things to read


24
Jun 14

The picture of the World Cup

If you’ve ever really wondered about the agony of defeat, here’s Boubacar “Copa” Barry to show you what it looks like. The guy had played a fine game, only to watch one of his defenders give away a foul in the penalty box in extra time today. And that means a penalty kick, which is decidedly to the striker’s advantage. All Barry can do is guess and hope. He guessed, but his hopes were not met. So, in the final moments of stoppage time, the Ivory Coast gave up a goal that meant Greece would advance and the guys in green would go home.

This was a great “What just happened here?” shot they got of Barry through the back of his net.

Copa

Much better than Luis Suarez’s biting of Giorgio Chiellini.

So I’ve got my SEO taken care of for today, right there. Excellent.

Today I swam 2,500 yards, which is almost a mile-and-a-half. I did it in sets of 500s, because let’s not think I’m so ambitious here. This let me set a baseline time, which is good because I have something to think about in the water now, as I narrowly chip away at that with each set.

I won’t tell you what the time is, because it is excruciatingly slow.

Let’s just say this, on the wall there are large signs for pool and NCAA records. I walked over to look at the 500-yard freestyle record. It turns out that the guy that holds the pool record in the 500 also holds the pool record in the 1,000. If he was swimming his 1,000 at his record pace, he would be finishing up about the time I was starting my last 100 yards in a 500-yard swim.

So, you, see, excruciatingly slow.

A guy jumped into the lane next to mine near the end of my swim. I didn’t speak with him, but everything about him just screamed swimmer. He was backstroking down the lane faster than I can freestyle it. And he could backstroke about three times and be at his turn. It was a beautiful thing, watching the guy swim was like watching a ballerina do her warmups. They are just easy because they’ve spent countless hours making it look effortless.

Whereas I would like to take about 15 percent off of my 500 time, putting me in line with the pool record in the 1,000.

I counted the championship banners hanging from the rafters tonight. I’ve previously counted the names of Olympians stenciled into the wall. Serious, serious athletes have been in that lane. The rest of us are just in their way.

Later in the evening my buddy, Murphy, and I ran a 5K. You never know what you’ll get when you invite someone to go for a jog. I thought about that after the fact. That guy is fit, and he played flanker in high school football. And now I’m going to run with him? We had a nice jog and a nice chat and I was able to keep up.

Take that, anonymous swimmer in the next lane.

Things to read … all headline links edition … because I’m a slow reader, too.

Have to go see it … Coca-Cola mural in Opelika could be over 100 years old

‘No-fly list’ process unconstitutional, US district judge decides

A tedious SEO headline, to be sure. I wish this story was in the American media … Also, the story buries that President Bush costs more. Taxpayers will spend $944,000 to support Bill Clinton’s lifestyle in 2014 as he claims he and Hillary are not ‘out of touch’ because they ‘talk to people in our town’

Go back to high school and blame your civics teacher. A third of Americans can’t name any First Amendment rights

Someone at Slate thought “Ya know, we have to remind people we’re Slate!” Looney Tunes Cartoons Were More Brutal Than You May Remember

I wonder how often this happens. Veteran believes he sees his image in Berman D-Day exhibit

Score one for city hall. Kansas Boy Forced to Remove Little Free Library From His Yard

For my reaction, see Boubacar Barry, above.


23
Jun 14

Golfing with Fin

My old friend Fin and I went out for a round of golf under the bright summer sun this morning and afternoon. We rode 18 and my clothes still changed colors. I hadn’t realized how much I sweat until I got home. Fortunately the course, which is very nice and super long, is just down the street from our home.

Anyway, here’s Fin pulling off some improbable shot or another:

Fin

I had two decent shots today. See that line going toward the pin? That’s my chip from beyond the back side of the green. They’d just sanded them, giving us some excellent lines to read:

Fin

We couldn’t play best ball, because we often wind up like this. At least once a hole we are within 10 feet of one another, to the good or bad. I would have thought he’d be much better at this than I am by now. I’m not very good at all. I think he was sand-bagging.

