Ben’s Blog

Cassie went back to the doctor yesterday. She had to see a different doctor because hers is out of town. They did some sort of (standard) stress test on Luke, and he passed with flying colors. I got a good recording of his heartbeat during the test. I’ll post it this afternoon if I get a chance.

Cassie hasn’t progressed any since her last visit, but the doctor said she’s already in good shape to be induced. If she hasn’t given birth by Monday morning, she’s going to be induced. We have to be at the hospital between 5:30 and 6:00am. The doctor said that if everything goes according to plan, Luke should arrive in the mid to late afternoon.

I got to hold Cassie’s cousin’s three day-old baby this past weekend. Now I’m even more exciting about Luke’s impending arrival. On the one hand I’d like him to be born in the next couple of days so I can spend the weekend plus my week off with him. On the other hand, it’d be nice to have one more weekend of normalcy. :) Good thing I have no choice in the matter.

Ole Miss faced Vanderbilt in the semifinals of the SEC tournament on Saturday. Vanderbilt is ranked #1 in the country, but because they had lost a game in the tournament and we hadn’t, they had to beat us twice to advance to the tournament finals. We only had to win once to advance. They scored 8 runs in the first one and a third innings of the first game. They eventually won 13-1.

We led 3-2 for most of the second game. In the bottom of the ninth Vanderbilt scored a run to make it 3-3 and force extra innings. (The tying run actually scored on a foul sacrifice fly to left field. That brings up the question of whether the left fielder should have let the foul ball drop instead of catching it for the out. I say yes, but it’s a pretty unique situation.)

In the top of the 10th, Ole Miss scored two runs when the catcher threw the ball into left field during a pickoff attempt at third base. The pickoff attempt occurred after a failed suicide squeeze. Crazy stuff. We then scored another run to make it 6-3. That’s a pretty secure lead in most extra inning situations, but we somehow allowed Vandy to score four runs in the bottom of the inning to win the game.

Sunday afternoon Vanderbilt played Arkansas for the SEC tournament championship. Vandy won 7-4. They are the first regular season champion to win the tournament in 10 years.

The NCAA also announced regional sites for the NCAA tournament Sunday afternoon. Vanderbilt, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Ole Miss will be hosting 4 of the 16 regionals. Vanderbilt is hosting its first ever regional. (Wow. That just shows you how far they’ve come.) Ole Miss is hosting one for the fourth year in a row. Texas is the only other school in the country that can make that claim.

Ole Miss will be hosting Southern Mississippi, Troy, and Sam Houston State this weekend in their regional. In my opinion, Southern Miss is the only team that has a chance to beat us, though Troy might surprise us. We’ve split two games against Southern Miss this year. However, neither team was using their best pitchers, so it’s hard to tell much from that. Our first game will be against Sam Houston State on Friday night.

The 13th Annual Oxford Double Decker Arts Festival was held on Saturday, April 28th. The festival takes its name from the double decker bus that was imported by Oxford in 1994. The bus was a big hit, so another one was imported a few years ago. They’re used for special events and entertaining visitors. A bit of history for you: Oxford, Mississippi was named after Oxford, England in the early 1800’s in an effort to convince the state legislature to build a University here. Obviously it worked. Thus, the buses kind of fit with the British theme.

I wandered around during the early afternoon and took a few pictures with my Fujifilm F31fd. I’ve posted 15 of them on Flickr. The slideshow is probably the best way to view them. Don’t miss the history in the description of one of the courthouse pictures.

This is the first set of pictures I’ve run through Lightroom. It saved a couple of them that were pretty badly underexposed. In the past I would’ve had to just throw them away. I think I’m getting better at separating the wheat from the chaff. I took over 100 photos and pared it down to these 15. Your comments are welcome. If you don’t have time to look at the entire set, I’ve posted four below.

Earlier in the week I mentioned that while I was enjoying Lightroom, I wasn’t thrilled with the results I got when I exported my images. The colors were different between the Lightroom preview and the exported JPEG viewed in Firefox or Windows Picture Viewer. The primary issue is that neither of those applications are color managed. (For more information on what that actually means, see Jeffrey Friedl’s tutorial I mentioned earlier.)

