Roundball Oracles – Year 9

March Madness is upon us once again. Which means it is that time of year when I call upon all would-be-basketball-prognosticators to compete in an NCAA tourney bracket pool for the chance at everlasting glory, immortality, and a trophy.

As always, the Roundball Oracles is open to all interested parties, and yes to even uninterested parties as well. Regardless of basketball knowledge or basketball ignorance. Heck, I might even let my dog enter this year. After all, there is a tremendous amount of luck involved in this competition, so there is no reason for you to be intimidated by how well versed I am in the motion offense. You should only be intimidated by me on an actual basketball court. Even though I’ve admittedly lost a step, but I’m spending the offseason getting that step back, but that is an entirely different story…

As always, there is no entrance fee, but pride and my research indicates that pride is a low calorie snack, so swallow it and get in the game.

The champion will be given a trophy. I would normally at this time insert a picture of last year’s champion hoisting last year’s trophy, but I admittedly, still owe him a trophy.

Last year we had a record 29 prognosticators (as of this writing, 9 people have already signed up). I don’t think it would be too crazy to hope to break that record this year.

2012 Final Standings

1. Lowell Davis
2. Corey Faust
3. Jason Baier
4. Angie DeWaard
5. Robert Henning
6. William McAlpine
7. Mark Wolfram
8. Jason Stensland
9. Dawn Krause
10. Jesse Howard
11. Jon DeWaard
12. Derrick Gorshe
13. Nader Parsaei
14. Jackson Faust
15. Bill Wentworth
16. Tim Peterson
17. Mike Donner
18. Jen Ensley-Gorshe
19. Michael Augustin
20. Carrie Baier
21. Shawn Lockner
22. Russell Kennerly
23. Shaun Kirsch
24. Teresa Kahler
25. Your Humble Narrator
26. Toby Sebring
27. Brandon Kahler
28. Jordan Toot
29. Becky Perkovich

Lowell was able to chisel his place amongst the other basketball immortals that have managed to hoist the Roundball Oracles Trophy.*

Past Roundball Oracles Champions

2012 – Lowell Davis
2011 – Carrie Baier
2010 – Mark Wolfram
2009 – Mark Wolfram
2008 – Mark Wolfram
2007 – Tim Peterson
2006 – William McAlpine
2005 – William McAlpine

So the metaphorical ball is now in your court. There are no guidelines for participation. This contest is open to all competitors: men, women, small children and the elderly.

If you are interested and I need the information, you know how to contact me!

Oh… the deadline for filling out your bracket is tip-off of the first game on Thursday morning.

*Technically he has yet to hoist the trophy.

Instagram: Pros/Cons

By far and away, the most popular photo sharing phone app is Instagram. The popularity is almost staggering. 100 million monthly ACTIVE users. 40 million photos per day. 8500 “Likes” per second. 1000 comments per second. It isn’t any wonder why Facebook bought Instagram for 1 billion dollars last year.

When it comes to sharing a photo with as many people as possible, there just flat out isn’t any competition for Instagram.

Instagram can simultaneously post a photo to:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Foursquare
  • Flickr
  • Tumblr

Although I personally wouldn’t consider all of their filters usable, Instagram boasts 20 unique filters. Like Flickr, the names aren’t particularly useful, but unlike Flickr, you can scan through them fairly quickly:

  • 1977
  • Amaro
  • Brannan
  • Early Bird
  • Hefe
  • Hudson
  • Inkwell
  • Kelvin
  • Lo Fi
  • Mayfair
  • Nashville
  • Rise
  • Sierra
  • Sutro
  • Toaster
  • Valencia
  • Walden
  • Willow
  • X Pro

Plus Instagram comes with a photo enhancement feature that actually does change the appearance of an image.

A look at Instagram’s filter options:


Normal. No Enhancement
Normal

Normal. Enhancement
Normal. Enhanced.