Fin

Oh, I played the last four holes or so in my sock-feet because I did this to my old, cheap shoes:

Shoes

Both shoes, within about a hole of each other. Oddly, I might have played better after I took them off. Something to keep in mind for next time.

Despite the heat I felt much better riding my bike this evening, which was abbreviated to only 14 miles because I got caught out in the rain. Usually I enjoy this, it is funny to me somehow, but today I decided I’d wait it out.

We were in a downpour, though, and I’m standing under the protective awning of a church building, staring at radar and marveling at how this system isn’t moving, it is just content to exist and drip. Then I got a text reminding me of dinner plans with our lovely neighbors. So I had to ride home in the rain.

Raindrops start to sting at around 29 miles per hour, just so you know.

Things to read … because reading never stings.

Just two things today, first your regular drone feature. CNN to study drone use for reporting:

The announcement comes amid widespread interest in newsrooms across the country in what’s been dubbed “drone journalism,” and equally widespread uncertainty about the legality of it. The FAA has severely limited the use of drones for commercial purposes, including newsgathering. It is due to develop new drone rules by September 2015.

“Our hope is that by working cooperatively to share knowledge, we can accelerate the process for CNN and other media organizations to safely integrate this new technology into their coverage plans,” David Vigilante, CNN’s senior vice president for legal, said in a statement. “It’s a natural opportunity to work with our neighbors at Georgia Tech, who have experience and insights into this area.”

The headline to this story is great — Police: 4-Year-Old Girl Foils Babysitter’s Burglary Plot — but the quote from the sheriff is even better.


19
Jun 14

Things to read

I am resting my legs. I am resting my legs because I’ve ridden two days in a row. I’ve ridden a paltry 28 miles on Tuesday and Wednesday, my first two rides on a real bike in a calendar month. Both rides felt like bad first rides. They weren’t even particularly demanding rides. I sought out easy routes. My legs are in no kind of form and that’s unfortunate.

And so it seems clear to me that I need to find a way to travel with my bike wherever I go because this is silly.

I have a lot of catching up to do.

Things to read … because I can catch up there more easily, I’d bet.

At the New York Times — A Paper Boat Navigating a Digital Sea:

The morning meeting is one of two large news meetings each day, with the other at 4 p.m. (For the record, of the 23 people seated around the main table, as opposed to the periphery, seven were women; two, both men, were African-American.)

The focus at the meetings, and The Times, has come a long way since the days when “what’s going on page one?” was the biggest question. Clearly, there’s an effort to make this, more than ever, an “all platforms” newsroom.

But the structural changes at The Times and in the larger media world are even more striking. And therein lies a problem that has no easy solution: how to fully transform for the digital future when the business model — and the DNA of the newsroom — is so tied to the printed newspaper.

The source may be anonymous, but the shame is all yours:

How did anonymous sourcing become the rule rather than the exception in American journalism? Journalism professor Matt J. Duffy informs us in a new (and securely paywalled) paper that anonymous sourcing was sufficiently rare in the first three decades of the 20th century that none of the journalism textbooks and guides he examined made mention of the practice. The first textbook mention Duffy encountered was published in 1955 — An Introduction to Journalism: A Survey of the Fourth Estate in All Its Forms, by Fraser Bond. According to Bond, anonymous sources appeared primarily in foreign diplomatic reporting and in those cases that reporters wanted to attribute information from the president.

How mobile is your strategy?:

Luca Forlin, Head of International Product Partnerships at Google, shared several thoughts on where mobile publishing is headed. “There are two things right now. There are two things right now. The first is the around the devices and the second is around usage.”

Around devices, “the interesting element is that we have seen huge growth in smaller tablets – phablets – which are taking a huge share of the market from the bigger tablets. Does that change much in terms of what publishers do? The truth is we are not yet sure. What is clear is that publishers must abandon the idea of designing something one way and move to a world where content actually adapts. Optimisation is really important. The second thing is that, while phablets are taking over, in reality they belong to the smartphone family, which is entirely different from big tablets. That again forces them to abandon their old habits. Small screen sizes require much more simplicity, different design logic and different content.”

