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Friday / journalism / links / music / Twitter / video — Comments Off
9
Nov 12

A brief collection of things

You’ve seen some version of this commercial, perhaps:

That Lebron James spot uses “Keep On Pushing” a 1964 hit from Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions. Wonderful stuff.

But that’s like a 1964 spot where NBA megastar Bill Russell moves around town as the 1916 Al Jolson hit “You’re a Dangerous Girl” plays:

Hard to imagine in the 1960s, eh?

Have you seen this Washington Post analysis of how the election was won? Excellent work they produced this week.

Have you seen the post-Sandy cover of New York Magazine? It is an incredible helicopter-at-night shot. Poynter has a great description:

Baan made the image Wednesday night after the storm, using the new Canon 1D X with the new 24-70mm lens on full open aperture. The camera was set at 25,000 ISO, with a 1/40th of a second shutter speed.

“[It was] the kind of shot which was impossible to take before this camera was there,” Baan said.

Unreal.

Battlestar Blood and Chrome, now airing as webisodes. Better than a Friday night slot.

My shoulders and neck are a mess. I’m going to go sit very still.

friends / music / Thursday / video — Comments Off
5
Oct 12

Bet the Beatles never made Afghanis dance

Someone, a school teacher, and the newest person at the table, asked how we all knew each other. We were having dinner on the deck as the world spun by, enjoying a nice evening out on a warm autumn night. There were people around, but we were probably the loudest and definitely the funniest.

And I realized, as I looked around this table, that I was the strongest link. I’m almost never the strong link. I win the table!

Silly, I know.

There was my friend from undergrad, who was back in town for the game this weekend. She’s a missionary in England, where she’s somehow working magic with free trade coffee growers and … it was a long and complicated story. There was Brian, who’s down to cover the football game. We worked together and have been friends for years, of course.

There was The Yankee, who as usual found herself outnumbered. Everybody at the table was from Alabama or Georgia.

(I told the story again of the time last summer when a man in overalls found out she was from Connecticut and he pulled out his .45 and showed off his AR-15.)

Across from her was the Army officer. We only met last year, but he grew up in all of the same places as I did and he majored in history. We get along. With him was his date, the teacher. And she was a pistol. We think we approve, but it turns out she’s a Georgia Bulldog, so we’re on the fence.

It was a fine time with nice people. After yogurt we spent the rest of the evening watching YouTube videos on the television.

What did people do before YouTube? This is a great way to evaluate the sense of humor of people.

Here’s the Army version of Call Me Maybe:

Think the mortar crew was zeroing in? Think they had to work hard to talk the Afghanis into dancing along?

links / music / photo / Samford / Tumblr / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
3
Oct 12

And the spiders?

I mentioned Colin Hay on Twitter last night, since you asked. I really fell into Hay’s music again around 2000 or so, and then again off and on since. For a while, I’ve been trying to describe it. If there is an overriding sentiment, what would it be? I’ve settled on midlife, convertible, late-afternoon sun.

The prologue in that particular live performance is his getting dropped by his record label after Men at Work. He released the album carrying that song in his mid-40s, so it makes sense.

The debates? Twitter had a big night. Remember when the media scoffed at Twitter? I love that all the big national folks fall all over themselves to report about it now. I bet we’ll find that this was one of the biggest nights yet for the microblogger.

New York Times? Fact checking in real time.

Who won? Big Bird, clearly. Maybe he should moderate the next one. And if that works out well, maybe we could start a write-in campaign for him.

Thirty-one cases of West Nile Virus in the state. Guess that’ll be the watchword of the season again.

Speaking of arboviral diseases, researchers are tracking down where Eastern equine encephalitis spends the winter. Snakes!

The spiders? They’ve got nothing to do with it. They’re just over here making art.

Looks even more like a heart today.

Critique day

Our regular critique of The Crimson was moved to this afternoon. Here is a big stack of newspapers:

We had four pages in color. It was a 12-page paper today. We went through every one of those issues, just to see if we could find the typos in the same places in each copy. We did.

(Find the same errors. We did not go through every issue. We are thorough, but we have other responsibilities, too.)

You can read The Crimson here, of course.

And now, a few pictures. This is meant to reflect a full day of newspaper topics, email, meetings, text messages, library time and cleaning my office and is in no way designed to get us over 100 photos for the month. That is purely a happy coincidence.

(That total doesn’t even count Catember.)

This is the Davis Library at Samford. I visit there from time to time to enjoy the plush leather seats and the many books they have. And also access to scholarly topics. Yesterday I read through about 30 papers in here:

Here’s a side view. Every so often I catch the perfect moment of the afternoon. The sun is at this precise moment realizing it is no longer high and suddenly sinks far more rapidly. But first it sets that window on fire:

And, just a moment or two later, now looking to the west, here is the view of Hodges Chapel, with vinyl canopies going up for some Friday function:

Samford does have a beautiful campus. I took these shots while playing with Picle. Audio! Video! On the iPhone! Together! With no editing-in-post! Drag and drop! And then I learned Picle doesn’t let you embed. That would be an oversight, guys. Embedding is important.

Anyway, here are a few quad shots taken while the carillon was playing the afternoon concert.

Lucky to go to work there.

Video of the carillon? Sure. I shot this in April:

Steve Knight, an amazing man, is the carillonneur.

A new photo found its way onto my Tumblr. And, of course, plenty more ramblings on Twitter.

adventures / cycling / history / iPhone / music / photo / weekend — Comments Off
15
Jul 12

Catching up

The regular Sunday post that slaps together a bunch of pictures among my many other featured treasures of the Internet. Showing them off with trite commentary constitutes cheap content. Off we go …

Did you know there’s a Hank Williams museum in downtown Montgomery, Ala? He’s buried not far from there, so it makes sense. I just found this museum on the Fourth of July, though. It was closed, but you could see this hand-carved Kaw-Liga piece from the door.

Kaw-Liga, you see, was a wooden Indian who fell in love with an Indian maid at a nearby antique store. He does not, as the song explain, share his feeling, because he’s from a pine tree. Classic tune, and this piece took 530 collective hours to carve:

On the way to the beach last weekend we saw signs for another Hank Williams museum. I can’t comment on the quality of either, unfortunately, but I want to visit them both.

Parasailing tourists on the Gulf of Mexico, off Orange Beach, Ala.:

Mr. Brown, our weekend host, is catching fish on his condo’s private pier on Orange Beach, Ala.:

Brian photographs the pelicans on the state pier in Orange Beach, Ala.:

Allie, playing in her tunnel this weekend:

The Yankee celebrating her first state line in cycling: