The Atlanta Falcons as a team deserve some credit in playing Superbowl LI impressively for three full quarters, until they didn’t in the 4th quarter. The New England Patriots basically slept during the first part of the game and came to life in the 4th quarter. In cardiac arrest inducing fashion, New England mounted the most impressive Superbowl comebacks in history. They came back from a 3 score deficit and tied the game in the final 2 minutes with a necessary 2-point play. A game had Tom Brady with head down at the half (below), had everyone chewing their nails as Superbowl 51 went into overtime for the first time in history.
Sudden death OT saw NE with both the momentum and the ball … that would be all that was needed to win the game.
Final score: NE Patriots 34 – Atlanta Falcons 28
Quarterback and 2017 MVP Matt Ryan demostrated why the Falcons had the #1 offense all season long, while the defense stepped up and shutdown Tom Brady most of the game and added points to the board as well. Brady demonstrated why he is without much doubt, footballs all-time greatest quarterback with 5 Superbowl wins. All in all it was an exciting game for millions of viewers.
As with all memorable Superbowls, the commercials were also must watch items as was a very impressive halftime performance by Lady Gaga and sponsors Pepsi and Intel. Her aerial atheltisism and high energy dance moves were as impressive as the programmed drones and lighting. Well done to all for keeping politics out of it.
Homing pigeons were outfitted with lightweight cameras in WWI with time-delayed shutters for aerial reconnaissance photography, likely the first "drones." They were used very effective as messenger pigeons prior to wireless radio and effectively in communicating behind enemy lines in World War II. Interestingly the Swiss Army continued they military pigeons until it was disbanded in 1996.
The first aerial photographs were taken in 1858 by the balloonist Nadar; in 1860 James Wallace Black took the oldest surviving aerial photographs, also from a balloon. As photographic techniques made further progress, at the end of the 19th century some pioneers placed cameras in unmanned flying objects. In the 1880s, Arthur Batut experimented with kite aerial photography. Many others followed him, and high-quality photographs of Boston taken with this method by William Abner Eddy in 1896 became famous. Amedee Denisse equipped a rocket with a camera and a parachute in 1888, and Alfred Nobel also used rocket photography in 1897.
Homing pigeons were used extensively in the 19th and early 20th centuries, both for civil pigeon post and as war pigeons. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the famous pigeon post of Paris carried up to 50,000 microfilmed telegrams per pigeon flight from Tours into the besieged capital. Altogether 150,000 individual private telegrams and state dispatches were delivered. In an 1889 experiment of the Imperial Russian Technical Society at Saint Petersburg, the chief of the Russian balloon corps took aerial photographs from a balloon and sent the developed collodion film negatives to the ground by pigeon post.
Spent a few days aboard Encore by myself this week doing a little (very little) needed maintenance. It’s amazing how "just sitting" is a killer for aging a sailboat! That’s not to say I’m ready to let her go, just that I need to give her more attention. One of the projects was to disassemble the Whitlock Constellation 400(I believe) steering pedestal for cleaning, inspection and lubrication. I didn’t find much information on the "late" Whitlock system that was bought by Lewmar, but since I had Whitlock branded X116 Conduit Lubricant, I used that for the cables and added to the chain for good measure. There is some corrosion on the exterior of the aluminum pedestal itself, but that will have to get some paint when I paint the cockpit — on my list. Also, the "wheel brake" has been broken since we bought the sailboat and does not look like a part that I’m gong to find easily … perhaps adapting or making one is an eventual possibility? For now, it is not necessary with the autopilot and Cape Horn Self Steering gear.
Next go-around, maybe I’ll consider looking at the wheel bearing as they are a bit noisier than I think they should be … not heavily grinding, but not exactly right either.
The cursor on my new Lenovo Yoga 710 Windows 10 notebook has been driving me crazy. It jumps around the screen when I’m typing and often ends up add or deleting text in previous paragraphs. In an attempt to diagnosis the problem, I’ve fiddled with the trackpad thinking that my palms or thumbs must be touching it. I revisited the setting I used to remap my "out of place" up-arrow key and decided that was not the culprit either. After a bit of reading, and some trial and error, I think its the Enhance precision pointer option.
