Google Plus Anniversary Photo Walk

Jun 26, 2012 by Bryan

To celebrate Google Plus’ one-year anniversary, folks have been organizing a global photo walk for this Saturday, June 30th. As of tonight, the total number of cities involved is 87. Cincinnati is one of those cities. Our photo walk will start at Fountain Square at 9:00 am, check out the west side of downtown, and end at Arnold’s Bar and Grill. Here is the route:

I tried to pick a route that would be accessible, interesting, and not interfere with the Pride parade. The route was adjusted to avoid crossing the parade. Bear in mind, the organizer doesn’t entirely know what he is doing, but what the heck, I’ve got to learn sometime.

What is a Photo Walk?

A photo walk is just an excuse for photographers of all levels to gather together and takes some interesting pictures. It doesn’t matter if you plan on using a film-based SLR, or your camera phone, the point is to get out and shoot, and then share the results. The focus on this event is to celebrate Google +, so sharing on Google + would be ideal, but choose any social media channel you choose. We will be using the hashtag #CincyPhotoWalk. Since many folks lie and use Flickr, I also created the Flickr public group Cincy Photo Walk.

I’ve only participated in one other walk, and is fun to see what other folks find to shoot. Depending on how it goes, perhaps we can do this other times and other places. If you are interested, follow the links, you can RSVP by commenting on the Google page and/or responding to the Plancast invite. Hope to see a lot of folks there, and look forward to their photos.

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COAST Insider Comes Clean: It Was All A Prank

Apr 1, 2012 by Bryan

In a surprise announcement today, an unidentified COAST insider revealed that the organization was started as a prank. The insider, who is not quite ready to reveal his identity, explained that it was all started by a group of friends who wanted to parody extreme political organizations. “To be clear, our group of friends are actually against wasteful spending, but we were commenting on how things like that can be taken too far, and thought it might be a fun exercise. None of us imagined it would keep going this long.”

What’s In A Name

In talking about the origins of the group, he explained there was a lot of debate surrounding the name. “Initially someone proposed Citizens Organized Against All Spending and Taxes, or COAAST, but we thought it would be too over the top.” He went on to say “I thought COAST was still too obvious. I mean come on, you aren’t going to get anywhere in life coasting, and the only direction you can coast is down hill, but I was over-ruled, and turned out to be wrong.”

According to the source, the logo was also carefully designed to hint at the prank. The trajectory of the star is clearly downhill, and even includes a dead-cat bounce at the end. The original design included a shattered star, but that was changed because they felt it was too obvious.

Shining Moments

He went on to reminisce about some of his favorite moments in the organization’s history. He felt the Streetcar was a gift from above. His favorite moment was the infamous “We don’t have signs, we can’t afford signs” press conference. He continued “What people did not realize is that this was one of the best instances of performance art in the city. Tom Luken gets a lot of flack for this, but the signs were actually his idea, and he ad-libbed that entire bit on the spot. Outsiders cannot appreciate his sense of comedic timing.”

Decline

When asked why he was coming clean, he admitted that it just wasn’t fun anymore. He explained that they have fallen into a rut. “There is only so many times you can retweet someone complaining about something on a streetcar before even you get tired.”

He also pointed to some mistakes. “It seemed like a good idea when we decided to compare the 9/11 tragedy to the City’s policy of browning out Fire Departments. In retrospect, we really didn’t think that one through.” But the real tragedy , he admits, was trying to connect a fire death on a browned out station. “Even if it had been true, it was in bad taste, but the fact that the responsible department was working that day put it over the edge.”

He is not sure how long the others will keep things going, but he admits he is done. “I have mixed feelings about the whole experience. It was a lot of fun at times, but it was also depressing that the general public didn’t catch on to the joke. I always felt uncomfortable when I ran into committed folks that were not in on the joke.”

He imagines that his decision to out the organization will not be popular with the group. He tried to get them to come to a consensus to reveal the prank, but in the end he decided it was time, and today was the day to announce it.

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Look Back in Time with WhatWasThere.com

Sep 29, 2011 by Bryan

Here’s a really interesting site: WhatWasThere.com. This site leverages Google Maps and crowd-sourcing to provide a great interface to share and browse pictures from our past. I love finding pictures from Cincinnati’s past. There are not many there yet, but they do have a nice old picture of the Tyler-Davidson fountain, and some other early architecture.

From their site:

The premise is simple: provide a platform where anyone can easily upload a photograph with two straightforward tags to provide context: Location and Year. If enough people upload enough photographs in enough places, together we will weave together a photographic history of the world (or at least any place covered by Google Maps). So wherever you are in the world, take a moment to upload a photograph and contribute to history!

So go take a look. If you have some good pictures to add, do that as well.

Source: The-Gadgeteer.com

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2011 Cincy Blues Fest

Aug 26, 2011 by Bryan

For my first official assignment I got to go the Cincy Blues Fest. This was the 19th year, and I am sad to say, the first time I have gone. I do like the Blues. And not because I’ve seen the Bues Brothers. I know who Robert Johnson is, and I own his complete recordings. But I don’t have a lot of Blues, nor am I familiar with the local talent. The only reason this was on my radar is that Crazy Joe and the Mad River Outlaws were scheduled to perform. They are a Rockabilly band from Enon, OH (north of Dayton) and I was excited to see them play here.

So here I was, first-time at the Cincy Blues Fest, on a Friday night. First thing I did was go exploring.

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