Quirkblog

Day three of the Transweb Webcast and it’s official – the University of Minnesota campus beats five kinds of good for the roses out of Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex. Not to dis the Diz, but having the webcast headquarters in the hotel, along with having half a dozen really good restaurants within a half block radius and not having any restrictions against having food in the HQ office means that we’ve got much happier webcasters than before.
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The Transweb site is being updated as we speak. I just realized that I wasn’t terribly specific about what my job is here. Basically, we’ve got photographers and writers at as many events as we can cover. The photogs have digital cameras and they shoot between 200-400 pictures at each event. Between events, they stop by the office and transfer the pictures to me. I go through and pick the best shots for use on the web, then I crop, rotate, scale & convert them before uploading them to the site server where the page layout crew puts them up for public consumption.
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The opening ceremonies from the Transplant Games are probably still going on right now… I headed back here to the office about half an hour ago and they’d just gotten done with the parade of teams. My job there was backup photographer. There are two other photogs still working the arena, but my batteries were dead. So, it was time to head back to the office and go through the 2 gigs of photos that had been shot so far. That’ll give me a head start on things for when the ceremony is done and the others come back…

Ah, the thrill-a-minute life of a webcaster…

I’m lurking about in Minnesota for the rest of the week. No great reason, apart from the webcast of the Transplant games. I’m part of the crew that takes all the photos and stories from the small army of photographers and writers and gets them chopped, channeled and formatted for the web. First night was the quick briefing and dinner for the webcasters at a place called “Sophia.” Replace the initial ‘S’ with a treble clef and you’ve got their logo. The menu we had at the hotel advertised things like “Goat Cheese Pizza” and such, but alas, it was an old menu and pizza was no longer available…

Tired of those anti-theft devices that run down your car’s batteries while making loud howling sounds? Try this new system! When the car thief tries to open the car door, the wasp stings him on the hand and he runs around making howling sounds, leaving your battery untouched!

Our cats have been exhibiting strange behavior.

No, really! More than usual!

Every so often, the cats will go absolutely nuts and practically attack my Wife’s shoes. After Art Fair on Friday, I came up with a theory as to why: Next to the driveway are some very fragrant mint-like plants, which are growing so wildly that they overflow onto the pavement. When my Wife gets out of the car, she sometimes steps on the plants, picking up the scent on her shoes. To test the theory, she went out and deliberately stomped on some of the plants, then came back in and left her shoes as bait for the cats while she camped on the futon with the camera.

Here’s the result:

Click on the image for a movie.

Raarghhh! Me Orc of Weldart tribe! Make by Bill Secunda, great metalsmith of Pennsylvania.

Me name Francis.

Francis take you tour of Ann Arbor Art Fair!

But first eat! Traditional Orcish Art Fair meal. Honey Glazed Lorq!

PhotoMatt say this just very bad font choice, but all know that Orc come running for great taste of Honey Glazed Lorq!

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