Try this:
Click the Window Start button –> type run –> control mouse
Mouse Properties should appear (see screen capture). Then select the Pointer Options tab and UNCHECK the Enhance pointer precision box. Click "OK" and see if that make a difference. So far so good for me.
The larger "old" tripod that I’ve owned for 40 years and a small pocket tripod that I gave to my son is now unacceptable for my new camera(my bias opinion) …so it is time to update with something I don’t mind hauling around. I would have liked a $300+ carbon fiber ultra-light, but that seemed a bit overkill and ridiculous amount of money for an amateur photographer. Instead I opted for a nice middle-of-the-road Slik 43.3" model with a ball head and quick release block. The Slik Sprint Mini II/SBH 100DQ ($69) has surprisingly sturdy legs for such a lightweight tripod and I particularly like the foam grips on the legs and sturdy castings (nice when it is cold out!)
So far so good as I’ve hauled it on the last couple trips. No problem with the airport TSA but it really doesn’t fit comfortably in my new Peak Design bag, even though it is designed with a flap for a tripod. Still I’m going to try and keep it within reach to steady the camera, especially when shooting .mp4 movies.
After the stock market closed yesterday, Apple $AAPL reported their fiscal first quarter earning and shocked even the most bullish in the crowd. Their iPhone 7 sales help them deliver record earning, no doubt due to Samsung’s battery issues(Android users switching to Apple iOS). Considering Apple make a lot more than phones, it is amazing to see two-thirds of their sales coming from the iPhone! Still, the growing App Store, Apple Music and Apple Pay are nothing to sneeze at accounting for $7.17 billion, an 18% increase over last year.
Speaking of other products, the Mac sales were up but only by 1% even with their new MacBook Pro. The iPad needs a refresh (coming this year) and first fiscal quarter sales declined 19%. Another concern is declining profit, although still strong. It was down 2.6% to $17.89 billion. But the really shocking number to me is the "hoard of cash" at $246.09 BILLION … and as Apple CEO told CNBC, "Repatriation is front and center. That’s good for the country and Apple."
Shares of the company rose 2.5% to $124.39 in after-hours trading.
People say President Donald Trump is unique in U.S. history, yet a few who study presidential history say it is not entirely true. Doug Wead, a presidential historian, compares President Trump to Andrew Jackson, as he did shortly after the November 2016 election on "Happening Now" with FoxNew’s Jenna Lee. It is interesting to hear a few stories from the days of President Andrew Jackson and ponder the chaos that ensued after his election. It is worth a listen if you’re wondering "if" the U.S. can survive a Trump presidency, a concern many in the mainstream media and political left (perhaps an oxymoron) seem to be ballyhooing. (video below)
Snipping an idea. Perhaps make the board with inset magnets to hold the pieces? Perhaps laminate over a peg board to more easily space Neodymium Magnets that fit in each hole?
Last summer we started to plan for a kitchen remodel as our "builder grade" cabinets and mishmash of appliances were in serious need of replacement. We updated our dishwasher and refrigerator already, but need to finish off the final stages once and for all. I’m currently working with a designer and close to getting the cabinets ordered.
I was going to tie everything together when I started the laundry room, but because Brenda wants a gas cooktop instead of our electric, that means a little more construction, etc. So far we’ve "got the plan" and "think" we have the contractor and cabinet company (second go at it) and are now finalizing the granite, knobs, tile and balance of appliances. At this point, we’ll switch to a Bosch two oven set-up and natural gas 5 burner cooktop … along with a Bosch SS hood. We’ve been happy with our under cabinet GE Spacesaver Microwave so will likely stick with that. An addition is trying to design a corner cabinet with the existing cabinet company … which was initially going to be a piece of furniture I wanted to build. Brenda’s point was that she wants to pull the kitchen together by keeping it all the same — and she has good taste. A humorous story usually comes up from our early years when I "regularly" would remodel our houses and thought about putting a bathroom sink and counter in our master bedroom — yup, I have a serious artistic limitation.
