Posts tagged Fav

Not a bad place to watch a game :-)

Not a bad place to watch a game :-)

Seeing Ellsbury steal home tonight in person reminded me that I’ve been lucky to see a lot of classic (non-playoff) moments in Fenway: Canseco pitching A-Rod’s MLB debut in the same game where John Valentin had an unassisted triple-play (about as common as a perfect game) Back-to-back-to-back-to-back homers Pedro shuts the door: In the final month of the season, he’d had 2 amazing performances on the road: 17 K’s in Yankee Stadium, than 14K in Jacobs Field. He came back to Fenway, and pitched a gem, striking out 12, and working the crowd masterfully. In the final inning, we all chanted his name (“PEDRO, PEDRO, PEDRO, PEDRO…”) as he mowed down each player, then the chants continued as we shuffled out of the stadium and out into the street. Vendors, neighbors, cab drivers. They all chanted. He was the Mayor of Boston that night. Billy Hatcher steals home: That was the coolest home swipe until Jacoby did it tonight (and 13 years to the day after the 4 consecutive dingers). The party night: Here’s my pics. Here’s my video.

Seeing Ellsbury steal home tonight in person reminded me that I’ve been lucky to see a lot of classic (non-playoff) moments in Fenway:

  • Canseco pitching
  • A-Rod’s MLB debut in the same game where John Valentin had an unassisted triple-play (about as common as a perfect game)
  • Back-to-back-to-back-to-back homers
  • Pedro shuts the door: In the final month of the season, he’d had 2 amazing performances on the road: 17 K’s in Yankee Stadium, than 14K in Jacobs Field. He came back to Fenway, and pitched a gem, striking out 12, and working the crowd masterfully. In the final inning, we all chanted his name (“PEDRO, PEDRO, PEDRO, PEDRO…”) as he mowed down each player, then the chants continued as we shuffled out of the stadium and out into the street. Vendors, neighbors, cab drivers. They all chanted. He was the Mayor of Boston that night.
  • Billy Hatcher steals home: That was the coolest home swipe until Jacoby did it tonight (and 13 years to the day after the 4 consecutive dingers).
  • The party night: Here’s my pics. Here’s my video.

overthemonster.com

Last weekend, I learned about tilt-shift photography from the crew with which I mini-golfed. This video is an example of many, many tilt-shift images combined to produce a video.

What I find most interesting about tilt-shifting, is its ability to make a large area (such as a stadium full of people) appear like a miniature model. At right is my first attempt at miniature faking with a shot I caught last year of Bill Buckner throwing out the first pitch at Fenway’s home opener.

80% of the Wikipedia entry on the subject went over my head, but this part sort of made sense:

Miniature faking is a post-processing technique, which involves selectively blurring a photo to simulate the narrow depth of field found in macro photography and some tilt-shift photography, making the image appear to be of a miniature model.
Um, by sheer coincidence, we happen to be watching the game next to Billy Bulger.

Um, by sheer coincidence, we happen to be watching the game next to Billy Bulger.

A friend stopped by our seats who works for the Sox, so I got to try on some rocks.

A friend stopped by our seats who works for the Sox, so I got to try on some rocks.

