When TV and Movies Enhance Music Appreciation

I find it interesting how hearing a song used as part of a TV or movie soundtrack can strengthen my connection to it, or makes me appreciate it in a whole new way.

The most recent example of this was hearing The Chemical Brothers song, "Alive Alone" (vocals by Beth Orton) during a key moment in the Virtuality pilot (which I actually liked a lot). I was familiar with the song (Exit Planet Dust is an awesome album, to state the obvious), but I can't say that it had any special grip on me. But after seeing it used in the Orion drive detonation sequence (at the 50 minute mark if you watch it online), it made me like it a whole lot more.

This isn't the first time this has happened. Other times include:

* Seeing Soul Coughing's Super Bon Bon during the cold open sequence of an episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets

* When the Propellerheads' Spybreak! plays during the lobby shootout in The Matrix.

* The epic use of Inna Gadda Da Vida during the climax of Manhunter. If you know the scene, nothing more needs to be said. If you don't, well, I pity you.

If the director knows what he or she's doing with the soundtrack, the song will match the tone and content of the scene -- they're using the song to reinforce the impact of the visual and action. (And I guess it also happens with music videos, so nothing new there.) But I still find it interesting how the opposite effect occurs, whereafter you associate the song with the scene.

I guess I'm easily impressed.

If you've got an example of a song that you ended up liking a whole lot more after seeing it used somewhere, feel free to share.

Tags: soundtracks, soul coughing, manhunter, homicide, inna gadda da vida, virtuality, chemical brothers, alive alone, propellerheads, spybreak

More Kickball Footage: Still Not Getting Any Better at This Video Thing

Had some offline time this weekend, so I was catching up on some photos and videos. Here's a quick clip from a kickball game on 5/21, notable for a sexy play at home (Please excuse the cameraman's hooting.):

We won the game pretty handily.

The next video is from 6/11 -- we were short-handed, but after a back and forth effort, we went into the bottom of the 6th down by a couple of runs. Somehow, we managed to pull off a win:

This particular video, I finally stopped using the Fade to White transition and moved to the Cross Dissolve. (This was a big step for me.)

Also, even though the camera shake is pretty minimal (well, except for the part where I was laughing because Dennis baited a fielder into making a play for him, so Michelle could get home), I didn't use any of the homemade Fig Rigs or Poor Man's Steadycams or anything -- just held the camera carefully.

One of these days, I'll invest in a real digital camcorder. As well as figure out how to optimize the file export settings -- I'm still not happy with the quality, especially after YouTube gets done with it.

Meet (Busty) Christian Women, Easy

I don't usually pay attention to the ads on my Facebook profile, and they're pretty easy to ignore. But this one stood out: Not only because of the mistargeting (Christian singles is pretty far off the mark), but because it features a model with huge tracts of Bible:

Then I realized that I'd seen this particular particularly pneumatic model before -- she's busty glamour model Denise Milani (she works non-nude -- barely -- but I wouldn't call the site SFW) and she's a former SportsbyBrooks girl.

TinEye reverse image search finds the photo in larger size, used in other, decidedly non-Christian contexts.

While it's possible, of course, that Denise Milani is a fine, upstanding Christian woman, and that her photo was licensed to this particular Christian singles site, it seems far more likely that whoever was responsible for the ad -- either the site or an affiliate -- just grabbed an eye-catching photo off the Web. *yoink*

Seems to be standard operating procedure for any dating site ads on Facebook, whether it's over 30s, Christian, or whatever -- find a pretty girl whose boobs take up 40% of the available image area. (Actually, I guess that's the SOP for pretty much any Facebook ad.)

I actually did click through to take a look at their site. (Their slogan is "The Community for [Busty] Christian Singles.")

It has a lot to offer -- for example, it has a wonderfully streamlined registration process. For example, it asks your gender, but doesn't ask what gender you're seeking. Simple!

Tags: facebook

Please Don't Touch Me... I'm Thinking

Cameraphone pic of a frozen touchscreen kiosk at the Harris Teeter:

Why Yes, the AOL Time Warner Retirement Plan IS Administered by "PunkRocks"

Here's the most ridiculous AOL employee password phishing e-mail ever. (The fact that I got it also shows the phisher is working off an old internal employee list and only adds to the ridiculousness):

From: [redacted]@gmail.com
Subject: Retiring yourself from AOL?
Date: June 5, 2009 8:10:43 PM EDT
To: [my old AOL business screenname]@aol.com

Associate:

The depression has struck the entire nation, including us here at AOL Time Warner. Some associates may no longer be eligible for retirement plans. As the depression locks its grip on us in an unstable fashion, and we spiral toward financial disaster, there is little to do other than ride out the storm and hope for the best.

