I lived in Austin for three years – from August 2008 until June 2011 – and loved my time there *. We made a lot of good friends, ate a lot of good food, and gut-remodeled a house.  (Pictures of that finished product are here.)  We moved to Cambridge, Mass, last summer, and I hadn’t been back to Austin until last week.  I was a guest of the University of Texas for five days, and it was a jam-packed trip that I can’t fit into a single blog post, so this will be part 1.  Or: “UT Austin, Part 1: Sporty Day.”  (And when you think “John Mackey,” you really should think, “sporty.”)

* not all time in Austin was loved. Any time spent outdoors between March and November: not loved.

It was Saturday, and most Saturdays during the fall in Texas are Game Day. This was a big one, with UT hosting Baylor. Fortunately, it was a night game. (Seriously, there’s no humane reason to have a day game in Texas, ever. Even for this night game in October, it was 82 degrees when the game started. Have you seen my hair? I have bangs. You know what doesn’t work well with bangs? Sweat. You know what happens when you take somebody who has been living in 54-degree-in-October New England and stick them in 84 degree, humid weather? THE BANGS GET SWEATY AND NASTY. Not cool, Texas. Literally not cool.)

Sorry. Had to get that out of the way.

So, it was a night game, leaving the morning free for other activities like… golf! I’ve never played golf on a course that didn’t include a miniature windmill, but I went along as a spectator (which is both less stressful, and much, much cheaper) while Jerry Junkin (UT Director of Bands) and Steve Davis (UMKC Director of Bands, visiting for UT’s concert) hit balls.

Fore! (Turns out nobody actually yells that in real life, and if you do, people get annoyed – especially if you yell it as a spectator while somebody is in mid-swing.)

My favorite part about golf: the Golf Course Critters! (Why is there no cartoon called “Golf Course Critters,” about animals who live and play on an exclusive golf course? There must be an audience for that. Or even “Jack Hanna‘s Golf Course Critters.” I’d totally watch that. “Mitt Romney’s Golf Course Critters” : somehow less cute.)

He looks so perfect, you might think he was stuffed, but no, this buck is actually alive.

A river rat (AKA a coypu or nutria). I want him for a pet! Loki would love him! Loki could chase the nutria’s thick, juicy, nasty tail!

Later that day — off to campus! I traded in my hybrid for this huge truck, just for the game.  (Few people know that my nickname is “Gommy.”)

Big Bertha!

I was told that I really shouldn’t be wearing a shirt with Baylor green on it. (I love my dollar-sign polo shirts — and the crazy thing is, when I put this shirt on that morning, it was blank, but the dollar sign magically appeared on my chest during the course of the day!) I was given a change of clothes.

Before the game, Vincent DiNino — Director of Bands Emeritus, and conductor of the Longhorn Band from 1955-1975 — conducted the Longhorn Band in a warm-up. Vince is 94 years old. Dude is no joke.

To the stadium!

Here comes the band!

Sideline access is a pretty sweet perk of my “job.”  Here’s Rob Carnochan, conductor of the Longhorn Band.

UT President Bill Powers with Vince DiNino on the sideline before the game.

Here’s Vince conducting the Longhorn Band in front of tens of thousands of people.

94. He’s 94.

Jerry Junkin conducts the national anthem.  (As you can see, it was blue hour.  If only there were a piece of music about that time of day…)

It’s loud from here.

Speaking of loud… This canon is fired every time UT scores. With over 50 points scored, this became tiresome rather quickly. BOOM. BOOM.

A Longhorn Non-Varsity Band member.

The Baylor Golden Wave Marching Band.

My friend Isaiah Odajima, Associate Director of Bands at Baylor. He’ll be happy to have this photo when he records his first album, “God, Band, Murrica.” (The American flag is the background is a nice touch, I think.)

Three conductors: Jerry Junkin, Steve Davis, and the wonderful Eric Wilson (Director of Bands at Baylor). Their relative heights are inversely proportional to the number of times they’ve performed my music*.

* not to scale

Friend and fellow photographer Christina — the official photographer of the Baylor Band.

Christina taught me this fun backlighting trick, which I tried on this shot of Rick Espinosa, Assistant Director of Bands at Baylor. Rick can use this shot for the poster for his upcoming movie. In the film, Rick plays a football coach with the commitment to helping an underprivileged, mentally-challenged, young boy enjoy life and realize his potential.

* Oops, that might be the plot for “Radio“, starring Cuba Gooding, Jr.

The Baylor Band’s halftime show.

The Longhorn Band’s halftime show.

Me, Jerry, and Bevo!

I have too many friends at both UT and Baylor to have had a “favorite” for the game, so I was mostly indifferent about the outcome, but I’ll say that UT won. I think the lesson here is that I’m good luck! Fund my visit to your campus during a big game, and YOUR TEAM IS GUARANTEED* TO WIN.