Amaro. No Enhancement.
Amaro

Amaro. Enhancement.
Amaro Enhanced

Mayfair. No Enhancement.
Mayfair

Mayfair. Enhancement.
Mayfair Enhanced

Rise. No Enhancement.
Rise

Rise. Enhancement.
Rise Enhanced

Hudson. No Enhancement.
Hudson

Hudson. Enhancement.
Hudson Enhanced

Valencia. No Enhancement.
Valencia

Valencia. Enhancement.
Valencia Enhanced

X-Pro. No Enhancement.
X Pro

X-Pro. Enhancement.
X Pro Enhanced

Sierra. No Enhancement
Sierra

Sierra. Enhancement
Sierra Enhanced

Willow. No Enhancement.
Willow

Willow. Enhancement.
Willow Enhanced

LoFi. No Enhancement.
Lo Fi

LoFi. Enhancement.
Lo Fi Enhanced

Early Bird. No Enhancement.
Early Bird

Early Bird. Enhancement.
Early Bird Enhanced

Sutro. No Enhancement.
Sutro

Sutro. Enhancement
Sutro Enhanced

Toaster. No Enhancement.
Toaster

Toaster. Enhancement.
Toaster Enhanced

Brannan. No Enhancement.
Brannan

Brannan. Enhancement.
Brannan Enhanced

Inkwell. No Enhancement.
Inkwell

Inkwell. Enhancement.
Inkwell Enhanced

Walden. No Enhancement.
Walden

Walden. Enhancement.
Walden Enhanced

Hefe. No Enhancement.
Hefe

Hefe. Enhancement.
Hefe Enhanced

Nashville. No Enhancement.
Nashville

Nashville. Enhancement.
Nashville Enhanced

1977. No Enhancement.
1977

1977. Enhancement.
1977 Enhanced

Kelvin. No Enhancement.
Kelvin

Kelvin. Enhancement.
Kelvin Enhanced

One bonus (you may have noticed) with Instagram is that some of the filters have a frame you can toggle on and off. Some of the frames are actually a bonus, a few don’t really need to exist. What is disappointing is that you can’t mix and match frames. Each frame is assigned to a filter. It can’t be used for any other filter. More customization would be a plus, but since frames ultimately aren’t that useful, it isn’t a big miss.

The biggest con of Instagram is that you can only create square images. There is no other aspect ratio available. There is a commitment to theme that I respect, but this stubbornness has resulted in a cottage industry of third party apps to take rectangular images and making them square for publishing in Instagram.

Another negative of Instagram is that out of the app home, you can only use their camera. This might be a plus on a phone with a lesser camera app, it is a negative on a higher end phone. A plus for their camera app is that you can use the backwards face camera on your phone if it is so enabled. The Instagram camera is a decent camera app, but really only has the option of using or not using flash.

This is only a slight negative because you can use any camera app and then upload any picture into Instagram.

A positive of Instagram is that it saves Instagram images at a decent size. 2448×2448 on my phone. I could easily print decent sized pictures from that size. I’ve seen plenty of cool decorating ideas on the web with people printing their Instagrams. Another positive is that it saves its images in its own album, so you don’t have to go poking through another album for your images.

Another nice editing feature of Instagram is that it allows you to blur your pictures to emphasize your subject. There are two options. You can either circle blur or line blur. What is really nice about this feature is that you can control the size, placement, and orientation of the blurs.


Circle Blur.
Circle Blur

Line Blur
Line Blur

Another nice feature of Instagram is hashtagging. A feature that Twitter has really hung its hat on and that Facebook has been scrambling to try to figure out how to steal. By place a “#” in front of a word, you have hashtagged it. Making it a link to all similarly hashtagged pictures.

However, by far and away my favorite toy part of Instagram is the photo map. You have the option of putting any of your pictures onto your photo map. It is a great way to remember where images were taken, or just to mark, in a tangible way, all the places you have visited. While you won’t be able to tell from my medium range screen shot of my photo map, I have left central Iowa. You also won’t be able to tell the accuracy of the photo map. It will place that photo pretty much precisely on the block where you took the image.


Photo Map.

In fact, the Instagram photo map might be my favorite thing in all of social media.

A slight negative of the photo map is that you have to place the picture on the photo map when you take the picture, you can’t place it on the photo map later, like you can in Flickr’s photo map.