Black Holes and Snowy Mountains

The NFL offseason is a time of great change throughout the league, from the madness of free agency to the rush to get under the salary cap before deadline. Here are 8 pre-draft headlines that made me stop and think- ranging from the downright absurd (Matt Cassel) to comical (Andre Smith).

1. Matt Cassel franchised by the Patriots, then traded to the Chiefs for a second-round pick.

We all know the story. Tom Brady’s knee gets introduced to Bernard Pollard’s helmet and ends his season after about 7 minutes. Matt Cassel, a 7th round pick who hadn’t started since high school, leads the Patriots to within a half-game of the playoffs. The Patriots promptly franchised Cassel and he signed the tender worth $14.65 million for 2008, setting off a flurry of discussion about his trade value to other teams in need of a quarterback. Draft guru Mel Kiper fueled the fire by saying he would rather trade for Matt Cassel than take a quarterback out of the 2008 class in the first round, and most settled on at least two first-day draft picks in 2008 and probably another in 2009 as fair compensation.
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Filed under: Sports by HP

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Yes, I know about them and am working to fix it. Something went awry with a plugin update.

Update: Specifically, the auto-update for Contact Form 7 and the All-in-one SEO Pack caused several include_once… warnings to appear at the top of every page (including the admin panel). Attempts to solve the issue so far haven’t been successful (or answered on the plugin’s forums), but you’ll notice a new contact form on the About page. And you don’t have to worry about SEO, I’ll take care of that

So for now everything is more or less normal. If anyone has any suggestions on how to get the old plugins working again, I’d be eternally grateful for a fix.

Technorati Tags: bugs, plugins, Wordpress, All in one SEO Pack, Contact Form 7

Filed under: Humor by HP

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Everyone has their own favorite list of applications. Here are some great applications for OS X that I find indispensable. This list, especially the free apps and those already included with Leopard, could also serve as a great starting point for a switcher just starting to find their way around.

1. BBEdit (Text editor)- An absolutely phenomenal text editor, the new version (9.1) is a huge improvement over previous versions when dealing with multiple files. It comes with all the features you’d expect from a powerful text editor, including syntax highlighting for almost every language you can thing of, built-in FTP, and regular expression matching. I’ve also found that BBEdit opens large files (10 megabytes and larger) faster than Textmate. $125 single user/$49 educational license.
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Filed under: Apple, Technology by HP

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Books are something that I have had a very involved (for lack of a better word) relationship with since childhood. I read constantly when I was young, and when it came time to get my first “real” job the only place I seriously thought about working at was my town’s independent bookseller.

With the recent release of Amazon’s second generation Kindle, I’ve heard a lot of buzz about how paper books are looking more and more dated with each new electronic innovation. While I will concede that electronic print is becoming more and more of a viable alternative to traditional print media, I find this talk of the death of paper to be extremely premature. Keep in mind that this is not a comparison between the pros and cons of a paper book and an eBook/eReader, although I will occasionally use the comparison simply because it better illustrates my point. If anything I will bring up the deficiencies of the eBook/reader because there is an issue that must be addressed before it can truly be called a viable replacement. I realize that eBooks offer a lot of advantages that hard copies don’t; physical space advantage and ease of distribution to name a couple, but that’s for a future post.

So, here is a short list of 8 reasons that the paper book is not yet ready to roll over and die.
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Filed under: Culture, Lifestyle by HP

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This will solve somewhere between 99.8 and 99.9 of all computer problems. Can we please start using JGI (just google it) as a more general version of RTFM?
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Filed under: Humor, Technology by HP

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Here are the remaining teams ranked on the basis of their win/loss differential from the 2007 NFL regular season to the 2008 regular season. For ranks 32-17, see The Expectations Power Rankings, Part I.  (Note: as with part I, this is a pre-draft edited version of my original post on a friend’s blog. It can be found here.)

16. [+1] Oakland Raiders (2007: 4-12, 2008: 5-11) – Al Davis missed his second game in more than four decades and the Raiders won their week 17 matchup 31-24 against the Bucs in Tampa, knocking the Bucs out of the playoffs. Coincidence? It’s the same old story with the Raiders; the trickle-down effect from the top has the franchise in a total mess. The Raiders have a personnel-based roster lacking the scheme to exploit their talents, and like the Jets they found out the hard way that throwing money at the situation (Tommy Kelly, Javon Walker) won’t buy you success. On the bright side, 2007 first-overall pick JaMarcus Russell showed flashes of talent and 2008 fourth-overall pick Darren McFadden mostly lived up to the hype before he got injured. The future of the franchise hinges on how well these two turn out.
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Filed under: Sports by HP

