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Samford

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11
Aug 11

The presentation

At AEJMC I was asked to give a presentation on what the future of journalism might look like and how we can prepare our students for such unforeseen adventures. I come down on this with a fantastical view of the future that is grounded in the mundane need for the soft skills. So, teach them holograms, but also insist they can still write. Major, we said, in journalism or communications, but consider a minor in computer science.

You don’t really get that from the slideshow, but that’s what our panel topic was about. Since I made a slideshow, you may gaze at its wonder, which pre-supposes that there will be changes in the newsroom atmosphere between now and the year 2055, here:

Took in several other nice sessions, ran into friends from my doctoral program I haven’t seen in a while, other professors I’ve meet from around the country and even my boss. Had lunch at a grill that featured a deliciously messy barbecue sandwich. For once I managed to not get anything on my suit. We had dinner at a little Italian joint we discovered that was sort of the Burger King of the genre. They are also not afraid of cheese, which is apparently the midwestern conception of Italian. That’s fine, too.

Sat in on a business meeting, went back out to visit some more. And now I’m ready to collapse before another day of conferencing. We’re spending less than 48 hours here this time. We’ve only just arrived, but it is almost time to pack up and go again. Maximize your time.

adventures / iPhone / Samford / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
10
Aug 11

Travel day

We are on the road again, but this time only for a short trip. And our flight was in the late evening, which was a change. Usually we have the up early and rush-rush-rush itinerary, but with the 8 p.m. flight I could sleep, finish my presentation, eat, pack the day of the trip, run errands and so on.

So I bought stamps, which made me consider the wisdom of alternatively putting the destination address in the return address spot. Would that really work? I mean, aside from convincing the recipient that your a cheapskate? If you put an envelope in the mail and the to address was local and the return address was across the country, do you think the postal machines would catch on? Or does that just become the letter that is finally delivered 35 years from now that you occasionally read about?

Visited the bank, where I learned that the precise point of parking in front of the ATM is the exact spatial section of land not covered by satellite radio. And by satellite radio I mean terrestrial repeaters. We blame Washington and NASA for “killing the space program” when really they only mothballed the shuttle. But I think we should blame Sirius/XM for ruining us on space. Even the space radio people are grounded. Or not. They have between 700 and 1,500 repeaters in North America, depending on whom you believe. There are maps. And the system is in place to mitigate dead spots in tunnels, foliage cover and buildings. There’s four inches in my garage where I can’t get a signal and then at the ATM. What a country.

Even still, the satellite radio can’t find me in this age of wonders. How will I ever cope? I guess I could plug in my own recording of the song I was listening to. But what medium will I choose? The trusty CD or the ones and zeros I have tucked away on my phone and iPod? And is this going to lead to the massive music project that requires I store every song I’ve ever heard on one my mobile platforms?

These aren’t problems. And yet the letdown is still disappointing. You’re telling me I can’t hear that song while I conduct my banking business? My transactional experience will be forever ruined by the nice brick facade my bank has erected that affords me shade and multiple blindspots.

So, yes, there was time on my hands before we left town. And we left. Made it to the airport, where we passed through security, but the metal detector emitted a subtle beep at it’s human companion as I walked through, not the “you have aluminum foil and chewing gum in your pocket” beep, but a different tone, encouraging him to select me for random additional screening. My hands were swiped with a thin cotton swab and that was put in a Star Trek machine that made noises and featured flickering lights. Twenty seconds later the guy was assured I had not been fertilizing my lawn earlier in the day.

There could be several paragraphs here bemoaning the TSA process, where I generally accept the people that work in front of a frustrated and bored populace are doing what they can — bad apples notwithstanding — while basically being hamstrung by what is given them from above.

I could complain about the comfort and design of the plane seat, or the poor quality of the burrito, or just my thoughts on air travel at this stage of society in general. They all sound about the same. But that would make it sound more tedious than necessary.

Instead I’ll just leave you with this.

I’m traveling with my lovely wife, going to a place where we’ll see friends and do things we enjoy. It was a lovely day, on the whole.

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14
Jun 11

On campus today

Spent the day at Samford. Well, spent lunch here:

I had been craving Whataburger since somewhere midway through the cruise. Odd, really, to be on a floating buffet of extravaganza institutionalized with a dual lack of dietary restraint and judgment and want a burger, but there it was.

So we stopped for lunch at Whataburger, where I had the cheesed variety and fries. And I admired the famous Whataburger print. I love that shot. Ideally I’d have 95 percent of the things hanging in my house to be photographs that we’ve taken, places we’ve been and the people we love. And then I’d have two or three other things that were gifts, a few posters and that print. I can’t say why, but it is about as Americana as you can get, from the air vent to the faux-stone wall, in one frame.

That 1950s little league team reunited last year. Whataburger is the title sponsor of a minor league ballpark and they rounded up the guys, now in the 60s or so, and had them through out the first pitch. Four of them did the honors in Corpus Christi, Texas, home of the first Whataburger. The restaurant conducted a nationwide search and found those guys, some lost to time, at least one lost to war, but others, still enjoying a good french fry from time to time.

Anyway. Back to campus today. Phone calls to return. Emails to Email. Things to print. Heavy things to move from here to there. Stopped in a few offices. Conducted an inventory of video equipment.

Discovered I had a “bad duplexer connection” in my printer. Great, I guess this means no going back in time to play Johnny B. Goode at the high school dance.

The whole thing was a four-hour party. (The inventory, not the Johnny B. Goode. That would be one great drum solo, though.)

