Tim.McGuinn.es/s

Just spell it out

What You Want to Catch

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If there has been one saving grace during this virus lockdown is that the weather around here has cooperated and given us the opportunity to get outside.

Now with softball canceled (they said thru April 7, but who knows), the new project is catching and hitting. If my daughter’s reading this, I should say improving at catching. With the extra time, it started by trying to break in her glove better since it may be slightly big for her (but there really aren’t smaller choices). I followed some Youtube thing for steaming her glove, but there’s no video available since it’s just me cussing as the boiling water splatters on my hands.

Then we took it outside. There is a definite improvement since we started, but check back in a month and I’ll have a catching update and some hitting stick pictures.

Game Day, but first…

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Building a Computer Game

But first … we had to build the game.

 

 

We went to a game building class held at the local science museum over the weekend. My daughter wanted nothing … NOTHING … to do with this, but my wife had a thing, so it was daddy/daughter day at the class.

When we arrived, I talked to the museum and the teacher, and before I was able to sit down she had my laptop powered up and had it positioned right in front of her seat.  She had also met out tablemate, a very nice 12 year old boy, who had no idea how many questions this old guy was going ask him.  He had already taken one of these so he had a game programmed was happy to help.

Oh boy did we struggle. We never actually got anything built which was frustrating to her, but at least I know that we have the Unity 3D platform set-up correctly so we can get back to it soon.

Our Rod Serling Film Festival Winner

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Winner Rod Serling Film Festival

There’s no doubt in my mind that my daughter’s decision to enter the filmmaking category in her school’s art festival was that last year only 1 person entered in her age group — so scoring at least a certificate was within reach.

However, the rules are very strict about parental involvement and if my kid is anything it’s that she’s afraid to break rules. So we had to draw a line regarding where I could help and where she was responsible.

I decided she could use an old MacBook (“the white one”) since it had iMovie. I had no idea how iMovie worked, but I threw together some random film clips and photos and then added some transitions. Boom! A movie.

I showed it to her, and said gave her some advice how to move around clips. She went out and shot the clips on an old Nikon point and shoot, and I uploaded them – then it was all her.

One day I heard her talking into the screen mic, and after I asked what she was doing – a voiceover. Yes, she was dubbing out some dialogue. I had no idea that was possible.

In the end she did get her award from the local and then later the regional PTA.  We then found that the local PBS station was having a Rod Serling Film Festival, as Mr. Serling is a Binghamton hometown hero, so we entered it there since it had a Twilight type of intro.

About the film — I saved this for last — I don’t claim to get it or even know if there was something to get, but when we went to the awards people we didn’t know ran up to her to tell her how much they enjoyed it, and she beamed. So that’s better than any certificate.

Giant Lake Waves

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The view west from Sandy Pond State Park on the eastern edge of Lake Ontario, near Pulaski, NY.

A quick getaway to the Sandy Pond area near Pulaski, NY and on the eastern shore of Lake Ontario.  Oddly, back in the old Green Nova days, I drove through here on the way to Clarkson maybe 100 times. I had no idea this was here.

My brother’s family recently got a place here, and they invited us to come up for the weekend. The weather was as close to miserable as can be. The picture looks sunny, but it’s about 50 degrees with a stiff wind coming off the lake, but we had a great time anyway.

The surprise was the rough waves during the day. They were as big and strong, especially the undertow pull, that we really had to keep an eye on each other. It was odd having never experienced this is fresh water, but a great time. The downside was that the area has been suffering from flooding and beach erosion and these waves and winds only made it worse. You can see some baseball-sized rocks on the beach. By morning, these were piled high as they continued being pushed up all night.

Math Quiz — Big Data Smokehouse Version

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These are metal rods used to string herring and are then hung in the smokehouse rafters. How many are there?

This is my daughter’s favorite place in the world, The McCurdy Smokehouse one the eastern edge of the U.S in Lubec, Maine.  We really can’t explain why she loves this place, but the people that work there are really very nice to her and remember her each year, so it’s always the first place she wants to go once we get into town.  It works with me too since there’s a brewery directly across the street.

