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Monday, August 17, 2009
Foul Ball Audio

I don’t know why I didn’t think to do it until yesterday, but I decided to listen to the radio broadcasts of my foul ball. No mention of the catch on the Padres broadcast, but they talked about it on WFAN! Click Play to listen. 🙂

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Posted by alan to baseball at 10:08 am PT | Link | Comments (4)
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Stadium Tour

JetBlue is offering an All-You-Can-Jet pass for $599. It inspired me to take a trip, since I certainly have the time right now. All the flights are booked, but I haven’t finalized hotel, car, and baseball ticket details yet. Still working on that, but it’ll all come together soon. My itinerary:

9/7  	SBA to LAX 	AA 3042 		1:45PM-2:30PM		
	LAX to LAS 	AA 741   		4:25PM-5:40PM		
9/8	LAS to JFK 	JetBlue 192 		11:15AM-7:39PM		
9/9	TB @ NYY 				7:05PM
9/10	FLA @ NYM 				7:10PM
9/11	NYM @ PHI  				7:05PM
9/12
9/13	WAS @ NYG 				4:15PM
9/14	JFK to BOS	JetBlue 1012		1:35PM-2:36PM		
9/15	ANA @ BOS				7:10PM
9/16	ANA @ BOS				7:10PM
9/17	BOS to TPA	JetBlue 441		8:35AM-11:50AM		
9/18	TOR @ TB				7:38PM
9/19	MCO to IAD	JetBlue 334		1:15PM-3:19PM		
9/20	BOS @ BAL 				1:35PM
9/21
9/22	LAD @ WAS				7:05PM
9/23	IAD to FLL	JetBlue 301		8:00AM-10:33AM	
9/24	
9/25	NYM @ FLA				7:10PM
9/26	NYM @ FLA				7:10PM
9/27	FLL to JFK	JetBlue 146		8:45AM-11:27AM		
9/28	
9/29
9/30	JFK to DEN	JetBlue 125		7:55AM-10:16AM	
10/1	MIL @ COL				1:10PM
10/2	DEN to SEA	Frontier 835		12:18PM-2:09PM		
10/3	TEX @ SEA			 	TBD
10/4	TEX @ SEA				1:10PM
10/5	SEA to LGB	JetBlue 293		11:25AM-2:00PM		
	LGB to LAS	JetBlue 286		2:50PM-4:00PM
10/8	LAS to LAX	AA 776			6:35PM-7:25PM		
	LAX to SBA	AA 3035			9:00PM-9:40PM		

As I said, baseball tickets and hotels are not booked yet. If any of you are in those areas and want to go to a game, please let me know! If you can offer me a couch to crash on, that would be appreciated, too. 🙂

This trip has 13 games in 10 stadiums (Citi Field being the only one I’ve been to – 9 new stadiums!), plus the Giants season opener, if I decide to spend the money for a ticket to that. Gonna be fun.

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Posted by alan to baseball at 4:37 pm PT | Link | Comments (5)
Monday, August 10, 2009
Foul Ball

I went to see the Mets play in San Diego on Saturday, a 3-1 loss dropping my season record to 2-8. Traffic on the way down was hell, I had just lost a bunch of money playing poker, and was in a pretty bad mood when I got there. Alex Cora, the second batter of the game, hit a home run to put the Mets up 1-0. That helped. Then, in the third inning, David Wright fouled a ball back that cheered me right up. Those of you who follow me on Twitter were the first to know

Earlier this year, I caught a batting practice home run in San Francisco, out over the right field wall. That was fun, but it was batting practice. I’m not even sure who hit it. Someone on the Giants. Saturday, I was sitting in the front row of the Toyota Terrace, section 203, at PETCO Park. At the start of the game, the guy sitting next to me was asking some teenagers he knew sitting behind us if they brought their gloves for a foul ball. I held mine up, and said I was ready. They made some comment about me being a Mets fan.

The ball came back off the bat fast. I jumped out of my seat, reached up as high as I could, and it hit right in the pocket of my glove. The next minute or so was a blur. I sent off a tweet, a few text messages, some messages to Facebook. Took a picture of the ball. Missed Wright, whose jersey I was wearing, striking out to end the at bat. But at that moment, I didn’t care. I’ve been going to games for a long time, and always bring my glove. This was the first time I’d ever caught a ball during a game. A few times I’ve gotten balls that outfielders threw into the stands after warming up between innings, and once after catching the third out. That’s just not the same.

My next thought was wondering if I got on TV. When I got back to a computer, I checked both the Mets and Padres archived games on MLB.tv. Sadly, the camera stayed on Wright at the plate. I did notice something I completely missed at the game, though: I got a nice cheer from the crowd for my catch. I spent yesterday trying to figure out how to save that clip. A little hacking around with mlbviewer and mplayer, and I was able to do so.

So I now have a batting practice home run, and a foul ball from a game. Next step: catching a game home run.

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Posted by alan to baseball at 2:11 pm PT | Link | Comments (2)
Monday, June 8, 2009
Welcome Back, Palm

Two and a half years ago, I switched from a long line of Treos (180, 270, 600, 650, over 5 years) to a Blackberry Pearl. When I first got it, I loved it. I did for about a year and a half, and then things started to go downhill. An operating system memory leak would cause it to slow down to almost unusable speed. T-Mobile’s coverage in my area seemingly got worse, somehow (all my Treos were also on T-Mobile). An OS update temporarily fixed the memory problem and made it usable again for a while, but then it came back. It would sit there for several minutes at a time with just a spinning hourglass, accepting no user input.

