Author: Doug LeMoine

Categories
basketball san francisco visual

Warriors / Drama, elevation, a posterization, terrible officiating

The War­riors play­off ride is over, the Jazz's ride will come to an end some­time in the next week or so, but Baron's dunk over Kir­ilenko will live on FOREVER. Let's just sit back and appre­ci­ate it for a minute. (It's much bet­ter live).

the rise-upBaron ele­vates and ele­vates; he begins his leap before Kir­ilenko and is still going up as Kir­ilenko descends. Mind-bend­ing. To his cred­it, Kir­ilenko said after the game that it was an awe­some dunk and that "at least I got to be on the poster." Also to Kirilenko's cred­it, he didn't foul Baron; if any­thing, it was an offen­sive foul. More on the stu­pid NBA offi­ci­at­ing later.

 

stomach shotAs impres­sive as the dunk itself was Baron's stom­ach flash after he land­ed. Not real­ly sure where this came from. The ele­men­tary school play­ground? An And1 mix­tape? Wher­ev­er it came from, it was a stroke of genius in that par­tic­u­lar set­ting — Fri­day night, Oak­land Col­i­se­um, West­ern Con­fer­ence Semi-final blowout. You could prac­ti­cal­ly feel the Bay Area ele­vate that moment.

 

the dust-offAgain, haven't seen this before, out­side of a play­ground game in the Pan­han­dle, but Stephen Jack­son appeared to be dust­ing some­thing off Baron's shoul­ders. The remains of the rim? Some mag­ic dust from David Blaine?

Inci­den­tal­ly, the best pic­ture of all was not tak­en off my TV, but by an AP pho­tog­ra­ph­er from the oth­er end of the court. It cap­tures Baron as he descends from the dunk.

I really did believe

Like every­one in the NBA uni­verse has already said, the War­riors were huge­ly fun to watch this post-sea­son, and it was sad to see them go. It would have been nice to see more scrap­py, inspired Matt Barnes moments; more Stephen Jack­son dag­gers; more Baron Davis PERIOD. I've always liked Baron, but this post-sea­son he had it all work­ing: his fast-break vision, his high-arc­ing three-point bombs, his cross-over, his abil­i­ty to get in the lane and dish out to open shoot­ers. (More of Baron's finest career moments on YouTube.) It was nice to see Mon­ta get his game back in games 4 and 5, and Biedrins had some real­ly strong moments, by which I mean some ridicu­lous dunks and a few improb­a­ble free throw conversions.

Yes, the Jazz deserved it

At the same time, I admired Utah by the end of the series. Jer­ry Sloan is an ass­hole, but he proved in this series that he is an ass­hole who knows what to do with tal­ent­ed play­ers. The 3‑D guard play (Deron Williams, Dee Brown and Derek Fish­er) was unex­pect­ed­ly sol­id and impres­sive. Memo and Booz­er were Sports­Cen­ter fix­tures through­out the sea­son, but I was sur­prised at how eas­i­ly Memo was tak­en out of his game by the quick­er War­riors. I was sim­i­lar­ly amazed at how great Booz­er has become. The guy rose to the occa­sion, took lots of big shots, fre­quent­ly changed the momen­tum of the game and was by any mea­sure a badass among badass­es. To say those things about a for­mer Duke play­er requires a lot of pride-swal­low­ing on my part.In con­trast to the uneven, streaky War­riors, every Jazz play­er was tena­cious and grit­ty while exhibit­ing a pro­fes­sion­al­ism and char­ac­ter that has been miss­ing from the West­ern Con­fer­ence play­offs this year. Why are so many play­ers, espe­cial­ly War­riors, con­tin­u­al­ly try­ing to draw charges? Play defense. Draw the charge when it comes to you, but don't try to sub­sti­tute actu­al defense with step­ping in front of a play­er as they go to the bas­ket. Stephen Jack­son! Dude! You were huge in the Dal­las series, but against Utah you took your­self out of the game by try­ing to take charges and then get­ting pissed that the refs didn't call them! You know this: the refs are not going to give you those calls when the only thing you're doing is try­ing to draw them. Same goes for Barnes and Har­ring­ton. UPDATE: Hen­ry Abbott of True­Hoop has some thoughts on this very sub­ject:

There are a lot of fouls called on play­ers defend­ing against the dri­ve. What occurs to me more and more is that it's smart to do the whole "draw the charge" flop onto the butt, and only in part because you might draw the charge. A big­ger rea­son is that if your hands are up, and you're jump­ing, and there's con­tact, you have NO chance of get­ting the call, and it's like­ly a foul on you.

