Saturday Sunshine

 We chased the nasty cold winds away and today turned out pretty darn decent - sunshine and 50-some degrees. A bit breezy, but I'm not gonna complain.  I can, however, complain about the Razorback basketball team.  After showing they had the talent and skill to defeat two of the top-rated teams in the country, they seem to have forgotten how to do it.  There were some good stretches in today's battle with Florida, but the good was outdistanced by the bad.  Sad.

Did watch a bit of the MSNBC and CNN coverage of the events leading up to Tuesday's inauguration. CNN has its anchors in some kind of semi-protected outdoor set.  Most were wearing gloves, but not everybody had on heavy coats. (UPDATE: Looks like it's getting colder. The coats have come out.) MSNBC, on the other hand, has a pretty snazzy indoor set that makes it look like they're outdoors.  And they're using football-style flying cameras for crowd shots, etc.  It's an impressive setup.  Now, if they were just doing it in High Definition......

The story today is the Obama/Biden train trip and MSNBC is using some new technology to cover it, tying together a half-dozen cell phones to let them go live from the train, while it's moving. It's not broadcast quality, there's a horrible lag when the anchor tosses to the talent, but it's neat to watch.  That being said, I do have to point out that the TV station I worked for in the early 1990's tried something very similar, using two cell phones to feed breaking video back to the station. Of course, you couldn't go "live" with that setup, but it did get tornado footage, etc back in an emergency. We stopped using it after a few months, when it became apparent that it just wasn't that effective. With higher-bandwidth cell technology, it's interesting to watch the concept get a second wind.

The crowds are certain turning out for Obama and Biden, and the President-Elect has been heaping praise on his VP -

Biden's Story Takes Center Stage

If it were not for the emotional threads of Barack Obama's personal story, it seems very likely that more attention would be paid to Joseph Biden's own deeply moving biography.The vice president-elect has largely kept to the shadows during and after [...]

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