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Thursday

Road trip

I got a rental van. It arrived a bit later than it should, so we left precisely 14 minutes after I wanted to. But, still, getting on the road at 3:46 when you were hoping for 3:32 isn’t bad when you consider you’re pulling in six people’s schedules and the general We’ll be there at 2:30 or 3:15-ness of the rental car guy.

We live in an amazing time if you think of it. I looked at glowing words on this flat screen, picked up a hunk of plastic and called a hotel, booked four rooms, found more words on the screen and made arrangements for a rental van. (Of course they called me in return three times, but that’s trivial.) I arranged all of the paperwork, procured the department’s blessing, recruited four students and a colleague, made them all sign the inevitable waivers and now we are bouncing all over western Alabama, Mississippi and western Tennessee.

Here we’d stopped for gas in Tupelo:

Brother, if your tank is low you better stop in Tupelo. It is a long walk in either direction if it purrs, conks and dies.

Our rental performed admirably, even with a distinct twang in Tennessee as we drove on the Rockabilly Highway, a 55-mile stretch of Highway 45, from Mississippi to Interstate 40. Look, I’m the guy who always wonders about the stories behind the names we put on roads, who regularly rides the actual Lost Highway and still does it with wonderment. So believe me, being on something called the Rockabilly Highway was pretty great.

Apparently there are Rockabilly murals here and there along the Rockabilly Highway, but it was dark and raining — which sounds like a song in of itself — so we didn’t see any. Shame that highway doesn’t stretch into Mississippi, though. Jumpin’ Gene Simmons was from Tupelo:

That video is understated and terrific, except our disc jockey didn’t walk it all the way up to the post. Everything else is perfect.

Anyway, we made it to beautiful and cosmopolitan Jackson, Tenn. around 8 p.m., just in time to register for the Southeast Journalism Conference. It runs tomorrow and Saturday and is a good trip for the undergraduates. They hear inspirational messages from talented professionals, met peers, eat free food, win awards and so on.

We had dinner at a place called Redbone’s right across from our hotel. They made a nice Casear Salad, and one of the students complimented their ribs. The band was good, if loud. And then they did a Beatles’ song that might have been a bit ambitious for two guys running their percussion through a keyboard. But they did enjoy themselves, and seemed to know they did Sweet Baby James just right.

Checked into the hotel mostly uneventfully. Everyone crashed into their rooms. I ironed in mine. Very exciting night, really. But tomorrow will be a busy day.

iPhone / journalism / links / photo / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off
14
Feb 13

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day. It was clear and cold. I spent time this evening making a birthday video and working on my computer, which refused to load iMovie for much of the night. Happily, the Internet was able to save the day after a delicious Valentine’s steak dinner. I deleted everything related to iMovie except iMovie, restarted the machine 49 times, bribed, threatened and cajoled the thing and, finally, the program loaded.

And so I was able to edit the video and send it off just in time. It was, I think, a good video.

I found a neat app that mimics a depth of field to your cameraphone photos. It is called Big Lens and is done by touch. It works pretty well. Here’s a before and after:

I overdid it a bit on the effect in this first example, which just goes to show how differently things look on a phone screen compared to a monitor. But, still, there might be something useful in the app. A phone’s camera can be very useful, but it has a few obvious shortcomings. Maybe things like this app will help. If you don’t mind editorializing.

Things to read. A recent panel asked “What role does computation have in the practice of journalism today and in the near future?” That is a fine read. My answer: More and more every day.

Time Warner looks to unload their print properties. It is all very much up in the air, but this is going to be a big story.

Need a last-minute card? Consult The Auburner for all your Valentine’s Day needs.

And, finally, I received an email intended for someone else. It was from a florist. The inscription read “I just wont you to no I love you.”

Proofread, friends.

Now I must go give my cards …

Auburn / Glomerata / links / music / photo / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off
7
Feb 13

We have a mystery song

Stayed cloudy and gray and dim all day. Never topped 55 degrees, according to the local weather station. Though it never really felt like that warm. I had a few minutes that I could have pedaled around on my bicycle, but I did not. Too cold. Presently my baseline is 52 degrees.

So I stayed inside and did other things. And I counted the minutes until dinnertime, when we could enjoy the rest of last night’s delicious gumbo. Homemade and good stuff. You should be so lucky!

Every so often you see stories about social media fatigue. On the other hand, here is a piece discussing Innovative uses for social media:

(W)e predict that in 2013 social media intelligence will become much more commonplace as businesses, government agencies and not-for-profit organisations seek to leverage this new, unparalleled wealth of information.

There’s a list. It should include things like tracking illness, moving money, wide scale gaming, collaborative art and more.

To aggregate or not to aggregate. The debate continues:

aggregation or curation is a fact of life in the digital age — just as record companies have had to learn to live with rampant downloading and sharing of music, publishers of all kinds are trying to get used to the idea that their content is no longer under their control.

… which is fine as a philosophical point. The reality is you can’t put it back in the box.

Here’s a new show to watch:

The Weather Channel’s latest reality show, and coastal Alabama’s latest taste of reality-show exposure, “Reef Wranglers” makes its premiere at 8 p.m. Central time on Tuesday, Feb. 12. It’s a limited four-episode series focusing on the adventures of the crew at Reefmaker, a business based at Walter Marine in Orange Beach.