An inter­est­ing point; per­haps it's all part of an effort to enable slash­ing and to com­pli­cate phys­i­cal defen­sive play. On the oth­er hand, super­stars seem to get calls even if the defense seems to be legit. Baron obvi­ous­ly drew a lot of charges and hacks, which I think is evi­dence of a huger prob­lem: THE F%@$$%$ING CONSPIRATORIAL OFFICIATING. 

What the f%$#@%$?

It real­ly seems like the ref­er­ees go into each game with an agen­da. Like, the Jazz got every call in game one. Why? Did they want to even things up from the pre­vi­ous series when it seemed like there were some quick whis­tles on Josh Howard? The lop­sid­ed­ness of the calls make you won­der things like that. I mean, even Stephen Jack­son had some legit beefs that night! Then in Game 5, Baron got pret­ty much every call. He lit­er­al­ly ran over Deron Williams a cou­ple of times, no whis­tles. When Williams would so much as touch him, whis­tle. Did the NBA want to pro­long the series? Did they want to give Baron the super­star foul exemp­tion? UPDATE: And don't even get me start­ed on the role of the NBA front office in all this. If the sus­pen­sions of Diaw and Stoudemire end up cost­ing the Suns the series, I'm going to … protest. Some­how. How can the NBA be so bad at inter­pret­ing their own rules? Every sport in the world func­tions effec­tive­ly by imple­ment­ing the spir­it of its rules, not the let­ter. Why go by the let­ter in this case? Stoudemire and Diaw didn't esca­late any­thing; they didn't incite fur­ther may­hem; what gives?In spite of it all, great play­ers make great play­offs. Thanks War­riors, and go Suns.

Categories
basketball

Gamers / That's not even your blood

SI's Jack McCal­lum just pub­lished an arti­cle about the Suns-Spurs series that includes an intrigu­ing peek into the mind of Robert Horry. As every NBA fan knows, Horry's blood runs cold dur­ing the play­offs, evi­denced by his pen­chant for hit­ting dag­ger-like three-point bombs and his nick­name, "Big Shot Rob." (NBA.com has a page ded­i­cat­ed to Horry's big shots, includ­ing com­men­tary and video). But what's he real­ly like? McCallum's insight into this comes from the Game 1 col­li­sion between Steve Nash and Tony Parker. 

An air of civil­i­ty sur­round­ed Game 1, an atmos­phere that grew out of the mutu­al respect the fran­chis­es have for each oth­er. There were Dun­can and Suns vet­er­an Kurt Thomas sumo wrestling for posi­tion down low, then pat­ting each oth­er on the back dur­ing a break in play. There was Nash, unaware that he was soon to suf­fer a TKO, bend­ing down in con­cern as Park­er lay on the court after their col­li­sion, a kinder response than Park­er got from team­mate Robert Hor­ry, who said, "Get up, that's not even your blood."

Fun­ny, that's exact­ly what I was think­ing when I saw Park­er writhing around. One thing is clear: Nash and Hor­ry are both gamers. [Thx, Hen­ry]

Categories
ixd urban visual

NYC subway maps / The great debate of 2007

A graph­ic design­er named Eddie Jab­bour has pro­posed an alter­na­tive design for NYC sub­way maps. The New York Times wrote about it last week, and since then blogs have been blow­ing up over it. 37 sig­nals eval­u­at­ed it, and applauds the effort to increase usabil­i­ty at the expense of geo­graph­ic accu­ra­cy: "Sub­way map read­ers want to know how to get from A to B a lot more than they want to know the exact curve of the tracks along the way. Some­times truth is less impor­tant than knowl­edge." If points A & B are always sub­way sta­tions, I whole­heart­ed­ly approve. As seen in snip­pet form below, the redesign much more clear­ly presents infor­ma­tion that is rel­e­vant on the subway. 

