Drew Bonner Night at Fairfax High School

by Neil Bonner on May 16, 2013

in Culture, Life, Social Media

On April 22, 2013 the varsity baseball teams from Fairfax High School and Madison High School honored Fairfax student Drew Bonner with a ceremonial at-bat. I recorded the event on my iPhone and then uploaded to YouTube. After my tweet was re-tweeted, the heartwarming story was first picked up by Preston Williams of the Washington Post and it went viral from there.

A few days later Tom Jackman of the Washington Post put the story on the Post Local section of the website. Drew and his crew got a little schweg going when the video and story was posted on MLB.com’s Cut 4. The guys loved it when David Culver of NBC Washington showed up to practice with a camera crew and aired the story on local NBC 4.

Danny Farris of MLB Fan Cave blogged about Drew’s walk up song, “First of all, how amazing is his walk-up song? It’s “Ridin Dirty” by Chamillionare and the first lyric in that song is: “They see me rollin.” That’s about a 14 out of 10 on the incredible scale. It made me smile and laugh.”

Just this week reporter Diane Roberts ran with the story on USA 9 — the local CBS affiliate in Washington, DC. She put together a nice two minute segment that you can see on the USA 9 website or watch below.

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A “common sense” solution

by Neil Bonner on December 19, 2012

in Culture, Public Policy

With all of the discussion the past few days concerning the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut the media and elected officials are emotionally reacting with suggestions that the solution to Newtown and mass shootings in general, is to ban military-style “assault weapons”. This emotional reaction is understandable but nonetheless, trampling on the Constitutional Rights of citizens is always wrong and makes for poor public policy.

According to the Center for Disease Control, falling out of bed accounts for 450 deaths each year. According to the FBI, last year only 358 people were murdered by rifles.

In this post I show why those that seek to limit our rights and freedoms are wrong and I propose a solution that would limit future mass shootings.

Yesterday I felt the need to respond to a post on the GovLoop website calling for the ban on “assault weapons”. As typical with most emotionally driven folks, they never define what is an “assault weapon”. Is it a weapon that looks like a military gun? Is it a weapon that contains a large magazine that can hold 30 rounds of ammunition? Again, those that wish to weaken certain elements of the Bill of Rights, never are able to articulate what exactly needs to be removed from civilian use. Some in Congress are now calling for banning the popular AR-15 rifle that is by far the most popular rifle sold in the U.S.

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Convert DVD and Blu-ray discs to digital video files

by Neil Bonner on May 9, 2012

in Life, Review

Moving your video collection from DVD or Blu-ray discs to “on demand” digital content is easier than you may think. As the years have gone by your collection of commercial DVD discs has likely grown large. In recent years you may also have purchased blu-ray discs because of their superior High Definition resolution on large HD televisions. With the advent of devices like the Apple TV which lets you stream your own music and video content, more people are considering converting their existing content rather than repurchasing it in a digital (non-disc) form.

Apple TV with remoteOver the past few years, I have converted my favorite movies and TV shows into a format that I can stream directly to my HD television. I also load movies onto my iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch devices.  The best part is that you can do it yourself without spending much money. Here’s how.

There are a number of devices you can hookup to your HD TV that can act as a media server/player. My favorite is the Apple TV which can play videos and movies in 1080p and it supports Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. At only $99 it is an incredible bargain especially if you already use iTunes to manage your music and video content. You will also need a computer and an external hard drive to hold all of your media. I use an Apple Mac Mini to convert my disc content to digital files. If you do not have a DVD reader/writer the Apple SuperDrive is a good drive for Mac users. Another option to consider is the Samsung USB2.0 External Slim Blu-ray Writer Drive. It uses two USB 2.0 ports but requires no power cable. It’s small, lightweight, supports both DVD and Blu-ray, works on Windows and Macs; all for around $80. I use the Samsung drive to “rip” Blu-ray discs directly to my computer’s external hard drive.

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NPS National Mall – iPhone App Review

November 22, 2011

The National Park Service launched their official mobile (iPhone iOS) app in August 2011. It is available free from the Apple iTunes App Store as a 13.9 MB download. I’m reviewing the latest, 1.0.2 version which is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices running iOS 3.2 or later.

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“My TSA” mobile app review

November 17, 2011

There are currently two versions of the app, an iPhone (Apple iOS) version and a “mobile web” version that will work with all devices that have a web browser. TSA currently is working on an Android version but no availability date has been released by the agency. This review is based on the latest (iOS) 1.2.2 version of MyTSA.

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More nuclear power plants

June 5, 2011

Everyone talks about how we need to be more energy independent for financial and national security reasons. Politicians and commentators also say that we need a broad-based approach to energy that includes greater domestic development of oil, natural gas and coal; as well as nuclear and alternative energy sources. The economy is largely dependent on [...]

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Predicting “Runs Created” in baseball

February 11, 2011
catcher's mask

In 2003 Neil Bonner published a series of articles on Ron Shandler’s Baseball HQ website on an alternative method of calculating Runs Created per Game (RC/G). Bonner claimed that his analysis showed there were only three significant elements that could be used to forecast RC/G.

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