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Every year teams go into the season with baggage- a Super Bowl victory or defeat, major offseason acquisitions or releases, a history of being horrible, or perennial underachievers.  While it’s true that win differential doesn’t tell the whole story- the Patriots couldn’t be expected to repeat their perfect regular season, nor could anyone have reasonably expected the Lions to lose every game in 2008 (or could they?)- it provides a fun look at the league’s booms and busts.  Context means everything for teams like the Chargers and the Cowboys, while the same weaknesses that plagued the Bills and the Texans in 2007 helped them to a repeat performance in 2008.  Here’s the bottom of the list with commentary starting with the largest negative differential to the largest positive differential.  In cases of ties, the team that had more wins in 2007 got the lower ranking on the negative side while the team that had less wins in 2007 got the lower ranking on the positive side. (Note: this is a pre-draft edited version of my original post on a friend’s blog. It can be found here.)

32. [-7] Green Bay Packers (2007: 13-3, 2008: 6-10) – It is genuinely difficult to pin down the root causes of the 2008 Packers’ ineptitude.  Some people might point to the Brett Favre saga/trade installing Aaron Rodgers as the franchise quarterback.  That doesn’t fly very far when you look at Rodgers’ numbers (4038 yards, 28 TDs, 13 interceptions) compared to Favre’s (3472 yards, 22 TDs, 22 interceptions).  Ryan Grant’s slow start might have played a part, but the Packers were doing well in the first half of the season.  The defense certainly played a part, but outside of a couple games (New Orleans, Carolina) they were averaging around 18-20 points per game which isn’t terrible.  So I guess the only thing we can say is that it was a team effort.
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Filed under: Sports by HP

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Sometimes it’s the little things that can really ruin a meal, your morning commute, or even managing your finances. I tried to come up with a somewhat unique list of small things that seem to conspire against me on a daily basis that aren’t as obvious as the all-too-common things that nobody likes such as stubbing your toe or being attacked by a rabid platypus.

1. Apple bruises- I’m a pretty big fan of apples. Gala, Pink Lady, even the venerable Granny Smith… all delicious. Refreshingly sweet and healthy, I almost always have a couple in the refrigerator awaiting consumption. However, apple bruises take all of the joy out of eating one. These soft spots not only taste like something is amiss, but they have a spongy, unsatisfying texture coupled with a sickly brown pall. A surprising (to me, anyway) amount of research has gone into the cause and characterization of apple bruises. For example, according to a study done in the Tree Fruit Postharvest Journal, the average number of bruises per fruit were caused by:

Picking (2.6)
Bin hauling (2.2)
Packing line (5.4)
Bagging (2.7)
Distribution (.34-1.45)

Apple bruises have also been characterized by their electrical impedance in a study by the University of Budapest, although sadly I am not able to access the paper without paying. I’m sure it sent shockwaves through the industry when it was first published. No matter how you want to study or classify these defects of nature, the bottom line is that apple bruises suck, big time. (more…)

Filed under: Humor, Lifestyle by HP

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Few things dominate our culture today to the same degree as music. It has been at the forefront of the entertainment industry for centuries, and only recently as begun to lose ground to relatively “new” mediums like television and the internet. The ways in which we produce, distribute, and listen to music have changed drastically, but the fundamentals remain the same.

I believe that the lasting appeal of music is not only due to the technological reasons other media did not arise sooner, but because it appeals to almost every aspect of the human experience.

1. History- The history of music is a long and fascinating tale with as much diversity and conflict as the story of any nation or empire. As a historical tool, music has and still is a common method of passing knowledge from generation to generation. Musical tastes, sounds, and techniques come and go as the cultures around them change and evolve. Rivalries between opposing schools produce brilliant works on both sides, each sticking to the core values of the composer and their time but still eluding to a more universal message. Music history is world history.
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Filed under: Culture by HP

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Recently I had to take my laptop into the Apple Store on the Rue de Marche in Geneva, and was somewhat surprised and a little dismayed to discover that Apple stores across the world really do have the same types of people in them.  Below is a summary of those I see most often.

Part 1: EMPLOYEES

Decked out in their Jobs-esque minimalist attire and lanyards around their neck, Apple Store employees educate and manage the flock.

The Enthusiastic Specialist- This one is heard before they’re seen. Even though they don’t really know anything about Macs (or computers in general), they’re quick to mention how Macs are “5 times more secure” than Windows before quickly switching to a smooth video demo of the newest iLife suite.  When not harassing a customer, the Enthusiastic Specialist can be found hovering between the iPod and iPhone tables, asking if you need help finding either of them. (more…)

Filed under: Humor, Technology by HP

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