5,000 employees are no longer eligible for retirement.

To find out if your plan has been canceled, please do the following:

1. Instant Message the AIM BOT Screen Name "PunkRocks" and login to the system by IMing your credentials in this format: [ScreenName][Password][SecurityCode]
2. Your updated retirement plan file will be pulled up and displayed for your viewing.

Remember: Your plan MAY still be active. You MUST Instant Message "PunkRocks" with the above information to verify.

We apologize and have no further information at this time,
AOL Time Warner

Outside of the purpleness of the prose and the ludicrousness of the idea of an "AOL Time Warner" retirement, a few comments:

• People still phish for AOL employee accounts. Who knew? And they say AOL is no longer relevant.
• Sure, Gmail has always been the preferred e-mail host for AOL Time Warner benefits information.
• Why, yes, the AOL Time Warner retirement plan has always been administered by screen name "PunkRocks" (I'm assuming it's a compromised account, of course.)

On my inaugural Facepalm Scale, I give it a five out of five -- the highest possible score! Congratulations!

Tags: security, phishing

Hi, We're the Replacements

Here are the replacements for almost all the items I've managed to lose recently (save for my mind and possibly my dignity):

Stolen from my car in Baltimore (in April):

* Garmin Nuvi 200 GPS, $88 (refurbished) from NewEgg.com. Same model, so a straight-across replacement.

* iPod Nano 8 gb, $104 (refurbished), from Apple. Same amount of memory, but an upgrade to the next generation. I'd been debating getting the iPod touch, but decided to see what Apple (and Sprint) decide to do next month.

Lost (possibly stolen, in January):

* Skagen 105LTX watch, $27 (used), on eBay. I blogged about this watch before. It's got a grey dial face, not a blue one, but it's the same thing. It's in good shape -- the scratches in the crystal are almost the same as mine, too. Plus, I saved $10 by resizing the band myself, using a push pin.

Lost (a few months back):

* Nitecore Defender Infinity flashlight, $70, off eBay. Probably fell out of my pocket in a parking lot somewhere as I was doing errands. Yes, $70 is a lot for a flashlight (even if it's really cool, with infinite adjustability and throwing 130 lumens on a AA battery), and I don't really need a tactical flashlight... where was I going with this?

Anyway, I'll try not to lose these. For a while, anyway.

[The headline, of course, refers to the TMBG song]

Tags: nitecore defender infinity, skagen, ipod nano, garmin nuvi

Using My Poor Man's Steadycam to Document Our Lackluster Kickball Performance

We had a kickball game on Wednesday. Even though it wasn't cold and rainy, the team was pretty flat offensively and we lost. (I went 0 for 2 at bat, including kicking into a double play, and was accused of being a rules lawyer because I reminded a girl that she couldn't take a lead off of first base.)

It did give me a chance to finally test out the Poor Man's Steadycam that I built just over a year ago (and hadn't used since).

The results were... mixed. I didn't really try walking around with it, just doing some basic panning. Even so, there's a lot of camera shake, because instead of using the prescribed 2.5 or 5 pound counterweight at the bottom, I just used a screw-on cast-iron flange, which I thought I could get away with because my Canon powershot only weights 1/4 pound. It saved weight, but basically killed the motion-dampening action, which defeats the whole purpose of the thing (other than to make people wonder "What the heck is that guy holding in his hands?").

Also, the wind noise is really prominent in spots -- need something with an external mike and one of those fuzzy covers.

Anyway, here's the video (make sure you click the "HQ" option, I may not have picked the best file size settings):

Tags: fxa

Items That Weren't Stolen From My Car in Baltimore

• The contents of the hatchback [too numerous to mention]
• Lightwave Tec2000 LED flashlight
• River Rock 0.5W LED headlamp (useful for hands-free operation, like changing a tire or cutting brake lines)
• Big-ass 5-D-cell Mag Lite with EverLED conversion (apparently thieves don't like LED lights, despite their higher efficiency and lifespan advantages)
  
• Half-bottle of generic Pepcid AC antacid (Famotidine)
• Bottle of Blink Contacts lubricating eye drops
• Spare eyeglasses with clip-on sunglasses; contact lens case (a.k.a. the Morning After Navigation Kit)
• Eclipse mint tin filled with Trident bubblegum
  
• My E-ZPass
• One set of Etymotic ER-20 high-fidelity earplugs
• Air pressure gauge
• Mileage log and repair log notebook
• Spring-loaded center punch (Irony Alert, since I keep it in the center console in case I need to... break a window out)
• The CDs in my side door pockets, as well as few burned CDs in the center console. Guess they didn't like my music.
  
• A disposable 35mm camera.
• My (cheap) sunglasses
• About $8 in singles and change in the ashtray
• Cassette audio adapter (still in the deck)
  
• A couple of other sundries

Items That Were Stolen From My Car in Baltimore:

• Garmin Nuvi 200 GPS, suction arm mount, power cord.
• Black iPod nano
• An old-model Gerber Multi-Plier
• Car charger cord for my cell phone (annoying, as I still have the phone)
• About $2.25 in loose change from the console
  

A few Saturdays ago, I was up in Baltimore for the 2009 Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race. I'd gotten a late start (expected for a Saturday, but also because I got to Tyson's Corner before I realized I'd forgotten my 8 gig memory card and had to go back, since I wanted to take video), but I got into town by about 11:30am and scored a street parking spot right in front of the Digital Harbor magnet high school, just a couple of blocks from the American Museum of Visionary Art.

The day was great and I'll write it up in a separate post. I got back to my car about 8pm, and had just loaded up the hatch and gone around to the driver's side when I saw the mess inside:

Someone had smashed my passenger side window, and tossed my glove box (unlocked) and center console, stealing and bypassing the items above.

My iPod and GPS -- not bad for 15 seconds of work.

Of course, I'd marked myself as a target by leaving the cassette adapter cord in plain sight; I'd also had my GPS suction-cup arm mount on the dash (the GPS itself was in the glove box) with my sunglasses on it, and if that wasn't enough, I think I left the power cords on the passenger seat.

I scraped out the rest of the window and got ready to drive home. I wasn't even going to report it, but as I started to drive off, I saw a Baltimore police car parked about 50 feet in front of me -- an older couple's car had also been broken into, and they'd called the cops. So I stopped, made it a two-fer and gave a report.

Despite the security cameras out front and the group of skate rats doing the stairs nearby (witnesses or suspects, who knows), I have a feeling that this one will go unclosed.

Anyway, after I got home, I scooped the broken safety glass out and saved it. I put it in a coffee can and shook it up in small batches to break up the bigger pieces and dull the sharp edges, then washed off the glass dust and put it in the oven to dry:

Why yes, I have been watching a lot of Breaking Bad.

Yes, definitely. Too much, probably:

It's kind of pretty:

Though I have no idea what I'll use it for. It's back in the coffee can.

So, the window is fixed now (after driving around gingerly, plastic flapping, through two rainy days). I've got a refurbed, same-model GPS on order as a replacement. For the iPod, I'm not sure if I'll just get another nano or upgrade to an iPod Touch, but in the meantime, for my drive up to New Jersey for Mother's Day, here was my iPod stand-in:

I'd bought the power inverter a while back just to have on hand, so it came in handy for the laptop (it causes a pretty big hum in the speakers, though). It worked okay.

In summary, I'm a lot more careful about what I leave out nowadays.

Blog Performance Anxiety and Procrastinating Your Way to Immortality

My blog drafts pile has been building up, while my actual blogging has been going down. I can only blame Twitter and posting in other blogs to a limited extent.

The actual mechanism goes something like this:

* Gather blog material into drafts.
* Procrastinate, delay, obfuscate.
* Despair at evergrowing pile of drafts, whose short half-lives are rapidly aging into irrelevance.
* Horde drafts, in the hope that events will come around that will provide hook with which to revive draft.
* Take perverse comfort in completely specious rationalization that I can't die with unfinished business, even though I know it happens all the time.

How's that working out? I'm reminded of an old Bloom County cartoon (I took the liberty of scanning it, possibly from my copy of Bloom County Classics of Western Literature):

Binkley: Ya know, Voltaire once said that there's a certain inevitable futility in indecision.

Tags: bloom county

Building a Kick-Ass PVC Fig Rig That I Hope to Use Someday

So, what's it all about, then? Read on.

It's been just about a year since I built my Poor Man's Steadycam, and I've yet to put it to anything resembling real-life use. Mostly because I just don't shoot a lot of video, but also because it's pretty darn heavy to lug around, and it's too unwieldy to skate around with.

Still, I'm intrigued (some might say "obsessed") with techniques to stabilize digital video cameras, and this Saturday is the Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race, so I wanted something new.

Enter the Fig Rig
The professionally-built Fig Rig is basically a steering wheel, with the camera mounted in the middle. By gripping the sides of the wheel, you reduce camera shake. Pretty straightforward.

Now, I'd seen the plans on how build a PVC Fig Rig knockoff (here's another version on Instructables), though it seemed to be a bit large, considering I don't have a big little video camera (just the video mode on my point-and-shoot).

The Instructables' entries weren't particularly... instructable, but a quick search pulls up this Flickr set, complete with exploded view so you can see how it all fits together. Even better, a commenter had created his own even more compact version, The Mini DV handlebar, which was just what I was looking for. (Another person, Missile Mike, did a helpful blog entry with a complete parts list and instructions.)

The Build
Of course, I had plenty of 1/2" PVC left over from my Blackjack Table Halloween costume, so I just had to make a trip to Home Depot to pick up the other PVC fittings. I didn't take any build photos since you can just look at the Flickr set, though I guess I should have -- I had to improvise a bit -- the 90 degree joint with the threaded outlet (that serves as the camera mount) only came in 3/4", so I had to get some 3/4"-to-1/2" reducing bushings.

Also, when I finally fit it together, the pieces didn't quite... fit. (Good thing I did the dry fit before gluing everything together.) The 90 degree elbows didn't meet in the middle -- one side was higher than the other, and the ends didn't reach. I ended up changing the design a bit, flipping one around and using a 1/2" coupler to join the ends in the middle, but it's basically the same.

Additionally, for the 1/4" screw mount, I just used the mount from the Poor Man's Steadycam, since I'd done it before, I don't have a quick-release mount, and because my end caps were a little different. (I did have to go back a few times to find the right-sized bolts, though.)

Anyway, here's the final product -- I wrapped it black electrical tape, then red marble-patterned cork bicycle handlebar grip tape, because it looks cool:

There are two rows of washers -- the bottom row is basically just a spare.

As you can see, it stands on its own:

With camera mounted:

And gripped, in life-like fashion:

(Note that in a world of self-timers, this is the only acceptable justification for shooting a self-portrait in a bathroom mirror -- when you actually need to show the camera in the shot.)

It feels pretty solid -- sturdy enough to, say, beat a hobo to death with. It's actually one of the reasons I went exclusively with PVC couplings, instead of trying to use my heat gun to bend the PVC (you'd still need a few couplings, anyway) -- everything's short connectors butted end-to-end, so there's no flex in it.

Does It Work?
Um, that's hard to say. I was going to try to test it at Wednesday's kickball game, but we got rained out. Based on some limited indoor testing, I'd say it works better than hand-held, not as good as the Steadycam. We're gonna be cooking with gas when I try it out on Saturday -- hopefully, we won't get rained on too bad, and also hopefully, this scratch in my throat (which is most definitely notnotnot the Mexican/Swine/H1N1 flu, even though I spent a lot of time in Home Depots this week) won't put me on the sidelines.

Tags: pvc fig rig, camera stabilizer

2 Year Twitterversary Statistics: No More Than 184,520 Characters of Inanity

After eDemocracy Camp 2, I was thinking about how much Twitter had become the de rigueur conference backchannel / session notebook / fashion accessory, which I didn't think was the case for the first one just a year ago.

That got me wondering about when I first joined Twitter, so I paged back in my archives and found that I posted my first Tweet on April 22, 2007, which was just about my 2-year Twitter anniversary when I first started this entry.

[This entry, incidentally, is unrelated to any of the current "When Did You Join Twitter?" or "How long are you on Twitter?" foolishness that's been going around. Also, if you hadn't noticed, I've given up my previous petulant objections and am resigned to calling Twitter posts "tweets."]

Getting My Twitter Stats
I was curious about my own Twitter posting pattern; the quick, easy, and pretty way to look at your stats of course is to use TweetStats (which I also did), but I wanted a little more granularity. (For example, TweetStats calculates your daily average just using the days you posted, instead of looking at every day.) So I decided to pull and crunch the numbers myself.

Here's my 2-year Twitter post count:

Click through to Flickr for additional notes by Patrick.

I signed up on April 18, 2007 and posted for the first time 4 days later. My posting was pretty much non-existent until the first spike (8 whole posts in a day!) from the Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture race on May 3.

I stayed primarily with phone updates until June 14, when I got Twitterific, and you can see a general trend upwards (I switched to Twhirl on June 25), with an all-time high responding to birthday greetings (March 26).

Pulling the Numbers
To get the numbers:
* I used the Java TwitterBackup 2.5 to pull the XML file, which basically has everything (it took about 50 minutes -- it does 20 per minute to avoid hitting API limits)
* As suggested, I did a bunch of find-and-replaces in TextEdit to clean things up and remove extraneous fields
* I then pulled the numbers into Excel, where I did some serious massaging of the numbers. This included fixing the year on the previous years' posts (in the process, I may have shifted some of the dates a day... damned leap year).
* I also added in the intervening days where I didn't post to Twitter, consolidating them to get my daily Tweet count (this is where using the FREQUENCY formula came in.)
* Finally, I plugged the numbers into Google Spreadsheet to get a pretty chart, and uploaded it to Flickr to get a nice, 500px wide image.

TweetStats gave me an average of 3.2 average posts per day (with a median of 2.0 posts), though my numbers for the entire period (counting days I didn't post at all) gave me 1.8 posts per day (median 1.0). I haven't done any deeper digging; Tweetstats has a good talking points topline, and I have the raw data if I want to look any further.

Thrilling, yes?

Tags: twitter, twitterversary, tweetstats, twitterbackup

Please Don't Shoot the W&OD Trail Signs

I guess I should give up all other pretense and just turn this into a skating blog.

I wasn't planning on going again so soon after my blister harvest, but I was in Sterling doing errands and it was such a nice day that I couldn't resist.

I started at the Route 28 overpass at about 5:45pm and headed west. There weren't too many people out that late in the day, so it was pretty uneventful. I stopped at my turnaround point, the Luck Stone Quarry Overlook, plopped down on a bench and watched the vultures gliding on the thermals for a few minutes.

There's a plaque on the bench:

"In memory of C. Wayne Tolbert (May 14, 1917 - May 3, 2000), an outstanding lawyer and avid cyclist who enjoyed many hours riding on the W&OD trail and particularly enjoyed this view."

On the way back, took a shot of traffic calming zigzag stripes painted on Belmont Ridge Road (they were mentioned on Fark last week):

And here we get to the title of the entry. I noticed something different about a "Warn Before Passing" sign just off of Smith's Switch Station -- a bullet hole:

There's also a dent in the "F" that looks to be a second bullet strike. From the back of the sign, it's pretty obvious. Nice sized, too:

Anyway, my plan for afterwards was to try Cheeburger Cheeburger (I haven't been yet) as something of a reward (or, maybe the skate was pre-emptive penance), but that went out the window and I met a few folks, sweaty and stinking (me, not them) at Jackson's to rehydrate.

The feet held up okay -- I'd duct taped over the pinch points and hotspots, and it worked okay. I guess I'm getting ready for next Saturday's Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race. Which means I'll need to get a new heel brake before then (it's worn to the nub). I'm also working on a PVC mini-Fig Rig, which I hope will be a bit more suitable for a full day on skates than the Poor Man's Steadycam (which I still haven't really used). So we'll see how that goes.

Tags: w&od trail

Bicycle Cleavage, Crack and Bonking: W&OD Trail Skate Report

Ever wonder why oncoming cyclists on the trail wear big, shit-eating grins as they whizz by? I think it's either:

* Desire to share the joy of being outside
* A kind of rictus of effort
* Overexposure to athletic girls hunched over their handlebars while wearing scoop-necked tops

Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of said bicycle cleavage (which should actually be "bicyclist cleavage," but the other way sounds more interesting and less creepy) when I went skating on Saturday afternoon.

It was the first really nice, over-70 degree Saturday of the spring, and I went to skate my usual Reston-to-Sterling trek on the W&OD Trail. (I note that my phone autocomplete thinks I mean "slaves" when I type "skates.")

As I Twittered, it was busy, but not crowded.

From Herndon through Sterling, there were a lot of cracks that spanned the roadway, in some places every 40-50 feet. Some were fairly wide (especially when compared to a 76mm wheel):

There's a new-ish golf course just west of the Route 28 overpass -- where the hell did it come from?

Some of the bridge interfaces had widening gaps, and there was some subsidence at the edges of the trail at mile 24.5:

Lower angle:

Given the current budget realities, I'm just hoping they can at least slap some vinyl patches over some of the wider cracks.

Here we see some topped trees along the power line right-of-way:

The Bonking

From Reston (the lot off Sunset Hills and Old Reston Avenue, at the 7-11) to my usual turnaround point at Ashburn Village Road is about 18 miles round trip (throwing in a few speed runs up and down the western side of the Route 28 overpass). In retrospect, doing the full mileage for the first skate of the season was probably not the wisest idea.

On the way back, I started having some problems. The hotspots, which had been developing at the usual spots on the inside edges of my feet, had turned into full-on blisters. Big ones, too, since my feet hadn't toughened up yet.

The blisters altered my stride, and between that and just flat out bonking and hitting the wall, my quads started to cramp up pretty bad. With 5 miles left to go, I ended up having to stop for a few minutes about every half mile.

I was officially no longer having fun.

I nearly broke down and called for a ride a few times, but I eventually made it back to my car. It took a while. And my feet look pretty nasty right now.

I was pretty thrashed and almost bagged on a birthday party down at the Georgetown waterfront. But NewMediaJim talked some sense into me. Who says Twitter is useless?

Tags: W&OD trail, skate report

Easter Sunday in Koreatown

I went back up to the homestead for Easter weekend. Because I am hellbound, I don't usually make the trek back, so I didn't realize that every Christian-minded person on the Eastern Seaboard makes the pilgrimage up/down I-95. I guess it wasn't too bad.

After a lazy Saturday at home and Sunday services, at Mom's suggestion, we went to NYC to get some Korean food and look at the pretty flowers (alas, Macy's was closed Easter Sunday).

But the food was good -- we ended up at Kum Gang San on 32nd St. in Koreatown, NYC.

We had Bul go ki:

Shot from above:

More photos, including random strangers, and Times Square, in the full set: Easter in Koreatown, 4/12/09.

The trip home was just slightly-below average. Gas in NJ was $1.89 (cash), about 15 cents cheaper than in Virginia, which is par for the course. I made it back in just over four hours, though as I twittered, 95 in Maryland sucked, enough so that I did the 695 swing-around, taking the Key Bridge (which is actually a pretty nice drive, especially if you like refineries).

The drive gave me a chance to catch up on a few NPR Music podcasts, including the Heartless Bastards show from NPR's SxSW concert podcast. I also listened to the Liz Phair 'Exile in Guyville' show from The Troubadour, which was okay, but I thought the accompanying interview was great.

Tags: liz phair, easter

I Rarely Go Deep Enough

I'm talking about during my squats, of course. Mostly because I'm lazy and out of shape; partly because, for a time, I kept jacking my back at inconvenient intervals due to poor technique; and lastly because my right knee often makes funny noises when I try.

I'm supposed to be doing 20-rep sets for the next few weeks, which is a chance to work on cleaning up my technique, but it seems that the lower the weight I use, the fewer reps I can do.

I'm hoping this means I'm actually going deep enough for a change.

After my work set (which was more of "hobby" set), I finished up with 3 sets of 20 squats using just the weight bar (45 pounds). It took a lot out of me, but I was able to finish the rest of my workout. Well, most of it -- my body thoughtfully gives me a splitting headache just before I'm on the verge of throwing up, which gives me a chance to stop and avoid making a mess.

NCAA Final Notes
Now despite my earlier Tweet, the gym didn't have the NCAA Final on any of the TVs. Apparently I didn't miss too much, though -- UNC seems to have things commandingly in hand, and Michigan keeps getting picked, chucking up 3-pointers, and missing free throws.

I'm kind of grudingly rooting for UNC, if only in the interest of ACC solidarity (outside of Duke and UNC, the ACC had another weak tournament showing).

I had been going on a working theory that if you're Duke or UNC, you're not going to win a national championship unless you beat the other team at least twice (and it'd be a prerequisite, not a guarantee) -- it works on the Duke side, though leave it to UNC to not cooperate.

Finally, I'd just like to say that the overhead arena cam gives me vertigo.