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8
Dec 16

Last show of the semester

The sports guys did two sports shows tonight. This is the last one, The Toss Up, a show they launched just this term:

And so this is the last production in the brand new studio, which opened just this semester, in September, actually.

We’re learning where all the lights point and how the buttons work. It’s a fine place and we’re very pleased. It’s a really nice studio, a great classroom and a terrific jewel in the Media School’s crown.

The students are pretty good too, if you like sports talk shows.

You can watch it here:

It felt like 12-degrees today. I ran to work in that. I ran to work. (I do not know what is happening.) It flurried on me.

Last Friday it felt like 31 when I rode my bike to campus. I’m no longer going outside.


6
Dec 16

Who watches the watchers watching me?

Oh, just trying out some new eye-tracking software in the incredible new ICR labs that are coming online in the new building.

The usual Tuesday night stuff.

This software is so cool. That camera above the monitor catches and follows your eyes and then gives the person doing the research, who is sitting on the other side of a full-sized partition a real-time look at everywhere your eyes are going on the computer screen. So if I wanted to put an action sequence from a movie up, or some newspaper or magazine layout or anything, on the screen, we could then see what you glanced at, when, and for how long. It does a whole lot of other things, too, but it probably would sound weird out of context.

You do that with several dozen subjects and you’ve got yourself a study sample. Very neat Tuesday night stuff.


5
Dec 16

Oh I sat down a lot, too

This was the most notable thing about my weekend:

On Saturday I ran 10 miles. This is a new personal record for run-only. (I do not know what is happening.) I’ve done a half Ironman and that involved a 12.1 mile run and somehow I did that. But this was 10 miles and it was about 38-degrees, which was only a problem at the beginning and the end. The pace was slow, but that was a deliberate choice on top of this pre-existing fact: I’m just kinda slow anyway. But the eighth mile and the 10th mile were the two fastest miles, so that’s good.

How was your weekend?


1
Dec 16

Testing 1-2-3, testing, testing

We are very fortunate that we have such a diligent watch-cat. This is her bird window of late.

We put a few kitty condos on top of one another so she can sit at window height and stare into this bush and watch all of the little thrushes and things that are still hanging around. There’s a cardinal in there that is taunting her. About 15 yards away are the bird feeders and I guess this is a good place for the birds to hide until it is there turn. But Allie, she’s a smart one, and she has got these birds figured out.

Never mind that there are other windows with a direct view of the bird feeder where the birds are moving around and she can’t be bothered to stare at them from that window. There are just somethings I don’t need to understand, I guess.

Poinsettias on campus:

And I’m in the studio doing microphone checks. We’re doing a training session.

I’ve demonstrated, once again, my literacy by reading words from a scrolling prompter. It’s a skill I have, one of few. But it is one we teach. One day I’m going to tell them that I learned to read from a prompter by running the scroll myself. No one will be impressed, because this setup here is comparatively incredible and they might never have to try it.


30
Nov 16

The sidewalk went out for henna

Or, the murder of maple leaves:

This was on a campus sidewalk near our building. You don’t have to go far just now to see the crime scene that brings on winter.