The 2006 Reds are eliminated
It was pretty much inevitable, but I was hoping against hope that the slim chance the Reds had for postseason would materialize. Alas, the Reds were eliminated tonight when the Milwaukee Brewers failed to default the St. Louis Cardinals. It’s been a good season: no one expected the Reds to be in serious contention for this long and now with a key offseason move or two, the Reds will certainly be in contention starting from day 1 next year.
I’ll do a postseason recap in a few weeks, but there is good news in all of this: the Smackies challenge is now over and once again I will be receiving delicious BBQ for no charge from the gracious Indians fans in the office after the Indians failed to overtake the Reds at the end of the season. So I got that going for me…
Akismet
I’ve added this Akismet thing to my blog. It purports to be able to tell the difference between a spam comment and a non-spam comment. It’s a web-based API made for WordPress, but it has been adapted for other environments as well. (Noticibly absent is ASP classic, which I may try to develop myself sometime down the road).
Right now I’m simply letting is flag every incoming comment with “Y” for spam and “N” for not-spam. Once I see how well it works over a week or so, comments marked as spam will no longer be displayed at all.
On a side note, when I think of Akismet, I think of Kismet, the Magic: The Gathering card famous from Stasis decks: Enchantment, 3W, Target opponent’s artifacts, creatures, and lands come into play tapped.
You are a pirate!
If this is the kind of stuff that’s normally on Lazytown, I may need to start DVRing it…
On the same token, the pink-haired girl (Stephanie?) creeps me out for some reason. Maybe it’s because she gets the weird techno version and has a terrible choreographer.
The slippery slope is lined with trans fat
Rarely do I think that the slippery slope argument is used in a valid way. Usually it takes the form of the “if they do X now, what will they do next!?” type of panicy alarmism.
Not so in the case of smoking bans.
New York City banned ‘public’ smoking around 3 years ago. It’s for the children! It’s for innocent second-hand smokers! It’s for the non-smoking working man! Sure we’re taking away your ability to use a legal product while still taxing the hell out of it, so what?
Now they are going after trans fat. Why? It’s unhealthy, and we, the government, know what’s best for you. Behold:
“It is a dangerous and unnecessary ingredient,” Frieden said. “No one will miss it when it’s gone.”
Unbelieveable. In the case of trans fat, there isn’t even a second-hand trans fat to use as an excuse. This is government meddling plain and simple, and the slope is becoming more and more slippery. Why not ban deep fried foods, or enforce calorie restrictions? Why not make the nutritional guidelines mandatory? I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: Join me in a Boston Food Party!
Play NES games in your browser
Here’s a site that hosts some emulators and the acompanying ROMs. I guess it all works through Java applets. There’s about 1400 games for various systems. Here is list of the systems, the emulator, and an example game for each system available:
- Sega Master System – Potato Emulation – Space Harrier
- Turbo Grafx 16 – Potato Emulation – Bonk’s Adventure
- Game Gear – Potato Emulation – Virua Fighter Mini
- NES – NESCafe – Bases Loaded [Note: NES was working when I first visited, but isn't working now]
- Arcade – CottAGE – Galaxian
- Gameboy Advance – Boycott Advance – Pong Fighter
Don’t get too excited about GBA, there’s only a small amount of games available, and those look to be low-complexity homebrew games. Otherwise, there seems to be a decent collection of games available. Not sure why the NES isn’t working anymore…
Braille dots on a drive-thru ATM
I know I’m dipping into Seinfeld territory here, but here’s an excerpt from the Economics textbook that I’m reading in the MBA program this quarter:
Why do the keypad buttons on drive-up automatic teller machines have Braille dots?
Braille dots on elevator buttons and on the keypads of walk-up automatic teller machines enable blind people to participate more fully in the normal flow of daily activity. But even though blind people can do many remarkable things, they cannot drive automobiles on public roads. Why, then, do the manufacturers of automatic teller machines install Braille dots on the machines at drive-up locations?
The answer to this riddle is that once the keypad molds have been manufactured, the cost of producing buttons with Braille dots is no higher than the cost of producing smooth buttons. Making both would require separate sets of molds and two different types of inventory. If the patrons of drive-up machines found buttons with Braille dots harder to use, there might be a reason to incur these extra costs. But since the dots pose no difficulty for sighted users, the best and cheapest solution is to produce only keypads with dots.
Neat! Take that, Jerry Seinfeld!
Columbus Clippers changing affiliation
The Columbus Clippers have changed their Major League affiliation. No longer is Columbus associated with the New York Yankees. Good riddance, I say!
They are now associated with the Washington Nationals (National League, woohoo!), at least for two years. Coincidentally, the Cleveland Indians and the Cincinnati Reds contracts with their minor league affiliates (the Buffalo Bisons and the Louisville Bats, respectively) are up at the end of the 2008 year.
Also coincidentally, the Clippers are getting a new ballpark downtown. A very very nice one to boot!
All of this adds up to this: at the end of 2008 the Clippers are likely to sign with the Reds or Indians as a new AAA affiliate. With a new ballpark and an in-state affiliation, this is likely to spark a renaissance of baseball in Columbus.
Hopefully, it will be the Reds who snatch up Columbus. They have the most to gain and the most to lose. Columbus fans are pretty much divided between Cincy and Cleveland, maybe favoring the Reds a little bit historically speaking. If the Indians AAA team was in Columbus, you can pretty much kiss that goodbye, as Indians fans would likely start to dominate. Also, the fans in the city of the current Reds affiliate, Louisville, would likely not abandon the Reds if the AAA team were to leave. Who would they be a fan of instead, St. Louis? Atlanta?
I would hope that the Clippers would finally change their name. They’ve been the Clippers since they were affiliated with the Pirates. ‘Clippers’ almost made sense with the Yankees (Joe DiMaggio was “The Yankee Clipper”), but it makes zero sense now since Clippers have nothing to do with the land-locked city of Columbus and nothing to do with Nationals.
I’m wondering what a Reds affiliation would mean for Dave Miley, who was fired by the Reds last year and then hired by the Clippers for this year’s season.
Anyway, it’s likely to be a pretty heavy battle for Columbus fans come late 2008. If the Reds pull it off, they are looking at least two people (me and my wife) who will be first in line for Clippers season tickets.
Family Guy Pilot
I’ve never seen this before. It’s the rough 7-minute Family Guy pilot. It’s basically the same story as the eventual first episode (Peter drinks at a stag party), but there are a lot of changes from the version I’ve seen dozens of times.
In particular:
- Meg’s outfit, Lois’s hair, etc
- Quagmire and Cleveland are different
- Mr. Weed has no accent of any kind
- Tom the newscaster is known as Mike
Other than that, the animation/artwork is noticeably different, but I guess that’s expected, and it’s not that much different. Here’s the video:
Comments are now working
The comments should be up and running now. They aren’t as elegant as I’d like them to be, but they do work.
I strip out all HTML tags from all the data you enter, so don’t bother with formatting. If you enter some carriage returns, they won’t appear, but don’t worry, I will fix that soon enough. Enjoy!
Archive is now working
The “Archives” section on the right-hand side of the new design is now up and running. The last 9 months will always be listed there. The archive pages are not very pretty yet, but I wanted to get something up and functional.
As always, you can return to the main page from the archives by clicking on the ‘mgroves.com’ at the top of every page.
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