Dr. Thompsen – Page 17 – Professor of Communication | Scholar of Media

Fun with Panoramas

I recently have been experimenting with panoramic photography. During my recent travels, I attempted to take a number of photographs that could later be stitched together into QuickTime VR panoramas. Below are links to some example panoramas I created using DoubleTake, a handy program for panoramic stitching on the Mac. They aren’t perfect, as you can still notice some seams if you look closely. But I don’t think they’re bad for an amateur.

To move around in the panoramas, just click and move the mouse. Use the shift key to zoom in and the control key to zoom out. Note that you’ll need to have QuickTime installed on your computer to view these files.

Farewell, Ruth Bell Graham

Billy&Ruth.jpg Ruth Bell Graham died today at the age of 87. She was the wife of evangelist Billy Graham and the mother of their five children. The obituary from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association reports that Billy and their children were all present by her bedside as she passed away in Little Piney Cove, their expansive homestead in Montreat, North Carolina. The Los Angeles Times reports that Ruth will be buried at the foot of the cross in the Prayer Garden of the recently-opened Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina.

My wife and I visited the Billy Graham Library just this past Tuesday, stopping by on our drive home from Florida. We took a number of pictures, including this one of the Prayer Garden where Ruth will be memorialized. It is a beautiful, peaceful setting, adjacent to the Library and the recreated Graham Family Homestead.

Among the many exhibits in the Library is a special room devoted to the life of Ruth Graham. She was a remarkable woman who led a full life. She was born in China as the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries Dr. Nelson and Virginia Bell. Early in her life, Ruth had dreamed of being a missionary in Tibet. But then Ruth met Billy while they were students at Wheaton College in Illinois. They were married in 1943, shortly after they graduated from Wheaton. I took the picture below of Ruth’s diploma from Wheaton, which is on display in the Library. Next to the diploma is one of the tin cans she made into light fixtures in the Graham home in Montreat, North Carolina. Apparently she was a very resourceful homemaker.

The Billy Graham Library is really more of a museum than a library. For scholars, historians and others interested in Dr. Graham’s papers and writings, a more academic library is located at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. Nevertheless, the Billy Graham Library is certainly worth a visit if you’re in the Charlotte area. There are numerous multimedia exhibits in the Library, as well as a bookstore and a small cafe. If you take the complete tour, you can expect to be exposed to some mild proselytizing, including the traditional “invitation” in the “finale” theater, with the obligatory “Just As I Am” music in the background and a group of counselors waiting to pray with you as you leave the auditorium. But to anyone who has attended a Billy Graham crusade or watched one on television, the evangelistic flavor of the closing moments of the tour seems entirely fitting. Indeed, I remarked to my wife as we were leaving how I thought today’s preachers could benefit from the simple, direct and positive approach that was Dr. Graham’s hallmark.

The Billy Graham Library is located at 4330 Westmont Drive, just off of Billy Graham Parkway, and not far from I-77 and the Charlotte airport. Admission is free, and the complete tour takes about an hour or so. If you would like to see more pictures from our visit, I’ve posted some in a Picassa Web Album.

Booker T. Washington National Monument

On our drive home from our recent Caribbean Cruise, my wife and I decided to skip I-95 and try a more inland route, closer to the Appalachian Mountains. As a result, our route took us through Rocky Mount, Virginia, and the nearby Booker T. Washington National Monument. We enjoyed a visit to this picturesque and informative memorial to one of the most noted African Americans in higher education.

Many people have heard of Booker T. Washington, but they may not know why he was significant. As the helpful guide at the Monument told us, a lot of people confuse Booker T. Washington with George Washington Carver. That’s not surprising, given that both were African Americans, both were born into slavery, both would grow up to become famous educators, both taught at the Tuskegee Institute, both worked to improve race relations in the years following the Civil War, both have National Monuments honoring their memories, and both had Washington in their names. But there were two very different people: Booker was from Virginia while George was from Missouri; Booker founded the Tuskegee Institute, and later invited George to join the faculty; Booker was the more controversial figure, called “The Great Accommodator” by W.E.B. DuBois because he favored cooperation over confrontation in the fight for civil rights; George was perhaps the more widely remembered figure among school children because of his numerous inventions and innovations centered around peanuts.

