Monday, April 23, 2007

Ugh, Morgan

Which would you rather do:

  • List to Mr. Morgan do color commentary during ESPN/Baseball
  • Listen to the game on the radio 5 seconds ahead the TV
That was our quandary. We choose the second. Neither of us can stand Mr. Morgan. By the way, some of us also do not like Mr. Buck on FOX, I actually like him. Gimme Jerry and Don, or Kruk and Kuip, or ... How did are these people picked to do nationally televised games?

Now this is announcing: "Have some pizza!"

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Baseball Time

Ah Baseball season is here again. While I was home the last time my brother pointed me to a group that follows baseball in a different way. I was aware of the "statistics nuts" that were constantly referenced during baseball games commentary and other people complaining about "How many bases Ricky Henderson stole during night games while up by more than 4 or more runs during Passover ?" But some of the things are actually quite interesting, especially if you are just a bit mathematically inclined or want more to emerse yourself in everything baseball.

I was also a bit disappointed when one the OSX Dashboard Widgets I used during last year's baseball season to watch and follow all the teams I care about, yes there are three, stopped working. So I decided to make a widget of my own to replace the broken one. One of the things I added to my version was the determination of Win Probability and graphing that during the game. Here are some pics:
The score, count and bases are all there, just like the previous widget, but I added the pitcher, batter on the right and the team which is currently at bat. Finally there is a gauge which tells you probability of the home team of winning.
If you double click on the widget, it expands and shows the graph of win probability for each batter that is up for the entire game. If you run the mouse over one of those little red or black boxes, it will tell you the play that made the win probability change in a little box. And there is also a back so you can select the game you want and change the "importance" of the play to display those little play boxes.

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Clothes out of the Dryer

For the last few (4) weeks, we have been without a washer and dryer, and hence clean clothes. We normally do clothes on a every other week basis, but since the washing machine died about 4 weeks ago due a leak in the tub and killing the motor we have had to do without. It is amazing the kinds of stuff you will wear when you are trying to stretch your wearable clothes. Last weekend, we made a special trip to the mall, which is about 45 minutes away, to pick up necessary delicates. We finally this week got the new washing machine and dryer. It is one of the new high efficiency machines and is very quite and uses very little water, plus the dryer finishes in about the same time as the washing machine. Ahhh, clean clothes.