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Wednesday

Your most unusual ice cream

One of my annual projects took me snooping around campus today. Our printer brings us some of the plates from the newspaper as keepsakes. This is the day when they are delivered, and I spend a while searching for them.

My investigation led me to this door and the sign above it:

After what happened to your other hand, you’d think you’d learn, right?

Something I wrote on my student blog, The classes we wish we’d taken.

A professor friend in Texas wrote “The class I most wish I had taken is probably ‘How to Find Buried Treasure and Pick Winning Lottery Numbers.'”

They didn’t offer that in my undergrad curriculum.

The Yankee, Brian and I visited Bloodhound for dinner tonight. It is the hot new place in town, described to us as having specialties of bourbon and bacon. Looking at the menu, there’s nothing healthy at the place. We had to visit. Here’s their description:

Bloodhound is a family owned restaurant, bar and live music venue featuring over-the-top American classics, top shelf bourbon, 28 craft beers on tap, and a music line up sure to knock your socks off. Our atmosphere was designed to be warm and welcoming- think hunting lodge, antler-pronged barn setting with the hustle and bustle of old time Alabama. Our music venue is separate from the restaurant and dining area with it’s own bar, stage, and local art displays.

I had the bacon, turkey and avocado sandwich, which was great. The dijon really made the dish. They also offered free popcorn, popped in bacon grease. Tasted like popcorn.

It is a fine-food place in a casual atmosphere, keeping the slightly upscale prices. The meatloaf will set you back $16. Brian said it was delicious. I don’t doubt his evaluation, but have a hard time ordering a $16 meatloaf.

A big component of the place is the everything-local motif. They even offer honeysuckle ice cream. Seems they go out and collect the stuff in the spring. It takes bags of the flowers to make a gallon of ice cream, but it smells and tastes exactly like honeysuckle.

A little bit of the ice cream goes a long way, though.

Begs a question, though: what’s the most unusual flavor of ice cream you’ve ever tried?

Bunch of stuff on Twitter, and new things on Tumblr.

music / Samford / video / Wednesday — 1 Comment
18
Apr 12

The Rushton Memorial Carrilon

I took cookies to my students today, because everyone needs a cookie day.

Also, I stood outside and listened to Steve Knight play the Rushton Memorial Carillon above the Harwell Goodwin Davis Library. He’s been doing this for longer than I’ve been alive:

One of our students wrote a little story about him two years ago:

After studying organ under a blind organist in Paris in 1970, Knight’s interest in studying the carillon in Europe grew.

“I knew I wanted to get more involved in carillon, and I was interested in entering a composition contest,” he said. “I told myself that if I won the contest, I’d go over and study.”

With a friend writing down his composition, Knight composed “Pasacaglia Grave.”

He became the first blind American to win the contest, and a month later, was studying at the Royal Carillon School in Belgium.

Ten years later, in 1988, Knight played an organ recital in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. His parents had been encouraging him to play a recital in D.C. for a long time, so he made it happen.

Fascinating man, beautiful sound, lovely place.

adventures / iPhone / photo / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
11
Apr 12

Travel day

The Yankee planted this and we’re watching it grow:

Admire that while I’m on my plane.

Later, from San Antonio: we have arrived safely and in time for the Southern States Communication Association’s annual conference. The Yankee and I hold positions in the organization. We also have four or five papers and a panel to present during the conference.

Sadly, the banana pudding I purchased from Dreamland to take to all of the old Alabama grads did not make the trip. It turns out the federal government is afraid of it.

Let me say that again: the Transportation Security Administration feels that bananas, wafers and creme are dangerous.

The problem, you see, was that it was only partially frozen. Had it been solid they would not have been scared, because the guy who was making it up as he went along said, frozen things can’t be explosives.

We’ll wait as the chemists in the crowd have a little chortle.

So the pudding didn’t make it. I apologized profusely to a few people who’d been waiting on it since I promised it last year. But next year’s conference is within driving distance. Unless the TSA is going through my car by then — and at this rate … — we’ll all be indulging next April.

Saw this sign as we walked to a Mexican restaurant for dinner:

Dinner was at Rosario’s, which is apparently considered the best Mexican in town. It was quite delicious. And within walking distance of our hotel. One of the local conference-goers took us there.

I’ve been promised some barbecue this trip. I wonder if it will be at County Line.