I’ll only be on campus once or twice more this summer, so counting lens caps and XLR cables in a hot room is a small tradeoff.

Dodged traffic, got home just as the sun was going down. Enjoyed the evening at home and set about catching up here. There’s a lot to do.

cycling / errands / football / iPhone / journalism / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
17
May 11

Waiting for 4.0

That tree will haunt your dreams. I want to go back to Big Lots, buy it and bury it so it doesn’t frighten little children.

Would anyone like to hang it, instead? Or maybe put it in a lake as a fish reef?

Pedaled around the southern part of town today. Again it was very cool. The high today was 68 degrees. I set out down the hill of death and up the two hills of shame, took a right at the light and raced past the back of the subdivision. Turned right, passed a school, up two huge hills where I geared up as far as I could and still had to just put my head down, grit my teeth and make mind-deals. Just 20 more strokes and you’ll be there. OK, five more.

Crossed the interstate on the narrowest overpass in town, dodged traffic on the bypass and then cruised through one of the great old neighborhoods. When I made it to campus I turned around, cruised the neighborhood the other direction, got caught by a bunch of buses on the bypass and then made it home feeling strong.

Later I went back downtown to see about a watch. The crystal needs replacing, and the jeweler at Ware’s with whom I spoke could not see through the scuffs to read who made the watch.

It’s a Fossil.

“Oh,” she said shaking her head sadly. There’s bad news here. “Fossil doesn’t let us do any work on their watches. They have some sort of warranty deal, though.”

And then I asked the wrong question. Is that pretty much a standard thing? Would that be what the rest of the jewelers in town would say if I went asking?

“You could try Walmart, but we have some of the best jewelers in the state right here …”

Right. Well then.

She was happy to not help me, though, so there’s that.

So I went to the bike story, because I have this issue with gears and hoped someone would answer my question. But the answer was no better than what I’d read. Score one more for the Internet. Now if it would just get me up the hills a bit easier … (That’s web 4.0, I hear.)

Started watching The Pacific tonight. Made it through the first two discs, thanks to Netflix. We’ve seen Guadalcanal and Pavuvu. This was all promoted, when it debuted on HBO, as the Band of Brothers of the Pacific Theater. And the men that fought there have long had a legitimate claim that their stories have gone unnoticed through all the retellings of what happened in Europe.

The series, four episodes in, is fine. It is no Band of Brothers. I’ve seen that many more times and read Ambrose’s book that spawned the series and two memoirs (Dick Winters’ and Lynn Compton’s) around it. That story was much more about the camaraderie. I’ve only read one of the memoirs (Eugene Sledge’s) that was the source material for The Pacific, and will one day get around to Hugh Ambrose’s book. So far, this one is about the sun and palm trees and firefights at night and grim desperation in the daytime. But there are six more episodes to go, maybe it will get there.

The island hopping miseries are an interesting thing. Somehow you wonder if you’re getting the full story, but if you look around at enough perspectives you realize how this may have been a period of the deepest deprivations (from both sides) of man and maybe you don’t want to know every little terrible detail.

Finished an article I’ve been working on. The task was this: write a 2,000 catching-up-with profile. And the focal point gave me a lot of coachspeak and platitudes. Not that I blame him. The interview was fine — the coach is a very nice guy and has always been an accommodating gentleman — but coaches get in the habit of speaking like coaches. They’re always a little bit leary, because you never know who’ll read the thing. That just carries over, hopefully not at home, but whenever someone breaks out a recorder or a notepad.

So write 2,000 words on a series of humble “doing greats” and “we’re excited about the season” and “one game at a time” and “we see it as a business trip.” This took a bit of creativity.

I’d written about 2,200 words and then cut a few hundred, which just made the thing better. I wrote one ending, but decided against it, so it became the end of a section. And then, to finish the story, I wrote back to where the tale began.

Sent that off, it’ll be on shelves this summer, wrote this and now time for bed.

Oh, when I took out the garbage tonight I noticed I could see my breath. May in Alabama. It was 48 degrees.

Alabama / Auburn / baseball / cycling / iPhone / photo / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
11
May 11

Summer is here

The seasons have changed in more ways than one. My spring classes are now completed. All that is left is to finish up the grades. Then I’ll turn my attention back to my dissertation. And sweating. With spring gone summer has shown up, starting today. Riding a bike in the 90s isn’t the best idea, but we did that today. Nice ride, too. I should ride more.

Cleaned up some comment spam. The spammers like photo blogs, like my LOMO blog, where I dumped 100 spammers, but the automated text has lately been unfailingly polite.

After that we hit the grocery store. In the figurative sense. The store is made of brick and cement and various other painful looking substances. Hitting it would just be silly when what you really need to do is pick up cereal and sandwich stuff.

Then there was a little reading. And then some more research. Finding obscure Russian scholars is proving a tough challenge. I found seven items from this small group today, though, so that’s a start.

And then there was a baseball game. Auburn hosted Alabama State in a makeup game that was pitched as Fan Appreciation Night. Most people had something better to do (and school is out, further reducing the crowd). They didn’t even announce the attendance, but it was somewhere in the Montreal Expos territory. On the official statistics they called it 1,868. Only if they counted you twice.

(She got counted twice because she’s extra special. )

They might have miscounted the Alabama State pitchers. They had some big guys on the mound. The starter was an all-district center in high school, was listed as bigger than Auburn’s national championship center and I believe it. They just got taller and more impressive as the night went on. Auburn got an early lead in the game and flirted with giving it away before finally winning 7-5.

Lovely night to spend watching baseball, but every night is lovely at Plainsman Park. (This weekend they host Alabama.)