Finally, on Saturday, I made the switch back to Palm, though it’s a brand new operating system. I got to the Sprint store at 6am, and was second in line. The store opened at 8, and by 8:30 I was all set up with my number ported to Sprint. I now own a Palm Pre. At the moment, I’m thrilled with it. Let’s see if I still feel that way in a year and a half…

There are only a few applications available for it at the moment, and I’m still waiting on the SDK, but it can do most of what I want. The web browser is phenomenal. Far better than Safari on my iPod touch. The Touchstone inductive charger is neat. The battery life is crap, but that was to be expected. At least I can carry around a second battery with me if I need to, because it’s user replaceable.

With Classic, I am able to finally use Frames on my phone again, and don’t need to keep an extra Palm (Z22, which I will probably sell) at the bowling alley. My iPod touch (or an iPhone) is capable of doing this, but Apple won’t allow the software to be released. Just another reason I was convinced not to get an iPhone.

It’s better than the iPod touch as a photo viewer, because it gives me more control over the size and display of the images. If only it had more storage space, I might be able to replace my iPod touch as well. I might anyway, thanks to Pandora. I might just listen to that most of the time now, anyway. I’ll probably go through my music library and put a bunch of stuff on the Pre, though.

The Sporting News Pro Baseball app added all the Mets games to my Pre calendar. Supposedly, it will give me in game notifications during the games. I’ll find out tomorrow how well that works. The application does make it easy to check scores and see current game situations without notifications, as well.

The device also comes with Sprint Navigation, which gives me full turn by turn voice navigation. I’ve already used it once (though I knew where I was going) to try it, and it works very well.

Oh yeah, it works pretty well as a phone, too. Overall, very happy with my decision to switch back to Palm, even after today’s announcements from Apple about new iPhone features.

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Posted by alan to geek at 9:29 pm PT | Link | Comments (2)
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Citi Field Home Opener

I’ve been seriously slacking on the posting here. No excuses.

Baseball season has started! The Mets are off to a mediocre 4-4 start, including a loss in their home opener in their new park, Citi Field. The offense has been pretty good. They struggle with runners in scoring position, but have still been scoring a lot of runs. Pitching and defense, on the other hand, have not been good.

I went to the home opener with my mom, brother, and nephew. It was a lot of fun, even with the loss. David Wright’s game tying two out 3 run homer was incredible. Ryan Church’s dropped flyball the next inning, not so much. A lot of planning went into getting specific tickets for this game. I’ve posted my pics of Dodger Stadium and PETCO here before, and I wanted to get a similar shot at the first game at the Mets new stadium. Getting tickets in the front row of the upper deck was a must, and it worked out beautifully. I’m not sure how I managed to do it, but this is an even better picture than the one of Dodger Stadium.

Citi Field, Opening Day

I have more pictures from the game, and they’ll all eventually be in the Citi Field Opening Day flickr set, but I’m not sure when I’ll get to those.

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Posted by alan to [baseball, photography] at 2:03 pm PT | Link | Comments (1)
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Tour of California

I still want to post fairly regularly, even though I’m not posting a picture of my t-shirt every day anymore. That will make it a little bit harder to figure out what to write about. A little while ago I finally sold my first breakout board. I also just sold my first photograph, after someone contacted me on flickr asking to buy a print. I probably should have charged more. Also, I should set up a store to sell my pictures online, I think. Anyway, now to the real subject of this post…

Tour of California

A little over a week ago, the Tour of California went through Solvang, which isn’t far from me, so I went up there to shoot it. This stage was a time trial, so there unfortunately wasn’t a chance to get a shot of a large group of riders together. Instead, I got shots of each rider shortly after they crossed the finish line. I don’t know who most of them are, because I don’t really follow the sport, but there were a couple I was able to figure out.

Lance Armstrong

Tour of California

Levi Leipheimer started the day in the lead. He won the time trial, and would go on to win the tour.

Tour of California

I don’t know who this is, but he looked right at me and stuck his tongue out, so he gets his picture up here, too.

Tour of Caliornia

All of the pictures can be seen in the Tour of California flickr set.

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Posted by alan to photography at 5:37 pm PT | Link | Comments (3)
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Press My Buttons

Press My Buttons

This will be the last shirt in the T-Shirt a Day Challenge. I have a handful more that I could wear, but not nearly enough to make it through another month, so I’m going to end it here.

Yes, that’s a Gameboy playing a DS Lite. 🙂

Purchase location: shirt.woot
Purchase date: October 24, 2008.

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Posted by alan to general at 12:40 pm PT | Link | Comments (1)
Friday, February 27, 2009
Miss Scarlet in the Hall with a Revolver

Miss Scarlet in the Hall with a Revolver

Purchase location: Threadless
Purchase date: July 28, 2008.

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Posted by alan to t-shirts at 6:15 pm PT | Link | Comments (1)
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Random Shirt

Random Shirt

The last of the random shirts from woot.

Purchase location: shirt.woot
Purchase date: January 21, 2008.

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Posted by alan to t-shirts at 4:58 pm PT | Link | Comments (1)
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Pixelated Logo

Pixelated

Today’s shirt is meant to be a product logo, pre-pixelated for use on TV. Just so they don’t have to blur it out in editing later.

I don’t remember where or when I bought this shirt, but I think it came from Cafepress.

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Posted by alan to t-shirts at 7:49 pm PT | Link | Comments (0)
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