Quick Explainer: Who the Hell Do I Think I Am?

Friends, it feels like new social media sites are popping up faster than weeds in my wife's garden. What can you do? No one's quite sure which ones are gonna stick just yet, but we're all steady joining these things for better or worse. The hope, at least for me, is that each new site will offer a way to engage a new or different audience.

But every time we join one of these sites, we have to introduce ourselves all over again. That's a pain in the butt.

So. This is a little explainer: Who the Hell do I think I am?

Blog Shots: Trying to Reach People

 

Let’s Talk a Little About the BYU Cancellation & Why There Hasn’t Been a Make-Up Scheduled

A couple of guys were arguing about this on my Twitter timeline, and it got maddeningly acrimonious. Typical Twitter slap-fight maybe, but it’s still one of those things were both guys were mashing the PUSH TO TALK button without actually receiving anything. Obviously, both sides have a particular point of view, so that approach accomplished nothing.

Welcome to America.

5 Things on a Friday: Panic?!

Hi folks.  Happy Friday.  As you read this, I am skiing Mount Snow.  As I write this, though, it’s Thursday morning, and there’s precipitation in Vermont.

So.  Was it rain or snow?  Am I having a good day or a bad day?

With Josh & Rob at Killington.  I'll be with Josh again today.

These are burning questions.  But by the time you read this, we’ll know the answers.  As I write it, however, I can only worry and wait.  Kind of like the Coronavirus.

5 Things on a Friday: The ‘Stick to Sports’ Edition

With the State of the Union, impeachment, and every other thing going 24/7 on all the major new channels and Internet sites, we’ve decided to stick to sports here at Casa Cabeza.  Not because we don’t have opinions -- we definitely do have opinions -- but rather, because it feels very much like the best thing we can do collectively as a society is to just suck some of the air out of the room.  

EVERYTHING is politics, all the time.  It doesn’t feel like that’s helping.

For all the outrage, the actual Will of the People has become a forgotten concept.  No one cares what people actually think.  The only thing that matters is that we stay mad -- about anything.  It doesn’t matter what you’re angry about, just that you’re angry.  There are a million places to post an opinion, but just so we’re clear: NO ONE IS LISTENING.  We’re relevant only to the extent that we can be commoditized, and not one inch further than that.

Thankfully, it’s been an interesting sports week.

Favorite Photos of 2019

Happy New Year, everyone! 

This has been a year in which Sally and I have mostly kept on keeping on.  Arguably the biggest changes in my life were my decision to commit to skiing more last winter, taking up photography early in the summer, and writing a Hell of a lot for As For Football. 

This post is most obviously about the photography.  However, it's influenced by all three.  First, I wrote so much for AFF that there's really not enough material from the blog to do a best-of retrospective for 2019.  That's been a long-running series here, and I'm sad to skip it, but there's just not much point.  Luckily, I have these pictures to show, so it's not a total wash.  A good number of these come from shots taken for AFF, so before we bemoan the lack of additional writing, it's worth remembering that the As For Football crew sent me to a heck of a lot of really fun football games this year. 

That's not nothing.

The one regret that I have with this is that it's tough to show size and aspect ratios via the blog.  Some of these ought to be shown big and others are just wide or skinny.  None of that comes across in this format.  I'd like to have a little show in our backyard, but that's definitely a project for the spring or early summer.  Paired with beer tasting and a friendly audience, it could be fun.  We'll see.

Let me just say, too, that I don't know that I'm necessarily good at this.  However, I enjoy it, and I've never been shy about showing my work to others.

For all of these, you can click the pics to them at full size.

Twitter is Not IRL

I saw a couple of interesting articles about the Democratic primary election this week, one from the NY Times and one from the Atlantic.  Both papers are struggling to understand the Democratic electorate in the Twitter Age. That’s no easy task.  Bottom line, though, the Young Left of Twitter (YLT) has decided that it hates Mayor Pete Buttigeg of South Bend, Indiana, with an abiding passion.  Apparently, this is because he is either too successful personally or else he’s not far enough left.  Or perhaps both.

My message to those I meet is simple: "este país es tu país."

This country is your country. Everyone who has made the United States their home deserves to participate fully and freely in their communities.https://t.co/sMRkVfwFwF

— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) December 17, 2019

Pics from Round Pond and Army vs. Tulane

It's been a week.  I know.  But better late than never, right?

Before we get started with these, let me stipulate that I definitely need to read more about how and why we edit photographs, especially with filters.  I've read a few Internet articles, but that's not the same as understanding of the process.  I've learned a few things, but I like to understand why things work.  I need more theory.  I did most of these based solely on "feel," and in a lot of cases, that means that I know something's wrong, but I can't put my finger on what or how to fix it.

I took about half of these.  My wife took the ones from Michie Stadium and of the game.  She also, obviously, took the one of me.  I took the landscapes from Round Pond.

Technical note: to see full screen versions, click any picture.  You can even scroll through from that view.

Ready?

Let's get it on.

CFB Games of the Week: Week 2

Y’know, I was only partially right about Tennessee last week.  I was right that they would start ugly.  I was wrong, though, about exactly how ugly they’d start.  

They’ve had a bunch of kids enter the transfer portal this week, so it looks like the wheels may be coming off down in Knoxville.  Yikes!

Don't you just love college football?

