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Auburn

Alabama / Auburn / family / football / Monday / photo — Comments Off
30
Nov 15

The Iron Bowl

So one of these guys is my second cousin. The guy on the left is his high school buddy. They play football together. The friend has been to big time football college football games before, SEC games even. This is my cousin’s first big game. And an Iron Bowl is not a bad way to start, young man.

They bought tickets from a friend of ours and their moms said they could come and the spent the weekend and had a grand time. Also, they saw Bo Jackson. Hey, Bo, how many Heisman trophy winners did we see this weekend?

Close. We actually saw three, and that’s a pretty good afternoon.

In the stadium, down at ground level. Pretty decent seats and the guys got on the big screen for a super long time. Their moms liked all the pictures I took of them.

I made a Boomerrang and turned that into a gif. This is no more or less psychedelic in any of those formats.

Alabama won, of course, but Auburn kept it close. They had a good time. I’m glad we were able to show it to them.

And just like that, that’s my last Iron Bowl, my last Auburn game. A pretty decent run, lasting 21 years, but it’s over.

Auburn / football / friends / memories / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
23
Nov 15

Stuff from the weekend

There was a football game, and a flyover:

I took this picture:

And that’ll be the last of it, one way or the other. It is a sad thing in its own way, which I didn’t expect.

Also I snuck up on Allie and took this picture:

And she was completely oblivious when I took this one:

So I discovered yesterday that the cat likes graham crackers. Of course she likes graham crackers.

Finally, I ran in a fundraiser 10K yesterday. The Yankee did the 5K and I did the last half with the uncle of a friend of ours who was in town. He heard about this run and thought, “Hey, I’m retired, let’s impulsively run a 10K in jeans!” And he did. I want to be like him one day.

I finished second in my age group. I got an ornament and a gift card.

Auburn / football / friends / memories / podcast / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
18
Nov 15

A meaningful header would make you see past maple leaves

It is a shareable age, but you just can’t express autumn in any of the formats yet available to us. But if yours hasn’t passed yet, go outside and enjoy it some. May the weather be great and the leaves be bright, wherever you are just now.

Because you know what they say about winter.

So, anyway, even if you can’t really share the sense of the season in one photograph, I’m going to try. Here’s a basic under tree, looking up and through shot from campus today:

(And if that seems like a weird idea, I’m going to blame the Canadian singer-songwriter that’s playing as I type this.)

We were in the newsroom until 8 p.m. They gathered there less than 17 hours after leaving the place this morning. Student leaders, eyeing their upcoming Thanksgiving break, are wrapping up their plans for an issue the week after.

You have to really want it to work in student media, as they do. They know there will never be enough of them, or enough accolades or recognition for them. But I know those putting their hearts into it have learned the value of the work they do. The only lament is that not enough people appreciate their efforts and, sometimes, their sacrifices.

Elsewhere, here is a conversation I had with my friend and colleague Chadd Scott. He’s always worth a listen. This is no exception as today he’s breaking down what this underwhelming football season means for Auburn’s football coach. (The short answer, he suggests, is a great deal in the medium-term.)

Chadd was my first radio mentor and it is, to me, a neat thing to still get to work with him on projects. Check out Gridiron Now. It’s a great project.

Tomorrow I’m going to make a video. The best days are the multimedia days.

Auburn / football / friends / Monday / photo / video / weekend — Comments Off
2
Nov 15

Some Auburn weekend notes

Back at it again, then:

Brian came down this weekend. He pronounced the scoreboard large:

That’s been the attraction this year. The football team has struggled and continues to do so. They got outpaced in the second half by Ole Miss on Saturday. Can’t move the chains, kicking a lot of field goals, struggling to stop talented teams. It doesn’t feel like 4-4, but that’s what the record says.

But that scoreboard! And the eagle flights, of course. Here’s Spirit’s flight from before the game. Note the alternating sections of orange and blue. Looked pretty good on TV, I’m sure.

I just threw that video online without slapping a URL or any other branding on it. How daring! We walked up just in time to get a good spot near her cage, obviously. And then you can see she went all over the stadium. Spirit resides at the Southeast Raptor Center. He has a beak problem that requires regular maintenance, so she’ll always live there and do cool shows and flights like this.

What is interesting to me, the second and third time I watched that video, is the camera work of the production staff. I shot that on my phone, so the lens is wide and has practically no focus. But they’re following her all over the stadium. (When I lose her, just look at the giant scoreboard.) They do a nice job of keeping her in the frame too.

Hey, this is a wild animal. She can, and has, gone all of the places except the ones you expect.

It is a cool thing to see. Scoreboard isn’t bad, either.

Auburn / football / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
15
Sep 15

The new scoreboard

Everyone seems to have opinions about this, and they seem to vary widely.

I think an excellent promotion would be to superimpose an old version of the scoreboard on the screen every week. The previous scoreboard is supered here, supposedly at a 1:1 ratio. Of course, the one on display would get smaller and more basic each week. We’d see more sky and moving clouds behind it. And, after a few more weeks, there wouldn’t even be a screen to look to, just an actual scoreboard.

Crowd watching on the screen is going to be a lot of fun and the production team does a nice job of hustling around and showing all sorts of people. It’s pretty amusing, if there’s no football on at the moment. Not that you really need the screen to see football. But it is big.