The first real week of the NFL preseason starts today, and actually I’m pretty excited about the games.  First, we’ll see the return of Tom Brady when the Pats face the Eagles.  Also, Colt Brennan will get some playing time against the Ravens.  Finally, we have a superbowl rematch with the Steelers and Cards.

So far, Brady has looked okay.  He threw for a short TD, but also got picked off.  Brady has only had 7 pass attempts so far, but he seems to be back to NFL form, at least.

The other games have been uneventful so far.  Washington’s offense has been pretty pathetic, with starting QB Jason Campbell looking pretty bad.  Brennan has not yet taken the field.

There is one late game as well, with Dallas coming to the disaster that is the Oakland Raiders.  More updates to come.

The Washington Post is reporting that Colt Brenna went the first 12 days of camp without throwing an interception.  Not bad for the second year QB, who is competing for the third string role on the Redskins’ depth chart.

Brennan’s first interception in camp came today, and according to the article it cost him $100, due to a bet Brennan made with the DBs.

It looks like Brennan is maturing nicely, and it also seems like he has built a good rapport with his teammates.  But, the real test for Brennan will come on Thursday when the Redskins face a tough Ravens D in the 1st week of preseason games.

The 2009 NFL season kicked off today with a preseason matchup between the Tennessee Titans and Buffalo Bills.  Who else has been waiting all summer for this?

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It seems like every year there a bunch of WRs with either off-field issues, contract issues or both.  This year we have DUI manslaughter (Stallworth), self inflicted gun shot (Burress), ridiculous holdout by 1st rounder (Crabtree), and a ton of guys like Braylon Edwards and Brandon Marshall that are just making asses of themselves for no really good reason.

Now look, I know there are a ton of players in other positions that have their share of incidents – Vick and Ray Lewis come to mind.  But I’d say WRs by far have become the biggest douches out there.

Why?

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Former UH QB Colt Brennan has been looking good at this year’s training camp.  Last year Brennan was criticized for his technique - specifically things like footwork and pocket presence.  And although he had a couple of good outings in the preseason, Brennan didn’t receive a lot of praise from coach Jim Zorn.

But this year Zorn has praised Brennan for his improvement over last year.  It’s not anything to cheer about at this point, but it does give Brennan a better shot at winning the 3rd string role for the Redskins.

This is important, because Redskins backup Todd Collins will likely retire or be released when his contract expires after this year.  That means this year’s third stringer will have a pretty good shot at then backup role – key for the Redskins, whose starting QB Jason Campbell is often injured.

But Brennan will need to battle newcomer and former Heisman candidate Chase Daniel for the third string…and final QB roster spot.  So far, things are looking good for Brennan, and I can’t wait to see him again in the preseason.

Not too long ago if you wanted to show your pictures to others you needed to first make slides from the negatives, then load each slide into a projector, then click through the slides one by one.  Tedious.

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Who else misses HBO’s The Wire?  An artist at the Behance Network, Blake Hicks, does, so he made portraits from the wire on his wacom tablet.

A couple are below, and you can check out the whole set here:

Rumors of an Apple tablet have been floating around since last year when Apple filed for patents on the touchscreen interface.  Now, an analyst is actually claiming that he’s handled the mythical Apple tablet, and confirms that the device is on track for a September unveiling.

The analyst, who according to Engadget is remaining anonymous, says the device will cost around $700 to $800 and will have media player and gaming features.  Apparently, the device is awaiting Steve Jobs’ final approval, while other ODMs in china are pausing production to see what is actually released.

Now, who knows how legit these rumors are.  I would have expected some pics to have been leaked by now (the pic on this post is faked), considering the device will supposedly be announced next month.  (although, the suicide/murder of an employee who misplaced a prototype iPhone may make workers a bit leery about leaking stuff nowadays.)

In any case, I’m imagining this device to look like a big iPhone – I think that’s a pretty safe guess.  In terms of OS, I doubt that the Mac OS X will run on this thing – particularly for $700.  Apple wouldn’t want to cannibalize their laptop sales by making this thing a full-fledged computer, so it will probably run something like the iPhone OS X.

Sadly, I doubt the tablet will have a 3G modem, so web surfing will need to be all WiFi.  It would be incredible if some sort of iPhone tethering is built in to the tablet – like maybe you just slide your iPhone into a dock on the back of the tablet – but that’s wishful thinking.

$700 is a LOT to pay for a media player though.  Sure, that’s the price of an iPhone 3G S, but most of that is subsidized by carriers.  You could get an Archos 7 with web surfing capabilities for $300, or an Archos 9 with a full install of Windows 7 for around $600.

At the end of the day, for $700 this thing needs to do a lot in order to be worthwhile.  The reason why we don’t see that many tablet computers around today is that they’re not that valuable to people.  The form factor has very specific applications, and is much less useful for everyday computing.

I’m excited to see this thing released, and hell, I’ll probably get one.  But I have the feeling that an Apple tablet will not be a huge success for the company.