A Look Back at Good Mornings in Shipyard Park (2011)

Each morning I take a photograph with my iPhone using a program called Everyday to capture what the start of the day looks like at Shipyard Park in Mattapoisett, MA. I post these images to Facebook, Twitter and Google+ where they consistently get many thumbs up and comments. In fact, if I miss a day or 2, people get worried and email me often tongue in cheek complaining that their day got off to a rotten start without the image of Shipyard Park.

I have been taking photographs since I was about 10 years old and I’ve always been interested in using the media to capture time and place. The Everyday iPhone app is great because in addition to helping to set up the photo each morning, it also creates these cool little movies like this one for 2011. Enjoy.

Moby Monday — (Whale) Killer iPhone App

Shake for giant kraken

Speaking of iPhone apps, what would your Moby-Dick application look like? The iTunes store offers a few downloadable versions of the text (though, sadly, no annotated version yet) as well as audiobooks, musical recordings, a schweet study guide by Shmoop, and the whole 1956 film starring Gregory Peck … but no app that really brings the book to life in a new, iPhone-specific way.

Anna Leach of the blog Shiny Shiny proposes one such app: a simple whale-locator service that would identify any nearby whales and take you to their blogs (or, we’d add, their Twitter feeds).

Some friends and I had a different idea: a Moby-Dick video game. Blogger Matthew Wasteland has previously laid out the inherent problem with such a product. If you allow for alternate endings to Ahab’s quest, have you leached out of your game all the greatness of the novel?

That’s what makes our Moby-Dick game app idea so brilliant (if we do say so ourselves). It’s mainly just a view of the sea—sometimes calm, sometimes stormy, throw in a little St. Elmo’s fire now and again—and you only ever see the white whale after you’ve been playing nonstop for … what, hours? months? It’s theoretically possible to harpoon the sucker, but by the time you get a chance to do it, you’ll be begging for Ahab’s (virtual) fate.

Anyway, that’s our concept. If you have a better one, let’s hear it in the comments.

Margaret Guroff is the editor and publisher of Power Moby-Dick.

Last chance to win an iPod Shuffle and help me win an iPhone!

ipod-shuffle-from-gcaptain.jpgThe Sea-Fever iPod Shuffle contest closes tomorrow but you can still be part of it. Go to gCaptain.com Discoverer site and register and vote for your favorite Sea-Fever stories which can be found here. All of the Sea-Fever Contest info and rules can be found at this previous post.

I won this iPod Shuffle from gCaptain and would love nothing more than to send it to a Sea-Fever reader. Of course, I would really like to win the iPhone too! ;-)

 My top story is currently in the running for the gCaptainGrand Prize of an iPhone. If you haven’t voted for it yet, please read it; hopefully you’ll enjoy it and vote for it. 

Thanks for participating in the Sea-Fever contest and helping me to win an iPhone in the gCaptain contest!