Mike

Mmmhops

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Mmmhops

I’m still weighing if I like this or not.

Hanson is celebrating 21 years as a band. The logical way to celebrate that is to release a beer. Their biggest hit is Mmmbop, so they are calling it Mmmhops.

While I could care less about the beer itself, I didn’t like the idea when I first heard it was called Mmmhops. I mean, come on, be at least a little creative. But since it is for the 21st anniversary, I give them some clever leeway. They actually moved up the release so that proceeds could go to victims of the tornado in Oklahoma. More points.зъбни импланти

Mike

David Sedaris: Company Man

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David Sedaris: Company Man

Another great story in the New Yorker from David Sedaris. Every time I think I might want to write a story down I come across one of these and think it’s a waste of time, I can’t be that good.

In other David Sedaris news, he was on How Was Your Week, and it was awesome. I’ve yet to read (listen to) his new book yet.

Mike

Frozen Faceoff

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Frozen Faceoff

I’m very upset about the NHL lockout. With giving up college football and not really wanting to go all in on the NFL, the NHL was all set to get a lot more viewing from me this season. What we have here is a positive link for NHL fans.

Center ice designs for all the NHL arenas. So you can see all of them on the homepage. So cool, right? Oh, it’s not done. Click around for historical center ice designs. Yes. Historical.

One thing that stood out is that most teams have gone with the single giant logo these days. Only the Flyers and Canadians have the two logos on each side of the red line.

Looking at all the Flyers designs they have on the site, the only reason they’ve ever really had to change is for the numerous changes to the name of the arena thanks to all the bank buyouts and mergers over the years.

The Spectrum always had the best designs and that early 90s center ice should be the design for all time.

Mike

NFL Travel Schedule

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NFL Travel Schedule

I’m always interested in these, although I usually prefer to have some maps to get a real idea of what is going on.

Green Bay has the least amount of travel ahead of them. A trip to Seattle and New York (Giants) are the only times they have to wander out of the central part of the country.

Most northeast teams usually have the least amount of travel. The NFL is a little different as it isn’t weighted quite as heavily toward your division. And the division matchups could give you a few trips across the country. Also, having the Cowboys in the NFC East is wrong geographically, so that adds some travel.

Looking at the Eagles, Phoenix is the biggest trip with New Orleans, Dallas, and Tampa Bay all in that mid-range giving them the 21st most miles traveled.

Mike

Full Moon Names

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Full Moon Names

Tonight is a Full Moon. It’s the 2nd full moon of August. And that means it’s a Blue Moon. At least, I think. I thought the 2nd Full Moon in a month meant it was a Blue Moon, but then Wikiepedia said something about a Blue Moon being the 3rd Full Moon in a season with 4 Full Moons. That seems a little complicated.

Back to the link. I was not aware that each month’s Full Moon has its own name. August is the Sturgeon Moon, but that already happened a few weeks ago. So look forward to the Full Harvest Moon on September 29th.

The next Blue Moon? July 2015. That is, if you are following the 2 in a month business. Sounds like next August has that other seasonal Blue Moon.

Mike

Twins get 2014 All-Star Game

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Twins get 2014 All-Star Game

Mets have 2013, in case you forgot.

With all these new stadiums getting All-Star games, I can’t post about visiting the stadium. I went to the Metrodome in 2004, well before Target Field. I was living in Minnesota that year for a co-op. I convinced the co-op/internship program to pick a Twins game when the Phillies were in town. To add to the excitement, Larry Bowa got thrown out during the game. That’s all I remember. That and that it was a football stadium so the seats didn’t face home plate, but straight forward into the outfield (from the 3rd base line).

Target Field looks nice and the Twin Cities in July is a pretty great spot for an All Star Game. Compared to this year in KC, the Twin Cities have a lot more going on and it isn’t nearly as hot.

When will the All-Star game come back to Philly? I expect 2015 and 2017 to be some order of DC and Miami. Meaning 2019 for Philly at the earliest. The Phillies missed out with the new stadium buzz since they last had it in 1996 (I was there!) and then the new stadium opened in 2004. Also, the early 2000s Phillies weren’t a big deal so no one was all that excited about coming back. Now is a different story but we’re caught in a round of new stadiums.