The McCurdy Smokehouse when the fog rolled in – Lubec, ME. Otherwise, you would see the channel and Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada. 

Math Quiz – This year I asked my daughter how many metal rods were stacked against this wall. So she started counting…….I stopped her. Then we started to create slices and ultimately squares. Got a guess?

Using the picture below, each cube was roughly 20×20, and we rounded the total number of cubes to 22 since it was not a full 5×5 wall.  So the final math: 20 x 20 x 22 = 8,800 rods against this wall.  Are we right? I’ll go with close enough because — remember — there’s a brewery across the sstreet that I need to get to.

Easiest extra credit ever? – There were 3 walls like this. How many total rods?

Using a grid to help calculate the total number of herring rods in the smokehouse.

MIT CIO 2017 from the Inside

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Kresge Hall at the start of the MIT CIO Symposium.

I signed up to offer my assistance for the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium in social media, primarily in managing the Symposium’s @MITCIO  Twitter account.  In the end, I got much more than I expected, between the planning meetings with genuinely smart people and seeing how a conference of this magnitude comes together.

Another benefit was getting to work with some new content and social media tools, primarily the paid versions of Feed.ly and HootSuite (Yea! for people with budgets).

They worked well together.  HootSuite was great for planning and scheduling mass uploads so I could schedule out a week of panel members links or scheduled events, including the day of event posts as each new panel was scheduled to start.

Feed.ly’s advantages were in curating CIO-related news. Every few nights, I would go in and schedule 2-3 daily tweets around news updates, so I could keep a good balance of posts between event updates and CIO knowledge sharing.

The highlight of the day was actually seeing the #MITCIO hashtag appear in the trending column when the conference was spread across five panels after lunch.

In the end, I was able to capture of my earlier photos from day to get Lindsey Anderson, MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, Chair, as he signed off and announced the date for 2018.

This is the last image I used for the close of the MIT CIO Symposium to announce the 2018 event.

 

This Won’t Get Many Likes

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LGT Challenger (Binghamton, NY) – With crowds this small, it’s always interesting that they have such tight media rules.

The Levene Gouldin & Thompson Tennis Challenger is happening this week.  The tournament fits in as a minor league level event. That means that the best players may be ranked in the 100’s and many are breaking playing their first tournaments.  Their claim to fame is that an unknown Andy Murray won in 2005 before going on to win the 2012 US Open and then Wimbledon in 2013 and 2016, so you never know if you are seeing a future star.

What caught my eye was first that there were so few people on this Saturday. Granted it was not the finals and it was a miserable 85 degrees and 90+% humidity.

Next were the signs that basically cut down on all internet fun even though it certainly was needed to help stir up some publicity.  I’m sure the reason goes back to some lawyers making sure that no one tries to livecast from the US Open, but this event is a little off that track and should actually encourage this these tournaments to be experimental platforms for broadcasting (text or video) from a live event.

After the Fear, You Get Back in Line

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Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith

Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith

We did it!! We made it to Disney World, and it was a great all around week. We spent five very full days at WDW. We also added a trip to the Clearwater Marina so Col could see Winter and Hope in person.

As soon as Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith was over, I asked if I could go again. I had to. I also learned on this trip that a rollercoaster is even better than coffee for getting your day started. As for the early returns based on our talks on the plane ride home, it sounds like there will be another trip, since all the conversations started “Next time we come to Disney…”

Need more pictures?
There’s a running set of posts at our 7thtee Tumblr site.
And the growing monster set at the family gallery on Flickr.

Strat-o-matic Updated for a Digital World

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Big data updates Strat-o-matic

Big data updates Strat-o-matic

According to the NY Times, Strat-o-matic is rolling out a new digital version called Strat-O-Matic Baseball Daily. Players stats and team information will be updated daily. If this idea existed back in my day, I would know far less about Harmon Killebrew’s new Minnesota Twins franchise. Those were well-worn cards that had been passed though most of my father’s family until I was able to get my hands on them.

Last thing I need to add to my summer fantasy baseball / MLB.TV habit is playing daily Strat-o-matic, so right now I’m, hoping that it costs too much.