heaters.

When it got cold, we tried out our new toys. That warmed things up a bit.

We learned that the circuit didn’t care for two space heaters. The breaker tripped twice, so we went to just one heater, which warmed things up half as much.

Could be worse. I’ve worked in newsrooms and studios were it was so cold I could barely type. Ours tonight was merely just chilly.

Here’s retrograde fun: These last two days I’ve become aware of the number of clocks for which I’m responsible. I, like you, am disappointed we don’t have better logic chips for every device so these clocks can’t all change themselves. They’re so used to changing anyway, what’s one more tock?

After a certain point precisely matching up your clocks can be a challenge, but that just comes with the territory. To make it a little less tedious I’ve come up with a new game. In the fall I like setting my clocks over a series of several days. You should try it. It feels like you gain a lot of hours that way.

In the spring I concede the point and do them all at once.


7
Nov 10

Catching up

Yard

I took this picture in the yard and then ran it through a tilt-shift filter on the iPhone. When you blur everything else grass blades are very interesting.

Brrrrr

Did I mention it was cold yesterday? Absolutely gorgeous today.

Ford

Saw this at church. A 1930 Ford, I believe.

Ford

The detail on the radiator cap. Very fine looking auto.


4
Nov 10

“We are out of potatoes. We have potatoes. We are out of corn.”

Sitting at the red light to make my turn back onto campus I looked out of the window to see a gust of leaves making their adieu from trees. Floating there, in that transcendent space between instrument of photosynthesis and ground matter, they are so graceful. For all of their work on the branches and all of their nutritional value on the ground it is a shame that they are free for such a short period of time.

So I decided to record their moment. This decision always seems to take a long time, in retrospect. And when the neurons finally connect, assess and send the signal that documenting this visually might be fun, I must still pull my phone from my pocket. This can be cumbersome. The screen must be unlocked, the camera accessed and the video feature selected.

Of course this was when the remaining leaves grew resilient, their petioles growing stronger than the breeze.

That is one long red light.

Grand day. Had a class where students skewered the published works of learned authors. Enjoyed a delicious lunch where things were off the menu, and then back on the menu, but the other supporting item was off the menu instead. The poor waitress had to recite the sides three times through the confusion.

Took part in a meeting. Met a new student, the first-in-their-family type. Very nice person.

Punched out of my weight class in a particularly thorny carpentry problem. Longtime readers will recall I have no business even being in that conversation. But screws, the cheaply made international kind, were breaking off at the wrong time. They must be removed so that other screws of decidedly sturdier stuff can be put in their place. I invented a tool that would facilitate removing the offending broken screw.

But only after my super-powerful magnet idea was dismissed.

Turns out it already exists, this tool, but I didn’t know about it. Even still, it is gratifying to know when you’re on the right track, even if someone patented the thing decades ago.

This was the scene when I left this evening:

UniversityCenter

Samford is a beautiful campus.

Dinner with friends. Our realtor is now a friend. He’s been to our house after we’ve moved in. He didn’t even judge our staging. He had us over to his place for a football party last weekend. We have dinner about once a week now. You probably aren’t supposed to be friends with your realtor, especially if you moved onto an Indian burial ground, but he’s a nice guy and tells the best jokes.

So we had pizza tonight at a place called Little Italy and I brought home the leftovers. These are of the New York style, and while The Yankee has spoiled me on New Haven pies, Little Italy is pretty good stuff.

I just found the obligatory store opening story from two years ago. Those always amuse because the writer inevitably talks about how this new place uses only fresh ingredients. As opposed to, what? Stuff they found in a dumpster around the corner? Whatever fell off the farmer’s truck while he was on his way to market? Something frozen from the Green Giant?

I probably wrote the same thing. Years ago I did a restaurant opening story for a chicken joint just four blocks down from this pizza place. They framed the story and put it on the wall, which was cause for only a slight amount of chagrin when I would later dine there. The chicken was fine, but they had live music and I happened to live across the street from the place, so I found my way there a fair amount. Eventually they moved to a new location, and now Urban Spoon tells me the place is closed.

Those are always the more interesting stories — What did happen to that young couple? — but you don’t see them as much.

Busy and full day. The Glomerata covers will be updated momentarily. Tomorrow will be another full day, I’m sure, and it will come equipped with a full night as well.


1
Nov 10

November?

A new feature, this one set to appear once each month if I can pull it off. This is the video of the month, or more appropriately the video to set the tone. This month’s theme: leaves.

When I showed that to The Yankee she was stunned I covered my iPhone lens. They’re just leaves. And then she said something about how only I would record this. Well, yeah, maybe. But then I put in that pull focus at the end and she isn’t laughing any more.

As I raked I wondered why man hasn’t come up with a better way to do this. Just imagine if we’d attacked this problem with the same fervor with which we’ve faced other challenges or ills. If John Kennedy had said that we chose to deal with leaves not because they were easy, but because they were hard …

In my yard, they aren’t easy. I have a small rake.

The nice lady who visited my neighbor while I was raking observed that I did not even have any leaves yet, really. Probably 90 percent of the leaves are still in the trees, as you can see in the video. There are plenty of gray maple leaves, curled like an old man’s arthritic fingers, mixed in with the flat brown of the willow oak leaves.

But, still, half the yard got down as I shot that footage. You should have seen the outtakes.

Class prep today, blurb writing today, video editing today, reading today. The typical Monday barrage of things that make the day so fulfilling.

