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iPhone

Auburn / cycling / iPhone / photo / weekend — Comments Off
8
Apr 12

Catching up

The attempt to unload a lot of pictures that haven’t appeared on the site this week. Pretty things to look at for you, easy content for me.

And Happy Easter. Hope you enjoyed it in thought, with family, chocolate and peeps.

From the NCAA gymnastics regionals at Auburn last night. See the lady in the background? She’s the coach at Bowling Green. Also, she was one of The Yankee’s high school gymnastics teammates:

Sure you could do that. Right up until it came time to land:

This Michigan State gymnast had a lot of time to admire the ceiling:

At Georgia they call them Gymdogs:

That’s hardly flattering. When they perform as they did last night they should call them superwomen:

West Virginia had a great turn on the beam:

This is one of the Bowling Green gymnasts. The vault always looks a little painful to me …

She’s trying not to fall. She saved it, but this happened to her a few times. Shame, too, it was a nice routine:

The Auburn Arena is now just in its second year of use. They spent $92.5 million building the thing, and it is a handsome facility. For all of that, though, my favorite feature is that wraparound script:

The moon:

Clouds over the Samford University campus:

Told you I was replacing the seat on my bike. Can you tell which saddle is old and which is new?

I love the way the stickers are peeling away from this sign. How many summers do you think it has seen?

Saturday was just another beautiful day in the loveliest village:

Changing The Yankee’s tire:

Fond de Jante? There is a thin site with that name as a URL, but I doubt this website is official. Nevertheless:

They say dressing well is all about the details. The time spent obsessing is rarely repaid in public acknowledgment. Likewise, when repairing a bicycle, the attention paid to mechanical and aesthetic minutia will seldom be fully appreciated or understood by the rider. But, the worth of neither pursuit is diminished.

It means “inside the rim” or “rim base.” This rim tape is the best.

cycling / iPhone / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
5
Apr 12

There are at least three ways to spell “triple”

Meetings. Meetings about copyright laws. Meetings about stories. Meetings about meetings, at least two conversations worth. And then the emails. Emails about inventory. Emails about recruiting. And then there was a meeting about email. And, finally, emails about meetings.

That kind of day.

I took the long way home.

Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, between Calera and Jemison, Ala.:

They’ve moved! But their new location has the same chicken and the same chili. And you know they are good because they’ve deliberately misspelled both words. But don’t go in the old Dari-Delite. The recipes are not there. This is in Clanton, Ala.:

This is a fairly common misspelling if you search the Googles. But you don’t expect to see it quite so … large. Shame this Prattville, Ala. shop is closed, I’d loved to have walked inside and innocently asked them if they’d noticed anything odd about the sign. Or if Mr. Tripple was in today. Even for a muffler man this has to be galling.

The nine A’s though? That’s just brilliant:

Got my bike back from the shop. It now sports two shiny new shifter covers, a new chain and a tightened cassette.

So that will take care of the safety of my hands, a needed replacement — the old chain was starting to stretch and impacting performance — and fixed an obnoxious rattle on country roads.

The lady that runs the place offered to sell me a new seat because she’d noticed my saddle was giving way. When I bought the bike, used, there was one small tear. I recently rubbed two new spots on it in a stupid decision.

She said she’d just purchased a Felt herself, maybe that’s why she asked me about mine earlier this week, and couldn’t use this saddle.

“What am I going to do with an orange seat?” she said she’d asked herself.

And then through the door walks this sap, orange Felt with a frayed seat.

Saddles are a bit personal, though. She offered it to me for $20, and I talked her into a test ride. I’ll try it this weekend and buy it or return it. I gave her my business card, saying “If you don’t hear from me … ”

Turns out her husband works at Samford too. Small world, big bicycle.

iPhone / movies / photo / Samford / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
4
Apr 12

Biscuits, rust and authors

The second-biggest problem with the camera in the iPhone is the depth of field. This looks like a lot more food than it really is.

But, then again, there’s the app that let’s you blur out everything but your focus. (And that biscuit was delicious.) There are also apps that turn your HDR photo into HDRerer, which makes rust look magestic. This is through my dirty windshield, in an oddly lit part of the day, so it doesn’t pop as it could, but:

Think that guy is a beach bum in training? His flip flops do.

To see the real work of an HDR app, consider this picture from a few years ago:

And here’s the treatment:

It really jumps, doesn’t it?

There’s no real particular point to that, other than to say that I had a biscuit for lunch. If you didn’t, you should have. And also, the amount rest of the food really wasn’t that impressive. I’m blaming the frame of the barbecue chicken. The biscuit was the best part, though.

We had a bestseller speak in our class today. Nancy Dorman-Hickson co-wrote the biography on Joanne King Herring, who is a icon of the Republican party in Texas. You might recall her from Charlie Wilson’s War, which demonstrated her role in drumming up support for the United States’ proxy role in the Russo-Afghanistan war:

She was upset, Hickson said, by how overtly sexual she was portrayed in the movie. She is a gentile, Southern lady and so on.

Hickson was great in the class where she talked about freelancing and becoming a book author. She said she got that book contract, in part, because Herring’s people Googled “Southern writer” and “Christian.” And when they did, a small magazine piece she wrote on a Lutheran church event got her foot in the door.

There was a small handful of writers they decided to try out. The prospective authors were to have a phone conversation with Herring, and from there write one of her stories, trying to capture her tone and rhythm.

Hickson says “She was to share one story. Joanne is Southern. Multiple stories ensued.”

Well, yeah. That’s as natural as biscuits.

history / iPhone / video / weekend — 2 Comments
1
Apr 12

Catching up

The old romantic edition.

Just one piece today. This is the story of an old couple who met in letters during World War II through common friends. He was shipped to Europe and Africa. He saw Algeria, Belgium, France and Germany. When he came home after the war, which is where this telling picks up, they finally met and married almost immediately:

I recorded the audio on my iPhone using an app that seems to stop recording when the screen goes to sleep. Learned that lesson the hard way. (Moral: Never learn these lessons the hard way.)

There were too many people in the room. Too much noise outside. I had to tweak and tweak and tweak to get the levels to be close to comparable in Soundbooth. Since I couldn’t get it right at the scene I have failed them as an audiophile. The many shortcomings are mine, but their story is lovely.

Auburn / baseball / Friday / iPhone / video — Comments Off
30
Mar 12

Rainy day baseball

Auburn hosts Mississippi State for a three game series this weekend. The first pitch was delayed for an hour by rain. Between the fifth and sixth inning there was another 23 minute rain delay. Auburn starter Derek Varnadore went six innings, collecting five strikeouts while walking three and giving up three runs, one of them unearned.

In the bottom of the seventh inning Auburn trailed Miss State 3-2. With a runner on third Dan Glevenyak was punched out by the first base umpire to end the inning:

In the bottom of the eighth inning Auburn trailed Miss State 4-2. Ryan Tella is at bat here, he singled to right, scoring Jay Gonzalez and moving Creede Simpson to second base:

The heavily accented guy in the background is not me.

Also in the bottom of the eighth inning, with Auburn now trailing 4-3, the tying run was standing on third base in the form of Creede Simpson. Garrett Cooper hit a fly ball into right field.

State’s Brent Brownlee had a fine throw home to get Simpson in the double play. It was aggressive base running and a great tag by catcher Mitch Slauter.

It ended Auburn’s rally. Mississippi State scored again in the top of the ninth and would go on to win the game 5-3.