Think about it: text is text, but images are hard in some mobile platforms. Some videos work well there, others less so. We have to think not only about the content, but where it is going and, now, how it is going to look in several different places.


6
Jun 14

Dinner on the road, while on the road, from the road

We took a drive this evening …

tunnel

And we went through this tunnel …

tunnel

Which isn’t dramatic at all, but I enjoyed the pictures and wanted to share them.

At one point during our trip I counted four Dunkin Donuts within eight miles. I don’t really have a point for that either, other than to point out that Waffle House has some catching up to do. Wikipedia tells me there are about 1,700 Waffle Houses. A story from boston.com says there are 7,200 Dunkins. They have a lot of catching up to do.

Anyway, the purpose of our trip this evening was to eat dinner with our friends Paige and Kevin. Paige took our engagement photos in the middle of a nor’easter. She laughed about that tonight. She took our wedding pictures on the hottest day of the summer. I laughed about that tonight, too. Everyone laughs! And you can do that when the weather is mild enough to dine on the back deck of a Victorian house that has been turned into a restaurant. That place is formal about casual dining.

Here’s Paige and The Yankee:

Paige

Things to read … because reading always makes for casual dining.

If it is World Cup time it must be time for more stories about oppressed people who work under a multi-multi-billion dollar international entity: Pakistan workers fire ‘Brazuca’ ball to Brazil

Veterans bid farewell to D-Day beaches after emotional tributes

So this gentleman slipped out of his nursing home and traveled to France. Well, the Royal Navy, for whom he sailed, says “Life without limits,” so this makes sense: Hove veteran disappears for Normandy trip.

I’m a bit surprised this is still the case, Web TV soon to beat terrestrial reception in the US:

The percentage of US households with a television that relies exclusively on an antenna for television programming reception (6%) is about to be eclipsed for the first time ever by the percentage of households relying only on the Internet for TV programming (5%).

It seems it won’t be the case for long.

New head honcho on the Bulldogs’ hardwood … Samford Names Padgett Head Basketball Coach


5
Jun 14

A quick Thursday post

I don’t know what you had for dinner tonight, but we went here:

Tuttis

It is one of those look-forward-to-it-all-day places. We always visit here when we’re on the Gold Coast. It wasn’t even especially good tonight and it was better than most things you could enjoy.

Tonight we attended the year-ending party of Special Church, which is a program my mother-in-law runs for special needs community members. The Waffle Man was there, with ice cream. The music therapist played songs on a ukelele. One of the attendees did a great solo, others danced and shook noisemakers. We had party favors and tropi-coladas: coconut and pineapple juice and huge sugar rushes. We got hugs. It was a fine party; it always is when we are there.

Things to read … because when have you not been to a party that had a lot of great reading?

Exactly.

Huge leap in mobile video usage and ad interaction

Mobile is fast becoming a central hub of entertainment decisions, with not only content usage climbing but also a commensurate leap in ad engagement, says research from Vdopia.

Among the key findings revealed by the latest edition of the mobile video advertising provider’s Vdopia Mobile Insights (VMI) report was the fact that the number of people who consumed entertainment content on their smartphones ever in a month jumped 28% in the past year to 109 million. Americans now average 33 minutes each day watching videos on their smartphones.

Moreover, mobile entertainment audiences not only are twice as likely to click on mobile ads but 45% recall seeing ads compared to only 24% for non-mobile entertainment audiences.

Which one of you is watching that much video on your phone? Pretty sure it isn’t me.

There’s an Alabama hook here, and four amazing stories: Four POWs we should all remember.

Veteran, 89, Recreates D-Day Parachute Jump: “They made me feel very relaxed but I wanted to get out that door!”

I’m just going to read every D-Day story, aren’t I?

This one features a different fellow. D-Day paratrooper, 93, to jump again for anniversary: “They are worried about me getting hurt. I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. If I get hurt or I get killed, what is the difference? I’ve lived 93 years. I’ve had a good life.'”

And, finally: