This weekend there is a 50/50 chance that it will be raining here in the Bay Area. With this Sunday being Easter, having the rain is bitter sweet. We, the people that live in the Bay Area, need the rain if we don’t want to worry about having a drought this year. But we don’t want the rain because many of us will be on an Easter Egg hunt or watching an Easter Parade.
For you baseball fans, the regular season starts this Monday. But if you are either an Oakland Athletics fan or San Francisco Giants fan, you may want to catch them play a friendly exhibition game against each other this weekend. Friday the Giants will be hosting the A’s and on Saturday the A’s will be hosting the Giants in Oakland. Last night the A’s spanked the Giants 7-3 at At&t Park.
What ever you plan to do, just don’t forget to pack an umbrella.
For those of you that don’t know, I’m a huge NFL fan. I’m the guy that watches the NFL Network every day and reads the latest rumors that are going on in the NFL. Why am I talking football in the offseason? Because in the NFL there is never an off season, just a non playing season.
People may not be surprised that I love the NFL but they sure are when I tell them that I am a huge Arizona Cardinals fan. I love the Cardinals through the good and bad. For as long as I have been a fan of the Cardinals (since the advent of Tecmo Super Bowl in 1991), they have been for the most part mediocre. The Cardinals had their ups and downs and I’ll stick by their side through the good and bad no matter what.
However the ‘what’ has me curious for now with rumors of Arizona and Bruce Arians picking up Carson Palmer, who currently is an Oakland Raider. Oakland wants Palmer to take a pay cut and Palmer doesn’t want to, who is expected $13M for this season. However rumors say that Palmer doesn’t mind taking a pay cut for a team that can win. If Oakland does cut Palmer lose, Arizona may be a nice landing spot for Palmer. I’m sure that Palmer wont mind throwing the ball to Larry Fitzgerald and a rising Michael Floyd, plus Arizona has a pretty good defense. Arizona started 4-0 then had some QB issues that led them to a long losing streak. With the right guy under center, Arizona can compete in a very tough NFC West division.
Here’s a quick update on the QB situation in Arizona:
And Brian Hoyer is just like Stanton, a back up QB competing for the starting job.
Carson Palmer doesn’t look to bad compared to what the Cardinals currently have. Palmer started more games last season (15) than what Skelton, Lindley, Hoywer, and Stanton has combined (11). Palmer was able to actually stayed healthy with a pretty good offensive line in Oakland that just allowed 27 sacks, less than half of Arizona’s 58 allowed sacks. Will Palmer be able to succeed in Arizona without any protection? Only time will tell but the offensive line of Arizona is where the attention should be going. But no, quarterbacks get all the attention whether it’s good or bad. I’m just hoping Arians and his staff will get the O-Line running on all cylinders by the time the season starts.
Lately it’s been Geno Smith and Tyler Wilson that are potential QB’s that Arizona could draft. Even Matt Scott is on Arizona’s radar as a late QB draft. Hopefully Arizona will be smart and invest in their line with this year’s draft. But until April 25th, I’ll be back watching highlights of Carson Palmer in Silver and Black and in Cincinnati, I gotta sell myself the idea that Palmer can actually succeed in the desert with a porous O-Line.
With today being the last Wednesday of the month, this Wednesday can only one thing. Winter is Coming!
Not sure how many of you folks are Game of Thrones fans, and if you’re not you need to get with the program! Watch the series on HBO, so far there has been 2 season that has been produced and published. With only 2 season to catch up, one can get brought to speed by Sunday, when the Third season comes out. Currently each season of GOT covers about 1 book from the GOT book series that was written by George R.R. Martin. There are currently 5 books out with George R.R. Martin planning to write a total of 7 books for the A Song of Ice and Fire series). Book 3 is one of my favorite book of the series. BAD ASS is the best way that I can describe it.
HBO’s The Game of Thrones returns this Sunday March 31st.
For those of you that does follow the GOT, check out this short webisode series that I stumbled upon on YouTube. It’s called the School of Thrones, an adaption of GOT set in high school. Who ever wrote the show understood the main characters and the plot of the series. The acting is YouTube standard, a tiny bit cheesy, but the intro animation is pretty damn good, and these webisodes are a nice quick fix to those still going through GOT withdraws.
Well, I found myself back at the Embarcadero this past Sunday. I was just planning on heading home right after work but my brother wanted to go out and shoot. So I went and grabbed my camera from home only to find it dead when I tried using it. Burn… Well, More panoramic shots from my cell phone. Cheers!
I’m going to try posting something up every Friday which will be called Friday Escape. Fridays are when most people are ending their weekly grind and starting their weekend. If you’re like me, by noon you’re ready to bolt out the door and get your weekend started. Hence, Friday Escape.
The idea behind Friday Escape is to post something that is relevant to the weekend quickly. Whether it is telling you about my plan for the weekend or an event that’s happening in the San Francisco Bay Area, since there is almost something going on every weekend here.
This week March Madness started and we have San Jose hosting several games that started Thursday at the HP Pavilion. Saturday you can catch a game our local team Cal take on Syracuse or Oregon against St. Louise, that is if tickets aren’t sold out.
The weather is going to be great all over the Bay so you can play tourist in the City, play at the many beautiful parks throughout the Bay Area, or locked in your room playing God of War: Ascension. What ever you chose to do, try not to miss out on the great weather this weekend. Crack the blinds open if you’ll be cooped up indoors. Keep in mind that we have spring showers coming in next week.
Last weekend I was down at the Embarcadero with my brother James. While I was there, I took several panoramic shots of the area with my Samsung Galaxy Note II. I’m pretty impressed with the quality of the picture and how fast the phone processes the image. Below you can view both the untouched original photo followed by a quickly edited version. Let me know what you folks think about both original and edited image or how great cell phone cameras are or how I need more practice on Photoshop. Thanks!
Original:
From the Raygun Gothic Rocketship to the Bay Lights
Touched up:
From the Raygun Gothic Rocketship to the Bay Lights
Back in 2011, when Google+ was only available through invite, I went on my very first photowalk. I was, still am, New into the world of photography so I though that this would be a great experience. And it sure was!
The photowalk took place on the campus of Standford. There were a ton of people that came out for this photo walk, big names and everyday people like myself. Thomas Hawk was there and it was pretty cool watching my buddy Joe Ercoli about art and his personal project that he was working on Flickr.
I learned that there are a lot of friendly and helpful photogs (photographers) out there. Many of photogs like to talk gear and techniques. I also learned that I needed a tripod as the day got darker.
Here’s one of the photos that I took from the photowalk, the James H. Clark Center:
James H. Clark Center
The photo with my camera resting on my camera bag. I don’t know the settings and what it was shot with (I’m blogging from my phone so I don’t have all the details on me). All I know is thatthis was one of my first attempts to HDR. The photo is eh, it’s a decent start.
Standford is an amazing and gorgeous campus. I can’t to go back and take pictures of there. I’ll probably need a whole afternoon on the campus since the place is so vast.
Last weekend my brother and I had time to check out the Bay Lights. I only had my GoPro Hero2 on me which I used to capture movements of the world’s largest art installation. Sadly the GoPro doesn’t record urban night shots that well. Instead of uploading an ok video of the Bay Lights, I figured that I’d throw it in a mix of videos and try to tell a story with it. Let me know what you folks think about. Thanks!
2013 is here! Yes, we are 2 weeks well into the New Year and I am a bit disappointed that the Mayan’s got it wrong. Oh well, all it means that I still have to give money to my estrange stalker Sallie Mae.
What I do look forward to for 2013 are some exciting movies from the second installment of the Hunger Games trilogy: Catching Fire to yet another Die Hard movie. Below are several movies of 2013 that I look forward to watching.
Catching Fire is the second part to Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Game trilogy. The only thing that I don’t like about this movie is that it doesn’t come out till the last quarter of the year, eta November.
Marvel has butchered the X-Men and Spider Man series in the past but they have redeemed itself of late with The Avengers, the Iron Man series, and X-Men first class. The Wolverine follows Logan through his journey in Japan and is based off the Chris Claremont storyline.
Tony Stark is up against the Mandarin, played by Sir Ben Kingsley. The movie is supposed to have the War Machine in it but from the trailer, it appears to be the Patriot. Oh Marvel, how you like to twist things up.
johnydecali 