A radio station I like to listen streams over the internet using StreamTheWorld. Unfortunately, my computer has an amd64 processor and currently, flashplayer doesn’t support that processor. Plus, I don’t particularly care for the browser only interface. After a little googling, I found a nice command line solution using mplayer and a script.
Here’s the python script. I just had to append an ‘FM’ to the station callsign when using it. Kudo’s and thanks to the author for a nice solution.
Apparently, there is finally a formal proposal to expand the NFL season to 18 games. Here are some of my thoughts on what it will mean(try to read past the first couple, which I admit fall into the “Duh” category):
Assuming a strike doesn’t happen, it will mean more money for the owners. Of course, even with the strike it will eventually mean more money for the owners, it’ll just take longer to get there.
It will also mean more money per season for the players. Expect a lot of contract renegotiations when the transition occurs.
I’d expect more late season injuries- especially to older players where bodies basically breakdown. Along the same lines, I’d expect more injuries during the playoffs.
Careers will get shorter. I don’t think the average person understands the physical toll taken on an NFL player. I think the affect of 2 more games of wear on a player is greater than just 2 games. Players are already beatup mentally and physically at the end of the current season. Many will be downright primed for breakdowns with 2 more games.
Expect team turnover to increase. A successful team has about 6-8 years as a unit, depending on talent, because of the extra playoff games. Happened to the Cowboys in the 90’s, it happened to the Patriots in the 00’s. So a good team with Super Bowl aspirations will have fewer years in which to win one, and fewer years that they remain competitive before their talent pool is used up. Probably more in line with 5-6 years. No more “Team of the Decade” titles. It’ll probably shift to “the best team of the past 5 years.” The 4 Super Bowl mark of greatness for a team goes away.
The possibility of an undefeated season disappears I think. I know the undefeated record is something like 23 games, but that’s spans from the middle of one season to the middle of the next and includes playoff wins. Two extra games makes the odds of running the table (what, 21 games from the season opener to the Super Bowl) astronomical to the point of impossible.
I expect the first 4 weeks of the season to be much more chaotic. Timing and game conditioning won’t be the same. I know part of the current justification rests on shortening the preseason. But those games are used to gradually ramp players up to speed. Look at Favre this year, or Darrelle Revis who both missed training camp and both were not ready for their respective openers. Now imagine that on a league wide basis.
I think all season records should be reset to 0. The new benchmark for season rushing yards becomes 1500, with a great season becoming 2000 yards. The record will be 2500 or so. I think 6000 yards passing is now doable, with 4500 yards becoming the new benchmark.
Expect more late season playoff runs. The extra games will likely throw-off precision teams, such as the Colts, early. But once they hit their stride, they’ve got a couple extra games to make up for a slow start. The effect won’t be huge, but it will be there.
The transition for rookies will be brutal. They will have two fewer weeks to learn offensive and defensive systems. They’re body and minds will have the shock of switching from a season that starts in late August and ends in November to a season that starts in mid-August and ends at the end of December. I’d say rookies will be used more sparingly early in the year in the hopes of having them capable of meaningfully contribute at the end of the year.
Youth becomes king. Veteran teams will not be able to keep pace with younger teams because they just won’t have the energy at the end of the year to make their experience matter.
Good defenses become downright stifling by the end of the year. Defensive coordinators will have 2 more games to figure out what makes offenses tick. They’ll put it too good use.
On a pure speculation note, I think the raison-d’etre for this move is television. Specifically, no one watches the pre-season and the networks are none to pleased with that state of affairs. I’m a Cowboys fan and I can’t tell you anything about how they looked in the pre-season. I know I’m not the only one. Only the fantasy guys and diehards who think they can coach care about the pre-season- and even there it’s only because they haven’t figured out that the pre-season is a predictor of absolutely squat. So the owners figure that making the games “count” will increase the viewing season. They’re probably right.