8 things I was surprised to learn about my Kindle

  1. Customer phone support is staffed by English speaking Americans. They’re articulate, friendly, smart, & when they have to pass you to someone else, they pass along all your info, so you never have to repeat it. The number’s 866-321-8851.
  2. You can take screenshots. This is handy if you want to email a pertinent passage to a friend, or post something on your blog. To grab a screenshot, you hit Alt+Shift+G.
  3. I found out from this site that you can call up the game Minesweeper by hitting Alt+Shift+M.
  4. You can load your favorite pictures onto the device, for enjoyment on the road. I like how they make everything look like a Wall Street Journal hedcut. The instructions are here.
  5. Most users know that you can upload files to your Kindle by emailing them to your personal address. Most folks also know that you’re charged $0.10 for each file, but I hadn’t known that you could send files to [your_address]@Free.Kindle.com, and have them converted for free. The trade off is that, instead of loading it onto your Kindle for you, they email you a file in Kindle’s format that you then upload manually, via USB.
  6. Based on an old (and since updated) post on Marco Arment’s blog, I was under the impression that Amazon had a proprietary connector, like Apple does for the iPod. It turns out, they’re using the relatively new micro USB for input. This should make it easier for all sorts of accessories to spring up, as USB is an open standard.
  7. The Kindle’s battery is not harmed by frequent charging, and doesn’t need to be regularly drained for maintenance purposes.
  8. This is probably known by everyone who owns the Kindle, but, in addition to “reading” books aloud, the Kindle will play music. The interface is pretty spartan for managing a playlist, but I’ve put a handful of instrumental jazz tunes on my device, in case I’m ever in a place where I’d like a little music to drown out background noise.

Catching up with 6 high school buddies at Lower Depths near Fenway in Boston. It’s a lot of fun to tell old stories every few years.

Catching up with 6 high school buddies at Lower Depths near Fenway in Boston. It’s a lot of fun to tell old stories every few years.

Lisa at sunset, in Naples.

Lisa at sunset, in Naples.

I’m lucky enough to have a lot of kind friends who sent me well wishes yesterday on my 30th b-day. Last year, I found it interesting to note how people said “happy birthday” to me. This year, I figured it’d be interesting to do the same expercise, then compare it to last year. I should be able to keep this up for many birthdays to come, and it will be neat to see how technology impacts this graph over time. A few easily gleamed findings: Twitter showed up on the list this year, where last year, the technology was still so new that it didn’t occur to any friends to use it as a medium. As a big Twitter fan, I particularly enjoyed those greetings (thanks, @ScottOrn, @JPDownsTex, @Deena_Malkina, & @Sheffi). Facebook dominates the list. The site makes it easy to see which of your friends are celebrating a birthday, and for as long as Facebook is culturally relevant (which I expect will be a good chunk of my lifetime, in some form or another), I’m sure it’ll have a big presence in this graph. Email shrunk quite a bit, and I’m thrilled about that. I treasured reading well worded epistles from the several friends who reached out to me via email yesterday, but if this is an indication that email in general is loosing juice, than I think that’s a good thing, for the sake of everyone’s productivity. This data population is certainly tainted by where I happen to be on the day of my b-day, but I enjoy the exercise of looking for trends and thinking about what this’ll look like in 5 years, 10 years, and beyond.

I’m lucky enough to have a lot of kind friends who sent me well wishes yesterday on my 30th b-day. Last year, I found it interesting to note how people said “happy birthday” to me.

This year, I figured it’d be interesting to do the same expercise, then compare it to last year. I should be able to keep this up for many birthdays to come, and it will be neat to see how technology impacts this graph over time.

A few easily gleamed findings:

  • Twitter showed up on the list this year, where last year, the technology was still so new that it didn’t occur to any friends to use it as a medium. As a big Twitter fan, I particularly enjoyed those greetings (thanks, @ScottOrn, @JPDownsTex, @Deena_Malkina, & @Sheffi).
  • Facebook dominates the list. The site makes it easy to see which of your friends are celebrating a birthday, and for as long as Facebook is culturally relevant (which I expect will be a good chunk of my lifetime, in some form or another), I’m sure it’ll have a big presence in this graph.
  • Email shrunk quite a bit, and I’m thrilled about that. I treasured reading well worded epistles from the several friends who reached out to me via email yesterday, but if this is an indication that email in general is loosing juice, than I think that’s a good thing, for the sake of everyone’s productivity.

This data population is certainly tainted by where I happen to be on the day of my b-day, but I enjoy the exercise of looking for trends and thinking about what this’ll look like in 5 years, 10 years, and beyond.

