Musings

Today I learned first-hand what chicken poker is.

First, you have to prep the “field.” Establish a grid, lay one playing card for each square. It’s pretty much mandatory that the grid be “fenced.” Sell tickets for what you can get ($1 this day). Each “ticket” is a playing card corresponding to the ones distributed in the squares. Introduce the chicken. Wait for product.

Winner, of course, holds the card corresponding to the one in the square inoculated by the chicken.

This at a wedding, mind you!

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Step right up!

Windy today, but with the sun: quite nice! Whatta surprise to find a few hardy lupins still blooming as autumnal overnight temperatures begin to turn the leaves, especially on the maples, glorious colors.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Temperate continental season-change

In these crazy economic times, perhaps you can afford to drop in at the beauteee shoppeee, but maybe you can’t afford a comb-out.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Whatcha gonna do?

Night-day and day-night changes can yield tremendously compelling skies. I was surprised the camera pulled out the flag colors in the low light.

For a non sequitur: today was vegetable day. Tomatoes, green beans, red and green sweet peppers (all from the Botanist’s garden). Not a tremendous variety, but, ooooh, some tasty eating!

Posted at 8:52 PM | Comments Off on Fading, windy day

Doesn’t this architecture (and setting) just scream New England?

Love the color, too, but a city-person choice rather than a farmer choice, I think….

From the weekend….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Time code

I’m figuring the bus-paint manufacturers that cater to the candidate trade (vs. the school bus trade) stock lots of red, white, and blue, but the gamble is how much of the accent colors to stock. Here, the choice is gold, so does that come off as too upscale?

The short story is: you never know what you’ll find parked at a gas station (etc.) just off the highway.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on What color is your…bus?

If I could zip through the vegetable aisle in a vehicle with two steering wheels, I’d probably enjoy it more!

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Impossible engineering?

Back to last night’s game—this is a crucial part of the 3D broadcast process; these are the screens the truck-guys watched to make sure the left-eye and right-eye pictures “came together” (not a technical term) properly. They watched those grey pictures on the left like hawks. Those projections highlighted whether the dual pictures were in registration (my term, maybe theirs too, I dunno) or not. Remember, most of the cameras were right down on the field, and the field was HOT! Tough conditions, we thought…but the guy in charge of the cameras said they’d done 3D shoots in India, Australia, so this was, well, not the worst yet.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on 3D camera picture-perfect

Remember a 3D camera is really two cameras, stuck together with the lens distance carefully calibrated. This gear is ungainly more than it is heavy, I was told by a camera-dude. Still, I’m very glad I didn’t wear it!

And, here’s the picture on a 3D monitor, playing in 3D—the view without glasses to “fix” the image and make it 3D!

The 3D team got all the glitches taken care of by game time, and we heard ooohs! and aaahs! for the graphics (and the pictures, uh-huh), and even laudatory comments from an assortment of big-wigs, we were told!!!

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

In our leetle world today, the focus has been on 3D. But not HBA 3D like this!

HBA = health and beauty aids, in Meijer parlance

Posted at 9:53 PM | 1 Comment »