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I do not know what is happening. / iPhone / links / Monday / photo / running / swimming / things to read / video — Comments Off
13
Jan 14

Do not do math underwater

Swimming again this morning. I got in 1650 yards, which apparently used to be measured as a mile in the pool. That’s weird because, when you swim as slowly as I do, you have plenty of time to do multiplication and division in your head — several times — and realize, Hey, that math isn’t right.

Don’t do math in the pool. Because the sequence of events that follows is not unlike those Directv ads. And the inevitable “What lap am I on?” is only the beginning.

Don’t do math in the pool.

This evening I went for a run. It seems that if I get a route in my head some part of me feels obligated to do the entire thing, if possible. And there I was, wondering how this felt and why that ached, and enjoying that it was cold, but I was sweating. Wondering how my hair could be wet, the temperature could be 46 and I find that I’m enjoying myself. So I ran and walked eight miles. OK, really it was 7.94 miles, but my first rule of running is to round up. I walked the hills, because of whatever is going on with my legs. The entire route was on sidewalks or bike paths, except for one little bridge. I fairly well sprinted over that.

I don’t sprint.

I do not know what is happening.

Now, as I sit resting quietly, Allie has come for a visit. I moved to take a picture of her cuddliness and my poor posture, and she does this:

I can take photos of her with my camera all day long. She’ll tolerate an iPad being shoved in her face. You pull out your phone, and that is just going to ruin her night, you filthy paparazzo.

Things to read … because reading is fundamental.

A conversation on Mobile Content Strategy with Mark Coatney, Al Jazeera America:

Mark reads books on his commute so he believes that long form is absolutely possible on mobile. In his eyes a 5-minute video is long form. Short form means anything that is a steady stream of consumption: ‘stock and flow’. When asked if he was encompassing that theory by combining into one or splitting into two apps he replied “Two, but I hadn’t really thought of it like that”. One will give the steady stream of information and be more social. The other is a second screen, a companion that will give you more information, go deeper whenever a consumer wants to.

There is a ton of stuff, in that one simple paragraph.

Enhanced fan experiences: The sportd strategy of the second screen:

Consider this: 83% of fans say they use social media during games. Sixty-nine percent prefer phones as second-screen alternatives; 48 percent check scores and 20 percent watch highlights via mobile, according to data from March 2013.

[…]

Not enough is said or written about the engagement teams are having with fans in social. I feel conversations are not genuine enough and too many teams and leagues have built a barrier, not engaging fully with those who appreciate them most.

That is because most teams are terrible at the practice. The exemplar Tom Buchheim uses are the Boston Bruins. “The team uses replies to many fan tweets, even personalizing each response with the initials of those behind the scenes.”

So someone there understands Twitter is a conversation. Good for the Bruins. Why are most professional and big-time college franchises have difficulty grasping the attendant concepts? Buchheim continues:

Game time is go time in social media, and it can be chaotic. But teams should dedicate resources to connect one-to-one with fans more. Share their content. Have conversations. Build stronger bonds. This will only drive further engagement during the off-season and help fulfill social media’s true value — breaking down barriers and connecting people in authentic ways.

[…]

A sports fan’s second-screen options are endless. So are the ways teams and leagues can reach them during live events. It’s imperative fans find value in these experiences, whether they’re watching online, on their couches or in the bleachers. As it becomes ingrained into the sports experience, the second screen must be about the fan, providing deeper engagement, better access and increasing value.

The standard if/then/so structure there is heartening. These programs will figure it out, though I’m not sure why it will take them that long.

Who’s poor in America? 50 years into the ‘War on Poverty,’ a data portrait:

Today, most poor Americans are in their prime working years: In 2012, 57% of poor Americans were ages 18 to 64, versus 41.7% in 1959.

[…]

Today’s poor families are structured differently: In 1973, the first year for which data are available, more than half (51.4%) of poor families were headed by a married couple; 45.4% were headed by women. In 2012, just over half (50.3%) of poor families were female-headed, while 38.9% were headed by married couples.

Poverty is more evenly distributed, though still heaviest in the South: In 1969, 45.9% of poor Americans lived in the South, a region that accounted for 31% of the U.S. population at the time. At 17.9%, the South’s poverty rate was far above other regions. In 2012, the South was home to 37.3% of all Americans and 41.1% of the nation’s poor people; though the South’s poverty rate, 16.5%, was the highest among the four Census-designated regions, it was only 3.2 percentage points above the lowest (the Midwest).