I opened a watermelon tonight, perhaps the last of the season. Seedless — may contain seeds, the sticker says — and delicious. I’m not ready to concede the season. The mild weather is nice, the open windows and the evening breeze are certainly welcome, but the shortening days and the impending chill could hold off another four months.

And by then it’d be March.


30
Oct 10

Football Saturday

Straight from Twitter. Watched the Auburn game with friends, and three delightfully distracting little girls who managed to turn the television off at one point. At least they were all short enough to walk under the screen and not get in the way of the shot. On the other hand we learned about chocolate chip cookie brownies, so the trade off might have been worth it.

Stick around for the video at the end:

Florida and Georgia look like two emo kids trying to out emo each other.

Maybe Georgia is the most emo. They are wearing the black trim. Hunker down and play Radiohead, unironically, Bulldogs.

Ok, I’m at the football party. Let’s play ball. What do you mean it is already 7-7? Cam Newton the receiver? That’s just on-field Heisman marketing.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! There is no scheme for Onterio McCalebb on that misdirection.

Masoli to Summers for the score. The Auburn defense will get off the bus shortly. 14-14.

@tzac81au is no fan of Faulkner. Though he does run rather like Sound and Fury.

Cover this guy, cover that guy, there’s always Emory Blake. I love this. They haven’t had to show it, so the pre-season narrative has been diminished and then forgotten, but there are weapons and talent and the ability to produce all over the offensive side of the ball.

We didn’t see that. Best not to see it. As I, and now others, have said: the only team stopping Auburn’s offense is Auburn’s offense. Fumbles will do it. This at a point where they’d produced a defensive stop and could have gone ahead by two scores and start the tidy business of putting this game away. Instead Ole Miss gets a reprieve.

Demond Washinton with the goal line pick. So the drive in which we create separation continues again. I’m starting to warm up to this defense.

I’d like to see Kodi Burns catch one in space, just to see him run again like his freshman year’s enthusiasm. Do you remember that? He’d dance around, gather a few yards, get tackled and then hop up like a kid so flush with energy he couldn’t vent it or express it all at once. It was beautiful. He should get a few more moments like that.

Now this is offensive balance. Fill the box, Auburn will just throw it around the yard. Defensive coordinators are waking up in cold sweats now.

Darvin dropped a pass. Does not compute.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Cameron Newton to Darvin Adams, showing a complete offense to the RebelBears.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Demond Washington! 95 yards! 31-17. Kickoff returns for touchdowns make one think we might get something resembling the illusive complete game. But Washington has been due a big return for weeks and Ole Miss is not very good at this. Stands to reason it would happen here.

Ole Miss comes up short because Josh Bynes shows off his super powers. Now let’s see another score, just to rip out their hearts. The scoring defense isn’t there, but they show up when it matters and that is enough given everywhere else Auburn can produce.

A touchdown would have been nice, but I’ll take a 17-point lead going into the half of a trap game. There is no Admiral Akbar. I just never saw the trap in this game. My sense of peace with it is now validated. And this is only halftime.

Hey Ole Miss? Look away, look away, look away: Tigers are in town. One of the best songs a band plays. About four years ago, after Ole Miss lost at Jordan-Hare the two bands struck up a song simultaneously. Auburn’s band stopped playing while the Rebel band finished this tune. It was late, dark, a little ethereal out. I’ve always liked that memory.

His next update is “This is too easy.” RT @cameronnewton Cameron Newton can tweet during halftime. That’s a spoof Twitter account — I don’t write it, don’t know who does — and it is worth following.

If you can hold a team to a four-yard gain, and feel good about it, you might be playing Auburn. And you’re in trouble. Because, really, you’ve limited Mike Dyer to half his average yards per carry. This guy just gets more impressive with each game.

@wesbyrum stretches the Auburn lead to 20. 37-17.

When ESPN calls your game and gets things wrong about your school you wonder how much they get wrong about other placed too. And, no, I don’t mean just Bob Davie.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Mike Dyer for 30 yards down the sideline. 44-17. He, too, is about to break a not insignificant Bo Jackson record.

Eli Manning is looking to beat traffic put of Vaught Henmingway!

Ole Miss scores, but this is all garbage time. 44-24. About the waning moments of the game, I feel for Mario Fannin having to fill that role, but I agree with the coaches that they’re going to need him to win. Fumble troubles notwithstanding, he’s a weapon receiving the ball out of the backfield. I hope he gets his chance to redeem himself before his career is done.

Houston Nutt just showed up, Ole Miss recovers a surprise onside kick.

@Lucas_au asked why Eli Manning would leave early, since Vaught-Hemmingway only seats 1,500 people. I replied: It takes a while. He can only drive his daddy.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! @tzac81au with the score.

If you were wondering, that’s hanging 51 points on an SEC team on the road. Fifty-one points! No matter if you say three-point road wins are good wins or that Auburn still has something to prove, you have to be impressed by this effort. The easy, obvious, natural comparison people try to make for this Auburn team is the 2004 vintage. I’ve asserted that you can be more confident about the general scoring power of the 2010 team on any given drive in any given game. Just for comparison, the 2004 Tigers, who could beat anyone like a drum by then, won 35-14 in Oxford.

How about that offensive line? They need a award, too. There’s no doubt these guys, Mike Berry, Byron Isom, Ryan Pugh, Lee Ziemba, Brandon Mosley (and A.J. Green, before his injury) are the reason why.

Nine and oh! War Eagle!

In a year where Auburn sheds the ghost of 2004 we find ourselves cheering for USC. Weird. Thanks, Trojans.

And, now, driving by Toomer’s Corner:

Undefeated, top of the charts and War Eagle!