Making a few changes and additions

6/15/09

I recently decided to join the ranks of Twitter, mainly to have the ability to grab my usual screen name of Hokie20. I'm still trying to get the hang of it with the symbols and whatnot, but feel free if you want to follow my crazy antics and travels. As well, I keep up my facebook profile if you wish to see more. Also, I've created a cruhland.com facebook page - become a fan.

I talked with my brother James a few weeks ago about some changes that I should make to the website. I agreed, but I always felt that it needed to be simple enough for my mother to get around. Simplicity was the goal James mentioned, such as reducing the amount of clicks on the front page. Here's my first shot at it by having the desktop download links right here on the front.

Hokie Huddle - June
1024x768	1440x900	1680x1050

Now that you can follow my travels on Twitter and Facebook, I have been pretty busy over the last month. Most of my weekends have been spent spotting for ESPN and Fox at NASCAR races. At the end of May, I spent three days at Lowe's Motor Speedway with camera four and the cameraman nicknamed "Drain-O".

Drain-O and I spent all of Sunday for the Coca-Cola 600 only for the race not to start due to loads of rain showers. The race was run the next day on Memorial Day. Promptly at 3 p.m., NASCAR stopped the race for the nationwide moment of silence. It was the coolest thing I had ever witnessed at a race.

There's Drain-O capturing the event. Check out the crew members lined up on pit road.

Two weeks later, my uncle Larry and I made a trip to Nashville Superspeedway for another spotting event. We spent a while before the race down in the infield and I spotted the winner's trophy sitting in victory lane and I snagged a quick photo.

It didn't have that glow to it - it's an HDR photo.

This is one of the prized trophies in American motorsport. The guitar in Nashville has been a tradition for years, but race winner Kyle Busch acted like a rock star when he won the event. It's too bad the race was in country music land, where artists don't smash guitars after their shows. Nevertheless, I thought it was great to see him do it.

As for the race, I stood in turn one with cameraman Kevin Rogers (no nickname there) where you could feel the wind the cars created at the end of the straightaway.

My perch above turn one at Nashville Superspeedway was pretty cool.

One week later, Larry and I packed up and headed to Kentucky Speedway just south of Cincinnati. The track is much like a Charlotte or Las Vegas track, just without the big name stars. I worked with a cameraman named Andy, who kept an eye only on the leader all night - Camera 1. The cool thing about working that spot was being able to call lead changes directly to the director, which was pretty cool. It's too bad the lead changed only a few times.

There's Andy catching race winner Joey Logano crossing the finish line.

I have a few more races I'm still scheduled to work before the season is out - possibly the Firecracker 400 in Daytona. I'll keep the Twitter and Facebook world posted.

On another front, EA Sports is coming out with the new NCAA Football game in July. One cool thing they have added this year is the ability to create your own team using custom logos and the ability to edit everything from the stadium the team plays in to the color of the shoes your team wears. You can also create historical teams, and I have made the 1999 Hokies squad that played for the national championship. Check it out by clicking the green box below:

Click in the text box and enter "Virginia Tech"

Once the multiple VT logos have appeared, search for the "Big East" logo and click on it.

Be sure to check out the uniforms and the team roster. I used an old media guide and help from Techsideline to set the roster and the depth chart. Even Bill Roth chimed in and gave his approval.

Here are the two uniforms I've recreated for the '99 Hokies for NCAA10.

As for desktops, I'm still debating on how to set the helmet logos on the bottom of the game specific ones to be used during the season. Here's my latest idea:

Let me know what you think. Stay cool,