Another issue is that my monitor wasn’t calibrated, so I ordered a copy of Colorvision Spyder2express. In a comment on my last post, Jeffrey says this is just as likely to hurt the color matching as to help it. Thankfully, in my case, it did help it. I can no longer differentiate between the Lightroom preview and an exported JPEG viewed in Firefox or Windows Picture Viewer. Here is the example photo I used earlier:

If your monitor is calibrated and you’re viewing it in a color managed application, it probably looks something like I intended it to. Otherwise, all bets are off. :) This is a photo from the Double Decker Festival last month. I’ll be posting some more soon. This particular one was pretty badly underexposed. I was able to save it with Lightroom.

Even if monitor calibration hadn’t helped, it’s always a good idea to have your monitor calibrated when editing images. I’ll never be able to control what my images look like in non-color managed applications, but at least I can control what they should look like. It does give me some amount of control.

While I still recommend Lightroom, I can’t really recommend it without some sort of monitor calibration package. I have no complaints about Spyder2express, and it’s only $60. Yes, there are better ones out there, but they cost a lot more. I’ll probably buy one of them some day, but for now I’m happy with Spyder2express.

I’ve been looking for a software project to do on my own time, and this experience may have pointed me toward one. Firefox should have some level of color management. However, I’m not sure where I’d even start, and it’s not something I want to get into right now with a baby on the way. Maybe in a couple of months.

Ole Miss scored 5 runs in the first inning and another in the fourth to beat Tennessee 6-3 last night. All of Tennessee’s runs came on a three-run home run by Arencibia with two outs and two strikes in the 6th inning. Lance Lynn gave up 6 hits and 3 runs in 7 innings of work. He also had 10 strikeouts, which brings him up to 130 on the season. That once again gives him the single season team record that his teammate Will Kline had stolen from him the night before. Both Kline and Lynn should have another shot at the record in a regional. Kline is now seven strikeouts behind Lynn. Cody Satterwhite pitched two perfect innings of relief to get the save.

Saturday at 1pm Ole Miss will play the winner of tonight’s Vanderbilt/Tennessee game. (Most likely Vanderbilt.) If we win, we go to Sunday’s championship game. If we lose we’ll play the same team again Saturday night since we haven’t lost a game in the tournament yet. We should have an advantage over our semifinal opponent due to the fact that we’ve played fewer games than them and aren’t as deep into our pitching staff.

We would face Arkansas or South Carolina in the championship game. One would hope South Carolina could upset Arkansas in the semifinals or at least force a second game. That would give us a pitching advantage in the championship game.

Cassie and I were married on May 25, 2002, or exactly five years ago today. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long. Since then we’ve both earned two degrees and lived at four different locations in Oxford. (After this last move we promised each other we wouldn’t move again until we leave Oxford.)

Yes, we got married before either of us had finished our Bachelor’s degree. It was in between my Junior and Senior years and her Sophomore and Junior years. It worked out well for us, but it’s not something I recommend for most couples. For whatever reason my GPA skyrocketed after we got married. Come to think of it, I haven’t made anything other than an “A” since we got married. Talk about a good luck charm. :)

Unfortunately, we don’t have anything spectacular planned for our fifth anniversary. I suppose we’ve been too focused on Luke. I halfway expected to be in the hospital (or already home) today. I imagine we’ll find a nice place to eat and use the long weekend to rest up before the little guy gets here.

We share our anniversary with some interesting historical events. For instance, the Constitutional Convention was convened today in 1787, John T. Scopes was indicted of teaching evolution in a Tennessee classroom in 1925, Babe Ruth hit his last home run in 1935 (his record stood for 39 years), JFK announced his goal of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” in 1961, and the original Star Wars movie was released in only 32 theaters in 1977. Today is also Towel Day, a tribute to Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Cassie originally had an appointment for Tuesday, but her doctor was out, so it was postponed until today. The good news is that she has progressed a little bit. The bad news is that her doctor is going out of town for over a week, starting in the morning. He gave her the choice of being induced today or trying to wait until he gets back. She decided to wait.

She has another appointment for Wednesday (with another doctor). If she hasn’t had Luke by Monday, June 4th, her doctor will induce her. However, she’s due on Tuesday, May 29th, so we expect she’ll have Luke before then.

Cassie’s first cousin, Mandy, gave birth to her little boy, Braxton, in Tuscumbia, Alabama today. She wasn’t actually due until June 4th, but her doctor decided to induce her this morning. If Cassie had decided to be induced today, their grandmother would have become a great-grandmother twice in one day.

Will Kline pitched a complete game last night as Ole Miss defeated MSU 3-1. State had some base runners, but stranded too many of them. Jordan Henry reached base for the 45th consecutive game.