Hey look, here’s River Walk:

It is quiet at this time of day on a Wednesday, I’m sure it will pick up.

Tomorrow the conference begins. I’ll post pictures, and spare you all of the conference details. Unless you want to hear about the methodology on this content analysis, or that discussion on the primaries, or the response I’m giving to a handful of mass comm papers, or our Super PAC paper, which promises to be a big hit …

Yeah, pictures then.

iPhone / movies / photo / Samford / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
4
Apr 12

Biscuits, rust and authors

The second-biggest problem with the camera in the iPhone is the depth of field. This looks like a lot more food than it really is.

But, then again, there’s the app that let’s you blur out everything but your focus. (And that biscuit was delicious.) There are also apps that turn your HDR photo into HDRerer, which makes rust look magestic. This is through my dirty windshield, in an oddly lit part of the day, so it doesn’t pop as it could, but:

Think that guy is a beach bum in training? His flip flops do.

To see the real work of an HDR app, consider this picture from a few years ago:

And here’s the treatment:

It really jumps, doesn’t it?

There’s no real particular point to that, other than to say that I had a biscuit for lunch. If you didn’t, you should have. And also, the amount rest of the food really wasn’t that impressive. I’m blaming the frame of the barbecue chicken. The biscuit was the best part, though.

We had a bestseller speak in our class today. Nancy Dorman-Hickson co-wrote the biography on Joanne King Herring, who is a icon of the Republican party in Texas. You might recall her from Charlie Wilson’s War, which demonstrated her role in drumming up support for the United States’ proxy role in the Russo-Afghanistan war:

She was upset, Hickson said, by how overtly sexual she was portrayed in the movie. She is a gentile, Southern lady and so on.

Hickson was great in the class where she talked about freelancing and becoming a book author. She said she got that book contract, in part, because Herring’s people Googled “Southern writer” and “Christian.” And when they did, a small magazine piece she wrote on a Lutheran church event got her foot in the door.

There was a small handful of writers they decided to try out. The prospective authors were to have a phone conversation with Herring, and from there write one of her stories, trying to capture her tone and rhythm.

Hickson says “She was to share one story. Joanne is Southern. Multiple stories ensued.”

Well, yeah. That’s as natural as biscuits.

cycling / iPhone / journalism / links / memories / Samford / things to read / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
28
Mar 12

Oh snap!

We are so very fortunate those words did not define our generation. You’ll see why at the bottom of the post.

Riding through the neighborhood the other evening I found I’d picked the neighborhood time for bicycles. Usually I see the ladies walking, or a mixture of people taking their dogs for a stroll. I often find kids out in their yards, but never anyone riding a bike.

But on this particular weekend evening I found four of them. I caught up with two at the stop sign that leads to the creek. At least one of them was even greener than I am. He was struggling with something at the intersection and his friend had turned and was waiting for him up ahead, his thigh across his crossbar.

The second pair I met soon after. The first I passed easily enough, he was just out for a ride. His partner wanted a race. And so surged up the hill after the creek. He was pedaling furiously, constantly looking over his shoulder. I pedaled furiously, clicking down through the gears and tapping out a rhythm I’ve never tried on that little hill. At the top he turned right and I turned left, but I had him. I was no good for the next few miles after that, but I would have had him.

It would be better if I didn’t get competitive about this sort of thing, as I am a bad cyclist.

But today, when I sat in my office doing office things, I thought about that hill. I thought about that little attempt at rushing up it. I thought about how my legs weren’t burning. That was a nice thought, for sitting in the office.

In class one group of students did a presentation and part of that was asking the question “Is print dead?” What followed was the best conversation of the entire semester. There were many different stances. Some said yes, some no. Others took the middle ground and wondered why we don’t simply say that print is changing. There were strong opinions. It was so great we’re turning it into an assignment.

Maybe I should have started the semester asking that question.

Things to read from my journalism blog: The interactive infographic uses a fancy ProPublica design as an example.

The increasingly useful Internet radio where I realize how many streaming apps I have on my phone, and we are teased with next month’s announcement of even more surprising smartphone penetration.

Two prisms, two news brands pulls together two stories, one on Al Jazeera English and the other on the growing Patch network. Both good reads of successfully growing (in different directions) projects.

From my evening drive: