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Before you head into your weekend

Today I looked through a 1976 edition of the Crimson. This newspaper was produced before I was born, and the ads inside it were great. Here’s one:

That IHOP is now a pizza joint. That pizza joint is now closed.

You can see the front page and several of the ads on my Tumblr, here, here, here and here.

Isn’t this a lovely photo that I snapped from the car?

That plane was pulling up as I was driving under its flight path. I dug out my phone and pointed it in that general direction — eyes on the road — and pressed the shutter button one time at what felt like the last moment.

And maybe it was the last moment. Another second or two of fumbling and the plane is out of the frame. But never mind that, look at all of that beautiful empty space.

Things to read … because the cat has currently strapped herself to me and is not interested in this typing business at all. (Seriously, she is being ridiculous.)

The fall of 2012 I don’t remember all that well, but I remember we sat near Kiehl Frazier at Barbecue House and took the “Oh look who is over my shoulder picture.” I also remember, prior to that, that he once felt the need to apologize on social media for the outcome of a football game. When you get beyond how unnecessary that is, you remember he was a freshman at the time. You can’t help but cheer for a guy like that, no matter where he plays, Auburn to Arkadoo:

Marquez knows sooner or later Kiehl Frazier will be one of those calling. When Auburn’s former quarterback-turned-defensive back-turned receiver is asked about the whereabouts of his 2013 SEC championship ring, he’s like all the rest who use Marquez as a lost-and-found.

“I haven’t picked it up yet,” Frazier admitted, 10 months and 550 miles removed his former school, an SEC title, and the ring that went with it. “I bet Dana still has it. I haven’t seen it at all. Right after the national championship game I came down here.”

Here is Arkadelphia (Arkadoo, they sometimes call it), a slow, sleepy Arkansas town 30 miles from Hot Springs, an hour and change from Little Rock, and light years from big-time football. Here is Ouachita Baptist University, a tiny private school that has to share space in a town of 10,000 with fellow Division II football power Henderson State.

Alabama’s unemployment rate dropped in October

Here’s a way we might have actually had it better than kids these days. Teens Are Sharing Gross Pictures Of Their School Lunches With The Hashtag #ThanksMichelleObamaNanny statism neither looks nor tastes delicious.

That’s all I have. Enjoy your weekend.

history / links / music / photo / things to read / Thursday / video — Comments Off
20
Nov 14

Does this guy look familiar to you?

Yesterday I spent a few minute hanging some newspapers in our newsroom. I took a few ancient issues from frames that were tucked away in a corner and replaced them with more recent and better copy. Now we have a wall that shows off a strong front page from each of the last four years. It looks nice.

But that means I have some old yellow newspapers on my desk. And that means I got to read through them today. And that means I took pictures of the good stuff. Like this guy:

This pair were in the paper because they’d just had a great run at a national debate tournament. They placed in the top 10, having beaten Harvard and MIT and others along the way. Samford’s second team had a great showing, too, but, really, I think we can all admit now that the hair had something to do with it.

He has a very common name, which is a bummer, or I’d look him up and see what what road life has offered him. The newspaper is from 1978, and so many of the folks here are often well placed in their careers. Indeed, among the 1978 newspaper staff there is now a university provost, a reverend, an attorney, pediatrician, professor and more. They seem to have done well for themselves.

You can see a few more items from this 1978 newspaper on my Tumblr site, here, here, here, here and here.

The lead story in that issue was this guy who would soon have a concert on campus:

I have an entire drawer of clips from the 70s and 80s in my office. I’ll get to them soon. The Crimson is celebrating its 100th anniversary in the spring, so we’ll be looking at things a lot farther back than the Carter years. Even still, that hair was worth seeing, right?

The best 3:40 commercial you’ll see this year, and it is based in historical truth some 100 years ago:

There’s also a “making of” video and an “about our video” video. Because if you’re going to run a 3:40 spot, even online, go all out.

A history teacher friend of mine found that online. I was just having a conversation about why history is or isn’t interesting to people, and it so often comes down to the person in the front of a classroom somewhere. I had one great history teacher that made the things she taught about people and their emotions and motivations and not just names and dates, and here I am. I suspect that my history teacher friend, passionate as she is about her subject matter, inspires her students too.

Things to read … because a simple story can inspire, too.

100 years young, Tennessee woman sees the coast for the first time in Orange Beach:

Ruby Holt has seen a lot of things in her 100 years and counting (she’ll turn 101 next month) on this earth. She’s seen two world wars, a Great Depression, 17 presidents and more than a few hard times. But she’d never seen the beach until this week.

Holt made the six-hour trip from the Sterling House senior living facility in Columbia, Tenn., to fulfill a long-time dream of seeing the shore.

(That story made it on the BBC, too.)

Unfortunate news here, Boeing layoffs target 130 jobs in Huntsville, elsewhere

I’d want to change them too often, so I better not put my pictures on my shoes, How adidas puts your images on their shoes:

adidas has let the buying public in on a little secret: the ability to step into a production line with their own shoe design.