Should be worth it for the underwater scenes. Ignore the stereotypes, if the producers allow you.

I got a new Glomerata today. Actually I have a few new ones to add to the site, so I’ll do that in the next few weeks. But this one is especially special, one of the earliest editions. Inside was this:

There are two pages of sheet music to this diddy. This book is so old that it is entirely possible that no one alive has ever heard this tune. Can’t wait to know what it sounds like.

Come play it for me?

cycling / journalism / links / things to read / Thursday — Comments Off
31
Jan 13

I quote Keating

I found the perfect 20 mile route around town this evening. Leave the house, pedal around the loop and add on this road and that and come down the last hill and then up through the neighborhood and 20.00 on the Cateye, precisely. Remarkable.

And I was only almost hit by a car once. This never ceases to amaze me. On any country road around here people will move way over to the left as they go by. Get on one of the four lane roads and they’ll get as close to you as possible, even if every other lane is open to their use. Today this particular driver was obviously unprepared or unmoved by the three feet law — 36 lousy inches, that’s what you’re supposed to give. Had I been glancing down at my gears, and had my left shoulder or right foot been down at the time, I would have drifted just a bit and that car would have hit me. It was chillingly close, which is a delightful way to make you question if you’re full comfortable in the saddle again.

Anyway, lovely ride notwithstanding. A little faster than I’ve recently been, but still nothing worth mentioning. The heart rate is the thing, and all that.

Some things to read: Salesman: Bama players used spray:

Key said players bought products at a rate he cited as confidential.

“They want to win,” he said. “After the games they said they couldn’t believe how they weren’t tired and how much energy they had.”

I know they are sports writers, but even those guys should be able to identify when they are giving unscrupulous commercials to people. I don’t really care one way or another about this story as a sports story. It is frustrating how the reporters have really allowed themselves to be complicit in these miracle elixir pitchmen to glam themselves up. That’s a shame.

Oral history of the Super Bowl Shuffle, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Or taxes, if you prefer. Alabama tax system lands in ‘terrible 10’.

I like this one, Eight ways journalists can use SoundCloud:

1. To post news programming

2. To report from the field and post audio from interviews

3. Record, edit and upload a recording from an iPhone

There are a lot of great ideas and details there.

And, finally, a real thinker: How to redesign the beat for engagement, impact, and accountability:

Instead of going to the candidates and talking to them about their agendas, we flipped it. We made a public call: We’re coming to your neighborhood. Show us what needs fixing. We then sent a reporter into each district for one week. The reporters did ride-alongs with locals, quizzed residents, and found out what city-level issues mattered to them.

We wrote about those community needs. Then, we took that residents’ agenda back to the candidates and asked what they would do to address it.

The approach sparked a series of revelations that have reshaped how I look at the fundamental choices we make as journalists. It turns out our coverage for years had been focused on things that didn’t seem to matter all that much to even active San Diego residents.

There’s a difference between monologuing and conversing.

This is the sixth and cumulative point of a draft plan I’m writing on right now, it falls in step neatly with that, and may be helpful in preparing young journalists for the world they’ll one day enter:

Engage your audience. Ask for their questions. Get and share the answers from appropriate sources. Follow your most active readers and repost their most compelling material. Engagement becomes reporting, which draws more readers, who increase your engagement. Remember: the audience, in the aggregate, is always going to know more than you as an individual.

“‘Twas always thus, and always thus shall be.”

Check out the historic marker series earlier? Breeze through the full and growing site! There’s always Twitter! And Tumblr too!

Auburn / cycling / history / markers / photo / site / Thursday — Comments Off
24
Jan 13

A few photographs

Here is a panorama of the historic Auburn train station. Click to embiggen in another tab:

Lot of history in that joint. Jefferson Davis reviewed the Auburn Guard there as he was on his way to his inauguration at Montgomery. That was, apparently, the first presidential review in the Confederacy. This is also the place where students sabotaged Georgia Tech’s football team in 1896:

The Wreck Tech parade, and the pajamas, date back to their first football meeting in 1896 where legend has it that the A.P.I. students snuck to the train station under cover of darkness and greased the tracks. The train couldn’t get stopped at the station and the Tech players had to walk some five miles back to Auburn to get their 45-0 beating.

The last train passenger was called aboard in 1970. Empty for almost a decade now, the last tenant was a real estate agency. The old building needs a lot of TLC.

Here’s a door handle at the train station:

And by the rails, a self portrait at the first sign passengers would have seen getting off the train:

A closer view of a font you’ll never see again:

These shots were part of a brief ride today. I got other pictures today, so the marker series will return next week. That’s progress.

Nothing about the ride felt very good today, though. Nothing about me felt very confident of myself. Just a lousy ride. But I also found an incredible curve I had to slow down through, lest I wind up in the trees. And then I had to ride through a big neighborhood disagreement that involved at least five police officers, two of which I almost hit on my bike because they didn’t look both ways before crossing the street. One of those days.

Here’s a sunset over Agricultural Heritage Park, with the intramural field in the background to the right:

Even “those days” are beautiful.