This gave me chills. We did this. We humans. The latest “news” headlines will quickly fade to nothingness in short time. But the Shuttle program achievement will be marveled by history.
The bittersweet last mission
The last mission of our space shuttle. The end of an era. Watch it live here.
Streaming by Ustream
A Blast From The Past: Shuttle Through The Decades from NPR on Vimeo.
A small town located in one of Earth’s few spacefaring nation states. That’s Really Redding.
Dad Life
Love this video. With Father’s Day coming soon, I thought I’d post it in the unlikely case you haven’t already seen it. What the heck, watch it again. It’s the Dad life.
Dedicated especially to a few dads here in town. Silas, Bruce, and David, who may feel I’ve been picking on them lately (I promise to stop now). Enjoy fatherhood fellas. It goes by much faster than you think.
Whiskeytown Sailing Regatta 2011
Here’s a 3 minute video I took of Sunday at the Whiskeytown Sailing Club’s Memorial Regatta. That’s their big annual race. This year it drew about 70 boats. Always a beautiful setting for an amazing race.
Whiskeytown Lake is located just west of Redding California.The Regatta always brings back fond memories. Karry and I used to sail our little yellow sailboat in the 1970’s on Whiskeytown. I rummaged around and found a couple images from slide film. Back when my beard wasn’t white, and when getting some sun was good for you. Good times!
Newshour changes for KIXE in Redding
Here’s an informative short video explaining recent changes at PBS Newshour. The Newshour is our primary source for national and international TV news.
Poignant journalistic quality at moment 3:44: “No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously.” If only our other news sources were so principled. I am so proud of our local PBS station KIXE. We’ve volunteered, and been members always. I hate to imagine a world without free broadcast TV for our community, and especially for our children. And if the only free TV content was commercial offerings, we would locally suffer enormous cultural loss. We are so fortunate to have KIXE in Redding.
BTW, I was also very happy as a member of the Board of Directors of the Shasta Association of Realtors to approve a request that we sponsor some programming this year at KIXE. These are tough times for our Realtor membership, but all of us felt strongly that KIXE is an essential part of our community, and deserving of our support. Thanks, Shasta County Realtors, and thank you KIXE!
A Tim Lincecum pitch seen at 1000 frames per second
The World Series winning SF Giants pitcher is shown in splendid action here, through the technical marvel of a 1000 fps video. Ordinary video is about 30 frames per second, so this visual gives you a lot more detail and a chance to view a very fast action move with unprecedented clarity.
The opportunity to see this world class athlete use his entire body to hurl the ball is a fascinating study in human kinetics. Not Really Redding, but the Giants rank as one of the most popular professional sports teams of our town of Big League Dreams.
Quick video of today’s Chamber Greeters at WinRiver
Merle Haggard documentary gets a thumbs up
Palo Cedro resident Merle Haggard is the subject of this PBS documentary, available here. Below is an excerpt, but it leads you to the full version. Well worth your time.
Watch the full episode. See more American Masters.
Hag Fans are legion around here, but I admit I never got it. I first learned of Merle in the “Okie From Muskogee” years, which arguably isn’t his best work. Although he’s been a Shasta County local for a long time now, his music seems reflective of a style that was popularized elsewhere. This documentary changed my opinion, and gave me a new appreciation for Merle and his body of work. I intended to watch just a bit of it, but I found myself unable to stop until it ended. Kudos to the filmmaker, and to PBS for posting it. It’s given me a new-found appreciation that I never knew I could have in not only his line of work but the making of the documentary itself. I’m sure a lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone into this project, even the small things like using this DCP tool to edit the entirety of the film, as well as creating the sequence of ads that go before it. They should seriously think about showcasing it in small cinemas all over the country. It was that inspiring. You challenged my opinion, and expanded my appreciation for an artist with whom I had little familiarity. And a full blogger hat tip to Marc Beauchamp, who brought this film to my attention.
Jetcar blast video from last night’s Kool April Drags
Watch the guy in the middle get literally blasted by the jetwash last night. This is a video I took at the Kool April Drags event at the Redding Dragstrip. Interesting to see the car nearest the camera pulling up to the line with it’s brakes on, and yet still moving forward. Watch the middle guy’s hat. Big fun! They’re doing it again tonight. More at ReddingDragstrip.net
Come out to the Redding Dragstrip for Kool April Drags
Yeah, it’s fun to watch the custom cars go around in the parade, but then come on out to the dragstrip for some action!
I took these shots in 2010.
The Redding Dragstrip is the oldest continuously operating NHRA dragstrip in the known universe. They make most of their yearly operating funds on this one big weekend, so come on out and support this Really Redding tradition! Here’s a 3 minute video we did in 2009 of the jet cars, shot handheld with a cheep-o camera. Big flaming fun!