Houston.BloggersPub

A few shots from Thursday night. I took with me my new flash, my Sony 50mm and my Sony 16mm fisheye.
The 50mm has not been seeing a lot of use lately. I favor the Sigma 30mm for a bit wider angle. I forget how glorious this lens can be. Handheld, no flash portrait of Craig […]

Happy Halloween from MikeMcGuff.com.

This is one of my favorite photos from a past Halloween when Jeff Ehling and John Mizwa did a live shot from the now dead Astroworld. What a picture.

You might really need my Halloween Guide today.

It’s almost that time of year where you can relive your younger days where you actually inserted coins to play video games. Keith Christensen, the man behind the event, emailed me the info:

The Houston Area Arcade Group (HAAG) is holding their 7th Annual Arcade Expo on November 7th & 8th at the Houston Grand Plaza Hotel.
Admission is $25 for a weekend pass or $15 for a single day, which gets you access to over 130 arcade games and pinball machines all set to free play, some games will be for sale!
We will be adding Classic Console games to the mix this year! Game systems. This includes Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, ColecoVision, Vectrex, Intellivision, and other classic consoles.
You can also participate in arcade and pinball tournaments, win door prizes, try your luck at a game raffle to win a full stand up arcade or pinball.
We doubled out vendor booth and tournament space this year, we will have tons of arcade and pinball parts, Manuals and memorabilia. Even great general memorabilia and comic books.
There will be concessions and a full bar available for you to purchase refreshments.
There aren’t many opportunities to enjoy large collections of classic arcade games, so if you are in the Houston area (or can get there!), you should be at this expo!

Admission is $25 for a weekend pass or $15 for a single day, which gets you access to over 150 arcade games and pinball machines all set to free play!

Email: Expo@arcadecenter.com for vendor table information and sponsorships.

Dates: November 7th & 8th, 2008

Times:
Friday 6pm to 2am
Saturday 10am to 2am
Houston Grand Plaza Hotel
8686 Kirby Drive Houston, TX 77054

I did a story on this event and the state of arcade games in Houston about four years ago for KTRK.

The 80s did have some iconic songs associated with movies. Tampabay.com came up with a top 80 list (how clever).

Here is the top 5 songs with links to the higher numbers:

5. I’m Alright - Kenny Loggins (Caddyshack)
4. Power of Love - Huey Lewis & The News (Back to the Future)
3. Eye of the Tiger - Survivor (Rocky III)
2. In Your Eyes - Peter Gabriel (Say Anything)
1. Don’t You Forget About Me - Simple Minds (The Breakfast Club)

This is a good list in the top 5, do you agree with the rest.

SEE THE OTHER 75

(Thanks Brian!)

This is one dedicated radio DJ!

WATCH HIM BROADCAST THROUGH FIRE

Early Tuesday morning I posted my finished Astroworld tribute page on abc13.com.  There was lots of interest all day.  For those of you who don’t know, Astroworld was Houston’s big amusement park from the late 1960s to 2005.

The anniversary of Astroworld’s closing is nearing (Oct. 30) so I thought I would go through the KTRK video archive in my spare time and see what I could find concerning the park.

WATCH THE CLIPS

I put up raw video of The Texas Cyclone, aerials of the park, The Looping Starship and more.  I also included a Heidi Jones (now of WABC) story on Astroworld’s history.

(Image courtesy of Flickr user Newscaster)

60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft takes a look at the credit default swaps and their central role in the unfolding economic crisis:

In the early part of the 20th century, the streets of New York and other large cities were lined with gaming establishments called “bucket shops,” where people could place wagers on whether the price of stocks would go up or down without actually buying them. This unfettered speculation contributed to the panic and stock market crash of 1907, and state laws all over the country were enacted to ban them.

[snip]

“So they’d already closed up ’cause the law was coming. Here’s a picture of one of them. And they were like parlors. See,” Dinallo says. “Betting parlors. It was a felony. Well, it was a felony when a law came into effect because it had brought down the market in 1907. And they said, ‘We’re not gonna let this happen again.’ And then 100 years later in 2000, we rolled them all back.”

READ MORE

WATCH THE STORY

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One of my latest projects for abc13.com was designing the layout for this Harris County candidate Q&A page. 

Paige Hewitt is a KTRK producer who used to work for the Houston Chronicle. For this project she was armed with one of my favorite things in the world, The Flip video camera and list of her tough questions, plus questions from the politico’s opponents! Now that’s rough! (And you see why we call it the Political Paige…get it?)

Watch the candidates work up a sweat answering the questions us voters deserve to know!

WATCH THE VIDEOS

No one will be as impressed as I am concerning my artwork with the incorporated flash video to show the big named candidates who answered the questions. First time I ever tried this and it appears to have worked.

Looks like Joost may have competition from a new web site out of Europe called factualTV. Carl Wahlström who is with the site emailed me the following info:

The Swedish and UK based web-TV company factualTV introduces the first global television service solely focused on TV programs within specific subject areas carrying great commercial potential. The company currently has global licenses for more than 2,500 titles of factual and lifestyle programs and documentaries.

factualTV’s concept is to identify specific subjects within factual television where commercial potential exists for both viewers and advertisers. Based on this, factualTV will create thematic sections only containing programs within the specific area. Examples of some of these sections are UFO, Pets, Adventure and World War II.

[snip]

Another reason why factualTV focuses on factual television programs is to optimize the possibilities for subject search, which is the natural behavior of online users. The users can easily find factual television programs within their specific topic of interest through search engines or directly at www.factualtv.com.

[snip]

factualTV strives for simplicity in its service, which is completely web-based. This means the user is not required to download any software to watch a TV program.

The site is in beta for now, but will officially launch in 2009.