Mike

High Frame Rate Video Playback

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High Frame Rate Video Playback

There was a lot of talk about high framerates when The Hobbit was previewed a little while back at 48fps. This post has a lot of examples of some of the effects of different framerates.

Mike

A History of the NHL’s Current Logos

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A History of the NHL’s Current Logos

As I do with most items I find that feature the entire league, I look for the Philly team. I had to scroll pretty far to get to the Flyers.

They really got this one perfect on the first try. That or just its design makes it nearly impossible to tweak.

Check out the whole post and the rest of the blog. The RSS feed was already added to my Reader.

Mike

An Inner Circle for the Hall of Fame

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An Inner Circle for the Hall of Fame

A look at the Top 50 baseball players of all time. This is long and totally worth reading.

I found this through another blog (I forget which). I went to add this blog to my Google Reader and found the most recent article is called, ‘In Defense of Tim McCarver’. Ut oh. I’ll give it a read though, maybe there is decent point in there.

Mike

Fortune: Volkswagen: Das auto giant

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Volkswagen: Das auto giant

The Focus & The Tiguan
Left (03 Focus, my 1st car purchase), Right (09 Tiguan, my 3rd)

I hear a lot about VW’s big dreams of being the world’s largest auto maker. Here is a great look about how VW is managed.

I drive a VW now and my car before this one was a VW. That’s more than 6 years as a VW owner. My biggest issue has been what seems to be the lack of advancement in engine technology and fuel efficiency. My 2006 engine was almost identical to my 2009 and if I bought today, still the same engine. While I love the turbo engine, I think with the advances of the last 6 years they could deliver something with similar performance with a bump in MPG.

Reading about how things work behind the scenes makes my issue with lack of engine innovation unsurprising. The focus now is standardizing so they can lower their costs across all their lines. They also appear to be very risk averse which is leading to very boring design decisions. Their focus has been on diesel, which excites me little. Finally it looks that hybrids are coming and I’ve read good things about the Jetta Hybrid. However, doing something interesting with a car I’d want to drive (Golf or Tiguan) is going to be difficult to do before I’m ready to buy again. Which will probably be a year from now.

Mike

NY Times: Four-Man Rotation by Committee

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NY Times: Four-Man Rotation by Committee

Interesting article on the Rockies attempt to use a 4-man rotation. I heard about this during the Phillies-Rockies game yesterday, since I’m not a usual follower of the Rockies. I don’t think you can fault the Rockies at all for trying something different. They’ve never had any luck with pitching. It has a lot to do with their location, but even if it didn’t, trying to work something out with the pitching staff you’ve been given should be applauded. So I have no idea why anyone would read The Denver Post if the criticism mentioned in the NY Times article is their usual baseball coverage. You’d think the Rockies would be in a better position to do these things, from the aspect that they aren’t an old team with lots of ‘old school’ baseball people around who are terrified of doing things differently.

As for the actual proposal: 4 starters, limited to 75 pitches, and 3 relievers for middle relief and some starts. Why so limited? Why not go with 8 pitchers for this project, pair them and limit everyone to 75 pitches. There has to be some benefit of pairing 2 almost starters together if they have some characteristics that make them difficult for a batter to follow. Lefty/Righter, hard throwing/change-up master, any combination that would throw off the batter’s balance.

I’m not sure I can get the pitch data exactly like I want. A simple per team home/away pitch/out report would do.

Looking at yesterday’s game against the Phillies is a decent enough single sample. It was a home game, they only gave up 5 runs (on 6 hits) and 4 walks. Seems about average. The pitchers (and pitches): Pomeranz (80), Torres (31), Ekstrom (11), and Betancourt (4). That’s 126 total pitches. This is just one game, so those numbers are fairly meaningless.

I still think this is worth a shot, just with the actual pairing. They can even market this like tag-team wrestling. Advertise the starter and reliever together. Develop a whole ad campaign of all these odd couples having to do everyday things together. Go all in Rockies.