New View

For Christmas, my sister-in-law got me a small spotting telescope and it's sweet. Where I usually live, the view outside my window is relatively mundane. So it's a good thing we are house-sitting this week for some friends who happen to live across the street from Soho Billiards. I was practicing focusing the scope last night and discovered that pool balls are excellent targets for this. Once I found a good angle, I tried taking a few pictures through the scope using the camera on my Blackberry. I was surprised it even came close to registering. The results with and without the scope are above. Definitely due for a visit to Soho Billiards this week, maybe I'll try a timelapse there. Happy Holidays to you all.

3D Pool: High Roller

In July, Yvonne and I got ourselves some BlackBerry 8130 phones. She had been on a month-to-month plan using a phone she hated, and my plan was charging me 20 cents per text over my 100-per-month limit. So we signed up for a new joint plan, charged up our new Blackberries and haven't looked back since. In addition to having all my emails forwarded to my phone (a luxury I can't imagine ever living without again), I've spruced up my device by adding a 4GB media card, switching to an iBerry theme and downloading a couple useful applications. TwitterBerry is my current favorite, but before that it was a pool game called 3D Pool: High Roller. The game features a couple different modes of playing to choose from, Career or Practice. Career is the one that allows you to play other people and unlock the rest of the game. In Career you start out in Monaco, then go to New Orleans and finally end up in Las Vegas. Throughout the Career mode, the opponents get harder and harder to beat as you advance. Same is true with the trick shots, which include jumping, swerving, making two balls in one shot, etc. Now that I have beaten every level and unlocked the entire game, I seem to have more options when I start up. So in addition to Career and Practice, I now get to choose Trick Shots (which is a collection of all 15 trick shots that are featured on all the levels of the game) and just simple Shoot Pool. This final choice is my favorite because it allows you to choose between one and two player, so you could theoretically play a friend sitting next to you at the bar. It also lets you choose the type of pool game (15 balls numbered, 15 balls red and yellow, or just 9 ball). And finally, it allows you to scroll through various shapes of pool table, from hexagon (as seen in the screen shot above), to L-shaped, to Z-shaped, etc. From what I can tell, the new version of 3D Pool: High Roller (updated October 21, 2008) features animated characters that you play against, as opposed to a still photograph of some model holding a pool cue. In my version of the game, I'd always be straight-in on an easy shot on the 8 ball when my opponent's picture would appear and I'd be taunted and challenged to go for a totally different pocket (of the opponent's choosing) for extra cash. I never once made any of these challenges to earn extra money, but by the time I played my last match in Las Vegas I had still amassed over $1 million. 3D Pool: High Roller is certainly a nice way to spend a long subway ride. And it's a game that's fun to put away and come back to, especially when it comes to trying to make a few of the more difficult trick shots.

Damn Right Your Dad Drank It

I was flipping through an old issue of Rolling Stone today and this ad for Canadian Club Whisky jumped out at me. The headline reads "Your Dad Never Used a Bridge." The text of the ad goes on: "He didn't wheel his luggage. Drive an automatic. Or drink anything rimmed with sugar. He drank whisky cocktails. Made with Canadian Club. In a rocks glass. And if there was a cue around, he didn't have to pay for them." Well, then. I can see where they're going with the demographic they're trying to reach. I looked up the Canadian Club Whisky website and was impressed to find a kind of do-it-yourself advertisement maker that allows you to upload your own photos. However, it only allows you to pick from one of three template ads. And beyond uploading the main photo, it doesn't allow you to customize it too much. But it's still pretty cool. I tore the page out of Rolling Stone and will put it in one of the books in my small billiards library. This ad makes me think of the brilliant Errol Morris Miller High Life ads. Click here to view one of my favorites.

Recent Memorable Runout #2

This is probably a bit of a stretch, but I'm going to throw this out there in case anybody wants to click on the image at left to see if they can follow a 6-ball runout I made Monday night. My attempt at panoramic timelapse was a disaster, so I just put the camera up high with the c-clamp and got the whole evening captured at one frame every 20 seconds. This is from the third game I played, against a SL3. We were tied 1-1 at this point and this runout put me one win away from taking the match, which I won. In the very top photo you can see the cue ball is very close to the orange 5 ball. That was my first shot of the runout, the 5 into the corner pocket. You can see that I hit it with follow and got straight-in on the blue 2 ball. Before taking my shot on the 2 into the other corner you can see me lining up the yellow 1 ball (third picture from the top). That's not a very high percentage shot, I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I felt unusually confident Monday night and had made a killer shot in my first match, so I guess I was on a roll. I pocketed the 2 and then cut the 1 across the table into the corner pocket and left myself perfect on the red 3, "threading the needle" and not disturbing my opponent's stripes. With the 3 ball it was a simple draw shot to get back in position on the maroon 7 ball. I hit the 7 softly and managed to nudge the 8 a little closer to the same pocket for a little last-pocket win. It felt great throwing my wallet onto the table to mark my pocket.

I've had a pretty crummy season and this was my first win in what feels like an eternity. And it was a continuation of our success from last week, putting us at 5-6 for the season with four matches left, three of which are at Sophie's. Here's to a nice home stretch finish.

Time Lapse Experiment

Just a quick video showing about three hours of time lapse I shot a few Friday nights ago at Doc Holliday's. I had a pretty decent run toward the end, almost winning 8 in a row before my camera's battery died right after I had snookered myself behind my opponent's ball with my 8 hanging in the pocket. There's an unused cue rack at Doc's that works perfectly as a bracket for the C-clamp mount that I use. It's perfectly aligned with the pool table is up high and out of the way. I'm definitely going to be giving this another try, perhaps tonight during our match at Sophie's. I'm anxious to incorporate a slow, panning motion into the sequence as opposed to this type of static perspective. Stay tuned.