Pics from Rice at Army

I took 109 pictures at Army's first home game.  Three-quarters of them were total garbage, even for me, but I liked a few.  A few of my favorites are below.

Tailgating with friends.

I edited these rather indulgently, so have some patience, okay?  I mean, I didn't have to crop everything 16 x 9, but I wanted to, so that's what I did.  

Be thankful they're not all sepia-toned.

CFB Games of the Week: Week 1

Before we get started, did you see Tulane last night?  Wow!  The Green Wave look legit my friends.  Been sayin’ it all offseason, but actually seeing it was something else.

My games of the week are below.  Times and channels via 506Sports.Com.

CFB Games of the Week: Scoring Week 0

I went 2/3 in Week 0.

I went 2/3.
• Colgate (-3.5) ❌
• #MIAvsFLA Under 46 ✅
• Hawai’i (+13) ✅

— Danno E. Cabeza (@Dan_T_Head) August 25, 2019

CFB Games of the Week: Week 0

If you missed it, As For Football launched a new podcast this morning called College Football Roundtable.  We’re using a gameshow-style format for a 30-minute discussion of the happenings in college football beyond the Army Team, and although I’m no unbiased observer, I was super-pleased with the way the new show came out. 


 

Digital Camera Experiments

One of my projects over the offseason has been trying to improve as a photographer.  I've taken half-a-million pictures at Army Football games, but I don't feel like I've ever successfully captured the experience of being up in the stands at Michie Stadium.  That needs to change.

Alas, photography is a fully-formed and complex art form.  People spend their lives trying to take better pictures.  I'm not going to necessarily get where I want to be in a couple of weeks.  And yet, there is an enormous difference between wholly self-taught swimmers and those who've spent just a single year on an organized team.  I'm not looking to shoot at the Olympic level, but I would like to approach the comparative competence of a low-end high school letter-winner.  That seems doable, though maybe this is one of those occasions where I don't know what I don't know.

Seems possible.

My buddy Andy took this one at the 2018 Armed Forces Bowl.  He did a great job capturing the action, though I cropped it quite a bit for emphasis.  I also dialed the colors down a little to try to emphasize the drama of the action.  I like this 16:9 format, especially for football, because I feel like it gives the scene a scene of perspective and impending action.

CFB Roundtable: Duke at Pitt, 2018

The Yankees played a doubleheader yesterday, and I cooked dinner on the grill in between the games.  I put Duke at Pitt, 2018, on outside while I cooked, and man, am I ever glad that I did.

CFB Roundtable: Final Thoughts on Daniel Jones and the NY Giants

I’ve been back and forth in my head about whether or not to write this.  On the one hand, the Giants draft infuriated me so badly that I feel like I have to talk about it, or else I’ll scream.  But then again, everybody and their brother has already written something about the draft.  It’s not clear that the universe needs my particular thoughts.

Part of the reason that I’m actually doing this, and that I’m doing it here, is that we’ve been over this at some length as an As For Football (AFF) staff, and not to put too fine a point on it, but nothing that’s not directly tied to Army Football is really on the menu over there.  We’ve got two sponsors now, and we’re growing, and things are generally pretty great.  However, our audience is a distinctly Army Football audience.  My dream of doing a weekly CFB Roundtable podcast are on indefinite hold, and any coverage of other teams and/or other aspects of the sports are also out at least for the foreseeable future.  My long-term goal for the site is to cover not only Army Football but also the football that Army fans are watching.  But there’s no consensus as to exactly what that means, nor has any of that stuff drawn enough interest to make it worthwhile.  Meanwhile, we need to actively resist taking focus away from stuff that’s actually working.

I’m not sure how to handle it.  Part of me feels like I should just do CFB Roundtable here, and if there’s an audience for it, maybe that will create some kind of opportunity.  We’ll see how it goes as the season progresses.

5 Things on a Friday: Trying to Move On

Back to work this week.  It hasn’t been an easy transition, and yet here we are.

I hope you all enjoyed your time off.  I know I did.  I already miss skiing.

Blog in Review: Top 15 Posts of 2018

The 80/20 Rule is a basic business guideline.  It says that any business will get 80% of its revenue from just 20% of its offerings or services.  For example, we should expect McDonald’s to earn 80% of its revenue from just 20% of its menu items.  This makes sense; almost everyone orders either a Big Mac or a Quarter-Pounder with Cheese.  Really, most of the menu is revenue neutral; the only reason to even offer a lot of that stuff is to make it easier for Big Mac lovers to bring their non-Big Mac friends into the store.  It’s the Big Macs that are keeping McDonald’s in the black.

Happy New Year!

Blogging is the same but moreso.  Much more than half of this blog’s readership has come from a handful of posts, and the rest is here either to entertain me as a writer or to give legitimate fans of my writing a reason to come back on a semi-regular basis.

#SBRLLR: Afterword

My wife Sally and I conceived this book as a joint project.  We wanted to show off our partnership as one of the world’s great love affairs.  I gradually came to realize, though, that Sally doesn’t quite have the time to write a whole book about her formative years, and even if she did, the resulting two-volume biography would read like The Winds of War.  Part of me still wants to do it that way, but I wonder who would read two hundred thousand words about a couple who are not famous and not looking to become famous.  

It seems like a tough sell.

5 Things on a Friday: In the Top 10!

Happy Friday, everyone.  Let’s go!