I’m hardly an expert on African American history, but I’m glad I spent some time learning more about the life of Booker T. Washington at the Monument’s Visitor Center. Not only was it an informative and interesting stop, the Monument is in a beautiful setting, with well-maintained grounds. There are farm animals and crops growing in the fields, a handful of recreated cabins and barns from the mid-1800s, and numerous interpretive signs helping illustrate the natural environment that Booker T. Washington experienced as a young boy growing up as a slave in Franklin County, Virginia.

A Day at Princess Cays

Today the Caribbean Princess stopped at Princess Cays, a private beach for guests of Princess Cruises. It is located on the southern end of Eleutheria Island in the Bahamas, near Bannerman Town.

Although many passengers (including myself at first) pronounced “cays” like “kays,” according to Wikipedia and the online dictionary of Merriam-Webster, the word is more correctly pronounced “keys” as in the Florida Keys and Key West. A cay is a small island, often part of a cluster of islands. Princess Cays is actually a small group of islands connected to Eleutheria Island by a short bridge “to the mainland.”

Unlike other cruise ship ports, where passengers generally must pay extra for food, beach chairs and cabanas, these amenities are provided at Princess Cays (although you can pay extra to reserve a cabana if you wish, as well as rent various water sports equipment). There is no cruise ship pier, so the ship was anchored a good distance away and passengers were “tendered” to and from the beach aboard a fleet of reasonably comfortable lifeboats.

We enjoyed a lazy day at the beach. The weather was a bit threatening, and the water slightly cool, so I was the only one in our party of four to actually swim out any distance. Although it took a minute to adjust to the water, I eventually swam out about 100 yards. The water was a beautiful clear blue, and the sand was soft (although not quite as smooth as the pink sands of Bermuda). Many of my fellow passengers went snorkeling, and I could see some extensive coral reefs underneath where I was swimming.

After a generous informal buffet lunch on the beach, I walked around the various vendor stands to shop for souvenirs. I didn’t find anything worth buying inside the Princess Cays compound, so I took a short stroll outside of the main entrance gate to look at the booths set up by local artisans. Unfortunately, there seemed to be very little different to choose from outside the gates, although the vendors did seem to be more willing to haggle on price.

So even though we returned to the ship sans curios, we had some pleasant memories of a relaxing day. There was a bit of a wait for the tender ship back to the ship, as the storm clouds grew more threatening in the afternoon. But we made it back to the ship before the rain became a downpour.

YouTube dumps FLV

A report at iLounge reveals that YouTube is planning to switch video formats in order to integrate more seamlessly with Apple TV. YouTube has been using the Flash Video format (FLV), which some believe sacrifices streaming efficiency for security. Starting later this month, YouTube will encoding videos in the H.264 format, which is an advanced, highly stream-efficient format based on the MP4 standard.

One consequence of this switch may be changes to the way people download YouTube videos. Currently, in order to download videos from YouTube (rather than just linking to them) one needs to either manually find the FLV file in their browser’s cache, or use one of many software or web-based utilities to do the trick. One site I’ve used in the past is KissYouTube, but there are many sites out there that provide similar services. Given the AppleTV-YouTube announcement of a few days ago, I suspect that in the future, YouTube video grabbing will be easier on the Mac than on Windows or Linux.

On the way to Florida…and beyond

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in the parking lot of an outlet mall near St. Augustine, Florida. My wife and I are on our way to visit my mom for a couple of days before heading down to Ft. Lauderdale to catch a cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. We’ve cruised the Western Caribbean before, and have been wanting to cruise out to the Eastern side. Our ports of call include the island of St. Martin/St. Maarten, a tiny island that is jointly owned by the Dutch and the French. We’ll also visit St. Thomas, part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, which are just northeast of Puerto Rico. Although it’s rather warm this time of year, we hope the trade winds will keep us cool We’re exited to set sail!