Mississippi State will have to play a vengeful Vanderbilt today at 1pm. Vanderbilt’s ace, David Price, is pitching. I predict State loses.

Ole Miss will be playing Tennessee tonight at 8pm. Tennessee took a series from us earlier in the season, but most people will tell you we are the better team. Lance Lynn will be pitching, and we have a bunch of fresh relievers. It should be a good game. Once again, I will not be staying up for it. Last night’s game was supposed to start at 8pm too, but it didn’t start until after 9:30pm and didn’t wrap up until 12:40am this morning. (Yes, that means MSU has just over 12 hours between games.)

If Ole Miss wins tonight, they won’t have to play again until Saturday. If they lose, they’ll have to play the winner of the Vanderbilt/MSU game tomorrow. That’s all the more reason to win. (Tournament schedule)

We won the Saturday game 5-0 to win the Arkansas series. Unfortunately we needed to win all three games to take the division crown from them. Still, it’s always good to take a series from a top 10 team on the road. Bukvich started for the first time in a long time and gave us seven shutout innings.

Earlier in the week Jordan Henry was named SEC Freshman of the Year. Zack Cozart made First Team All-SEC. Jordan Henry, Lance Lynn, and Cody Satterwhite made the Second Team. I was surprised to see that Justin Henry made neither.

Ole Miss and Mississippi State are about to square off in Game 4 of the SEC Tournament. Game time is set for 9:30pm. I will not be staying up for the conclusion. Three games have already been played today, and the biggest surprise so far is that Tennessee knocked off Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is ranked #1 in the country and just finished sweeping Tennessee last weekend. The loser of the Ole Miss/MSU game has to play Vandy tomorrow. No one wants to play an angry, desperate Vanderbilt. Ole Miss won last year’s tournament by sweeping the field. They beat Vandy in the final game.

Ole Miss is fighting to host a regional. Some say we already have it in the bag. A good showing in the tournament would go a long way toward a case for a top 8 seed. Being a top 8 seed means you get to play at home in the second round of the tournament. The NCAA lists us as #14 in RPI, which is one of the measures they use to determine ranking for the NCAA tournament. Warrennolan.com, a web site that tracks college sports, lists us as having the toughest schedule in the country this year. It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out.

I got my copy of Adobe Lightroom a couple of weeks ago, and I’m quite enjoying it (academic license, $94.95). The amount of tweaking you can do to images is amazing, especially with the RAW files from my Rebel XTi. I definitely made the right decision about getting Lightroom instead of Photoshop CS3. At this point Photoshop would just have too many options for me. Plus, Lightroom has lots of nice DAM (Digital Asset Management) features that Photoshop doesn’t. I’m sure I will want to get Photoshop CS3 at some point (perhaps around Christmas?), but right now I’m happy with Lightroom.

There is one small problem. I can tweak images to look exactly like I want them to in Lightroom, but then I have to export them to JPEGs. On my monitor at least, there is a notable color shift between the Lightroom preview and the exported JPEG viewed in Firefox or Windows Picture Viewer. Here’s an example:

The first one is a screenshot of the Lightroom preview. The second one is a scaled down version of the exported JPEG. On my monitor (and my monitor at work) there is an obvious color shift. Depending on the calibration of your monitor and the browser you’re using, these images may look completely different to you. If I import the exported JPEG back into Lightroom, the two look identical.

All of this led me to investigate the wonderful world of color management. Jeffrey Friedl has a good color management tutorial on his blog. It’s seven pages long, but the first three tell you most of what you need to know. Jeffrey is the author of O’Reilly’s Mastering Regular Expressions. I starting reading his blog a couple of months ago, but I missed his tutorial because he posted last year.

As it turns out, neither Firefox, nor IE, nor Windows Picture Viewer is color managed. Lightroom is, of course. The sRGB color space is supposed to render correctly in non-color managed applications. I knew this, and was exporting using sRGB, but the color shift was definitely there. ProPhoto RGB is the working color space for Lightroom, and there are definitely some colors in ProPhoto RGB that sRGB can’t display, but I don’t think that, by itself, accounts for the color shift.

I posted to a couple of forums, and the most viable explanation is that my monitor is miscalibrated. I’m not completely convinced, but I have ordered ColorVision Spyder2 Express. Hopefully it will solve my problem. If it doesn’t, well, I needed to have my monitor calibrated anyway. It should be here tomorrow, so we’ll find out soon.