Brooklyn train line comparison

Eddie Jabbour's pro­posed redesign trades geo­graph­i­cal accu­ra­cy for read­abil­i­ty But a sub­way trip is always part of a big­ger logis­ti­cal process. You're not just try­ing to get from Atlantic Avenue Sta­tion to Astor Place Sta­tion. You're try­ing to get from an apart­ment on Pres­i­dent Street to the place where your friend cooks near Wash­ing­ton Square Park. And often the opti­mal sub­way route is not avail­able to you; the line you want to take is extreme­ly delayed; anoth­er line is not run­ning; anoth­er is express past 9pm; anoth­er only runs to this sta­tion on Sun­days; etc; etc. The real­i­ty is that you need to be able to impro­vise when you're in the sub­way sys­tem, and a map that is not geo­graph­i­cal­ly accu­rate inhibits your abil­i­ty to adjust to the real­i­ties of the system.Which brings me to the Lon­don A‑Z. Lon­don can get away with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sub­way map because it has a com­pan­ion book that allows you to fig­ure out stuff like that. So the Cir­cle line isn't run­ning? Trust­ing the Tube map to go to the next near­est sta­tion may be dis­as­trous, but you can always find your des­ti­na­tion in your trusty A‑Z, scan for anoth­er sta­tion near­by, etc. More­over, mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers often place the A‑Z grid loca­tion next to an event list­ing. Remov­ing geo­graph­i­cal con­text from the NYC map may make it eas­i­er to scan, but at this point, I feel like it's per­haps pre­ma­ture­ly reduc­tive. On the oth­er hand, a reduc­tion of infor­ma­tion on the sub­way map may sim­ply under­score and high­light (and ital­i­cize and cap­i­tal­ize) the need for a NYC A‑Z. Or per­haps the MTA itself just needs to be more pre­dictable. Or maybe every­thing should stay the same so every trav­el­er can have that spe­cial scary feel­ing of being strand­ed in Brook­lyn at 2am on a weeknight.UPDATE: My friend Jonathan Gabel, a New York res­i­dent for the last 13 years, had some inter­est­ing thoughts on the matter: 

The cur­rent map is a total fab­ri­ca­tion of geog­ra­phy any­way — Man­hat­tan is made fat and short, and Brook­lyn and Queens lose all of their length. In fact, the L line through Williams­burg and Bush­wick is actu­al­ly more accu­rate in the changed map, as it makes a rad­i­cal zig-zag through the area. For instance, the L train runs: Lorimer, Gra­ham, Grand, Mon­trose. From Niki's house, 8 blocks north of the Gra­ham stop, to meet our friends who's live 4 blocks East of the Mon­trose stop, we often walk to Man­hat­tan Ave, one block West of the Lorimer stop because it is half way between our hous­es. Fig­ure that one out. I have nev­er seen the Lon­don A‑Z but I looked at one of the NFT (not for tourists) guides to New York and found it wasn't real­ly help­ful, specif­i­cal­ly because it doesn't real­ly help you find address­es. Even the address­es of things it is telling you about — like restau­rants. Say you want to find Snacky's in Williams­burg. It shows you a map of the gen­er­al area, and list­ings of all the restau­rants and oth­er things by street address, next to the map of the area. The map is bul­let-rid­dled with lit­tle icons to tell you where all bars/ restaurants/ laundromats/ clubs/ sweatshops/ motor­cy­cle-repair-shops are — but every bar/restaurant/laundromat/club/sweatshop/motorcyclerepairshop is only labeled with the sign for b/r/lc/ds/mrs and no num­ber. So to find your Snacky's you have to look at 20 r's and try to fig­ure out which one it is, and ignore 40 b's, 20 l's, 5 c's 50 s's that are cov­er­ing all the names of the streets. It's like that inter­face you described for the New York­er — it takes all the plea­sure out of car­tog­ra­phy. I would like to see a guide­book that makes dis­cov­er­ing one's way pleasurable.

Amen to pleasure.

Categories
web

NFL conundrums / Culpepper or Garcia? Jamarcus Russell or Brady Quinn?

Over­heard on Col­lege Humor's week­ly sports chat, Straight Cash, Homey:

Ethan: Who has the bet­ter NFL career: Rus­sell or Quinn?Amir: That's an impos­si­ble ques­tion. I couldn't even tell you whos hav­ing a bet­ter career: Culpep­per or Gar­cia, and they've had like 15 sea­sons between them. I'll guess for you though: Rus­sell. He's big­ger, faster, and stronger. I'm real­ly curi­ous to see a 6'6" 260 pound quar­ter­back will do in the NFL. Can you imag­ine him and Bran­don Jacobs on the same team?

