Detroit Tigers - Comerica Park Centerfield

At the start of the season Karrie bought 2 tickets for $9 each for Detroit Tigers vs Seattle Mariners. We sat in left field, section 149, row 1.

(click to enlarge)

Being right behind the bullpens, we got to see all of the pitchers warming up, including Max Scherzer, the Tigers starting pitcher.

He pitched ok, but gave up a lot of hits and the Mariners scored a few runs.

Here's video of him warming up.

http://youtu.be/HSdf6wzVIMQ

The funny thing before the game was the rookie pitchers for the Mariners walking to the bullpen with their cartoon, little kid, backpacks.

It was a little cold and windy. But for the middle of April i wasn't expecting it to be 54 degrees.

Definitely the best part of the game was Miguel Cabrera's homerun.

It was coming right for us, flew over our heads and landed 5 rows behind us. You can't see our faces because right as the camera zoomed in, we turned around to watch where the ball went.

Jose Valverde warmed up a bit, but the tigers never came close enough for him to come in at the 9th inning for the save.
We got up in the 7th and walked around the stadium.

I stopped at one of the balcony's to try and get a cool picture of the ferris wheel. It sort of came out how i wanted, but not perfect. There was too much stuff in the way.

Here's the view from the upper deck. It's been a while since i've had tickets up here, i forget that they are not that bad of seats. But with left and right field tickets selling for under $15 dollars i don't see any reason to sit way up in section 238.

Anyway, it was a fun game to go to, even though it was cold and the Tigers lost.

RoboCop Statue in Detroit

It started as a rumor...then rumor became legend.

Then people started to collect money to build a 7' tall Iron statue of RoboCop in Downtown Detroit. It may be taller and made of bronze depending on cost. And it still hasn't been finalized as to where the statue will be located. It will either be at Wayne State University Tech Town or near Michigan Central Train Station.

I made a Photoshop drawing i made of what it might look like.

Stats:
2,718 people donated money
$67,436 raised (the goal was to raise $50,000)

Here's the laser cut die pattern they will be using.

So now people going downtown for Tigers games will start saying "Let's meet at RoboCop at 7:30."

And for every person that says (in a nagging voice) "why are you building a RoboCop statue when Detroit needs money for poor people and bla bla bla..."

To answer that imaginary person; it's because that's what the people with all the money decided. They came up with a plan for a cool statue, gathered money and now it's going to be built. It's amazing how things can get built in the city when the City Council gets out of the way.

Had this been a Detroit City Council project, half the money would have mysteriously turned up missing and the other half would have been wasted to pay off their political buddies and nothing would have been built. Then they would have bickered and claimed it was a race issue saying "Why does RoboCop have to be a white guy...hummph?"

If people wanted to start a campaign called "Money to revitalize Detroit's neighborhoods" then the money would go to building houses. But that didn't happen. And even if they did, i'm sure they would have collected a lot less then the amount they collected for RoboCop.

I would only donate money to Detroit housing if it was called "Dynamite collection fund to improve housing in Detroit"

Notitlerequired.com

A year ago on Google Blogger i noticed that www.notitlerequired.com was available. I thought about buying the domain but i never did. Then the other day, for some reason, i decided to buy it for $10 per year.

My original plan was to change everything on THIS blog and transfer it over to the new URL. But it just seemed like tons of work. I could set it up so that when people type in http://davewirth.blogspot.com/ it would automatically redirect them to notitlerequired.com. But i didn't want to have to deal with 2 of everything, in terms of links and pictures.

At any time i could always change this blog over but as of right now i'm keeping this as it is. And after a year if i don't like it, i can just stop paying the $10 and go back to the way it was.

So what i decided to do was create a Photography page. My plan was to create some sort of fancy, artistic website where people could see and maybe purchase my best photographs.

The problem i've had so far is with the limitations of Google Blogger. I wish it had an "online folder" where i could upload the raw HTML file for each page. That way i could make a really cool and unique website with different layouts for the various pages. But the way Blogger works, every page is the same and each gets published in a linear fashion. So i am going to have to look more into other hosting sites that allow online uploading and full customization.  


So the site notitlerequired.com, as it is right now, is just temporary.  When i have more time to make a fancy photography site i will let everyone know.

Google Search - Rich Snippet Profile Picture Using Blogger

I finally got my profile picture to show up below my title and next to my description for Google searches. I had a very difficult time getting it to work, the whole process took about a month. With Google it is a gradual process and it still appears to be gradually updating. Notice how my pages show different Rich Snippet data.

One page will show my phony Rating and Reviews, while another just shows my profile picture. Here's the 3 different type of results people may see.

Here's a link to my previous attempt at How to Make Your Profile Picture Appear on Google Search . Back when i wrote that all i could get to show up in the rich snippet data was a fake rating. I still like the idea of having my page show 5 stars and 300 reviews. I think people are much more likely to click on my page when they see that.

Since that post i changed just a few things. First was replace my Blogger profile with my Google+ profile. That way i don't have to add a link like the instructions say to do, it just goes directly to the right profile.

So the link changed from this (Blogger profile): http://www.blogger.com/profile/05738850827175755919

To this (Google+ profile): https://plus.google.com/u/0/102603564838005736769/posts

Next i changed my profile picture. I read that some people tried to put a Logo as their profile picture but Google didn't allow it. So they must have some type of face recognition. So i changed it to something that shows an actual face. But anyway, since this has started working i've switched it back to the picture of me with goggles and a face mask on. If it stops working then i'll know it is because of the picture.

The last thing i did was get rid of excess HTML code. When i couldn't get it to work i kept trying and adding different HTML. So by the end i had 5 different versions of what i though the correct HTML code should be. That was a mistake. When i finally realized which one of the 5 codes was the right one, i removed the other 4, then checked the result on Google's Rich Snippet Testing Tool for my page.

It seemed to be working, then 1 week later it started to show up on random pages in Google Search. But still not every page. I have no idea still why it works on some and not all of them. I guess i just have to wait some more to find out.