Before I start, as a side note, I wish I wasn’t so busy at work right now, otherwise I would have posted this earlier, and also participated in liveblogging. Argh.
Surely, there are plenty of emotions that are being felt in this nation today. Jubilation. Pride. Amazement. For me, it’s all of those, but something else keeps finding it’s way to the top: relief. I just can’t seem to get over the fact that I am so relieved that George W. Bush is no longer our President.
Read MoreI just read an article on ESPN about Jonathon Papelbon’s recent re-signing with the Red Sox.
The Boston Red Sox signed closer Jonathan Papelbon to a one-year contract worth $6.25 million Tuesday, the largest deal in history for a closer who was eligible for arbitration for the first time.
The problem is, they had to make an article out of this and found the flimsiest fact to try and make the article interesting.
All sports reporting is subject to this because there is rarely anything that is cold and hard about the world of sports. Sure, you have statistics, but what do those really show? They are the most empirical facts about the sporting world, but, because they are based in the past, can only help predict what may happen in the present moment.
The problem becomes when statistics and facts become records so easily. It’s equivalent to getting an award for “Most Aggressive” on your 8 year-old house-league hockey team. In this age of digital, it’s only gotten worse with millions of archives able to pull up any statistic possible, stringing a few facts together to present a new, never thought of record based upon qualifiers such as “for a closer” or “eligible for arbitration for his first time.” These kinds of statistics are useless, ultimately just proving sports analysts to have the ability to string together a few facts to make something more interesting.
Sports broadcasts are no different. If you know a sport, drown out the meaningless statistics with a mute button because you probably already know the implications for important records before they show it. Tell me what you think sports fans…
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Hello fellow Juicers,
There is a little game called Geometry Wars Evolved 2. Choof and I have been having a little friendly competition in the game mode “pacifism” that I would like to share with you all.
The battle began when I had a high score of 140,000,000 (in that ball park) thinking no one would come close to touching my awesomness. Lo’ and behold Choof comes along and knocks me off my pillar with a score of 160,953,250. Due to my competitive nature I couldn’t let this go down, so I spent almost all of my free time this weekend polishing up my game to the detriment of my school work and Second Life shizniz.
Finally, on this historic day, I have once again assumed the rank of top dog with a score of 226,475,050. Choof, you have some work to do.
Over and out!
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That’s right. I’m going to summarize the story of Vince, the ShamWow guy for you. A longer story is here.
Vince is the ShamWow guy. And… he’s the SlapChop guy! Before this I’d be happy to just mock this guy forever. But I found out something amazing about him. He’s a crusader! He’s a hero. He deserves our admiration and respect.
Before we knew Vince as the ShamWow guy, he was Vince, the struggling director and member of the Church of Scientology. Vince wanted to make a movie, and used his contacts within Scientology to start doing just that. The movie was offensive to the church, and rather than being grown up about it, they were childish. They charged him with crimes against scientology (oooh, dramatic). Long story short, they ruined his life.
But he fought back, by being very good at selling ShamWows and SlapChops. He is on a personal crusade to bring down Scientology. He’s spending his cut of sales on doing all he can to destroy his former church. I love a good vendetta (and broken gold!).
Read MoreObama is up. Let the inaugurations … begin!
Speaking of which, that announcer’s voice is pretty intense. Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! Obama! Obama! Obama! Heeeeerreeeees BARACK!
11:49: Here is that Rick Warren guy. Lets hope he doesn’t upset … everyone.
11:50: A little too religious for me. I can let it roll off my back like a duck. No more comments on him.
11:52: Is this common? I am just curious. Do they normally do the Lord’s prayer at inaugurations? Brian?
11:54: Okay, maybe I am just having more fun than I should have … but that is one big bow on Aretha Franklin’s head. That is my last People magazine comment …
11:56: Good performance.
11:58: ‘atta boy Joe
11:59: Boy kisses ewwww …
12:03: Good choice with Yo-Yo Ma. Although it has got to be freezing.
12:05: Poor guy is getting owned! Some slip ups on the oath. Silly Barack. Matt was wondering if it was presented to him out of order. The “faithfully” sounded out of place … is this true?
12:10: I am digging this speech so far. He is doing a good job. I like the mention of the less quantitative lack of confidence.
12:15: Missed five minutes of the speech. We got booted from CSPAN. The tubes got clogged.
12:17: Nice. Address that constitution Barack!
12:28: Its over. I got kind of teary. I didn’t expect it. Not during the speech, but after. Kind of startled me. Great stuff.
Read MoreI went to a few places that were pretty choppy. This place seems to work well. Swearing in is at noon, Barack gives a speech around 12:05.
http://inaugural.senate.gov/history/video/video-2009-obama.cfm
UPDATE: NY Times site is MUCH better
http://nytimes.com/?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1232470837-nHu/HeRhZf7Of8vEETz3oQ
… until the big day.
[Sorry Brian. You are behind by a couple of hours. I won't try to guess, since Arizona has got to be different and create its own time zone and all ...]
Read MoreNo sound for first 7 or 8 seconds.
wait for it… wait for it… waaaait for it… there it is.
A wonderful adventure in Redhook, Brooklyn. January 19, 2009.
Music by the always enthusiastic Tomcat McFarland.
Read MoreFrom ReadWriteWeb’s writeup:
…Regardless of the attendance, one thing is for sure: with nearly ubiquitous access to cameras and video equipment, this will be the most well-documented inauguration, ever. Now, the Microsoft Photosynth team has announced that they will be making the event even more memorable – by creating a three-dimensional “synth” of the inauguration from your photos.
Sounds pretty cool, right? So how does one participate?
1. Take one photo of the moment when Obama takes the oath. If you have a digital camera with a zoom lens, take three photos (wide-angle, mid-zoom, full-zoom)
2. E-mail each photo as soon as possible to themoment@cnn.com (one photo per message, 10MB size limit). Don’t forget to include your name in the message if you’d like to appear in the list of the contributors. Please only send in photos you took yourself.
3. Go to cnn.com/themoment to see all of the photos in our photosynth
The good news? Anyone with a digital camera can participate and take part in recording history. In addition to the Photosynth project, all of the photos will also be shared via iReport. Then, there’s the bad news. If you want to see the finished work in all its glory, you have to have access to a Windows machine. Photosynth is only fully supported support Vista and XP currently. But they do offer an experimental Silverlight-based Photosynth player for other platforms. (I used the experimental viewer and it worked very well.)
Brian you should so get in on that.
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