Well, now I feel like a big shot. I got an email about about 6 months ago from someone who had come across this pan of mine from a pilgrimage to South Bend with a Notre Dame alum buddy of mine, Paul, and a bunch of other buddies from school. He liked the shot a lot (which really flattered me, because I love shooting pans), and was about to build a bar in his home, and wanted to blow up my image, and decoupage over it to make the counter top. Several months later, I guess his work is complete. I really liked the way that it came out, and I bet this “rec room” in his home is a ton of fun. God bless the Internet for connecting people to make things like this possible.

Well, now I feel like a big shot.

I got an email about about 6 months ago from someone who had come across this pan of mine from a pilgrimage to South Bend with a Notre Dame alum buddy of mine, Paul, and a bunch of other buddies from school.

He liked the shot a lot (which really flattered me, because I love shooting pans), and was about to build a bar in his home, and wanted to blow up my image, and decoupage over it to make the counter top.

Several months later, I guess his work is complete. I really liked the way that it came out, and I bet this “rec room” in his home is a ton of fun. God bless the Internet for connecting people to make things like this possible.

I found this via Zolora: Create your own band and debut album cover randomly To Do This: Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. The first random Wikipedia article that comes up is the name of your band. Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 - The last four or five words of the very LAST quote on the page is the title of your first album. Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days - The third picture in the top row, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together. Post it to your preferred online outlet with this text in the “caption” or “comment” and TAG the friends you want to join in. I was psyched with the way mine turned out. This would be a great 3rd album for a pretty edgy band. The teddy bear would be ironic (but real fans would note the reference to FanZanimals), and the “If You Have the Time” title would be false false modesty. So clever.

I found this via Zolora:

Create your own band and debut album cover randomly

To Do This:

  1. Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. The first random Wikipedia article that comes up is the name of your band.
  2. Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 - The last four or five words of the very LAST quote on the page is the title of your first album.
  3. Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days - The third picture in the top row, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
  4. Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
  5. Post it to your preferred online outlet with this text in the “caption” or “comment” and TAG the friends you want to join in.

I was psyched with the way mine turned out. This would be a great 3rd album for a pretty edgy band. The teddy bear would be ironic (but real fans would note the reference to FanZanimals), and the “If You Have the Time” title would be false false modesty. So clever.

I can only imagine how many times they had to go back and forth before this sunk in; like the time when I was 12 and my older brother had to explain why Pee-Wee Herman was in the news.

I can only imagine how many times they had to go back and forth before this sunk in; like the time when I was 12 and my older brother had to explain why Pee-Wee Herman was in the news.

Scary coincidence

There was a funny moment last night when I was downstairs, and I heard our fire alarm go off.

Lisa was upstairs cooking, and our alarm goes off probably 20% of the time that we use our oven. I was on an important phone call, so I didn’t respond to the alarm.

A few minutes went by, and the alarm was still going off. I happened to casually glance out my window, and saw 3 fire trucks within a 100 yards of my apartment.

What would your next thought be in that situation?

I darted upstairs to discover that the only thing that had burned in our apartment was a piece of bread, but I was reminded of the danger of frequent false positives.

6 ideas Twitter needs to borrow from Tumblr

First thing’s first: When I complain about Twitter, I feel like one of those people that says Jennifer Aniston’s not pretty. Obviously Twitter is one of the best things to happen to the Internet in years (and the same could probably be said of Aniston with respect to tabloids), but it’s worth noting that the team could make certain tweaks to the site for the better (just as Aniston needed a nose job to kick start her career).

Second thing’s second: There’s a million changes Twitter could make, but most are better left to folks making 3rd party apps or extensions. An ecosystem surrounding a product is worth a lot (just ask Apple), so leaving some value on the table for non-employees is a good idea. I’ll focus on what the site itself should change without unnecessarily cutting into the “Tweecosystem”.

