Thursday, October 21, 2004
Finally “Rivals”?
For a long time the national media was calling New York-Boston a great “rivalry”, but seeing the word “rival” only meant you were probably living in Boston or at least outside of New York. The Red Sox were not rivals - they were fodder.
Tonight the Red Sox finally beat the Yankees in a game that probably meant one thousand times more to the city of Boston than New York (and each team’s players as well if you were watching). While each franchise’s history will probably never be close to equal in terms of success, even a century from now, the Red Sox have finally stepped up and beat the Yankees when it mattered, something they haven’t done in a long, long time.
The Curse is not broken yet. They still have a World Series to go against either the Cards or the Stros, with St Louis probably being the tougher team on paper, but Houston having the more compelling storyline with Roger Clemens coming back to Boston to pitch against them in the World Series. If the Sox don’t win the World Series Boston fans will probably still be elated from the Yankees win, but that will fade quickly and the Curse will still be spoken of.
Either way, congrats to the Boston Red Sox.
The Sleep Schedule
Go home tired.
Fall asleep for part of baseball game.
Wake up, see most of game.
Not tired anymore, stay up late.
Wake up late, very tired.
Go home very tired, repeat process.
Need to get out of this.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Fox Sports NY Done?
The Mets have announced they’re looking to start their own television network, similar to the Yankees YES network.
The Yankees left MSG and the Nets left FSNY to go to YES. YES is also scheduled to have the Devils soon, who are currently on FSNY. Cablevision, who owns both MSG and FSNY kept the Mets on FSNY primarily, but also had them on MSG to keep the channel’s worth up for other cable systems to keep carrying it. After the Mets leave Cablevision will be left with three teams: the Knicks and Rangers, mostly shown on MSG, and the Islanders mostly on FSNY. I say “mostly” because Cablevision also puts some games on their Metro channels when games coincide, and a few other random times, once again, to make the channels more valuable for other systems.
However, after the Mets leave Cablevision should stop spreading themselves so thin and just pack it in on Fox Sports. It’s been written in the press that Rupert Murdoch (who owns part of FSNY) hasn’t been happy with their management, and when Cablevision was going to move a lot of Mets games to MSG, something they own wholely, Fox Sports was not thrilled, and that’s why the amount of games were limited. So now what? The NY Islanders certainly don’t have enough of a following to support their own channel (as much as I’d like it personally), and they’d be able to sell MSG much better with the Knicks, Rangers and Islanders. Of course, the three have overlapping schedules, so who knows how well only one channel would work, but they routinely bump games to the Metro channels all the time (to the dismay of local with satellite tv who have no way of watching the game at home). Certainly it’s not the ideal situation. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Islanders follow the Mets to their new channel whenever their contract expires, which I don’t think is for quite some time.
Note: I read this Newsday article about the Mets new network and the most interesting part to me was this:
The Mets channel also could seek to add the New Jersey Devils once the hockey team’s contract with Fox Sports New York ends after 2006-07.
I guess things aren’t set with the Devils going to YES. Despite the Devils being the more successful teams, I’d think geographically and fan-crossover-wise, a Mets-Islanders pairing makes more sense.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Introducing: Newslinks
I have a big announcement for anyone looking to easily follow the CBA and all other hockey-related matters (mostly NHL-related). On The Ice Block, Newslinks has been unveiled.
The concept is simple - it’s just a list of links. To make it easier to manage, there’s a small form so anyone can submit a link. As the site grows, stories from all markets will appear, and as soon as they’re made live.
The process is semi-moderated. Guests are allowed to post links, and all of those are moderated, fairly quickly. If you sign up and are logged in and are a reliable link poster, we can mark you as such and your links will appear immediately.
I’ve also made it so that the domain being linked to is posted below each link. It’s easier when looking at a big list like that instead of mousing over each one to see where you might be going.
After the site takes off, I’m considering adding the ability for comments about each, but I figure I’ll hold off on that until it’s bigger.
Any suggestions welcome.
Friday, October 08, 2004
Finally Found a DVD Authoring Program
For a while I was looking for a program that would easily allow me to take clips (mpg2 format) and put them onto a DVD. While they all do that, most will just add them as titles or separate timelines. The suggestion was usually to merge the clips and then make chapter points. Who wants to do that when you want to put 40 clips onto a DVD?
Finally, I found what I was looking for. TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.6 allowed me to easily add files (all at once) and have them be chapters in one timeline (although I could make other timelines too). I created a DVD easily, and can skip through it just as easy now. I spent a little extra time setting up a menu for it as well. I have it start out and go right to the first clip, but if you hit menu it’s there. It has about 10 pages of clips, title and picture for each chapter. Not bad. I just have to create a theme since I used a blah default one.
After all the trial programs and such I’ve had to download and try out I’m glad I’ve found something I can work with. As I create a few more DVDs I hope I can tweak it with the same ease it took to create what I’ve made so far.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Barry Bonds, What a Guy
There’s really little I can say without spoiling this ESPN wire report about Gary Sheffield detailing his relationship with Barry Bonds. A lot of people I know aren’t too high on Sheffield’s personality, although he has matured a bit… well, like him or not, he’s got nothing on Bonds.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Cheerleader Boots Protect Denney
ESPN is carrying this story: Did cheerleader boots help protect rookie?
It’s a nice addition to the “you can’t make that up” file. Soon to be “ripped from the headlines” and put into a Law & Order episode I’m sure.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Center Field Not Found
Apparently there’s a big Yahoo ad in center field at SBC Park in San Fran and right next to it is a 404 marker. As a geek this made me laugh. The rest of you can just shake your head and go about your day.
Monday, September 27, 2004
Getting the Hockey Blogs Together
After patiently waiting for a way to improve the way I can produce a feed, I’m finally able to starting pushing the blog feed on The Ice Block. Blogger only produces an atom feed by default and I couldn’t read those for a while. Unfortunately many sites use Blogger. No problem anymore, atom is all good now. I did have to write a few to ask them to change the encoding, but no one outside of Jes GÅ‘lbez (who does need to use Eastern European accents) will see any difference in their site by doing so, and probably allows more to use their feed besides myself. Jes did change his encoding to an ISO format and hopefully I can tweak my script to include it soon.
Until then, have a look at some of the best blogs around and follow the feed to easily get a nice group update. If you think I’ve missed any major hockey blog, or even a small one that’s just really good and regularly updated, please let me know.
Friday, September 24, 2004
The Many Flavors of a Blogger Feed
I’ve got a decent amount of people I know blogging through Blogger.
Almost none of them have a link to their atom feed (Google does atom over rss as a default on Blogger blogs).
I have been able to find a feed for all I was looking for, but it doesn’t seem like there’s one standard.
Let’s say the url for your friend’s Blogger blog is:
blogname.blogspot.com
To get the feed, try one of these:
/atom.xml
/rss/blogname.xml
/rss/feed.xml
/blognamefeed
Note: you can also normally view the source of a Blogger’s page and get the feed location there.
If I find any more, I’ll post them.