This is a video of the presentation I gave at WordCamp Atlanta on January 9, 2009 about integrating Google Analytics with WordPress. I’ve made a few updates to the slides and code samples since I found out afterward it’s against Google’s terms of service to track visitors by name.
This footage is from my grandparents’ 1961 trip starting in Jekyll Island and ending in Jacksonville, Florida where they watched Georgia Tech and Penn State play in the Gator Bowl on December 30, 1961. Penn State won 30-15.
To give you an idea of how long ago 1961 is in football years:
Joe Paterno was still an assistant coach for Penn State. It would be another five years before he was named head coach.
Georgia Tech was coached by Bobby Dodd, and was still a member of the SEC. It would be another three years before Tech defected from the SEC due to Dodd’s dispute with Alabama coach Bear Bryant.
I’ve broken a single 400-foot reel of 8mm film into three parts due to YouTube’s 10-minute limit on uploads:
The trip down. This might be boring to you, but it was interesting to me. Lots of footage of roadside signs, old cars, and what a lot of locales between Jeckyll Island and Jacksonville (Camden, Georgia is the one I could recognize by name, but there were others) looked like at the time.
Warm-ups, pre-game show and 1st half. See if you can recognize the coach stalking the goal line in warm-ups. I don’t think it’s Bobby Dodd, but I could be wrong.
Halftime show, 2nd half, fans’ exit. I love the floats, they’re like something out of a movie. Then seeing the Ramblin’ Wreck exactly as it is now ties the whole thing experience together for me as something real. Tell me if you think that’s a young Joe Paterno walking with the Penn State mascot before the game starts back up. I think it might be, but I can’t tell.
I found out not too long ago my Aunt Nancy has a collection of 8mm film reels sitting around my grandfather shot when she and my mom were teenagers/young adults in the 1960s. These may or may not be interesting to you, but they were very interesting to me.
Apparently this is only a small sample of what she has sitting around. As my mom tells it though, a lot of the footage they have was taken by my grandmother, who was short, from inside the car on road trips. So there’s a lot of dashboard. I’m going to try to get more and see if anything else interesting comes up.
Rosco the family dog (circa 1962)
Rosco was a smart Llewellin Setter.
My mom’s graduation from Oglethorpe University (1966)
The first couple of minutes is my Uncle Steve making chip shots on the front lawn while they wait to drive to the graduation ceremony.
My parents’ wedding (1969)
Alas, there’s not any video of the best man puking.
Like the headline says, turn to page 38 of the Summer 2009 MCG Today Magazine and you’ll find an article about my Great Aunt Jane. MCG Today is the magazine published by the Medical College of Georgia.
Jane had a lot of tragedy and sadness in her early years, some of which is documented in the article. But she persevered through it, and it’s been exciting to see her receive recognition for the interesting life she’s led. And if you’re looking for a new media success story, MCG Today found out about Jane’s story after watching this video I posted to Youtube:
(I’m still a little embarrassed I forgot to stuff the microphone cable in my shirt)
I have a video of her telling the story of when she found out her parents died, which is one of the topics discussed in the article. I’ve been debating whether I should post it or not, as it’s intense and personal. Maybe I will since the story is public now.
This isn’t any big secret or anything since Kyle mentioned it on Facebook a while ago, but in the interest of full disclosure I should tell you I was paid $300 to shoot and edit this campaign video for Kyle Williams’ Decatur City Commission District 2 campaign:
Kyle and his partner Larry are friends of mine, and we put this together quickly to coincide with the launch of his campaign website. Municipal election disclosures aren’t processed electronically or I would link to the form. All the talk of ethics.georgia.gov being down today and Jason Pye running a disclosure of work he did reminded me I should disclose this work.
I don’t have an ongoing commitment to work for the campaign, though we have discussed shooting other videos in the future. I’ll be happy to help out if asked, and will disclose any other income that comes from any other campaign work.
Kyle is good people, you should vote for him. I don’t live in Decatur anymore or I would. And I’d tell you that even if I hadn’t been paid to shoot a video.
Both of these videos with my Great Aunt Jane were shot a little over a month ago and I just now got time to go through the footage and edit it. For now, I’m only posting videos from her which contain information that I think is interesting to a broader audience outside my family, but I might post more later.
Great Aunt Jane reacts to photos from Grady taken the night of the Winecoff Hotel fire
I’d always heard about a group called The Skullbusters from my mom growing up, as her dad (Jane’s older brother) was a member. I never had a grasp on exactly what it was or what they did, but I did know a lot of people who were in it went on to become influential figures in politics, sports and business in Atlanta. Jane answers some of my questions in this video:
Amber and I visited Fitzgerald, Georgia this past weekend. We were told about 800 wild Burmese chickens have taken up residence there as a result of a DHR program in the 1960s. It’s quite a sight to see chickens walking around on nearly every block in a settled area. The locals hold a festival every year to celebrate them, which we unfortunately just missed this year.
Be on the lookout for a chicken-related episode of Mostly ITP in the next couple of weeks. We’ve already talked to the director of tourism in Fitzgerald, where we go into more detail about the chickens. We plan to talk to The Chicken Whisperer and some folks at the Oakhurst Community Garden soon as well about urban gardening and raising chickens in urban areas.
The folks in Fitzgerald hold a slightly different view of raising chickens in urban areas than I expect the others will, which has helped me think of what I hope are some decent questions to ask on the remaining interviews.
I’ve been trying to make good on a goal I set more than a year ago to record more family history. My mom and I went to visit my Great Aunt Jane this past Saturday to shoot video of her telling stories about her life. We knew she had been a nurse, but we didn’t know until Saturday she had been a night supervisor at Grady Hospital in Atlanta on December 7, 1946, the night of the Winecoff Hotel Fire.
The Winecoff Hotel Fire was the worst in history at the time, and remains the worst in U.S. history, with 119 fatalities. In this video, she recalls her experience working in the morgue.
This is a video I made for my parents for their 40th wedding anniversary. It features interviews with friends and relatives, and is edited to hopefully not be boring like most anniversary videos.