I'm kin­da just doing this to try out Clip­marks [Ver­dict: Use­ful, but insert­ed a huge amount of HTML crap into the clip­ping], but hey, those Col­lege Humor guys are fun­ny. And I'm skep­ti­cal about Jamar­cus Rus­sell, any­way. Even though he seems like a great guy, and he has a good QB pres­ence, I'm just not sure that a guy his size with­out proven tra­di­tion­al QB skills is such a good bet with the #1 pick. Why not Calvin John­son? The guy is a sure­fire super­star. But a per­fect storm has been cre­at­ed: Rus­sell is in the draft and the Raiders' have the #1 pick. Al Davis is a gam­bler, and he loves any­thing uncon­ven­tion­al. I sus­pect that he'll not be able to resist.Earlier in the chat, they equat­ed Trent Green and Rich Gan­non and, in all seri­ous­ness, I don't know how you can com­pare the two. They were both referred to as slow, which, umm, is just patent­ly untrue for Gan­non, who made his name with his wil­i­ness and speed. The dude had about one-third the arm strength of Joe Mon­tana and still won an MVP. Green is slow, of course, though not as slow as, say, Dirk Nowitzki.

Categories
inside art visual

Information art / Typographic map of London

Typographic map of London

This amaz­ing typo­graph­ic map, cheek­i­ly called "London's Kern­ing," was designed by NB: Stu­dio, a Lon­don graph­ic design con­cern. It's a pret­ty excel­lent demon­stra­tion of type's abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate size, shape, rela­tion­ship, the list goes on. I also love the homage (via type­face) to the Lon­don A‑Z, an indis­pens­able com­pan­ion, inter­preter and guide for any nav­i­ga­tor of Lon­don. They're tak­ing orders for them. [Thx, kot­tke].

Categories
san francisco the ancient past visual web

Living all over / Google-mapping my life

All over the place


So how come I just now learned that you can cre­ate your own Google Maps mark-up? As a lover of both maps and per­son­al doc­u­ments, the abil­i­ty to cus­tomize an online map has the poten­tial to have a Shabu-like effect on my life. The above map has all the places I've lived in the Bay Area. Check out the com­plete, inter­ac­tive thingy here. It has essen­tial, all-impor­tant com­men­tary on each place. Maps I want to make: killer runs in SF; fun night-time wan­der­ings in SF; lit­er­ary locales of SF (from fic­tion and from real life); TV/movie locales of SF; (this guy already made a cool music-relat­ed his­to­ry of SF); crazy work trav­el trips of the past few years; places I want to go; a bur­ri­to tour of the Mis­sion; the list GOES ON.

Categories
flickr music san francisco visual

Music / Lightning Bolt explodes 12 Galaxies

Flickr photo


A few years ago, it would have been sur­pris­ing to see a San Fran­cis­co indie crowd move its feet around in a dance-style motion at a live show. Last week, Light­ning Bolt got peo­ple mov­ing at 12 Galax­ies; it wasn't exact­ly "danc­ing" but (from my van­tage point in the bal­cony), it appeared kinet­ic — lots of mass mov­ing back and forth, a lit­tle crowd-surf­ing, a lit­tle flail­ing around. I took a lot of pic­tures from my perch above the drums.

Categories
architecture ecology urban

Architecture / Teddy Cruz's urban acupuncture

teddy cruz - tijuana river

Last night, I saw archi­tect Ted­dy Cruz deliv­er a fast-paced, idea-rich pre­sen­ta­tion at the San Fran­cis­co Art Insti­tute. In a lit­tle over an hour, he tore through a slide show cov­er­ing his recent work on the social, cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic forces at work in com­mu­ni­ties along the US-Mex­i­co bor­der. The slide show itself was pret­ty impres­sive — a blend of research pho­tog­ra­phy, sim­ple Pow­er­Point ani­ma­tion, and pho­to col­lages (like the ones shown in this post, cour­tesy of UCSD, where Cruz teach­es) that looked some­what like maps but also some­what like actu­al pho­tos of urban density.I'd first heard of Cruz in the NYT Mag­a­zine fea­ture from last spring, Shan­ty­towns as a New Sub­ur­ban Ide­al. It details "Liv­ing Rooms at the Bor­der," his pro­posed project to turn a lot in the bor­der com­mu­ni­ty of San Ysidro into a mul­ti-use dwelling/community center/market. He dis­cuss­es it in more detail in "Urban acupunc­ture", an arti­cle he wrote for Res­i­den­tial Archi­tect Online:

Hous­ing and den­si­ty need to be seen not as an amount of units but as dwelling in rela­tion­ship to the larg­er infra­struc­ture of the city, which includes trans­porta­tion, eco­log­i­cal net­works, the pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics of land use, and par­tic­u­lar cul­tur­al idio­syn­crasies of place … In a par­cel where exist­ing zon­ing allows only three units of hous­ing, the project pro­pos­es (through nego­ti­at­ed den­si­ty bonus­es and by shar­ing kitchens) 12 afford­able hous­ing units, a com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter result­ing from the adap­tive reuse of an exist­ing 1927 church, offices for Casa Famil­iar in the church's new attic, and a gar­den under­pin­ning the community's non­con­form­ing micro-economies, such as street mar­kets and kiosks. In a place where cur­rent reg­u­la­tion allows only one use, we pro­pose five dif­fer­ent uses that sup­port each other.

Cruz dis­cuss­es his archi­tec­tur­al mis­sion in this arti­cle at the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Architecture's site: Bor­der Post­card: Chron­i­cles from the Edge.

Categories
basketball kansas basketball

Kansas basketball / Post-Julian thoughts

Julian at the SIU game

Julian Wright is tak­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty of a life­time, and who can blame him? He brought enthu­si­asm and ener­gy to every game, con­tributed huge­ly in many of the big wins in the last cou­ple of years (cf. these dunks dur­ing the Flori­da game and this epic 33-point per­for­mance at MU), and showed enough skill and poten­tial to be very high­ly regard­ed by NBA scouts. Who wouldn't seize a chance to be finan­cial­ly secure, and to play in the NBA? The future is rarely cer­tain in these sit­u­a­tions, as these guys can attest. Best of luck to you, JuJu.The KU-sports-relat­ed Inter­net is (pre­dictably) thrash­ing around with the news, and the emo­tions range from hurt to hap­py, fatal­is­tic to opti­mistic. And who can blame them, real­ly? The last four years have been tough on Kansas bas­ket­ball, so tough that the men­tion of cer­tain names — Roy, Mic­ah, Pad­gett, Galin­do, Gid­dens, CJ, etc — can pro­voke pangs and spasms of hurt and guilt. I guess Julian gets added to the list now, though per­son­al­ly I think he's ready and I'm hap­py for him. Most of the com­menters at the end of this sto­ry feel oth­er­wise. Julian's depar­ture is com­pli­cat­ed, of course, by the fact that he pledged to stay fol­low­ing the loss to UCLA. This CBS reporter was real­ly peev­ed that Julian recon­sid­ered his prospects after the sea­son end­ed, which seems kin­da sil­ly to me. Did it real­ly take Julian's change of heart to com­mu­ni­cate to him that big-time col­lege sports are bit­ter­sweet, unpre­dictable, and per­pet­u­al­ly com­pro­mised by the twin prospects of major, life-chang­ing injuries and major, life-chang­ing paydays?Whatever hap­pens, I think that Julian will even­tu­al­ly have a good NBA career. Ryan Greene of kusports.com com­pares Julian to Shawn Mar­i­on, and I see the resem­blance as well. That said, he would be way bet­ter off with estab­lished, vet­er­an-heavy teams like Phoenix (who wouldn't?) or Chica­go, where he'd be able to learn and adjust out of the spot­light. Career-endan­ger­ing teams like Mem­phis, Atlanta or (once again) Sacra­men­to will give him too much respon­si­bil­i­ty too soon, though he may be able to sur­vive that either way. Long term, he's a West­ern Con­fer­ence play­er who will come off the bench, get his 12 and 8, con­tin­ue do all the lit­tle stuff that makes him great (deflect­ing pass­es, set­ting oth­er guys up, keep­ing offen­sive rebounds alive), and be a good team guy to boot.

The bright sides

Look­ing for­ward to next Novem­ber, here are three sce­nar­ios that reflect my think­ing on the remain­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for ear­ly entries and (yikes, not again!) transfers.

