“Before baseball was invented there were no Ty Cobbs and Babe Ruths; now they appear in an apparently endless series. Before the Wright brothers made their flight there were no men skilled at aviation; now there are multitudes of highly competent experts.”
Our semi-annual baseball road trip to Hilton Baltimore and Camden Yards commenced in somewhat somber fashion as we left NJ listening to the press conference of popular Phillies manager Charilie Manuel being replaced with 3rd base coach Ryne Sandberg. Our hotel room four floors lower than last year’s did not afford us the full-on view of game action this time. No matter, as we enjoyed both the option of VIP lounge and snacks six floors up on eighteen, and, the stadium view balcony adjacent to the fitness center on four (shown below).
Night cap and a window seat at the eighteenth floor VIP lounge (below).
The next night saw a livelier Saturday game crowd enjoy a hit-filled victory over the Colorado Rockies on a warm, somewhat cloudy evening with a barely visible Moon. Though Oriole Park was one of the first of the modern day retro-style ballbarks, it fits in with the urban landscape in a way that makes it seem that games have been played there for centuries. And to take advantage of a hotel setting wherein the game is played right outside your door is plenty special.
On the way home, Sunday traffic slowed things up a bit, affording me the opportunity to snap a photo from the bridge over the Susquehanna River:
On the driver side window, opposite the river bridge view is this hillside farm way off in the distance. Heavily image edited, just for fun!:
bobsfreeblog 
#1 by CogDog on September 3, 2013 - 5:21 pm
There is almost no better stadium than Camden Yards (I grew up in Baltimore, though watched all my games at old Memorial Stadium).
For your animated GIF… What software did you use to create this GIF? When I opened in PhotoShop the settings look like they are set to play only once. You might have to regenerate it and check your settings to make sure it is set o loop forever.
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#2 by Bob A. on September 3, 2013 - 10:50 pm
Thank you for reading and commenting. After trying to figure out a way to do a looping quick animated GIF with my MacBook’s existing software (I don’t have Photoshop) I gave up and used web-based gifmaker.me. Apparently, previous versions of Preview used to open animated GIFs but it is now broken or obscured in the current Mountain Lion version of OSX. I even posted the final version using the Scribefire add-on for Firefox, i.e. without logging into WordPress Dashboard. It’s disappointing that simple standalone GIF making capability is not built in to OSX as I don’t really want to get into constantly purchasing a key for every Quicktime Pro update.
I’ve actually been to Memorial Stadium to see the Eagles vs. Ravens during the infamous overtime tie game featuring Vinnie Testaverde! Camden Yards is a great place. I probably get there again soon before baseball season ends.
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#3 by CogDog on September 3, 2013 - 11:24 pm
It’s a bit of a bear getting used to, but its worth learning how to use the open source image editor GIMP.
Yes, Preview opens animated GIFs as separate frames. If you use quick view mode to look at an animated gif (click once on file to select on finder and press spacebar) you can check its state.
I took yours into Photoshop and resaved it with the loops set forever. Grab a copy at
My last memorial Stadium experience was when the Steelers beat the Colts in post season and after the game that crazy guy crashed his plane in the upper deck, maybe 8 sections over form where we sat.
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#4 by Bob A. on September 3, 2013 - 11:33 pm
Ah yes, I remember watching the news about the plane crashing into the grandstands. I did try it in GIMP but it does indeed have a steep learning curve, so that’s yet another project for a rainy day. I like what I see about Dropbox so far and am looking over all the various cloud service options. Thanks again.
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