Looking at the above, I’m struck by how easy it is to come up with net-negatives for the longer season. I suppose the main plus for fans is the longer viewing season and probably all the season record setting. Largely, the move seems to be a net negative for players. Sure they’ll have higher paying seasons; but there’s a good chance it’s offset by shorter careers.
I’ll be curious to see justifications beyond “more games that count.” I’m sure they exist; but I can’t think of them, which makes me dubious of their convincing power.
I was able to use my rye starter to create a white flour based sourdough starter. It’s still not as potent as the one I had a few years ago and I don’t have the confidence in it to stop feeding it a little rye flour when refreshing it. But I was able to use it yesterday to make a nice loaf of sourdough bread. The result was delicious.
Ultimately, that’s all that counts in a starter.
One of the kids’ favorite lines nowadays is “You’re not nice!” I, in particular, hear this one a lot. Initially, I just let it pass, but lately I’ve been giving them a simple reply:
“No, I’m your Dad.”
They haven’t come up with a retort for that one yet.
Last night, the lass decided to throw some serious attitude our way. Openly defiant and essentially daring us to come up with some kind of suitable disciplinary method. Our initial attempt was an early bed time.
She didn’t like that, but she refused to go. She decided to stall as a counter measure. Every time we mentioned she should go to bed, she simply crossed her arms and pretended not to hear us. Or she said ‘No’ outright.
At that point, the Wife threatened her with losing one of her stuffed elephants. Again, she bent but didn’t break.
So then I got up and started heading upstairs.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!”
Too late. She lost her favorite elephant. And many tears later there she was, in bed. With a quiet reminder that if she’d listened the first time, she would not have lost her elephant.
Of course, we have the boy to thank. The longer we go, the more we see, despite clearly different personalities, similar age dependent behavior. The lass is entering that lovely time where she’ll only eat what she wants, even if that means going hungry; she openly defies the Wife and I when we ask her to do something that she’d rather not like chores, or cleaning up after herself. When the boy went through that time, we found that taking things from him or giving him an early bedtime as effective means of discipline. So far, the lass is responding similarly.
However, when the Wife said “Goodnight” to her, the lass informed her “I didn’t want to sleep with that elephant anyway.”
We may have to get more creative.
A few observations, in no particular order:
The Cowboys and Vikings win, which I guess means we can pencil them in as shoe-ins for the NFC Championship. I mean jeez- right up until Sunday everyone was getting their “Jerry Jones is about to clean-house” story into draft form. Ditto for the “Maybe Favre should have retired afterall” stories. Now, their 1-2 and everything is just fine. Sheesh.
OK- Michael Vick played well again. So what. I mean, I guess if you’ve got to go to jail to finally figure out that you need to do a little more than show up on Sunday, so be it. As far as him actually being better than he was before, this one is going to take time.
First, let’s see if he’s still playing in December. He just got the starting job, he has yet to play the Cowboys, Texans, Colts and Titans to name a few. Let’s see if he still has triple-digit passer rating in December. A player just doesn’t, in an instant, become the best quarterback in the league. He earns it one week at a time. Vick doesn’t get an exemption, even if he has straightened out his act.
Pittsburgh will not got undefeated. Anyone thinking that right now needs to put their terrible towel down and take a chill pill. New England couldn’t do it, and that team was better than this Pittsburgh team. I’ll predict right now that they lose Roethlisberger’s return game.
Kansas City is not for real. Yet. They beat the Chargers , which isn’t looking like all that big a deal right now. Other than that, they beat Cleveland and San Francisco. This proves KC’s viability how exactly?
I’m starting to really dislike the Jets. I mean, actually want to see them get beat and badly at that. This is a bad thing because typically, that means the team is very good. I used to feel like this about the Chicago Bulls and New England Patriots. It’s early, but in this case I’m going to begrudgingly agree with the consensus that this could be their year.
I’m glad to see LT playing well. He looks a lot like he did about 4 years ago when he was everybody’s fantasy league hero. When gambles like that pay dividends for teams, it’s a sign. Think Patriots and Corey Dillon, or Cowboys and Charles Haley.