  • With­out Wright: Actu­al­ly may be bet­ter. Like Drew Gooden's ear­ly exit, I actu­al­ly think there's quite a sig­nif­i­cant bright side here. Julian's ath­let­ic abil­i­ty and tal­ent require that he play a major role in the offense, which results in few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for the tal­ents of oth­er play­ers — Mario's dri­ves and shots, Sherron's shot and dri­ve, Rush's entire offen­sive arse­nal, Shady's sweet moves inside 12 feet. When Good­en left, Collison's McHale-like low-post pres­ence and Hinrich's Stock­ton-like abil­i­ty to make the right deci­sion on every fast break end­ed up pro­vid­ing a sys­tem more sta­ble than the one focused on Gooden's always ath­let­ic, some­times errat­ic pres­ence. With­out Julian at the 4, Shady starts and gets more time. This means that the line-up gets bulki­er with­out los­ing that much in the way of speed. They'll miss Julian's explo­sive­ness and shot-block­ing, but they gain Shady's sweet touch and bet­ter abil­i­ty to (more depend­ably) make plays while post­ing up. If Rush is still around (not like­ly, so see the bul­let point below), I tend to think that this line-up may even be more dan­ger­ous than if Wright had stuck around.
  • With­out Wright and Rush: Lots of re-jig­ger­ing, lots of uncer­tain­ty. Los­ing Rush is a much big­ger deal than los­ing Wright, obvi­ous­ly. He's the team's best on-the-ball defend­er; he became the go-to scor­er dur­ing the games in San Jose, and he can stroke it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for him, he's not the explo­sive ath­lete that Julian is, and scouts are not eval­u­at­ing his drafta­bil­i­ty in the crys­tal-ball­ish terms of upside and poten­tial. His capac­i­ty is known, appar­ent­ly, and there­fore it has lim­its in the eyes of scouts. Does this mean he can't become, say, a Bruce Bowen type of play­er? Heck no. In fact, I think he'd fit in real­ly well with the type of team who would draft him in the 20's or so. And this is prob­a­bly what will hap­pen, so it all works out for the best, for him. If mon­ey and aca­d­e­mics (which are a major has­sle for him) were not issues, he's in a great posi­tion to thrive next sea­son. He fits into Self's sys­tem real­ly well; he real­ly began to shine at the end of the sea­son; anoth­er sea­son would real­ly give him a chance to refine his drib­ble-dri­ve and his out­side shot. But this is not an ide­al world, and bar­ring the entry of the entire UNC team or an injury that pre­vents him from com­pet­ing in the pre-draft camps, I sus­pect he's gone. Good luck to him.
    So. How do the Hawks replace Bran­don? Who becomes the stop­per? Who takes over the offense at the end of games? Who attracts the oth­er team's defend­ers when­ev­er he's on the floor? I'm not real­ly sure about any of this. A cou­ple of things are cer­tain, though: This will be a sea­soned, capa­ble team. They've been through a lot, beat­en Kevin Durant twice, won two Big 12 tour­na­ments, etc. More­over, they'll be with­out a super­star like Bran­don and Julian, and this — weird­ly — might make them much more like Self's Illi­nois teams — grit­ty, hun­gry, scrap­py and dan­ger­ous in the tournament.
  • With­out Wright, Rush, and Collins: !@$#%$#@*&. Almost too painful to con­sid­er. How many times did I text the words "Thank God for Sher­ron" dur­ing the Big 12 sea­son? How many times did he sin­gle-hand­ed­ly change the pace and momen­tum of a game with a vicious dri­ve to the bas­ket? He's not ready to jump to the League, but rumor has it that he wants to be clos­er to home. But would he real­ly want to sit out a year, play for a school in a mid-major con­fer­ence, give up a chance to play in a Final Four, give up a chance to play on nation­al tele­vi­sion for 15–20 or 20–25 games next year? I real­ly hope not. Man, that would hurt.
Categories
flickr visual

Photos / Bridge and Bay panoramas

Flickr photo

The weath­er has been get­ting nicer, so I've been jump­ing at any chance to ride my bike. Last Thurs­day morn­ing, I rode across the Gold­en Gate Bridge and up into the Marin Head­lands as the sun was com­ing up, and I stopped to take some pho­tos as it was peek­ing above the hori­zon. When I was going through the results, I real­ized that the indi­vid­ual pic­tures didn't real­ly do jus­tice to the moment, so I poked around the Inter­net look­ing for some­thing bet­ter than Photoshop's stitch­ing util­i­ty. Autos­titch to the res­cue! It's sim­ple, straight­for­ward, and it instan­ta­neous­ly pro­duces panora­mas with­out dis­cernible seams even with just a few pictures.

Flickr photo

(I was so intrigued by the above results that I decid­ed to try it with cell­phone pic­tures). Last Sat­ur­day, we had a pic­nic at Kir­by Cove, a lit­tle val­ley on the Marin side of the bridge. It was fog­gy and cold for the first hour or so, but then it start­ed to burn off and I took some pho­tos with my lit­tle cell phone cam­era. Once again, Autostich worked mag­ic on it. Here's to technology!