* not guaranteed

Today’s update.  It’s a brief one.  Since the last post (where I detailed the differences between an iPhone camera and an SLR — did you read it?)…

I prepared toppings for a pizza. “Pearls” seems a weird brand name for a company that sells black olives.  (Background: a vodka tonic with Grey Goose L’Orange.)

Toppings were applied to the pizza.

Loki snuggled.

I turned on the fireplace for the first time this season. (It’s off now, because the temperature here in Cambridge has returned to 73 degrees.)

We had to get a new garbage can. It turns out that squirrels – even the neighborhood Harvard squirrels – can’t read.

That’s about it. Have you been playing with the site’s new Ordering page? You really should. Shopping is super fun.

I’m off to UT-Austin on Thursday. I’m excited to be back for the first time since we moved to Cambridge over a year ago. Who wants to have margaritas?

Chase Jarvis said the famous words, “The best camera is the one that’s with you.” The iPhone has become the most popular camera on Flickr, because there are like a hundred million billion iPhones, and it takes a very good picture. There have definitely been times that I wanted to take a picture of something and only had my iPhone with me, and it’s obviously better to have gotten the picture with something. The iPhone’s camera gets better with every generation, but can it replace an SLR yet?

Just about every picture I post on the blog comes from my DSLR — currently the Canon 5D Mark III. My current go-to lens is the new Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L II. Is it worth hauling it around when I go on a trip, if I could just use the iPhone? “Hauling” is precisely what the Canon demands. This body + lens combo weighs 58.7 ounces — more than 3.5 pounds. That’s heavier than some laptops. The iPhone 5 weighs 3.95 ounces.

Then there’s the price difference. A 64GB iPhone 5, out of contract, costs $849. That’s a lot of money. With a contract, though, you can get the 16GB model for $199. The Canon 5D III ($3459) with the 24-70mm f/2.8 L II ($2299 – assuming you can find one in stock anywhere) = $5758. In a word: WTF? (Is that one word or three?)

So comparing the two is a little silly. One is a camera phone. The other is a dedicated professional-level camera. But even if it’s silly… let’s compare! I like to be silly – like when I talk in my cockney accent. (“Top o’ da mornin’, guvnah!” I’m afraid it’s even more embarrassing in person.)

To make this as fair as possible, I didn’t post-process the images. The Canon’s shots are from the JPG files, not the RAW files.  (Processed RAW images would have more color depth, and better white balance, among other differences.) The trickiest thing was to produce similar framing between the cameras, with the iPhone having a different height-to-width ratio, and seeming to adjust its perceived focal length on the fly. Also, keep in mind that these are all JPG files resized for web viewing, so we’re not comparing a 2.38MB iPhone JPG with a 26MB Canon RAW. Still, the differences are striking.

Let’s start with food.  Here are some cookies that I got from a local bakery today. (That top cookie, the “junk food cookie,” contains pretzels, chocolate chips, peanut butter cups, and Cheez-Its. I’ll let you know how that is. I predict: AWESOMETASTIC.) iPhone 5:

And the same cookies, shot with the Canon:

Another angle of the cookies — more of a macro shot. iPhone 5:

The Canon:

Here’s my favorite baseball hat. iPhone 5:

Canon:

Heading outside… This is the iPhone 5:

The Canon (this is the closest I could frame the shot, since this is not a macro lens – but there’s no denying that the color is truer, and the shot much more detailed — and this is not even comparing full-size crops):

You’re probably thinking, “that’s not fair! You’re shooting at, like, f/2.8, but the iPhone doesn’t let you set the depth of field.” True, but that’s a benefit of an SLR. To compare more closely, here’s a shot from the Canon at f/6.3. (This is also just a good general example of the difference between f/2.8 and f/6.3.)

Here’s a tree across the street from my house. iPhone 5:

Canon:

Those are pretty similar, at least at this small size. The iPhone seems to do its best work when it has a lot of natural light (but so does every other camera).

What about actual macro shooting? Here’s the iPhone:

And the Canon:

The background is much prettier with the Canon. And okay, I cheated. That’s a different lens: the Canon 100mm f/2.8 L IS Macro. (The IS stands for image stabilization.) If you need that lens to get that shot, you just added another 22 ounces — and $929.

Let’s give the iPhone another try with a macro shot. Here’s the iPhone 5:

And the Canon (again with the 100mm lens):

Not surprisingly, professional camera gear costing nearly $7000 does a superior job when compared to an $850 camera phone (or, $199, base model, with contract), but the DSLR also weighs — if you have both lenses I used here — over eight pounds. The iPhone takes a damn fine photo, too.

This blog post is kind of like comparing a single apple to a huge semi full of lead-plated oranges, now that I think about it, so… never mind.