The Giants suck. Love it.
The Pats are looking tired. They need a major infusion of youth. I think the Colts are in the same boat. It’s a long season and pride will only get them so far.
Mainly, the season is long, this is week 3.
Have patience.
The answers are coming.
One of my high school football coaches had a great saying that I never appreciated until the kids came along. It’s “Lessons are taught until they are learned.” At the time, I’m pretty sure my impression was “Duh.” But I’ve learned to appreciate the nuance of the statement now.
For example, we have a breakfast bar in our kitchen that is populated with bar stools. The stools are on the high side so when the kids sit in them, their feet dangle.
Being kids, they can’t sit still.
Being stools, they aren’t very stable.
I figured the first time they tipped the stool over and fell off would also be the last time. But, as I said above, lessons are taught until they are learned.
I went back to the rye-sourdough stater this week and I’ve got my first loaf proofing right now. Aside from the starter, it’s all white flour so I’ll be curious as to the flavor, texture and taste. I’m thinking it will be another good sandwich bread. Being a rye, it should certainly be on the hearty side.
I’m also trying to “back” into a conventional starter by using the rye starter to er, start the starter. Basically, I took some of the rye starter and I’m starting to feed it some all-purpose white flour. As it progresses, I’ll keep increasing the proportion of white flour, while discarding a portion of the starter. We’ll see if that works.
It’s been awhile since I’d learned anything interesting regarding git. Frankly, my needs are modest and I’ve been making due with my current work flow. My only real problem was every now and again, I’d run into trouble with merges.
Turns out, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation.
I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
Lately, all the Democratic criticism of current Republican/ conservative ideas seems to be a variation on “the failed policies of the past.” I think it’s worth pointing out that Medicare, Social Security, and now Government Healthcare are bankrupting the country. Further, everyone, Democrats and Republicans, agree with that assessment. Yet, somehow, with the exception of Healthcare which hasn’t fully taken effect, these are considered paragons of successful government policy.
Here’s the best explanation I can think of regarding this conundrum.
I’ve contributed a bit to the python-markdown project in the form of bug fixes. Today I finished creating an extension that allows python-markdown to recognize list types and generate code with the appropriate list markers. For instance, lists can be marked with upper or lower case letters, or upper or lower case Roman numerals.
The git repository for the extension is available here.
Not one of my more dignified moments yesterday.
I was cleaning the bird cage and the lass was helping. She actually wanted to help. Why? Beat me.
Anyway, I let her wipe down the outside bars since she is not comfortable that one of our 2 Greys won’t take a nip at her. While we were cleaning, she asked “Dad, have the birds ever pooped on your head?”
Now, anyone who has companion parrots will likely understand that any parrot owner is going to get pooped on at some point. It’s an occupational hazard; especially if you handle them for any meaningful amount of time. So, I have been pooped on. But never my head. So I answered in the negative without any qualification. Some topics are best left alone.
As it happened, I was sitting on the floor and one of the bird’s perches is attached to the door. Being as I was cleaning inside the cage, the door was opened and the perch, and the bird sitting on it, was positioned above me. I’ll also note that this particular arrangement is nothing unusual; I’ve cleaned that cage many a time without incident.
But naturally, this time would be different. Thanks to the lass. And it wasn’t 5 seconds after she’d asked and I’d answered. Luckily, she never noticed.
We, certainly I in particular, have been very pleased with our Blue Ray player. Probably the most noteworthy aspect of it is how little we actually use it as a Blue Ray player. Thus far, we’ve watched 2 BR discs with it. The vast majority of the usage is as a media center.
I’ve been using it to play music from my Pandora account almost constantly. I’ve always enjoyed having background music and when I first started using Pandora I was very pleased with the product. The BR player then solved a problem for me- how to get Pandora connected to our main stereo system. I frequently used my EEE for this purpose, but it was a little kludgy. The BR player has a Pandora application that works great. The only kludge involved is that the sound plays from our flatscreen TV’s audio out- a consequence of using the HDMI connection from the player to the TV.
We also signed up for NetFlix and have been able to go and select from a decent variety of cartoons to stream through the BR player. A plus for the kids since we can give them a little more variety for their Saturday morning fare. An added bonus is access to some oldy-but-goody cartoons and shows. Fraggle Rock, anyone? No? How ’bout Voltron? or Scooby Doo?
Definitely a worthwhile purchase.
The 18-game proposition, which from everything I’ve read appears to be a done deal, prompted me to think of some other possible rule changes. Here’s 2 other changes that I think have merit:
This preserves rivalries, perhaps augmenting them since teams only get 1 shot at one another each season. Plus, this makes crystal clear who the cream of the crop are. Mainly though, I think this augments the playoff scenarios. No more crappy division winning teams when there are better teams in a more competitive division. Or rather, we no longer have that argument because it’s all settled on the field.
Mainly, this affects the ends of games and keeps teams in a game even longer. Basically, the minimum safe lead becomes 2 touchdowns (14 points). For instance, under scenario ‘A’ a team down 10 late has a new path to tie, or even win the game. To tie, they need 2 50+ yard field goals. It’s a lot easier to move the ball to the 35 or so than to score touchdowns. Less time comes off the clock for each drive as well.
Arguably there are also new strategic considerations that come into play. Does a team down 10 immediately settle for a 50+ yard field-goal to preserve time on the clock, or do they try to finish the drive and score touchdowns? When inside the 10, does a team settle for 2 now, or go for it on 4th down because 2 points isn’t worth it?
Of the 2, the variable-point field goal is more interesting, IMHO. But I like both and don’t think either is so crazy as to be dismissed without merit. I’ve had other thoughts, but these 2 I think are simple and enhance the game in interesting ways.
There’s really not a lot to add to the current commentary about the NFL after Week 2. Being a Dallas fan, I will say that I’m becoming more hopeful about Tony Romo becoming truly an elite QB. I don’t know if I’m the only one, but I’ve never been totally sold on him. Sure he’s got gaudy stats and he’s won a lot of games. Truth be told, my criticism’s of him don’t even rest on his less-than-stellar playoff performances either.
This has become the boy’s favorite retort any time we discipline him or otherwise force him to do something he’d rather not. Annoyingly, even the lass has picked this one up. So when he used it on the Wife and I yesterday, while en route to the zoo no less, I unfurled a little sarcasm at him:
“You’re right, we’re not nice. We’re so not nice that we never get you anything for your birthday like bikes and rollerblades. We’re so not nice that we never take you to the park to use them. We’re so not nice that we never take you to the zoo, or the museum. We’re so not nice that we never take you out to eat. We never make you your favorite foods. We’re so not nice that we never give you a shoulder to cry on. We never take you to friend’s houses for birthday parties. We never let you get together with your friends at all.”
“You’re right, we are not nice parents at all.”
After several moments of silence, he said “I just meant right now.”
You never know what kids will fixate on, and the lass’ fascination with an elephant certainly fits in that mold.
Michigan State beats Notre Dame in overtime last night using a fake field goal. The significance here is that Michigan State was down by 3, so if the play hadn’t worked, they would have lost and chances are the coach would be second-guessed into resigning.
Looking around at the games, I’m seeing a lot of really good, competitive and entertaining games that were played yesterday. The Clemson-Auburn game went into overtime as well; Umass almost pulled an “upset of the year” against Michigan; and the Iowa-Arizona game was a good one.
That seems to be the pattern for now- there were a lot of good games last week as well.
Following is a simple new mail notification implementation for the awesome window manager that leverages procmail. It’s main virtue is simplicity: there are about 20 lines of python code, 1 procmail recipe and several lines of code required in the rc file for awesome. The result is a numeric count of new email displayed in the statusbar.
… is that anyone ever thought he was the second coming of Gale Sayers.