Saturday, June 27, 2009

3 Good Books

If you’re a sports fan, and even if you’re not, here are three books I whole-heartedly recommend you pick up and read:

Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty, by Jeff Pearlman. In his book, Pearlman takes us through the rise and fall of the Jimmy Johnson era Dallas Cowboys. Their rigorous training, their internal feuds, and they’re on and off-the-field antics. He recalls how Johnson takes the worst football team in the NFL, and turns them into a dynasty that would later win three Super Bowl Championships. After reading this book, I can honestly say that I will never see football the same way again. This is a great book from start to finish.


The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, by Michael Lewis. This one takes us through the life and times of Michael Oher, offensive tackle for the University of Mississippi, and a 2009 first round draft of the NFL Baltimore Ravens. It tells the story of a young man’s struggles growing up, and who, through his physic and sheer determination to achieve his football dreams, rises from the bottom of the most deplorable neighborhoods in Tennessee to the reach the starting line up of the Ole Miss Rebels football team. In one chapter, Lewis analyses and describes the evolution of the great Bill Walsh offence and Bill Parcells’ defense. If you’re a football fan, you have to pick this one up.


Blood in the Cage, by L. Jon Wertheim. A great book that details the origins of mixed martial arts (MMA) as a legitimate sport. Wertheim does a thorough job describing the detailed life of Pat Miletich, during his early life in Bettendorf, Iowa, his subsequent contributions to the vast popularity that made the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) what it is today, and the many champions he coached and mentored through his own Miletich Fighting System in his MMA gym in Iowa. This is one book I could not put down, and I recommend it to anyone who’s ever wondered why two men would ever get in a locked cage to duke it out and “leak some mud”…

JAM, if you’re reading this, thanks for the recommendations, I thoroughly enjoyed these books - keep ‘em coming…

Friday, June 12, 2009

Photo of the day

Bokeh


Few things will make the subject in a photo stand out more, than an image with great bokeh; this, of course, is just my humble opinion. Bokeh, in photography, refers to the amount of out-of-focus, or blur, within the image. The blurred area is generally achieved by setting a shallow depth of field (DOF) in your camera lens, which in-turn delivers a pleasing background either behind or in front of your subject. A larger aperture (smaller f/stop number) will provide a more shallow depth of field - the bokeh on this shot was obtained by setting the lens aperture at f/5.6