retrofocus ramblings.

The Boston Celtics won tonight, or more to the point, last night. They did this as a team in the face of a stupendous onslaught from a dead-eye shooter that was raining threes from every small slice of an opening.
The same Celtics team beat king Lebron already in 2010, and tonight they beat emperor Bryant by out hustling when it counted and making just enough clutch baskets to neutralize those improbable threes. It was real fun to see a team beat an anointed superstar – again.
Over the last decade in Boston sports world the mantra of TEAM before individual has rewarded these athletes and their fans with multiple world championships. It was real satisfying to watch team green win at the Garden tonight.
Two more nights like tonight and another banner will be hung.
No matter the final tally, watching the Celtics win as a team was amazing. Totally enjoyed it.

BEAT L.A.!

I don’t want to go to far out on a limb, but I bet it was a New Englander that came up with the idea for the indoor outdoor remote thermometer. Really, I do. My mother is totally addicted to hers and she bought me one for my office for Christmas. Now I’m addicted. Something about the weather. I tell ya. Around here there’s always something to say about the weather. And with this puppy you have twice as much to say!

In the last 10 minutes on Twitter I found Conan O’Brien and a link to this Muppets‘ video.
The video is awesome and I cannot wait to see what Coco has to say.

Entertaining as always.

The sky was blue and the sun was shining this afternoon. Had to take a walk around my neighborhood and it just so happens that my neighborhood includes a fancy dancy new outdoor mall which has plenty of nifty things to see. Given that the mall developers and I were basically building our businesses at the same time – I like to take daily walks at lunch to see what’s new on their side of the fence.

Looks like another new eating and drinking place is about to open!

A good, good friend of mine emailed me a whole long humor riff on the iPad name, although he claimed to have never seen the MadTV skit which basically goes in the same direction.

Okay, okay – I get it. The word ‘pad’ can only reference feminine products.

So Apple went with iPad anyway. Before the iPod, what did we all make of the work pod? Not sure where I’m really going with this.
However, I’m not ready to dismiss the iPad from Apple at first blush. In fact when I watched the streaming Quicktime version of the keynote my mind was racing with applications for the iPad. Reading books I still prefer to do the old fashioned way. As a photographer and a pilot a screen this size and weight has 1001 possibilities.

Anyway, just read this man’s take on the whole affair. He says some of what I was thinking and goes well beyond it. Much better than I could.

Frank Spiers on the iPad

This is creative. Makes me want to learn Chinese.

The intertubes are rapidly being filled with all sorts of video clips.
Today I’m posting a link to one of those clips I saw and enjoyed. All about the history of a quite essential piece of software.

Cool to hear from the mouth of the creator.

I admit to having a fair bit of prejudice on this one, but it is worth a look-see for yourself if you have in interest in photography, photographs and photojournalists.

David Hume Kennerly writing in the New York Times about a picture used in Newsweek.

There’s been a battle brewing in Boston over the past few weeks. Well, it’s just one of many battles, but one that has more relevance to me now that football season has begun. *

The touchstone for Boston sports fanatics has been WEEI-AM for a long time. However, back in mid-August CBS radio killed off a historic radio station in WBCN and moved it’s “Mix” to the old ‘BCN frequency. That made room for CBS to launch a clean sheet new FM sports radio station on the old “Mix” frequency. It seemed needlessly complicated the time, but I guess the powers that be wanted the new “The Sports Hub” at 98.5 rather than 104.1. The day the switch was done was rather strange, but the new “Sports Hub” has been growing on me – primarily because of the FM signal. I admitt that. Been giving the new station a chance. Thankfully all the buttons work on my radio, so I’ve been bouncing back and forth. **

Trouble is, when I’m sitting at my desk I’d prefer to sample both stations via iTunes. WEEI, which has been around for some time has a stream published in the iTunes “radio” sidebar, but the “Sports Hub” has been missing. So I did some sniffing around and have come up with a couple streaming links for both stations. That way I can sit at my desk and flip between the two sports chat lines. Not that I don’t sample news and other music streams too, it’s just that having both sports radio stations at my fingertips is much better that fooling around with corporate webpages.

Hope these iTunes-savvy links work for you, they do for me!

WEEI-AM 850 “Sports Radio”

WBZ-FM 98.5 “The Sports Hub”

* currently Boston has a mayoral race that’s heating up, and our fair state has a big U.S. Senate race that is just warming up.
** all the radio buttons in my Jeep worked – before the heavy rains on Saturday. Radio got wet. Not working now. Although the display lights up with the evidence – 98.5 shows, just no sound. Sad.