Pew has a chart and a map on that page which say a lot, quickly.

And a more localized view, from Kaiser Family Foundation researchers:

All 10 southeastern states have poverty rates above the national figure. Mississippi (27 percent, second-highest) and Louisiana (26 percent, third-highest) are near the top of the rankings, while North Carolina and Florida, each at 21 percent, are just slightly above the U.S. rate.

Alabama, meanwhile, sits at 22 percent, ranked 15th overall.

family / photo / weekend — Comments Off
12
Jan 14

Catching up

These are a little bit old, from Christmas, but there’s no time like the present.

We did a Christmas event at my great-grandparents’ home. They’re both gone now, but there are still family events and kids and life and presents and running water and things. This is right above the steps on their side porch, where everyone entered, into the kitchen:

I always wondered what kind of wood they used there. It has aged well, considering how long the house and that porch have stood there. I like to thing that worn away spot is a sign of many happy visits to see good people.

Years ago I got my first real camera for Christmas and I shot some of the first rolls of film here. As we left after this particular Christmas event I made sure to notice with much happiness, and relief, that the old dinner bell was still in the yard. That was one of those first pictures. When I was being “artistic” or something. And now, here I am, taking pictures of nails on my phone.

My grandfather pulled out some old pictures he’d found while working his way through his parents things. This is the first one he pulled out. It isn’t exactly crisp. I didn’t have a scanner in my pocket and had to make do with a picture of a picture. He said it was all gone now. He didn’t know who the man was and the only thing that might be left, anywhere, was the plow over to the left margin.

Even still, I couldn’t help but look at every barn from here to there and wonder:

I asked him if he’d thought about taking these photographs to church. It is a community that has stuck together quite nicely over the decades. Maybe someone there would recognize an old family face. He didn’t seem too optimistic:

When you look at the entire series of photographs he’d found, in the nice crisp shots under better light, you could tell that a lot of the same faces kept popping up. So these are people somewhere in his family. In this picture two or three of those faces have similar features to some people he knows:

This is that same family. The original shot is fairly blurry, too. But they’d gotten out, put aside their chores and put on a nice jacket and went and stood outside the homestead for this shot. Now no one knows who these people are anymore, which is somehow both sad and a happy mystery.

Probably they are in Alabama here. Most of my families, I’ve found, settled here before it was a state, which of course pre-dates photography of this kind. If not in Alabama, these ghosts are more-than-likely standing in Tennessee.

Even still, there are family events and kids and life and presents and running water and things. It takes more than nails to hold a place together, to allow for the time to wear down that solid wood.

links / photo / running / things to read / weekend — Comments Off
11
Jan 14

Things in the air

We’re counting the days until the sun returns and the weather warms up and spring arrives. This morning we woke up to tornado watches. In the late morning the sun remembered its job and by the afternoon there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We got into the low 60s, too, and it was a perfect day to be outside.

So we ventured over to the local exercise path, a nice two-lane asphalt topped trail that crosses two little streams on its 1.5 miles. It is named as a bike path, but the walkers and joggers and strollers have taken over. Occasionally you’ll see a bike, but anyone doing more than soft pedaling is going to be on the adjacent road. I ran up and back down the path, and then did it again, for six miles.

On the second return trip I saw this:

Which isn’t terribly sharp, perhaps, because I was panting, but we’re going to just consider this foliage as another sign of a great spring is in the air.

Things to read … because the Internet is one enormous scavenger hunt …

Speaking of in the air, 110 million Target customers and … some more stores you haven’t even heard about yet. More well-known U.S. retailers victims of cyber attacks – sources:

Target Corp and Neiman Marcus are not the only U.S. retailers whose networks were breached over the holiday shopping season last year, according to sources familiar with attacks on other merchants that have yet to be publicly disclosed.

Smaller breaches on at least three other well-known U.S. retailers took place and were conducted using similar techniques as the one on Target, according to the people familiar with the attacks. Those breaches have yet to come to light. Also, similar breaches may have occurred earlier last year.

The sources said that they involved retailers with outlets in malls, but declined to elaborate.

So it is back to cash, then.

Closer to home, there was a Lego show in Birmingham. Check out the photos.

We’ll just let the headline do the talking here: Huntsville woman reports intruder hiding behind Christmas tree.

That cold snap earlier this week was so severe that in the northern part of the state so many pipes burst that all of the water storage tanks were drained, and people are having to conserve water. First world problems, huh?

