Cell Phone Photography - Idaho Spring Thunderstorm

Snapped on the back of my parents' porch in the Boise foothills using the mighty 3.2 megapixels on the T-Mobile G1.

Memories of the NCAA Opening Rounds in Boise

Two weekends ago I was back in the original hood to watch a little First Round Hoops action at Taco Bell Arena on the Boise State campus. Here's a shot of the first game featuring Ivy League champs Cornell taking on the Missouri Tigers in what would be their first win in a strong tournament run to finish out a great season.

Our last game on the first was an over-time thriller between 12-seed Wisconsin and 5-seed Florida State. While the game itself was a defensive battle between two enormous teams, what was perhaps more intriguing was the contrast between the two schools and their respective entourages.

Every school that goes 'dancing' brings a posse of up to 80 support folks including basketball and athletic staff, cheerleaders and bands. We saw eight teams in Boise and each University has it's own flavor and culture that they bring during the games.

And no two flavors were more different than Wisconsin and Florida State. On the one hand we had the Big Ten in Wisconsin representing tradition, with cheerleaders in conservative, full-coverage outfits that would have seemed right at home in the 1950s. Their band wore white collared shirts, chinos and red v-neck sweaters.

On the other side, we had Florida State who's band was decked out in track pants and t-shirts and whose cheerleaders wore bikini tops, exposed midriffs and black lycra dance pants. It seemed that almost every time the Wisconsin band tried to start up, after patiently waiting their turn, the FSU band would interrupt them with that Seminole war-chant thing like the Atlanta Braves do too. It was a wild clash of cultures.

For the second round, we sat low down on the court with the families of the Missouri coaches and players. This was a crazy experience and we were swept along in the tide of Mizzou fervor as they fended off a tenacious Marquette team to advance to the Sweet 16. My ears are still ringing.

My Hooptie on Google Street View

Google Street View has some folks concerned about privacy, while others, like myself, celebrate the minimal Internet celebrity of their city, home, possessions and, in rare cases, persons that by long odds made it into the Street View shot of a given location just as Google's contracted Immersive Media Volkswagen, with its odd, satellite-tower appendage, drove by snapping pics every 30 feet.

Given that Street View originally launched in just a handful of cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Las Vegas to start), I was surprised today to first find it now includes Raleigh, NC (part of the Research Triangle Park) before experimenting with my home address and finding not just my parent's home, but my fucking car parked in front of it, meaning I defied the odds in more ways than one. Those are California plates on my hooptie and I have driven my car back from the Bay Area exactly one time... so what kind of odds did I defy? Or, was it fate? (Spooky! I'm feeling all tingly and connected with everything.)

Anyway, I think the privacy police and the tort system opportunists are way off on this one. Street View is an awesome project because it just made my car famous, among other benefits.

If you feel like peeping your own haunts, to see any lasting record of your presence made Universal on the Interwebs by Google, here is the list of areas where they are currently providing street-level imagery:

• Albany and Schenectady
• Boise
• Boston
• Chicago
• Dallas
• Denver
• Detroit
• Ft. Worth
• Houston
• Indianapolis
• Juneau
• Kansas City
• Las Vegas
• Los Angeles
• Manchester
• Miami
• Milwaukee
• Minneapolis
• New York City
• Orlando
• Philadelphia
• Phoenix
• Pittsburgh
• Portland
• Providence
• Research Triangle Park, NC
• Salt Lake City
• San Antonio
• San Diego
• San Francisco Bay Area
• St. Paul
• Tucson

This is way more than I expected, and you just might be pleasantly surprised too.