Tuesday

photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on ‘Technically perfect’
22
Sep 20

‘Technically perfect’

Here are a few more Saturday photos, because Saturday was technically perfect. Also, because they are memories and good photos and sometimes bad photos and sometimes those bad photos are the best memories. The best memories for me, anyway, he told himself, because that little blur is evocative of how memories can get sometime.

Not that Saturday is blurry, but one day it will be. Well, not last Saturday, because it was wonderful and unique and technically perfect. But, in general, some memories turn out a bit like this around the edges:

Cell phones are useful like that. They fit in my jersey pocket and you can take a picture riding down the road with the flick of a finger and the squeeze of a thumb, all while you carefully watch the area in front of you. But they don’t give you the best picture all of the time. I can’t imagine, of course, doing all the things required to get that picture — blurry or clear! — with a DSLR. So it’s useful, much like a bokeh lens. Inferior quality glass became art after it moved from Eastern Europe to the west.

I have a bokeh lens. I should break that out soon. So watch for those.

They teach you, in photography class, about how lines are good. They direct the eye. They mark action and movement. And, of course, I like repetition in photos. (I don’t know if anyone else has noticed that, but I picked up on it some years ago. I’m bemused that I only really see it in the finished photos, but I’m not nearly so aware of my tastes for that when I’m composing the picture.)

So, anyway, here are some lines in a photo, directing the eye, implying movement, in this case, we’re going deeper into the photo. In my case, I was, on my bicycle.

I took a selfie. Because they’ll also tell you, in photography class, that things like signs are boring. But if there’s some activity, some person or people, that helps.

If it’s a tunnel, it’s photographically perfect. OK, it’s not photographically perfect. I wasn’t thinking about the Fibonacci spiral, which you might also learn about in a photography class, when I took that picture. So there’s that. Without thinking about it, I technically filled the negative space, which is technically imperfect. Which is, technically, perfect.

Tuesday / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Just pulling some things together in the one spot
15
Sep 20

Just pulling some things together in the one spot

We’ve noticed we’ve saved a few bucks, since we’re eating all of our meals at the house. Cancelling vacations has helped, too.

Also, we’ve got a few more grocery operations, and we only go to the store every couple of weeks. Some of these habits will stick around for us.

He just wanted to talk about sports all the time. And he’s really good at that. Michael is proving to his boss and coworkers that he’s good at a lot of things in the newsroom. Of course, he’s been getting his fair of practice with bad weather.

This is the show where Michael got started. We miss him, but this year we’ve gained masks and they’re still going strong.

How do you do sports when you don’t have sports? Well …

We should get some sports news soon, maybe even tomorrow, or so we’re told.

More on Instagram and check me out on Twitter as well.

IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on Cluck cluck, tree, cluck cluck
8
Sep 20

Cluck cluck, tree, cluck cluck

Maples. Rubbing it in. “We’re going away!” Right in front of me, literally, the tree under which I parked today.

Which is the real story here. I went into the office a bit late today because I knew I’d be on campus until about 7:30 — which wound up being actually 8 or so. And even despite rolling onto campus in the middle of the day I parked right next to the building.

You can’t legally park any closer to our building than I did today, just before noon. That’s how many people aren’t on campus right now.

Our building has classes, but only the smaller ones. Anything over 50 students is automatically online. Faculty were able to decided, in a dizzying and disjointed system, whether they would teach in-person or online. One week, faculty could decide. The next, they couldn’t. It was all a part of a summer spent finding our sea legs. There was also a hybridized model, with rotating students on various days of the week and that seemed like it would have too many moving parts for anyone to keep straight. Ultimately, though, whatever got decided at an individual level, or got decided for them from above, has led to a quiet building so far.

With most classes apparently taking place on line, that means few students and very, very few faculty in the building. About 90 percent of the staff is working from home. And that means that, because I have to go in, I can get a parking spot right up front.

Just means I didn’t have to walk too far to my car at the end of the evening after a practice session in the television studio.

Except, after watching some practice shows get produced in anticipation of next week’s season premier episodes from the new news team, I walked to the parking deck. I hadn’t parked in the deck, but right beside that maple tree. It took me a block to realize it, and a block to walk back.

Which, for a Tuesday, isn’t the worst setback.

I’m more disappointed in the maple tree. If you see me out there sometime later this week, staring it down with a look of disappointment on my face, you’ll know why.

photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on And happy September
1
Sep 20

And happy September

This month will be totally better, don’t you agree?

Here are some roadside flowers I found.

I was standing on the side of the road for the same reason that every guy does, so they can take a picture of their wife as they ride by on their bicycle. You saw that photo yesterday. But what you didn’t see was all of the cars that went by wondering what I was doing on the side of the road.

Do people still think like that? Probably not. Everyone here is very particular about studiously avoiding interacting with others. In the car that’s easiest done, of course, by people staring at their phone while driving.

One of those sorts of drivers almost flattened me at a stop sign today. I looked at him and said, “OK, Boomer.”

We saw this car this weekend. Not sure if the driver was on the phone, but at least that’s a self-aware car owner.

Unless they’re un-self-aware. Maybe their friends or family members are putting stickers on the back of the car and the owner hasn’t caught on. I check my tires every so often, but, really: How often do you examine your vehicle for rogue stickers, anyway?

IU / podcast / television / Tuesday — Comments Off on How we’re trying to keep safe
25
Aug 20

How we’re trying to keep safe

Walked into the television studio for the first time today. Some things will be different this semester, but a lot of it feels the same. There’s a goodness to it, being in a room of potential, a space where people start to see their dreams come true, under lights where their skills begin to sharpen. It’s nice to be in a space like that, even if it’s just to study some of the new safety considerations.

But, in a few weeks, we’ll have students back in front of the camera. A different kind of recording today, though.

It isn’t every day you get to talk to a professor of pediatrics, who is also a medical school dean and the vice chair for health policy and outcomes research. Dr. Aaron Carroll wears a lot of titles. He’s also the director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research and is leading Indiana University’s arrival and surveillance testing for the 2020 return to classes.

He took time out of his busy schedule to talk about sending children back to school, and all of the work the IU campuses across the state are doing to help keep their communities safe.

It’s a good listen. Dr. Carroll is a great presenter. He’s built an ambitious program here, which is probably starting as one of the most ambitious programs on a college campus in the country. And, when it matures to his committee’s full plans will most definitely be at the top of the list.

Consider, when they implemented the re-entry tests for students IU returning to campus it became the biggest testing center in the state, virtually overnight. Some 100,000 students were tested in the last few days, and that was just to re-enroll. And it won’t stop with that one test that allows students to return. Pretty soon they’ll be running thousands of tests a week as a matter of course.

The university sent out two masks to each person on campus. Masks are required. That was a $600,000 expenditure. As Dr. Carroll says in the interview, this is entire exercise on the university’s part is about money and will. The university has had the will to build out, at some considerable expense, a robust system designed to help try to keep us safe.

It won’t be perfect, no. Nothing will be, and I think we acknowledge that here, but there’s something to the effort, and Dr. Carroll is a capable person, surrounded by similarly talented folks. That just has to filter down to the rest of us. A lot of this will come down to individual choices. Mine, yours, and everyone else’s.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →