Brad Wiliams, David Damstra and I are still hard at work on Professional WordPress, our internals-focused complete guide and tour of the WordPress platform. We hit the 80% completion point for writing and today got to about 30% editing and review (5 chapters out of 15, but some of the bigger ones are still on our plates).
For those who want to follow along on Facebook: become a fan of our Professional WordPress page.
Disclaimer: I consider Justin Shaffer a friend, and have gone to Yankees games with him, but we bought our own food.
Justin Shaffer, former geek in residence at MLB Advanced Media, the digital arm of the nation’s pastime, is on the cusp of tossing a new entrant into the social media game with “Hot Potato”. When Apple finally gets off its duff and approves the iPhone application, you’ll be able to experience it first hand.
There’s been some reasonable press coverage since Justin first tipped his hand at TechCrunch last week, but I think Hot Potato is more like Twitter: until you use it, you won’t get it. Put another way – Every time the Devils score a goal at a game where the Bubba and I are rockin’ our last row seats, we make sure to high-five people sitting behind us. I don’t know who they are, they wouldn’t pick me out of a crowd, but for 90 seconds they are my best friends in red and black. I’d love their thoughts and comments on the event as it unfolds. Sports fans participate by sharing their views, however loudly, and it’s more fun when you have an audience.
Despite media predictions that “location” is the next killer service, it’s not. I don’t really care what half-wasted Rangers fans think of the Devils, even if they are in the building. There were plenty of coffee-loving people at my favorite Dunkin’ Donuts this morning, but I’m not interested in connecting with them, just having them avoid double-parking so the lot doesn’t congest further. Location and intersection of interests is the killer – add in the mildly unknown, like an amazon.com recommendation, or (gasp) a Facebook ad based on your preferences and recent activity, and you have the basis for digital life accentuating the real world.
Now if only we could really throw hot potatoes at Rangers fans, via our iPhones….
An Open Letter to the Editorial Staff of USA Hockey Magazine:
I’m a bit surprised that the “Ivy on Ice” article in the November issue of USA Hockey magazine only talks about the men’s game. Co-education has existed in the Ivies for almost four decades, and the women’s game has a younger but equally important history:
USA Hockey usually does an outstanding job giving equal billing to men’s and women’s hockey, and I’m suprised at this omission.
I’ll forgive leaving out Darroll Powe (Flyers, Princeton, and one of the few players to score on Brodeur twice this year).
Once again Princeton University graduate Darroll Powe put one past Marty, and that’s what it took to unravel a pair of winning streaks. Powe scored on opening night as well, seemingly deflating the Devils out of the gate. Tonight’s goal wasn’t the turning point (it was Van Riemsdyk’s goal that Marty didn’t see in the 3rd), but it definitely showed which was the ice was tilting.
The problem with streaks is that after a while, people pay more attention to the statistics than to the end goals (playoffs, player development, fan attraction, financial management). Better to pick up points consistently than to be streaking one way or the other – averaging 1.25 points per game (or about a 63% points efficiency) is usually enough for a good playoff seeding. I’m not upset the streak of away wins or consecutive wins ended, as the Devils were close to 90% point efficient. You’re going to lose games, although I wish they weren’t to the Flyers.
Much more concerning to me: Darroll Powe basically walked onto the Flyers. Here was a kid playing less than an hour’s drive from the Rock, and the Devils didn’t chase him? He looked like he had the Devils defense scrambling for half of the last three minutes of the game tonight, simply forechecking strongly enough to keep Brodeur in the net. Madden and Rafalski were the oft-discussed “undrafted” players; the Devils draft has produced some huge winners (Parise, Bergfors) but their ability to spot talent outside of the fresh-faced set should be just as good, and it hasn’t produced in the past five or six years.
Even more concerning: schedule compression. Devils lost in their third game in four nights, and fourth in six nights. That’s incredibly tight game timing, and it’s a result of taking a few weeks off for the Olympics. I’m betting it’s one reason there have been a rash of serious injuries to marquee players, and it should be a sign of caution for the banged-up bodies (Niedermeyer, Pandolfo, Martin, Oduya, Elias to a lesser extent, Langenbrunner to a bit) to focus on strong, rather than fast, returns.
Mergers and acquisitions aren’t reserved for failing banks or technology companies: Turns out there’s excitement and kvelling in the Jewish themed consumer goods arena.
Jewish Fashion Conspiracy had its run and their products sidled over to PopJudaica. In addition to “Jews for Jeter” t-shirts and matzah-print toilet seats, they put six-points of light into a bunch of housewares. It’s funny, quirky stuff.
Today ModernTribe announced they’re buying PopJudaica. Hip chanukiot, CBGB-inspired shirts and other coolness reign.
At some point, I’ll pester them about carrying the Jewish Hockey Book. I just have to finish writing it first.
My “Jews For Jeter” t-shirt provided comfort, good luck and naches during the Yankees’ championship run. But if you’re a Mets fan, the off-season came early, without celebration or pre-holiday post-season splurges at the local Dicks or Sports Authority.
Take heart, fans of the injury-prone but get’em next year Amazins: New Rome Clothing has something equally sacrilegious for you. You can have “Messiah” embellished with the mogen david, sporting Sandy Koufax or Hank Greenberg on the back.
Tip of the yarmie to ESPN: The Magazine for the New Rome pointer.
I broke down and ordered the NHL Center Ice package tonight. It was actually a Facebook conversation with a co-worker that convinced me it was worth the $172 for the next six months, or as he put it, less than the cost of going to two games. My interest started with a sincere interest in seeing Mike Cammalleri, Brian Gionta and Scott Gomez take on the Bruins tonight. What I got was a lingering taste of the seven-plus years Mrs. Snowman and I spent in the Boston suburbs, channeling NESN on a 17-inch TV. It’s still NESN carrying the Bruins home game, but it’s in HD — a little bit of old school Boston sports mixed with geographic diversity. Given that all of the out of market games are redirections of local coverage, I’m looking forward to getting to know the broadcast voices of the Lightning, Canadiens, Ducks, Hawks and perhaps the Flyers, as I follow some brand name as well as lesser-known but fun to watch players (Halpern, Powe and Parros, along with Madden, Toews, Gomez, Cammalleri and Gionta).
Snowman favorite George Parros picked up his first of the year, ending a 21-game stretch without a goal that extended into last spring. It was a weird night, including a goal that Joffrey Lupul put in off of the glass stanchion near the blue line.
Sports fans most definitely mark time by sports seasons, and clearly associate events staggeringly good or bad with particular slices of our life. The 1969 Mets are what I remember from 1st grade; the 1972 Pirates-Reds National League Championship Series marked the beginning of understanding sadness in sports; the Devils won their last Stanley Cup the first year my son played travel hockey. But like financial prognosticators who picked stock market direction based on the conference affiliation of the Super Bowl winner, I have specific memories of World Series events and their perceived impact on my life.
1969 World Series: Miracle Mets, watching from Miss D’Amico’s first grade class on a black and white set perched on her desk, lights turned off, 25 of us clustered around the 12-inch screen to mark the first time I ditched school (or work) for a sporting event. My fascination with baseball cards started that following spring, collecting pasteboard memories of what transpired at the beginning of the school year.
1977 World Series: Yankees win, Reggie Jackson is Mr. October. I had put away my baseball cards the previous spring, upon graduation from middle school. I remember watching it with my cousins, amazed that they had such passion for the Yankees, not quite appreciating the magnitude of Jackson’s performance. It was likely the first sports event I can claim to have watched as a young adult.
1979 World Series: Pirates “We Are Family” series, Willie Stargell leading the black and gold to another championship, preaching unity before “diversity” was in the vernacular. In the fall of my senior year in high school, baseball was less interesting than college applications, dating, and doing statistics for the football team. My fascination with Stargell had faded a bit, into the mental left-center field gap, but came back front and center in the last Fall Classic I’d watch while living in my parents’ house.
2000 World Series: I watched the Yankees win from the comforts of a higher-end hotel, where I was addressing a dot-com high-flier the next morning. I remember seeing Sun Microsystems (my employer) stock jump the next morning, along with a basket of other technology stocks I owned. I sold only to be reprimanded by my manager for not believing the stock would continue its rocket ride. Just a few days, later, SUNW hit an all-time high, and since that day it’s been a remarkably difficult period to be a Sun employee or shareholder.
My personal definition of “lost decade” is that stretch from the Yankees last adding a ring until tonight. The World Series can’t make the market go up, or improve corporate earnings, or find jobs for all of my friends who have been displaced in the past year. Furthermore, there’s nothing I (or any other fan) personally did to propel the Yankees through the season and postseason. But for everyone who is a fan, who has been marking time since the first year of the double zero decade, the years marked with naught in every conceivable sense, there’s a bit of a halo effect that we’ll enjoy for a few weeks. It’s a nice way to wrap up the last season of this decade, bookending the way it started.
It’s time for the Fall Classic, and this year it tramples the Garden State in multiple ways. Growing up in Freehold, NJ, I had the benefit of being located as close to the centroid of the state as you could be. We lived only a few miles from the boundary of the 201 and 609 area codes, a Mason-Dixon line that separated Philadelphia from New York, Tasty Kake from Entenman’s, and pizza from cheesesteaks. The New York-Philadelphia battle lines run deep — it’s not about rivalry or competition, it’s about deep-seated, long-running, geo-politics, with New Jerseyans caught squarely in the cross-hairs, aiding and abetting each side.
Here’s a prime example: During my formative, impressionable pre-teen years, the local Rotary Club would sponsor a father-son trip to a baseball game (it was the 70s, forgive the political incorrectness). For some reason, we’d trek down the Turnpike to Veteran’s Stadium to see the Mets play the Phillies. Never mind that Shea Stadium was closer, and represented the Mets on home turf for displaced Long Islanders in the area. New York for some reason was off-limits: too dangerous, too far, too expensive, too something. So the upper levels of the Vet invited us, took us in, and shielded us from a 2-hour rain delay. In the middle of that weather interruption, I witnessed a fight break out between fans of the opposing teams, resulting in a Mets fan being dangled over the railing until he took back a comment made in haste or hates, depending upon your view. Beer dampened senses (common and otherwise) to the point where nobody would have felt the injuries until the next day. The Mets won, so all was for naught anyway.
Phillies fans are famous for hurling insults and snowballs at Santa Claus. Really. When JD Drew refused to sign with Philadelphia, his first visit to the outfield was punctuated with D-cell batteries. Philadelphia news media celebrated the minimal rioting that came with last year’s World Series trophy.
It’s the City of Brotherly Love only for some definitions of love that involve the home team, home team fans, and their supporters. Don’t cross Philly fans. Do not, under any circumstances, after your wonderful and cannot-be-denied NJ Devils defeat the Flyers to force a Game 7 in the 2000 NHL Conference Finals, after listening to nearly 3 hours of abuse, vulgarity and bodily noises coming from 200 level of the Meadowlands, turn around and holler “Hey Philly fans, bite my dad’s ass!” (Yes, this happened, yes we lived to tell about it, because I think the fact it came from a 6-year old’s mouth shocked everyone enough to give us a 3-step lead down the staris).
I believe that Philadelphia fans are rabid out of a sense of being in a perpetual “not” comparison; they’re not New York; they’re not Pittsburgh; they’re not the nation’s capital (although they were for a while); they’re just consistently belligerent. If Philadelphia is fueled by inferiority, then New York is driven by superiority: how many rings, the new stadium, the excise tax on the baseball payroll, the “world’s most famous arena” (Madison Square Garden), the winningest franchise in sports. The longest game closing call known to man originates from the broadcast booth at Yankees games. Yankees fans set themselves up for abuse; Phillies fans dish it out faster than a cheesesteak at Jim’s on South Street.
Baseball is America’s pastime because it includes, covers, habors and engenders such strong emotions. It’s acceptable to abuse your co-workers, your neighbor, your brother-in-law, just until the final out is made, and you go out for breakfast or lunch the next day and gently tease each other. It’s the basis for movies and television and songs and, well, slices of American life. It’s passion shared and surfaced and played out, each season after the other, a way to mark time without ever growing old.
A kid who used to skate on one of my hockey teams chided Yankees fans earlier today: “You don’t have a game tonight; the team does.” Oh, but fans of both sides have a game tonight. It’s our given right, protected by the Constitution, to enjoy free speech, with some allowance for volume. And anyway, the Red Sox are done for the year. Nah-nah.