  1. THREADED CONVERSATIONS
    • Problem: Many people use Twitter to conduct public conversations. I like that Twitter includes a link by each response pointing to the prior message, and I often click through to get some context. Many Twitter plug-ins will pull that text in, saving you the click, but if the conversation has gone back and forth a few times, this quickly gets messy.
    • Tumblr’s solution: Pull in the full text going all the way back, but clearly delineate the history visually. I’d understand wanting to force the user through several clicks if Twitter had an ad revenue model, but that’s not the case. Tumblr has even done this for Twitter when they recently integrated tweets in to their dashboard, so we know it’s possible.

  2. FAVORITING/LIKING
    • Problem: Twitter will let me “favorite” certain posts, but I never know when my content has been favorited.
    • Tumblr’s solution: I get an update in my dashboard when I’ve been “liked”. Most readers don’t go to the trouble of commenting, but it’s quite satisfying to click the little heart in the corner of screen. It’s like a virtual pat on the back. Knowing I’m appreciated makes me want to produce more content. Twitter users don’t click the favorite button much, but that’s because it’s currently a waste of time. If Twitter users knew the information went somewhere, they’d be more likely to use the feature.

  3. RETWEETING/REBLOGGING
    • Problem: “ReTweeting” is as awkward to do as it is to say. There’s no standard, and it’s easy to run out of characters. [Caveat: I dislike 99% of Retweets. If the feature was built into the site, it should also be something a reader could filter out.]
    • Tumblr’s solution: Build in reblogging as a standard, and even central feature of the site. They even, conveniently, distinguish between the original author and any subsequent reblogger, so you can get a sense of the whole chain through which content has been passed. Also, and this is important, Tumblr deprecates the original content, and places the focus on your response to that content. The internet has far too many curators, and not enough artists (I’m as guilty as anyone).

  4. PLAYING NICE WITH OTHERS
    • Problem: Twitter can’t do everything by themselves.
    • Tumblr’s solution: Tumblr didn’t want to do comments, but they’ve cooperated quite nicely with Disqus to make them available. Tumblr had customers that wanted to upload original video, so they partnered with Vimeo. Why couldn’t Twitter pick a handful of winners as partners, in several important categories. They’ve sort of done this with TinyURL for link shortening, but the implementation was unintuitive and inelegant (neither of those words are very cromulent). Why not partner with Bit.ly for a link shortening solution, and design it so even a grandmother can understand? Promote Bit.ly, and pull in some of their awesome analytic info at the same time. Why not partner with TwitPic to make photo-sharing dead simple? 5% of all links on Twitter are to TwitPic, so make it easy on the users.

  5. LEADING BY EXAMPLE
    • Problem: Most users don’t know what to write when they get started. Anyone who’s ever tried to introduce a friend to Twitter has faced the challenge of explaining how to use it.
    • Tumblr’s solution: One of the best tumblog’s out there is that of the lead-developer, Marco Arment. He’s setting a great example. The site also has a “radar” section that highlights great content. Twitter’s founders are some of the most followed people in the community, but they rarely write much, and aren’t particularly clever when they do. Twitter’s head of support, @Crystal, used to write quite a bit more, and she was interesting, but it seems like she’s too busy these days.

  6. TAKING THE COMMUNITY OFFLINE
    • Problem: Twitter use can feel isolating. Until you have a bunch of your friends on the site, or you’ve discovered a bunch of people you enjoy following, it doesn’t really feel like a community.
    • Tumblr’s solution: Tumblr encourages meetups in cities where they’re popular, and employees often turnout. You see pics on their site all the time of friends clinking beers at bars and referring to each other by their usernames. I’ve never been to one of these, but I enjoying being a part of a legitimate community.

Let me know in the comments if I’ve missed anything, if I’m wrong about anything, or if there’s anything Tumblr should borrow from Twitter (I doubt there is).

Now THAT's optimism

  • Me to the United check-in counter: What are my chances of getting an upgrade?
  • United lady: Well, 1st class is checked in fully, & you're 6th on the wait-list..
  • Me: So, no chance.
  • United lady: I wouldn't say that.