[…]

The concept started when adidas began promoting their own product with satellite images of cities such as London, Moscow and Berlin. “The design team was really amazed by the quality of the prints, which led to lively discussions about what other prints we could create,” Schumacher says. “This sparked the idea for an app.”

Customization, the micro-wave of today, the artist’s feet of the future.

The rhetoric being used here is something else, Apple and Others Encrypt Phones, Fueling Government Standoff:

The No. 2 official at the Justice Department delivered a blunt message last month to Apple Inc. executives: New encryption technology that renders locked iPhones impervious to law enforcement would lead to tragedy. A child would die, he said, because police wouldn’t be able to scour a suspect’s phone, according to people who attended the meeting.

If Disney features animals and toys talking behind our backs, and Tron was about the inner-workings of video games … well, wait until someone like Pixar gets a line on this, The Secret Life of Passwords

And that should just about be enough for today. Come back soon. There is always more to see.

journalism / links / music / photo / Samford / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
19
Nov 14

Winter breaks, and now to spring, right?

It has been cold. We have enjoyed bitter cold. Or, perhaps, the opposite. These last few days a few places have reported wind chills at 12 degrees. Twice we’ve had weather stations reporting morning lows lower than you can find on the northern shores of the 49th state.

When it is warmer in Barrow, Alaska …

But it has all turned a bit today, when it is only chilly. It isn’t the sort of “Oh we’re used to it, and so now it is just chilly” sort of day, but rather an invigorating sort of “take it outside while there’s still warmth in the sun to enjoy” kind of chilly.

I watched a lot of it pass by from my window, as usual.

So this guy goes on Chatroulette and gets people to sing songs with him. This is very helpful since I somehow found myself in a conversation about Taylor Swift today. I was able to retort with this:

If you didn’t watch, allow me to try one more time: I’m not sure if I preferred the Spiderman-Batman interaction or the grandma making it rain.

In class today we talked about user generated content, which I can sum up in one business card-sized image for anyone interested in curation and aggregation:

The Verification Handbook, an invaluable resource, has more on the subject if you’re interested.

That’s what they don’t see …

Sometimes that song isn’t so good, no?

One of our students, who is awesome:

@kennysmith My friends asked me why they haven't seen me in 9 days. I told them the @SamfordCrimson is a lifestyle, not a hobby.

— Emily Featherston (@feathers_878) November 20, 2014

Things to read … which are also awesome.

Polygraph Critic Charged with Training People to Thwart Polygraphs:

Williams is admitting to the charges. But why is his action a crime? Polygraphs have been notoriously unreliable for decades and their results are inadmissible in court because of that. A campaign to further undermine confidence in the technology is, if anything, laudable.

Nielsen to Measure Netflix Viewing:

Even as Netflix Inc. and other streaming-video providers have expanded to reach 40% of American homes, they have largely remained black boxes. They have refused to share data on how many viewers watch TV shows on their services, and there has been little independent data.

This looks to be about licensing, but I wonder if it will account for the times I inevitably fall asleep watching while I’m streaming something.

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17
Nov 14

An actual Monday

My first job out of college was traffic reporting. I think I did that four about four months before finally landing in news. One guy there once reported a car fire on the freeway as a carbecue. It sounded clever but I found it mean-spirited. Here was someone having probably one of the worst days of their year, losing who knows what and, for an encore, having to deal with insurance people. Making jokes just seemed like piling on.

I think of that every time I see a car fire, like I saw today.

And then, some time later, I changed lanes, topped a little rise in the road and found myself parked on the interstate. Three lanes going nowhere, for about an hour.

Turns out, just up the road, a dump truck lost its load.

As I told a colleague, even if I’d wanted to make up a reason to not be in the office I wouldn’t have thought of that. Who’s ever heard of a dump truck throwing dirt and gravel all over the pavement as the poor guy is driving from A to B?

In one of those philosophical cases of one-never-knows it is entirely possible, I suppose, that had someone’s car fire not slowed traffic down back there I could have had dirt poured all over my car further up the road. Sitting on top of the overpass and feeling it wave and whomp whomp with traffic coming from the other direction doesn’t seem so bad in comparison.

Rather than worry about a Monday — hey, the guy in the car fire wasn’t hurt and there didn’t seem to be any ambulances at the inadvertent dump site — let’s look at some pictures.

Here’s a mini-essay on tree doughnuts:

More tomorrow, on what will not be a Monday.

photo / weekend — Comments Off
16
Nov 14

Catching up

The post with extra pictures, things that didn’t fit elsewhere or are just looking for a good home. You know the type, and you know the post. On with it, then.

We took a little hike, and I saw this young oak tree:

Sometimes the little things jump out at you. Sometimes you don’t even realize it until you get back home. That was the case with this one, I was shooting color, but now I see the edges:

Should I really be walking on something made by a company called Biltolast?

Only kidding. A small, local company. They’ve got about 80 employees and pedestrian bridges in Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Oregon, California, Connecticut, all over.

We went to see a play today:

And here’s the cool part, we discussed the show with the editor this evening. How often do you get to do that? I asked questions about the lighting and the sound, the deliberate anachronisms and the symbolism. He may never again tell us when he is directing.