Ominous: ‘For Every One Job Added, Nearly 5 People Left the Workforce’:

Today’s jobs report underscores a deeper problem facing our economy: a large and growing block of people who are chronically jobless and completely outside the workforce. In December, the economy added only 74,000 jobs – not nearly enough to keep up with population growth –and 347,000 left the workforce.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, says everything but “This is the new economy.” He’s not saying that because it doesn’t get votes, but people are seeing it. They’re realizing it. That’s in the air, too.

Auburn / Friday / photo / video — Comments Off
10
Jan 14

Just a few things, and a bit of stuff

It is thundering, which means there is lightning. Accompanying them is rain. Two of those things are odd in January. They haven’t happened since … last January, apparently. So maybe it isn’t so odd. But it sure seems like it. The high today was 55, and it was overcast and that didn’t feel spring-like. But the lightning and thunder helps set the mood.

Can it be spring yet?

Spent a little time uploading 166 photos to Facebook last night. They are all older, pictures from the last 18 months, because I am a rebel when it comes to timeliness. All day people have been liking and tagging and commenting. My Facebook account has never been so successful.

Went to the gymnastics meet tonight. Auburn hosted and defeated Texas Woman’s University 194.875-189.825.

This was their opening meet of their season, at the Auburn Arena. I walked around a bit and strolled through the new “museum,” which isn’t as nice or complete as the old Lovelace facility was. I found this:

Those are the two trophies commemorating the first two Iron Bowls. The statue marked the second game. The cup, which has fallen from the perch just out of the top of the margin, celebrates the first victory.

I hope someone notices that and puts it back on the little display shelf. We’ll check back next week.

Yesterday I wrote here in passing about the documentary shot on Google Glass. Here’s the official site for Project 2×1, and their promotional trailer.

And, to wrap things up, the best 73 seconds of video you’ll watch tonight. Austin Hatch was in two plane crashes and lost his entire family between them. Now he’s back, finally, to basketball:

Austin Hatch says on Twitter is still planning to play for the Wolverines, making us all, for a time, Michigan fans.

Finally, How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet:

The hard-earned trust that the tech giants had spent years building was in danger of evaporating—and they seemed powerless to do anything about it. Legally gagged, they weren’t free to provide the full context of their cooperation or resistance. Even the most emphatic denial—a blog post by Google CEO Larry Page and chief legal officer David Drummond headlined, “What the …”—did not quell suspicions. How could it, when an NSA slide indicated that anyone’s personal information was just one click away? When Drummond took questions on the Guardian website later in the month, his interlocutors were hostile:

“Isn’t this whole show not just a face-saving exercise … after you have been found to be in cahoots with the NSA?”

“How can we tell if Google is lying to us?”

“We lost a decade-long trust in you, Google.”

“I will cease using Google mail.”

The others under siege took note. “Every time we spoke it seemed to make matters worse,” an executive at one company says. “We just were not believed.”

“The fact is, the government can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” says Facebook’s global communications head, Michael Buckley. “We can put out any statement or statistics, but in the wake of what feels like weekly disclosures of other government activity, the question is, will anyone believe us?”

Since it comes down to money and government contracts, no, probably not.

Auburn / football / iPhone / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
7
Jan 14

The Reverse Tiger Walk

The often copied, and originally Auburn tradition of Tiger Walk — where the plays walk from the athletic department to the football stadium a few hours before they play — now has a companion tradition. When the team travels there is a Reverse Tiger Walk when they get back home.

This is the walk from earlier tonight, when Auburn’s team returned, tired from a cross country flight and a bus ride across half the state to make it back home. They found hundreds of fans waiting to welcome them, to congratulate them, to thank them:

They lined up diagonally across the length of the indoor practice facility. They were two and three and four and five deep on either side of the path the players would take. The team, fresh off a plane and then a bus, walked through the crowd, looking a bit tired, but there was plenty of enthusiasm in the air.

Athletics director Jay Jacobs greeted the hundreds in attendance and told the players in front of him, saying “This is truly what the Auburn Family means.”

To the fans, he noted, in case anyone lost count, “In the last 10 years no one has won more SEC championships than the Auburn football program.”

Head coach Gus Malzahn spoke to the crowd:

Senior running back Jay Prosch briefly greeted the crowd:

And so did senior defensive back, and Iron Bowl legend, Chris Davis:

Here is some video:

And that wraps up the football season, and the last real football thing I’ll write about here for a while.

Good thing we’re getting back in the pool tomorrow.