Just as we stood a few feet behind the batting cage last year with Brewers young slugger Prince Fielder, today we were almost in the cage with Kansas City Royals rising star Alex Gordon. Is he the latter-day George Brett? Time will tell.

Part two of the Fan Fest includes shots of Eric Byrnes, Brandon Webb, Carlos Quentin, Chad Tracy, Randy Johnson (Yes, the Big Unit is back from the Big Apple) and Connor Jackson. Note that Jackson overhears this reporter mentioning that Jackson is a Cal grad. Indeed is a proud Golden Bear.

Major kudos to the Arizona Diamondbacks organization for a terrific Fan Fest, ushering in the 2007 season (actually, ushering in Spring Training for the team down in Tucson). The players were totally accessible and interacted without any restraint (to the delight of their young fans). Also, they are sporting their new logo, colors, apparel, merchandise, etc.. And yes, the fan shop was open.

There's too much for just one clip. In this one, we see Micah Owings, Orlando Hudson, Edgar Gonzalez, Livan Hernandez (I got to speak with him and thank him for those great Giants games), Tony Pena (no, not that one) and Jose Valverde.

For the second consecutive year, we headed over to Desert Ridge Marketplace for the SRP Battle of the Garage Bands. We heard all three high school bands: Marbury V Madison (perhaps would-be law students); Age of Evil and Green Tea Band. We were partial to Green Tea as the three young men were original and engaging.

We didn't hang out for the college bands, but we did meet the mom of one of the acts, Sister Cities. Here is their Myspace site.

At the Arizona Diamondbacks Fan Fest, 10 singers competed for the chance to sing the national anthem before a Diamondbacks home game. The first nine were women; the last one is the PA announcer at Chase Field.

When I was driving up NE 8th in Bellevue last November, I spotted a tea bar (like a coffee bar but with tea) called Koots. During our weekend trip to the Northwest, we were able to stop in for a quick cup of green tea. For a city laden with coffee places every 10 feet (and now, they aren't all Starbucks), a tea shop is a nice change of pace.

Editors note: the cameraman/narrator obviously has a bifocal issue in that he calls the place Hoots. Given he is prone to mumbling, you may not tell the difference.

Circled in red is the day pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in Arizona. Today, we ventured over to Scottsdale Stadium to see the Giants 2007 hurlers in their tune-up sessions. Of course, our #1 mission was to see Barry Zito. As this clip shows, we were not disappointed. The position players reports next week--we'll be back (as well as to other Major League camps in the area).

I have to admit, I didn't think I'd enjoy mobile videblogging (that is, shooting video and then uploading it to a blog), but I now deem it to be cool.

Thanks to my Nokia N93 (and a new account with T Mobile), I am playing around with mobile videoblogging. Right now, I am using both Vox and Juicecaster in sort of a mobile videoblogging bake-off. Vox is quite simple and is an embedded application in the camera/phone, but it posts to a Vox account I rarely use. I want to put my Vox videos here, not there. I have shot two, but they are more tests of the workflow/process. The MPEG 4 camera is great, the software is good and it's all very intuitive, but the upload seems to take an extraordinarily long time. In fact, it took me several tries to upload each video. No doubt, a T Mobile issue.

Juicecaster (see bottom right of this blog), allows me to post here. The software is an easy download (although I did something wrong in the initial settings so it always looks for a wireless LAN to connect even when I am not home.  Also, I cannot seem to figure out how to locate video files from my camera's gallery. These should be easy enough to fix. Look for videos down there soon.

I am also on the hunt for other services that allow me to do mobile videoblogging. Hopefully, they will be ones that allow me to post here.

All of this talk about YouTube and its problems with illegal content made me wonder what creative folks could do with content provided legally by networks.

So, this is not exactly artestry, but it is a series of clips (none more than 10 seconds), some Garage Band samples and some special effects. DCMA take down? No way!

Just for kicks, we drove over the meadow and through the desert to Fort McDowell Casino to see a large group of game show wanna-bes try out for Jeopardy. (Side note: with the FBR Open in town, it's hard to get from here to there). I was heartened by everyone's enthusiasm and dreams of being declared a winner after Final Jeopardy. Day one was test day, and the top finishers in that portion are invited back to play the game after which a few lucky folks get to go on the game.

In 1984, I was on Jeopardy. Yep, check the video archives of Game Show Network if you don't believe me. How'd I do? That's a story for another day. One thing I will say, Alex is no Art Fleming.